At various times, I have known various people who have done various things at Bungie - going back to the Microsoft purchase. That is to say, I've had the opportunity to see their management stumble drunkenly from acquisition to more of a sugar daddy situation and then - rain-soaked, on the doorstep, in cinematic desperation - back into the arms of another suitor. I've seen the people they drag into these scenarios slowly ground into dust, all the while creating incredible worlds people live and believe in.

No opprobrium here for the rank and file. None of this accrues to the people who annihilated themselves in the service of an ideal.

You might not understand this if you're a human person. It won't make sense to you. It only makes sense to me because I've had the "opportunity" to see it. It took me a very long time because some modes of social manipulation are essentially invisible to me. But when Management is looking for an Exit Strategy - the kind of escape velocity from the actual world that an external source like an acquisition can provide - they no longer work at the same company you do. They work at the real company, and they will burn your mind and body away so that they can achieve orbit.

It's not clear to me that Bungie could truly deliver on being a multi-project studio, and that was before rounds of layoffs and being parted out to other Sony entities. Even excellent, visionary work could not scaffold their way out of this hole. God only knows what these people told Sony, but whatever it was, it clearly didn't come to pass - and I'm not sure it could have. Anyway, it wasn't supposed to. It was supposed to happen exactly as it did.

(CW)TB out.