Former Bungie composer Marty O’Donnell, who wrote the music for Destiny and Halo, recently spoke up about the developer’s split from Activision and what it meant to him. O’Donnell won a court battle against Bungie in 2015, after the developer fired him and forced him to surrender his stock in the company following a long spat about how it handled his music.
O’Donnell got his start composing for video games with the soundtrack for Riven, the sequel to Myst. Not long after, he joined Bungie, working on some of the studio’s early games, including the Myth strategy series and the PlayStation 2 action game Oni. His most important work would come later, when he composed the soundtrack for the Halo series, which led to O’Donnell becoming the composer for the original Destiny.
Recently, O’Donnell sat down for a wide-ranging chat with YouTuber HiddenXperia, where he discussed his composing work in the video game industry and his relationship with Bungie. When asked how he felt upon hearing that his former employer was leaving Activision, which happened in early 2019, O’Donnell said his first reaction was, “it’s about time.”
According to O’Donnell, he and the other members of Bungie’s board of directors knew that joining Activision was a risk and that “it turned out to be exactly as bad as [they] thought it was going to be.”
O’Donnell says that Activision’s deal with Bungie allowed the developer to maintain control over the Destiny IP, an agreement meant to be safeguarded by Bungie’s leadership having final say over decisions about the game. However, O’Donnell claims that Activision began exerting more influence over the franchise, and the disagreements that arose were what eventually led to O'Donnell being fired from Bungie.
As O’Donnell points out in the interview, Activision’s acquisition of Bungie isn’t the only time that the publisher has taken over a developer and made controversial decisions about what to do with its games. O’Donnell points to its takeover of Infinity Ward, which led to accusations of a hostile workplace environment, broken contracts, and wrongful firings. Activision’s direction for Blizzard has also been controversial, with the publisher laying off 800 workers at a time of record profits for the company. More recently, its more than $100 million in compensation for CEO Bobby Kotick has come under fire.
As devoted as Bungie fans can be, it’s impossible to ignore how displeased many Destiny players have been with the direction the game took under Activision. While Bungie hasn’t yet proven that it will be back to its glory days now that it’s an independent studio, it seems that at least some current and former employees think it’s worth the risk.
Source: HiddenXperia/YouTube
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