Jason Jones

The person featured in this article is a Co-Founder of Bungie Studios.

Jason Jones, 2010

Jason Jones is a co-founder, programmer, developer, director, and current chief vision officer of Bungie. He joined Alex Seropian as a co-founder of Bungie in May 1991.

He helped create the Marathon series, Myth series, Halo series, and Destiny series.

Jones was named to TIME Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in 2005, along with Marcus Lehto and Charlie Gough, and has frequently been named in lists of the greatest video game developers.

Bungie History

At the University of Chicago, Seropian met Jones in an artificial intelligence class, joining forces to publish Jones' game, Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete. Seropian handled the design and publicity of the game while Jones finished the coding, with help from Jones' friend, Colin Brent, designing graphics. When the game was complete, they assembled Minotaur boxes by hand in Seropian's apartment.

Due to Minotaur's success, the duo wanted to release a sequel in 3D. Discovering that Minotaur's top-down perspective didn't translate well, they developed a new storyline for the first-person shooter genre that became Pathways Into Darkness, which was released in 1993. Winning awards including Inside Mac Games' "Adventure Game of the Year" and Macworld's "Best Role-Playing Game," Pathways was Bungie's first commercial success, resulting in the company moving from a one-bedroom apartment to an office studio.

Wanting to capitalize on Pathways' success, Bungie's next project began as a sequel to the game, but evolved into a new FPS game set in the future called Marathon. On December 14, the game was complete, and 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. On December 21, Bungie released the game to critical and commercial success, establishing the studio as a leading game developer for the Macintosh for bringing attention from press outside the Mac gaming market.

The team announced there would be a sequel to Marathon on July 19, 1995, entitled Marathon 2: Durandal. The sequel was released on November 24, and, far from being a cheap rehash of the Marathon story, distinguished itself by being a new game in its own right. With Marathon 2 released, Bungie gained nearly 500% sales growth, and hired more artists, programmers, tech support, and marketing staff. This growth allowed them to release Marathon Infinity on October 15, 1996, which included more levels and a much larger plot than the previous two.

Wanting to move away from first-person shooters, Bungie announced on December 6, 1996, seven weeks after Marathon Infinity's released, that they would be creating a new real-time tactical game, Myth: The Fallen Lords, for Mac and Windows. It was released on November 5, 1997.

At E3 on May 23, 1998, Bungie announced two new games in development: Myth II: Soulblighter (Bungie East) and Oni (Bungie West). During Myth II's development, Marcus Lehto had joined the team and was immediately working on a small "side project" with Jones, codenamed Blam. At the time, Jones wanted a real-time strategy or real-time tactics game, in the spirit of Myth but sci-fi. They wanted to one-up all the other sci-fi RTS games, having vehicles that moved like vehicles and terrain that really mattered.

In 1999, Peter Tampte, a former Apple employee who had just joined Bungie, called his old boss, Apple's then-interim-CEO Steve Jobs, and asked him to introduce Bungie's new game to the world. Before the meeting, Jones and Joseph Staten met with Jobs about the game. Jobs didn't seem to be that impressed because Pixar could create dozens of suns, and Jones' immediately reply was that their game could render them in real time. Jobs told them that they were in, and on July 21, 1999, Halo was unveiled to the public during Macworld Conference & Expo's keynote address by Jobs, with Jones and Staten explaining the tech and the story.

Due to continued financial difficulties as a result of Myth II's launch, Tampte contacted Ed Fries, head of Microsoft Game Studios, about a possible acquisition. With the consent of the entire company, on June 19, 2000, Microsoft announced its acquisition of Bungie, with Halo becoming a launch title for the Xbox.

Returning from break after launching Halo, there were no plans to create a Halo sequel, but everyone wanted to do so due to the amount of content they had to cut. Jones spoke to Marty O'Donnell about it, saying that, while he didn't like creating sequels, he "owe[s] it to everyone here."

Jones pushed for their next Halo game to have a strong online side, along with several others on the team. However, he did not give clear direction for the rest of the game, outside of big-picture moments, such as Master Chief standing on a space station and looking down at a battle, and for Captain Keyes' daughter to be angry with the Master Chief and trying to kill him.

Seropian left the company at the end of 2002 after realizing that he wanted something new and that Bungie would be working on Halo 2 for a long time, so he moved back to Chicago with his wife to start a family. With Seropian gone, the team had to figure out how to work together, since he was the one to solve problems for everyone. Jones decided to become Phoenix's creative director and project lead while also working on Halo 2. He eventually formed a Halo 2 leadership team: Griesemer, Lehto, Chris Butcher, and Michael Evans.

After Phoenix was cancelled due to Halo 2's demo not being compatible with the Xbox system, Jones returned and met with Staten and Paul Bertone to figure out a new play for Halo 2 while the team continued working on the game. What came out of their meeting were new missions with encounter beat moments from space to space, and a list of narrative beat moments. The third act was cut out completely, and planned vehicles, such as a Mongoose, an all terrain vehicle, and variants of the Warthog were discarded.

Due to the excess of crunch during Halo 2's development, Jones took a long sabbatical after the game was wrapped up to figure out if he wanted to make games anymore. The team decided to print out a cardboard cut-out of him and put it in the corner, using it during meetings. Jones returned toward the end of Halo 3's development, and all of the mission designers played through their levels in the company of Jones. He then offered feedback and criticisms to help the designers with completing their missions.

On July 7, 2007, Bungie completed their work with Microsoft to become an independent game studio again, but couldn't announce it until October 5. Instead, Bungie created a blog post on their website entitled, "Love, Bungie" that wanted to highlight the "seventh day of the seventh month in the seventh year" by telling people to log into the Xbox 360 to download free Bungie-themed Marketplace Game Pics and Dashboard themes. Also released were new Halo 3 wallpapers, and screenshots. This day became known as Bungie Day amongst the community and Bungie has celebrated the date ever since.

During this time, Jones, Griesemer, and a small team of engineers and artists began working on the game that was codenamed Tiger, which would eventually become Destiny.

On April 29, 2010, Bungie announced that it would be entering into a ten-year publishing deal with Activision-Blizzard for Bungie's next action game series (Destiny), under which Bungie would own the IP and retain control of the game development cycle while Activision would have a 10-year license to publish all video games created around that franchise on multiple platforms. Bungie said that Jones had already begun laying the groundwork for the new game with a core team.

Bungie celebrated its 20th anniversary on August 3, 2011, by releasing a ViDoc: O Brave New World, which featured Jones talking about the future of the company.

During development, Joseph Staten and his team were tasked with writing the game's story. In July 2013, a two-hour "supercut" of the complete story was put together for Bungie's leadership, comprising cinematics and major story elements. They reacted negatively, saying that it was too campy and linear, and completely scrapped the story to be rebuilt. Jones created an "Iron Bar" of meetings sometimes in August, where he and other creators such as Christopher Barrett and Luke Smith created a new plot, overhauling the story to be less linear and stitching together pieces of encounters that had already been created.

At E3 2014 in June 2014 at Sony's Press Conference, a new Destiny trailer was shown off, announcing the September 9, 2014 launch date. Another trailer was created where Jason Jones gave a thorough breakdown of what to expect in Destiny, and announcing that a public beta would take place take place beginning July 17. Destiny launched on September 9, 2014.

Sometime after the launch of Destiny, Jones took on the role of chief creative officer. In 2018, it was announced by NetEase that he would "begin the creation of new worlds."

On February 18, 2021, Bungie announced that they company was preparing for future growth, with plans to bring at least one new IP to market before 2025. In the announcement, Jones was named with the title "chief vision officer," taking on "a talent-facing role to help Bungie’s top creative leadership unlock their full potential at the company."

As part of Bungie's 30th Anniversary celebration, Jones was interviewed by Luke Smith in the August 24, 2021, pre-show for Destiny 2's annual Showcase reveal event. This interview is his last public or media appearance as of 2024.

On January 31, 2022, Bungie and Sony announced that Bungie would be joining the PlayStation family. Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Sony, said that Bungie "will remain an independent and multi-platform studio and publisher" and that "Bungie’s world-class expertise in multi-platform development and live game services will help us deliver on our vision of expanding PlayStation to hundreds of millions of gamers."

Gallery

Jones putting together Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete game boxes

Alex Seropian, left, and Jones during the 1990s

Jones as Robert Blake in Marathon 2: Durandal

Jones during the behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Halo 2

Jones in the Halo 2 cutscene for the level, Gravemind

A missing poster of Jones in Halo 3

Jones as a cutout in the Halo 3 level, Halo

Jones in the Bungie VidDoc O Brave New World

Luke Smith interviews Jones as part of the Destiny 2 Showcase preshow in 2021

Jones as part of the Destiny 2 Showcase preshow in 2021

Trivia

• He is notorious for being reclusive due to infrequent public and media appearances.
• On Marathon, Jason Jones commented, "all the characters are bitmaps, you could only draw trapezoids. When you looked up and down in Marathon, it's actually just distorting the geometry. It's an optical illusion."
• In Marathon 2: Durandal, Jones played the role of Robert Blake in terminals throughout the game.
• Regarding Halo, Jones has said, "We limited players to two weapons, we gave them recharging health, we automatically saved and restored the game -- almost heretical things to first-person shooters at the time. We made the game run without a mouse and keyboard. And now nobody plays shooters the way they used to play them before Halo 'cause nobody wants to."
• He suggested Halo to be called "Red Shift." He also wanted the Elites to have tails, a suggestion many others also agreed with. However, when the animations of the Elites manning vehicles were in production, the tail was removed due to weirdly interacting with the vehicles.
• Joseph Staten said that the reason why most of everything you see from the Covenant is purple is because Jason loves the color.
• Jones thought up the name for the Pillar of Autumn. He uses the name for his LinkedIn profile.
• Jones is known for establishing the quote: "Halo 2 is a lot like Halo 1 only it's Halo 1 on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas. And, the ninjas are all on fire, too." This led to the famous line of inside jokes, patches and t-shirts, user names, and memes of flaming ninjas. This is also where the Forum Ninja moderator name came from.
• During the end of Halo 2's development and most of Halo 3's development, Jones was on sabbatical, so the team decided to print out a cardboard cut-out of him and put it in the corner, using it during meetings.
• A cutout of Jones (possibly the one they printed out at the studio) was hidden as an easter egg in the Halo 2 level, Gravemind, in a cutscene.
  • To see it, you must start the level on Legendary. During the beginning cutscene, after the Gravemind finishes his long conversation with the Arbiter and the Master Chief the camera fades to High Charity. In High Charity, there are Brutes defending the room where the Prophets are hiding from the Elites. When the Grunt climbs the arch and the camera focuses to the crowd up ahead, you can see Jason Jones standing in the crowd of Grunts.
• The same cutout of Jones was also hidden in Halo 3's level, Halo.
  • In the level, there is a secret area for the 7th Terminal. Next to the Terminal's hallway, there are two rooms: one bright room with a vertical energy beam in the center, and a dark room with a horizontal energy beam and a lethal chasm. There is a small nook on the left side of the room (left, if one looks out over the chasm). When watching a saved film in Theater, one can detach the camera and move in there. You can also reach the area by propelling yourself with a rocket or Explosive Jump to get to the support piece, crouch jumping to the next one, turning the flashlight on, and zooming in. In the far corner of the nook is an eerie floating cardboard cut-out of Jones,
• The team also put "Missing" posters of Jones in two of Halo 3's levels, The Storm and Floodgate.

Bungie Game Credits

• Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete - Product Design, Programmer, Manual
• Pathways Into Darkness - Product Design, Programmer, Manual
• Marathon - Product Design, Programmer, Scenario Design
• Marathon 2: Durandal - Product Design, Programmer, Story, Scenario Design
• Myth: The Fallen Lords - Lead Design, Lead Programmer, Level / Scenario Design, Writing / Dialogue / Story
• Myth II: Soulblighter - Writing / Dialogue / Story
• Myth II: Chimera - Berserk #2
• Oni - Special Thanks
• Halo: Combat Evolved - Project Lead
• Halo 2 - Project Lead
• Halo 3 - Special Thanks
• Halo 3: ODST - Halo 3 Contributor
• Halo: Reach - Design: Additional Development
• Destiny - Director, Design Lead
• Destiny 2 - Overhead

Links

• Jason Jones on Wikipedia
• Jason Jones on MobyGames