. for the type of elastic cord see bungee cord . bungie inc. type private industry video game industry predecessor bungie software products corporation founded may 1991 1991 05 in chicago illinois united states founders jason jones alex seropian headquarters bellevue washington united states 1 2 key people pete parsons ceo jason jones project director brent abrahamsen cfo products list of bungie video games number of employees 750 2016 3 parent microsoft game studios 2000 2007 divisions bungie west dissolved website www.bungie.net bungie inc. is an american video game developer located in bellevue washington united states . the company was established in may 1991 as bungie software products corporation by university of chicago undergraduate student alex seropian who later brought in programmer jason jones after publishing jones game minotaur the labyrinths of crete . originally based in chicago illinois the company concentrated primarily on macintosh games during its early years and created two very successful video game franchises called marathon and myth . a west coast offshoot produced the pc and console title oni . microsoft acquired bungie in 2000 ; the project it was working on was repurposed into a launch title for microsoft s xbox console called halo combat evolved . halo became the xbox s killer application selling millions of copies and spawning a billion dollar franchise . on october 5 2007 bungie announced that it had split from microsoft and become a privately held independent company bungie llc microsoft retained ownership of the halo franchise ip . among bungie s side projects are bungie.net the company s official website which includes company information forums and statistics tracking and integration with many of its games . bungie.net also serves as the platform from which bungie sells company related merchandise out of the bungie store and runs other projects including bungie aerospace its charitable organization the bungie foundation a podcast and online publications about game topics . the company is known for its informal and dedicated workplace culture and recently signed a ten year publishing deal with activision . their first project together was the 2014 first person shooter destiny . 4 contents 1 history 1.1 founding 1.2 marathon myth and oni 1.3 halo and buyout 1.4 independent company 2 bungie.net 3 culture 4 developed games 5 related companies 6 references 7 external links history edit founding edit in the early 1990s alex seropian was pursuing a mathematics degree at the university of chicago as the university did not offer undergraduate degrees in computer science . 5 seropian s first video game was a pong clone called gnop pong spelled backwards . seropian released gnop free of charge though a few players paid seropian for the source code . 6 living at home shortly before graduation his father s wishes for him to get a job convinced seropian to start his own game company instead . 5 seropian founded bungie in 1991 to publish operation desert storm . 6 7 seropian culled funding from friends and family assembling the game boxes and writing the disks himself . 8 operation desert storm sold 2 500 copies and seropian looked for another game to publish . 6 seropian met programmer jason jones in an artificial intelligence course at the university of chicago . 6 jones was a longtime programmer who was porting a game he wrote called minotaur from an apple ii to the apple macintosh platform . 9 jones recalled i didn t really know alex in the class . i think he actually thought i was a dick because i had a fancy computer . 6 seropian and jones partnered to release the role playing video game as minotaur the labyrinths of crete in 1992 ; while jones finished the coding seropian handled design and publicity . 9 the game relied on a then uncommon internet modems and appletalk connections for play and sold around 2 500 copies 7 but it developed a devoted following . 6 the team focused on the macintosh platform not windows based personal computers because the mac market was more open and jones had been raised on the platform . while jones was responsible for many of the creative and technical aspects seropian was a businessman and marketer . 8 what i liked about seropian was that he never wasted any money jones recalled . with no money to hire other personnel the two assembled minotaur boxes by hand in seropian s apartment . 6 while the pair remained low on funds seropian s wife was largely supporting him the modest success of minotaur gave the duo enough money to develop another project . 10 inspired by the shooter game wolfenstein 3d jones wrote a 3d game engine for the mac . 11 bungie s next game was intended to be a 3d port of minotaur but jones and seropian found that minotaur s top down perspective gameplay did not translate well to the 3d perspective and did not want to rely on modems . 9 instead they developed a new storyline for the first person shooter that became pathways into darkness released in 1993 . jones did all the coding with his friend colin brent creating the game s art. 12 the game was a critical and commercial success winning awards including inside mac games adventure game of the year and macworld s best role playing game . 12 pathways beat sales expectations and became bungie s first commercial success . 8 13 bungie moved from a one bedroom apartment to a studio in chicago s south side on south halsted street ; 10 seropian and jones s first full time employee doug zartman joined in may 1994 to provide support for pathways but became bungie s public relations person honing bungie s often sophomoric sense of humor and irreverence . 14 bungie composer martin o donnell remembered that the studio s location a former girls school next to a crack house smelled like a frat house after a really long weekend and reminded staff of a locale from the silent hill horror video games . 15 marathon myth and oni edit bungie s next project began as a sequel to pathways into darkness but evolved into a futuristic first person shooter called marathon . not only did it introduce the rocket jumping mechanic to gamers for the first time then known as grenade hopping it was the first control system where players could use the mouse to look up and down as well as pan side to side . 16 pathways had taught bungie the importance of story in a game 17 and marathon featured computer terminals where players could choose to learn more about the game s fiction . 18 the studio became what one employee termed your stereotypical vision of a small computer game company eating a lot of pizza drinking a lot of coke while the development team worked 14 hours every day for nearly six months . 14 after showing the game at the macworld expo bungie was mobbed with interest and orders for the game . the game was not finished until december 14 1994 ; jones and a few other employees spent a day at a warehouse assembling boxes so that some of the orders could be filled before christmas . 14 the game was a critical and commercial success 17 and is regarded as a relatively unknown but important part of gaming history . 19 it served as the mac alternative to dos pc only games like doom and system shock . 8 the game s volume of orders was unprecedented for the studio who found that its old method of mail or phone orders could not scale to the demand and hired another company to handle the tens of thousands of orders . marathon also brought bungie attention from press outside the small mac gaming market . 14 the first game s success led to a sequel marathon 2 durandal . the series introduced several elements including cooperative mode which made their way to later bungie games . 17 the game was released november 24 1995 and outsold its predecessor . when bungie announced its intention to port the game to the windows 95 operating system however many mac players felt betrayed and bungie received a flood of negative mail . seropian saw the value of moving into new markets and partnering with larger supply chains although he lamented the difficult terms and sucky contracts distributors provided . 14 the game released on windows 95 in september 1996 . marathon infinity was released the following year . after marathon bungie moved away from first person shooters to release a strategy game myth the fallen lords . the games stressed tactical unit management as opposed to the resource gathering model of other combat strategy titles . the myth games won several awards and spawned a large and active online community . myth the fallen lords was the first bungie game to be released simultaneously for both mac and windows platforms . 8 20 the success of myth enabled bungie to change chicago offices and establish a san jose california based branch of the studio bungie west in 1997 . 8 bungie west s first and only game would be oni an action title for the mac pc and playstation 2 . 21 halo and buyout edit in 1999 bungie announced its next product halo originally intended to be a third person shooter game for windows and macintosh . 22 halo s public unveiling occurred at the macworld expo 1999 keynote address by apple s then interim ceo steve jobs after a closed door screening at e3 in 1999 . 22 on june 19 2000 soon after halo s preview at electronic entertainment expo 2000 microsoft announced that it had acquired bungie software and that bungie would become a part of the microsoft game division under the name bungie studios . halo would be developed as an exclusive first person shooter title for the xbox . the reasons for bungie accepting microsoft s offer were varied . jones stated that i don t remember the details exactly it was all a blur . we d been talking to people for years and years before we even published marathon activision made a serious offer . but the chance to work on xbox the chance to work with a company that took the games seriously . before that we worried that we d get bought by someone who just wanted mac ports or didn t have a clue . 23 martin o donnell who had joined bungie as an employee only ten days before the merger was announced remembers that the stability of the xbox as a development platform was not the only benefit . 15 shortly before myth ii s release it was discovered versions of the game could erase a player s hard drive ; the glitch led to a massive recall of the games right before they shipped 8 17 which cost bungie nearly one million dollars . 8 o donnell stated in a bungie podcast that this recall created some financial uncertainty although accepting the offer was not something bungie had to do . 15 seropian and jones had refused to accept microsoft s offer until the entire studio agreed to the buyout . 8 as a result of the buyout the rights to myth and oni were transferred to take two interactive as part of the three way deal between microsoft bungie and take two ; most of the original oni developers were able to continue working on oni until its release in 2001 . 24 halo combat evolved meanwhile went on to become a critically acclaimed hit selling more than 6.5 million copies 25 and becoming the xbox s flagship franchise . 26 halo s success led to bungie creating two sequels . halo 2 was released on november 9 2004 making more than 125 million on release day and setting