Bungie: GDC panel MMO announcement was a joke gone bad

On its weekly update blog, developer Bungie explained that the recent news of its MMO-based future was a joke gone awry. According to the blog...

Xav de Matos

March 6, 2011 8:45 AM

On its weekly update blog, developer Bungie explained that the recent news of its MMO-based future was a joke gone awry. According to the blog, lead network engineer David Aldridge was convinced that "everybody got the joke" during rehearsals for the panel.

"It was all in the delivery, he assured us, and he was certain it was clear that he was playfully riffing off of the recent rumors," the post wrote. He was so very wrong.

It should be noted that, while the post pokes fun at Aldridge's comments under a thick layer of Charlie Sheen references, there is no denial that the studio is working on a massively multiplayer title. But the post also doesn't deny Bungie is working on a successor to the My Little Pony series, so that doesn't mean much at this point.

Xav de Matos

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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March 6, 2011 8:45 AM

Comment on Bungie: GDC panel MMO announcement was a joke gone bad, by Xav de Matos.
- XAVdeMATOS
  
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  March 6, 2011 8:48 AM
  
  Summary: Bungie says news of its MMO future was really only a joke gone bad.
- roushimsx
  
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  March 6, 2011 8:49 AM
  
  aww, that sucks (for him). It's always kind of disheartening when stuff gets ripped completely out of context by the internet, but it's something you pretty much have to expect in this post-two gamecubes duct tapes together world.
  - CecilPhilpot
    
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    March 6, 2011 11:37 AM
    
    there's almost too much coverage of GDC, it's not really a venue for announcements, demos, previews
    - MorrisatCNN
      
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      March 6, 2011 3:47 PM
      
      To be fair, it didn't use to be. These days, it has become that.
      - JuffoWup
        
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        March 6, 2011 3:50 PM
        
        would you say it is mostly because of e3 shuttering for a few years, or do you think it was heading this way no matter what happened with e3? (you really need to change your name to FreelanceMorris)
      - SkipperMcG
        
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        March 6, 2011 6:12 PM
        
        My apologies to you Mr. Morris but the 2 worst things about GDC are press and students.
- pancake humper
  
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  March 6, 2011 10:08 AM
  
  GOG'd
- passingstranger
  
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  March 6, 2011 12:58 PM
  
  Disappointing, actually. I think Bungie could have done an FPSMMO well.
  - OverZealousQuakeFan
    
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    March 6, 2011 6:06 PM
    
    Why? They haven't even made a good FPS yet.
    Yea, easy :E
    - passingstranger
      
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      March 6, 2011 8:08 PM
      
      Oh I'm not a huge fan of the Halo series, but they're at least fairly solid shooters. Starting from there and building out to make an MMO, as opposed to the other way around, could be really interesting.
    - RaptorII
      
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      March 7, 2011 8:23 AM
      
      I understand the Marathon series was pretty fantastic at the time. Though they're a bit dated now (though the have Windows source ports) and I sometimes have difficulty getting into games of that era when they lack the nostalgia factor.
- Beady
  
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  March 6, 2011 1:05 PM
  
  There was a video knocking around of his talk that showed him saying "our next game will be Massively.....AWESOME!". So he was poking fun at all the rumours and managed to confuse the herd of copy-paste weblogs into an avalance of idiocy.
- Bensam123
  
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  March 6, 2011 3:17 PM
  
  Ah, here I was worried about a good gaming out in the next five years that may completely shake the balance of the FPS world... lol, silly me.
- [deleted] 1784011840
  
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  March 6, 2011 3:56 PM
  
  [deleted]
- the archvile
  
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  March 7, 2011 8:50 AM
  
  Half the problem is that I was expecting Bungie to be announcing an MMO, because that's what Activision would love to publish, and Bungie already has over 10 years of experience running their own online auth service.
  
  My "short list" of expected announced titles was MMO, console-centric FPS, or Myth rehash.