Transcript of Miguel Chavez's "The Jason Jones Macworld Expo NY Interview movie".
Interviewer & cameraman: Miguel Chavez
Transcriber: Chris Butcher
Editor: Miguel Chavez
Thanks to Eylon Caspi for identifying Sandro Fouché in the interview.
---------------- Miguel Chavez: All right, here we go with the illustrious Steve Jobs, uh, fellow compatriot Jason Jones, with the two cerebral cortexes ... heh heh, so... <JJ does impression of Steve Jobs> Sandro Fouché: The question is... and I give have to give you guys credit, you guys didn't ship Myth II late, after all the flak that we've watched you take, for uh, I don't remember what actually, bugs, no, there weren't any bugs. mc: Bugs? What bugs? sf: For Halo. Are you going to have any bugs for Halo? And Oni. I'm here to buy Oni. I've got my money. Jason Jones: Oh really? Sweet! I'll take your money... <laughter> mc: Heh. Pre-ordered through Jason Jones. sf: It's going to be on tape, you better be careful. I'd be paying on tape. jj: It doesn't matter what *I* say! heh <laughter> mc: I keep saying, they should release Halo at version 1.2. Just skip, go all the way to version 1.2. jj: ::points finger at Freewill:: <"good idea!"> mc: So, uh, how did it feel? How did it feel being up there? jj: It's funny... after I got out of that, that.. distortion field that Steve has around him, my mind un-numbed. I feel pretty good. mc: That's great! jj: Steve's really cool, it's hard to be around him for very long without getting... mc: Did he find out about Halo, or did somebody else find out and kinda... jj: Yeah. We got it setup... Peter Tamte to call people at Apple, got things going. We went out and demoed to Steve about a week and a half ago. mc: Oh, really? jj: Yeah. This all happened... OpenGL didn't work twelve days ago when we went and demoed it to Steve, so everything happened since then. We demoed the PC version. mc: Oh, okay. And he didn't... sf: uh oh! mc: ...care though, he didn't mind? jj: Yeah, no, well, maybe he cared, but he didn't say anything. Then we got this set up just recently, it's pretty cool. mc: Was there changes made, with what you showed today, with what was shown over at E3? jj: Um, yeah, absolutely. We got back from E3, and tore everything apart... put it all back together... mc: See, this is a real interview, you don't think I'm just bullshitting here... <laughs> jj: It turned out really well. I mean, OpenGL didn't work at E3, almost nothing we had did, really. mc: And did I hear you say something about Body Count, and its inclusion or lack of inclusion? jj: Riiiight... actually, you asked the question in a way that I could answer with 'fuck that'... basically, the question was 'Is Body Count going to be in Halo?' and the answer was 'fuck that'. mc: Okay. I'll quote you on that. <laughter> jj: Heh, okay. mc: Did you think, two years ago when you started this thing, were you just assuming the technology was going to... because there was no OpenGL for mac back then... jj: We've been planning this keynote for two years... no, this stuff just happened. Literally about twelve days ago. mc: Right. But the game itself, and the fact that machines are coming up... jj: Yeah. mc: So that means, when this thing is done, and you put it to bed, and somebody else gets handed Halo II, you're gonna be working on something else, right? jj: Perhaaaaps... <grins> sf: retire, ferrari, retire, repeat!... jj: but then again, I worked on Marathon 2, so you never know. mc: Oh, okay, cool. So, will this be something which will be competing, with like, uh, well, I don't want to say competing because Bungie games are always so separate from everything else, but <grins> like, uh, Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic... jj: Well, yeah like Quake 3, Quake Arena... they're not doing team stuff, they're uh... well... sf: How about Tribes? jj: Tribes... yeah we play Tribes uh, every now and then. <laughter> But we're gonna do something different then all those games. You will be... mc: Oh no, we're definitely salivating for it. You mentioned at the beginning <at the keynote> about community... are you even in this shot? [He was] You were mentioning about community... are you stressing maybe more than Myth II, the sense of community, maybe? jj: I think that it's the cooperative nature of the game, like the teamplay's gonna be encouraged, in a way that it wasn't in Myth. Like, it's really cool in Myth when you get a good team together, it's really fun. It's hard to do that, the game doesn't really... the game actually makes it difficult to set it up. Like to set up a good team, and to know what you're supposed to do, and to play well. And we're going to try to do everything we can to make it easy to put together a team. mc: well, you're going to address that, okay. Anything you guys wanna say? <turns to other people in attendance [CHIA being one of them]> sf: Well, actually, I would. Six years ago, you and I stood in another Macworld in a different town, and uh, mc: <to jj> Don't you remember him?! Remember?<laughter> sf: No, uh, back in that day Minotaur was the big multi-player game, and it was, uh, kill your enemies, kill your friends' enemies, kill your friends. And you've come a long way, now it isn't kill your friends, now team together with your friends to kill other people... are you guys at all worried about the violence in video games? jj: It's something we think about a lot, and we're definitely going to have a lockout feature even better than Myth. mc: Consoles? jj: Perhaaaaps... <laughter> sf: Is there anything you can tell us that you haven't already said? jj: No. mc: Perhaaaaps... heh. How about a console, as in like in Quake, as in being able to get into the engine... jj: Oh, yeah. mc: Are you thinking about that, too? jj: Our tools are set up in a much better way than they were in Myth. They already run on most platforms, so... it should be better. Yeah, there'll be something like the console. mc: Because I think that a lot of game geeks out there, love the tweaking, the ini files and all that, you know. jj: Yeah, people dig that. We're set up to do that. Especially with the multiplayer, and the team play, that's going to be really cool, people are going to be able to create their own scenarios, their own situations... mc: Right. So are you involved in hiring a network guy, to take care of the Bungie servers? Can you put a little push there... <laughter> jj: If I didn't already have a hundred things to do... mc: Oh, you're right. Okay, I take it back. jj: No, don't take it back, I totally agree. And yes, we are. And we get some candidates, but we ::points at camera:: NEED THAT PERFECT NETWORK PROGRAMMER! mc: We need you know. jj: And we haven't found him yet. mc: And once he comes on board, the Myth II servers will all be... the bungie.net will be... jj: They'll work that same day. Flawlessly. There'll be a hundred thousand people online. <laughter> mc: Makefile, that's it. sf: Can I just ask, what operating system are you running on? I am actually a network programmer. So in the realm of actual business, you're not going to get any of that. jj: The bungie.net stuff is running on Linux. sf: It is running on Linux? Okay. mc: Oh, wow. Very cool. sf: You've actually got forty-three thousand users, you're going to hit the user limit very soon? jj: ::laughs:: No. The big limit is the number of current users. And so, I think we're still pretty safe with that. Obviously so many things we could do to make it better. I mean, it's really frustrating to me, because we haven't had the time, we don't have the person to do it, and there's so many new things that we have to do. We plan on doing it a lot differently for Halo. sf: Right, and so, are you going to take this outside? jj: We're not taking bungie.net out. Is that what you're saying? sf: No, no, some of the dependence on the centralised server out. jj: There's going to be a total rewrite for Halo. Yes, it's going to be much more spread out. Arikay: <unknown> jj: I won't answer that question directly, but I think that the cool thing about bungie.net compared to, like, Half-life or Tribes is that if you want, you can get involved in a community. And there actually are people there talking about the game, and I don't know, I think that's pretty cool. So we're going to do something like that. But it's not going to be like one server clustering everything all the time. And crashing every now and then. mc: Good going! sf: The whole thing's on one server? jj: Right now? sf: Yeah. jj: Uh, no, there's a hundred servers distributed throughout the country. Yeah, it's pretty bad. sf: Okay, I'm surprised it works as well as it does. jj: Yeah, it's running at Bungie and our power went out. Actually, the whole block of downtown Chicago, the power went out. And our server was up, because it's on a UPS, but its connection to the Net went off. Yeah, that kinda sucks, to sit there and go... mc: ::points camera at self:: That's why I'm a dagger. Because the power went down! Not my fault, I'm damn good! sf: Well, how about you open it up to let those who do do it professionally help you on a volunteer basis. I can't quit my job, they've got really great handcuffs where I work, but, I mean, I have a card. <pulls out business card> No, seriously, I mean, I have a friend in Chicago who keeps me in housing, so I don't mind visiting her once in a while... mc: Ah! Bungie, the company that gets people together. <laughter> sf: No, I didn't meet her through Bungie, but if I had it would be really hard. If she played Myth, it'd probably be harder for both of us. But, uh I'd certainly go in and help you out, ah, for free, I'd be happy to come out and help, but uh you know... jj: We definitely need a guy, like Konrad who did the bungie.net 2 stuff, he's working on Halo now, and we need to find that "guy" who knows networking really well and has hopefully a ton of experience, but enough, and who's really interested in bungie.net. You really got to get somebody who loves this, like care for it, visit it every two hours... sf: Who was it? It was Yahoo, I think it was Yahoo, Yahoo was running on four hundred Linux servers, and the chief sysadmin for Yahoo lived in his cube, and I mean clothing hanging from the walls. And he didn't go anywhere for about two years. And, uh, they got professional, and they brought in some other people, but actually I've been doing it for about eight years. And, uh my problem's not... I'm a sysadmin guy, I do some networking, but I mean you should get a team of like six guys to come in for free, and <laughter> jj: You just come in and clean up! sf: All I want is to beta! <laughter> mc: Collective laugh! sf: I just want to stop by, and pull you guys up a little. jj: Oh, I don't know about that... I'm going to go over there and play Marathon. Arikay: We need more power on Myth I. <adminning> <before jj can answer, Doug Zartman makes his entrance> mc: Oh my God! It's the Man! How are you man? Doug Zartman: Happy doodle! Don't put me on the web! Don't put me on the web! <laughter> mc: You're already on the web. Man, you are like the punching bag of Bungie man! dz: I am? mc: They have the worst video clip of you, man! dz: Oh, you mean, uh... mc: Yeah! It's like... ::does off-camera impression of Doug in E3 Oni movie:: mc: Firings all around! <notices jj getting bored> All right, we'll leave you alone.. ---------- END!