| | Newsflash:
Developing Bungie.net 2.0
By B.B. Larouche
How do you build the perfect community site? Just ask
Tom Gioconda, the self-described "Bungie.net Overlord." Recently,
Gioconda took time out from his schedule to talk with us about the
new-and-improved Bungie.net. He also shared his visions for the
future of the Bungie community.
Xbox.com: Take us through the features of the new
Bungie.net. What's available right out of the box, and what can we
look forward to down the road?
Gioconda: The main features for this release are
speed and stability. The old Bungie.net was based around the idea
of a highly dynamic user experience, but on older technology with a
much lower number of users. With the big ramp-up to the release of
Halo
2 fast approaching, we had to bring our Web site into the
modern era. Users of the "new hotness" will notice right away that
everything is extremely snappy compared to the old site. Aside from
that, the most obvious change is the way it looks. Bungie.net has a
new logo and a brand new look. Not just a change in the color, the
layout of the site is completely different, and the navigation is
especially different. The old site wasted a lot of space with
redundant navigation links. Using modern browser technology, we
consolidated our navigation to a big navigation widget that lies on
the bottom of every screen. It is different, but once you
get used to it, you'll find that it makes navigation through our
site a breeze.
Of course, it would be fairly sad if all we did was re-tool the
inside of the site and change the interface a bit. So, we thought
that throwing in an entirely new forum system would liven things
up. This new forum is much faster, more stable, and much easier to
use and customize. It also has some requested features, like user
avatars and a flat view (rather than a complex threaded view). Did
I mention that it was fast?
Down the road, we plan to bring these features to our individual
fan clubs. For this release, we focused on the big public areas of
the site, but left the fan clubs with pretty much the same
interface and features. I won't get into the reasons for this
decision, but our long-time members can be assured that they'll get
the same love that the main areas have received, including upgraded
forums and news and some other neat things just for the community.
And, that's not even talking about how The 7th Column and Halo
2 will be hooked up together.
Xbox.com: Building a site like this is no small
task. How many people are involved with the development of
Bungie.net, and how has that changed since the previous
version?
Gioconda: The first version of Bungie.net was made
by just myself, Max Hoberman (yeroen), and David
Candland (Evil Otto), with content and testing
from various other Bungie staffers. But, that was a small site
compared to this. This time, we've got a whole new cast playing the
part of our development team. First off, our content guys are Brian
Jarrard (Sketch) and Frank O'Connor
(Frankie). Designing the front-end (that's the
user interface and layout), we have Claire Jennings. She's the one
who's responsible for the magic of our unique navigation and
cross-browser style sheets and HTML. Working closely with her are
the artists: Lorraine McLees (mehve) and Zoe
Brawley. They're the ones who gave Bungie.net it's new look, while
keeping that old-school Bungie flavor. And, behind the scenes,
doing the nuts-and-bolts development (programming and architecture)
we have me, Zach Russell, and Roger Wolfson. The task of kicking
the tires of the site falls to the testers, led by Doug Boyce
(weresnail) and his crack team, Daniel Bannon and
Jon Steward. Doug also leads the Ops guys, Kyle Emtman and Jason
Pietrzyk. And, who can forget our fearless producer, Harold
Ryan?
As you can see, the team has grown quite a bit. With the first
site, we were small and ambitious, biting off a little more than we
could chew at times. The Web site was more of a side project to the
"community relations" that the online team does. Now, however,
Bungie.net is much more front and center to our online plans. It is
our primary connection to the community, and that community’s
primary connection to us. We think that connection is critical to
our success as a game developer. Think of it as building a road:
the more who use the road, the more you need to build and maintain
it. The same goes for Bungie.net. It is very much a critical road
that needs great people working on it. It can be somewhat chaotic,
but everything has really come together. We're quite certain that
after you use "the new hotness," you'll agree things have really
come together.
Xbox.com: Bungie has long been known for its great
reputation with its community. From a technical standpoint, how do
you best support that sort of relationship?
Gioconda: I think the key has always been to give
the users flexibility to grow the community at their own pace.
Online communities are by their very nature extremely dynamic,
changing as their participants add to them. We try not to limit
people, unless there is a good reason, so that our users can evolve
the community without waiting on us. A good example of this is The
7th Column. We essentially give users access to the exact same
tools we use for the main areas. They get news, events, polls, a
forum, and even databases—all you need to create your own little
Web site within our system. The main goal is to provide people with
the tools to express themselves and to let them take it from
there.
Xbox.com: There have been lots of rumors about the
great community-based features that will be built around Halo
2. Can you tell us anything about that?
Gioconda: We've got grand plans. Not plans I can
tell you anything about, but grand plans nonetheless. The new site
is just a taste of the things to come. You can probably guess at a
few features just by digging around the site and see where some
existing hooks to Xbox Live exist, ready to integrate with
our online games.
For now, let's just say that Bungie.net will be an integral part of
the Halo 2 Xbox Live experience and leave at
that.
Xbox.com: Look down the road a few years: the
Bungie community has grown by leaps and bounds, computers are
faster, broadband is more mainstream, and herbal Viagra ads have
finally been eradicated—it's a golden age! How do you think
Bungie.net will have evolved in that time?
Gioconda: Bungie.net is more than the sum of its
technological parts. It is the Xbox Live integration, The
7th Column, the user content, and the Bungie-created content, all
at the same time. So, even if we do nothing to change it, it will
evolve simply from people using it. That's probably what I like
best about Bungie.net—it is pretty much what users make of it. As
long as we do our job and give users the tools, the system takes on
a life of its own. It is very similar to watching what crazy stuff
our fans manage to do in the game, like launching Warthogs skyward
with piles of grenades.
Aside from the usual feature additions, I'm hoping that Bungie.net
will stick around even after Halo 2. We'll add Bungie's
next game to it (whatever that may be), giving it the same kind of
rich experience we'll have for Halo 2. The neat thing
about the Web, though, is that it evolves quickly. We might think
of some new way to show rich data related to Halo 2 a year
or so after we release the game. Most likely, the millions of
people playing it will find cool new things that they want to see
that we didn't think of. We can add that to Bungie.net, allowing us
to update the Halo 2 experience whenever necessary and
keep things fresh, even a few years after release.
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