Paul McCartney working with Bungie
By
Brendan Sinclair, Senior Editor
Ex-Beatles legend tweets that he's "really excited" to be writing music with Halo developers.
Sir Paul McCartney is apparently playing a part in Bungie's upcoming Destiny franchise. The former Beatles singer-songwriter posted on his Twitter account today that he's "really excited to be working on writing music with @bungie, the studio that made Halo."
Although Bungie hasn't officially announced its next project, the studio's contract with Activision was outed as a result of the publisher's legal fight with Jason West and Vince Zampella. The contract called for Bungie to create Destiny, a series of four "massively multiplayer-style…sci-fantasy, action shooter games," to be delivered every other year beginning next fall. In between those releases, the studio was expected to produce downloadable expansion packs under the code name "Comet."
Bungie hasn't detailed release plans or platforms for its first series for Activision, and these plans were only current as of the April 16, 2010, signing of the contract.
The 70-year-old McCartney has been involved in games before, most notably with the release of The Beatles: Rock Band. In an interview with German outlet Die Zeit earlier this year, McCartney said he didn't game himself but was interested in the medium as a way to expose people to new music.
By
Brendan Sinclair, Senior Editor
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
195 comments
1 Like Paul McCartney is a great musician, but I dont think his cup of tea is making soundtracks for video games. That's a whole different thing.
why do you care about how much money does Bungie spend. That is not your problem, the game is still going to be extremeley overcharged despite Macca´s colaboration, so who cares. I just want to say that games need better music and if the best composer of our time is involved in it, I can almost say that it will be a good thing, at least music wise...
3 Like Give the job to someone unknown with fresh talent. I'm looking forward to Halo 4, Don't care about Macca's Input.
As someone who hates, hates, HATES Halo, I must concede that this is still really cool!!!!!.......Still not gonna play anymore of the franchise though.
This comment has been deleted
3 Like Bungie Employee: Please Mr. McCartney we must get back to work
Paul McCartney: So i put my face on her chest like this
Code named 'comet'? I would think 'Red Planet' would be more fashionable or perhaps 'He who landed on the moon first'...wait, we still dont have that info sorry...
@GinsuVictim Most people who like puns remind me of the kind of people who laugh at every joke, they just like them no matter what.
4 Like If Paul McCartney's making Bungie's scores, then they should hire Simon Cowell for judgeing.
4 Like "writing music" eh? or is it a plot twist? Chief finally shows his face and it's CGI Paul McCartney.
Awesome.
1 Like Paul McCartney isn't doing this for the money guys, he is finding new challenges in his life. Paul doesn't need the money, I know he has done alot of things with a small paycheck so don't worry guys :)
1 Like This is the first time i am going to go buy a soundtrack CD for a game...
Wow... i am waiting for the trailer just to freaking hear it :)
8 Like Are you guys being serious right now? This isn't the same thing as some actor that has never done voice work before taking the job over a person trained and proficient in voice acting. This is Paul freaking McCartney,
"McCartney was described by Guinness World Records as "the Most Successful Composer and Recording Artist of All Time", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100 million albums, 100 million singles, and a writer's credit on forty-three songs that have sold over one million copies each. According to Guinness, he is "the most successful songwriter" in UK singles chart history and "the most successful musician of all time". He has written or co-written "188 charted records, of which 129 are different songs. Of these records, 91 reached the Top 10 and 33 made it to No.1. In total, the songs have spent 1,662 weeks in the charts (up to the beginning of 2007)." (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McCartney#Achievements)
Do you guys realize how incredible all ^that is?
This isn't like Arnold Schwarzenegger just walking in and phoning it in for a paycheck or to pad his resume, it is a talented proven musician who knows exactly what he is doing.
Ah, yes, in this capitalistic society, success is measured by how many dollars you rake in. Not to imply that McCartney isn't talented or that he can't write good music, but I sort of feel that there's someone out there who's poor as hell, that can write better music than him. You don't need a big name to display extraordinary talent. Sorry, but this just comes off as more of a marketing ploy than anything. "McCartney makes the music? Oh, I gotta get the game." That will probably ring through a lot of heads.
@Animatronic64 McCartney grew up as that poor guy. He's been rich for most of our lifetimes, but he was the poor guy once too...
2 Like @Animatronic64 That's probably what they were thinking, and if they can make money while we get good music in our games, so be it. And of of course people will buy this game just because Paul was a part of it, if they enjoy his music why not?
Why go watch Clapton in concert when there is probably a poor guy in a bar some where who plays better guitar? No doubt there is some poor guy/girl who could write better music than him, but you can say that about anyone in any field, what is the point? Once again if people enjoy his work or anyone else's work, why wouldn't they want to hear more of it wherever they can get it?
3 Like @Bartz77 I wanna comment on this because I feel your first paragraph may be aimed at my comment made a little lower.
I feel like you didn't read my comment and are instead blowing what I said a little out of context. My point was that a lesser known but very talented voice actor was able to provide a superior service for a nominal fee. He was then replaced by another talented actor/voice actor (voice acting is still acting and requires much skill). The difference between the 2 was that the second one was very well known and as such came with a much higher price tag. The result of which was a waste of money because it was money that was not spent for the product's target market.
Similarities can be drawn to this article aswell. You have to do an analysis on cost of a big name talent versus return on that cost. For a game like Guitar Hero or Rockband, getting someone like Paul McCartney to provide music is fantastic. Not only are you getting a superior product, but you are getting a name that is recognized by the game genres targeted demographic. For something like Destiny you have to ask if having the name in the credits will provide enough increased revenue to justify the cost of hiring him, compared to a lesser known but still talented musician.
"Padding resumes" doesn't really apply here in any of these arguments and it goes back to @Dasim64 original comment that because the gaming industry is making more money than the movie industry, for much less money then some big name people are trying to get in on it.
It's all at a cost to both the little guy and to the consumer. Especially if it takes away from actual game development time.
@FacesMan Wow! I was literally about to start typing something similar to what you just said, but you summed it up in a nutshell.
3 Like @FacesMan Yeah I guess it was aimed at yours haha, and I understand where you are coming from and normally would agree with you, but when they hire someone as big a name as Paul McCartney they are pretty much guaranteeing sales just by his name alone, not many people have as much draw as him. I would certainly say in this case that they will most likely be getting their monies worth with Paul McCartney, I mean, I personally have never heard of a single venture of his that has failed.
I would also like to add that this is a much much safer investments of their resources than some unknown musician/composer. They know McCartney's style, talent, and history and know they will receive great work and experience, since he is working "with" them and not developing all the music on his own, and can certainly teach their own in-house music team a thing or two. While with an unknown musician, sure you are giving them a shot, but you also do not know if what you will receive is going to be quality.
This music is for an MMO type of game made by Bungie, and backed by Activision, it's not like an indie developer on their own spending their entire budget to sell on name alone. This is also for the whole Destiny franchise (4 MMOs), so more than likely this music he is creating is going to be used in all 4 games.
Also, I do not believe this will in any way take away from game development time, as music, art, and programming are generally done by different teams. Where it could take away from is budget for the other aspects of the game, but at this point no one knows how much he asked for or how much they are paying him.
2 Like @Bartz77 ...and yet with all those achievements, many people on these boards will actually be more familiar with Rick Astley :P
7 Like This is another huge issue with gaming right now. The industry is making billions and everyone wants a chunk. So these big stars show up to be part of something most of them know nothing about and take a huge percentage of the budged and it really does very little for the game as a whole and the gamers end up worse off for the whole thing. I'd rather see that budget go into making a better, more polished game. I'll never notice it's not Paul's music.
1 Like @Dasim64 Absolutely! It's like all those half-assed film licences or those awful FMV games from years ago featuring famous actors. Awful games, but people bought them because of the publicity.
5 Like @Dasim64 I really agree with you and I wanna add to the subject. I was watching an episode of X-Play (Miss Sessler) the other day and they interviewed the voice actor for Uncharted. It was pretty fascinating hearing his viewpoints and he brought up this exact thing.
In the interview he mentioned how he was set to do the voice over for a main character in a children's game and that his agent had to fight tooth and nail just to get him a fair paycheck for his work. What happened was that a big name actor (not mentioned) came in to the project to do the voice of the character instead and the company coughed up like 10x the amount of money to get the actor to do so. He then mentioned that since it was a kids game he asked his own kid if had even heard of the actor now doing the voice over and they had no idea who it was, so they spent 10x their budget on 1 big name when the guy (Sorry I really can't remember his name, those Uncharted fans out there probably wanna hit me right now :\, my apologies) could do the same job or better and get the same result.
L.A. Noire really strikes out to me as one game that put a good use to hiring some great talent to act out their characters. Everything else seems like a pointless waste of money just to get a high profile name on the credits for marketing.
2 Like so how much of the money used to hire mcartney could be used to make the game better
I liked the beatles, but Paul McCartney hasn't exactly released any gold material in the past several decades, Paul McCartney is famous these days not for the music he's churning out, but for being Paul McCartney, I dunno, I think they coulda found a better match with a much cheaper price tag, that's just my 2 cents though.
2 Like Wow maybe a bit over exaggerated when you said no gold material last several decades. Memory Almost Full released in 2007 hit gold, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard released in 2005 hit gold. Flaming Pie released 1997 hit gold, as well as albums in the 80s such as Flowers in the Dirt, Pipes of Peace, Tug of War and McCartney 2. lol He almost always hits gold dude! :)
@Hockenberry As much as I love McCartney, these songs may have charted well, but most people couldn't hum a single one of them.
@Hockenberry Fact: If you hum Skrillex, someone WILL call the paramedics for what they perceive to be a seizure.
1 Like I know, these days kids can only hum to Lady Ga Ga, or can't hum at all cus they are listening to Dubstep!
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