Bungie Podcast

The Bungie Podcast was started on August 26, 2006. It is available on iTunes, and is one of the most popular gaming podcasts. It currently consists of thirteen episodes, with a new episode coming out periodically.

Episode I
Run Time 55:00

The first episode of the show featured Frank O'Connor and Brian Jarrard, also known as Ske7ch, in a fairly formatted and planned out show. Guest stars included Jay Weinland and a man named Bob, who read the Bungie Waambulance.

Episode II
Run Time 35:36

The second episode again featured Frank O'Connor and Ske7ch, the regular hosts, but they were also joined by Luke Smith, who has gone on to become the third regular host of the show. They were joined by their guest, Lars Bakken, and they talked about multiplayer, as well as E3 2007.

Episode III
Run Time 1:07:40

The third episode of the Bungie Podcast featured the main three hosts, as well as Bungie writer Joseph Staten, who became the guest after Paul Bertone, the lead Campaign Designer for Halo 3 didn't show up. The show was released after E3 2007, and so Frank and Ske7ch talked about doing demos for press people at E3, while everyone talked about Joe going to Comicon the following weekend.

Episode IV
Run Time 49:19

The fourth show, which pushed the show into being 'hilariously regular', featured Jamie Evans, the Test Manager, talking about testers working on Halo 3. They noted that the number of people working on the game is a huge amount, and that testing games is not as easy as it sounds.

Episode V
Run Time 1:03:19

The fifth show featured Dan Miller, or DMiller, talking about Campaign Mission Design. In this show, the name of the second mission of the game was revealed to be 'Crows Nest'. It was also revealed that Dan Miller was the designer for the second and final missions of the game. Also, Ske7ch wasn't present in this episode, because he was doing promotional events.

Episode VI
Run Time 1:02:35

In the sixth episode of the show, Luke Smith and Ske7ch hosted while Frankie was out of the office, and they had Damien Isla as their special guest. The three of them talked about AI in Halo 3, specifically how much smarter and fun it was to fight against as well as the impact that equipment had on the AI programming and scripting.

Episode VII
Run Time 42:21

The seventh episode of the show again featured all three hosts, this time with two special guests. Lars Bakken returned to co-host for the second time, alongside Tyson Green, another multiplayer designer. The group of five talked about Forge, Halo 3's multiplayer map editor, discussing how fun it was, how easy it was to use, and what kind of impact it had on gameplay, as well as how the Halo 3 multiplayer community would potentially use Forge to create completely unforeseeable content for the game.

Episode VIII
Run Time 58:08

The eighth episode of the Bungie Podcast featured Paul Bertone, the Campaign Design Lead who skipped out on being the guest in the third episode of the Podcast. They talked about the Campaign mode of the game, and how it was no longer a single player experience, it was much more of a Campaign mode that could be played with up to four players at once. They also talked about Campaign Scoring, and the impact that that made on personal bragging rights.

Episode IX
Run Time 1:47:39

Released on September 20, 2007, just five days before the release of Halo 3, this nearly two hour long episode was highlighted by a visit from Marty O'Donnell to talk about the Halo 3: Original Soundtrack. Joe Staten stopped by again to talk about his book Halo: Contact Harvest and Chris Gossett, the Web Development Lead, stopped by to talk about the upcoming changes to Bungie.net.

Episode X
Run Time 53:19

The tenth episode of the Bungie Podcast, the first episode to be released after the release of Halo 3, featured the main hosts of the show as well as the Executive Producer of Bungie Studios, Jonty Barnes. Throughout the course of the hour, the four men talked about Halo 3 ranks, as well as Jonty's past in the video game industry, which included work at Lionhead Studios and Bullfrog Studios before that. Also, the group continued the feature now called the NFL Minute, in which they talk about that week's football action. This version of the NFL Minute was unique in the fact that during its course they proceeded to make fun of Jonty, who is British, and his faithfulness to English 'football', known in the states as soccer.

Episode XI
Run Time 1:16:47

The eleventh episode of the Bungie Podcast guest starred Bungie's Dave Dunn, who told all about events in Bungie History from ten years ago to today. In it, Alex Seropian is bashed, Chris Carney is mocked, and many other interesting stories are told, but overall, the Halo 3 news was very minimal, if non-existent. Paul Bertone did return to host the NFL Minute. During that, the results of Luke Smith's and Bertone's first match of Smith's 'Beat The Designer' Challenge were discussed.

Episode XII
Run Time 50:55

The twelfth episode of the Bungie Podcast was released after a lengthy delay and featured Chris Barrett, another one of Bungie's art directors. He talked at length with the three main hosts about how he got his job at Bungie, which was through creating multiplayer maps for Myth II, and then they spent a great deal of time talking about the (then) recently announced and released downloadable content maps.

Episode XIII
Run Time 1:05:34

The thirteenth episode of the Bungie Podcast featured Frank and Luke talking to Marty O'Donnell for an hour. They talked about the recent release of the Halo 3: Original Soundtrack, as well as the early days of Bungie, including Marty's time as a contractor working on Myth and Myth II with Jason Jones and Alex Seropian before the sale to Microsoft. He also talks about how Microsoft bought Bungie ten days after Marty was officially hired as part of the Bungie team. They also touch briefly on audio setups and how the original Xbox was the only last generation console to feature real-time 5.1 Dolby Digital Decoding. In addition, Marty brings up the fact that he still possesses the audio files from the cutscenes for the originally planned ending for Halo 2. They announce a preliminary plan to have a special Podcast in which the files will be aired.

Episode XIV
Run Time 57:11

The fourteenth episode of the podcast featured long awaited guest Harold Ryan, formerly a Test Manager at Microsoft Game Studios and currently the Studio Manager of Bungie Studios. They talked about the differences between operating under Microsoft and free from Microsoft's rule, as well as the future of Bungie Studios as a whole, although few details were revealed. They also talked about Harold's past Everquest addiction and his love for MMORPG's. There was also a slight discussion about Frank's creation of a World of Warcraft character named "Man Chowder" who was banned for breaking the game before he had gotten past Level One.

After awhile, Harold got back to work and Paul Bertone was once again welcomed onto the Podcast where they discussed Luke's hairdo, which was done up in such a way as to pay up for a bet made on the eighth episode of the show. They also talked at length about sports, specifically playoff football, before the show finally ended just under an hour after it began.

Credits
The Bungie Podcast is hosted by Frank O'Connor, Brian Jarrard, and Luke Smith, is mixed and mastered by Steve Lopez, and is Produced by Tom Gioconda and Chris Gossett.