Marty O’Donnell, the composer for Myth II, Oni, Halo and Destiny, shared that he would come out of retirement if Elon Musk decided to start a video game studio.
Marty O’Donnell speaking with attendees at the 2018 PAX West at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel in Seattle, Washington. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
O’Donnell’s comments came in the wake of Musk being asked if he would start a video game company in the wake of the woke mind virus infecting the video game industry.
During a town hall, Musk was asked, “With recent flops like Concord and Dustborn, games are prioritizing pronouns and things like that and stuff instead of actual gameplay. So I was wondering have you ever thought about making your own gaming studio and making an impact on the industry?”
After describing the inclusion of pronouns as “annoying,” Musk answered, ”You know if there is one thing actually that would be a fun thing to do it would be to start a gaming studio because I do actually intrinsically love video games. And I think if you apply sort of AI to video games you could really make incredible video games.”
🚨ELON MUSK: “Make Video Games Great Again! The problem with the DEI and the woke mind virus is that it kills the art. When you see something that’s forcibly imposed on a game, it kills the art. It kicks you out of the story, because you feel you’re bring lectured. Let me just… pic.twitter.com/Gq6EE0POLx
— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) October 19, 2024
READ: Elon Musk: “DEI And The Woke Mind Virus” Ended The Art Of Video Games
O’Donnell initially replied to this video writing on X, “So I ‘retired’ from video games because I had to fight MS, Bungie, and Sony. However, if anyone could coax me back in it would be Elon Musk. Give me a call.”
So I “retired” from video games because I had to fight MS, Bungie, and Sony. However, if anyone could coax me back in it would be @elonmusk .
Give me a call. https://t.co/J00qOtb1a6
— Marty O’Donnell (@MartyTheElder) October 19, 2024
In a subsequent post, O’Donnell wrote, “I’m in. Call me. Let’s start a game studio.”
I’m in.
Call me.
Let’s start a game studio. https://t.co/1mRKcC2ZLZ
— Marty O’Donnell (@MartyTheElder) October 19, 2024
O’Donnell shared in an interview with Andrew Chapados on his Andrew Says YouTube channel that he was fighting with corporate executives pushing the sensitivity changes as far back as Halo 2.
He said, “I started seeing it a little bit even during our Halo 2, which goes back quite a ways. We were making Halo 2 in 2002, 2003, which was close enough after 9/11. If you know the story of Halo it’s about this group of religious zealots” that would sacrifice themselves “to keep their religion going. That’s the characters we had for the Covenant.”
He then shared, “That started making Microsoft a little bit nervous because they felt like there could be some backlash from the Muslim community in the Middle East that maybe this could be seen as Islamophobic. All of a sudden we were being asked to be very careful about some names of people or references or phrases and things like that.”
A screenshot from Halo 2: Anniversary (2020), 343 Industries
O’Donnell then detailed how he initially reacted to this, “I started seeing that and I thought, ‘Well, that’s not necessarily unreasonable because we weren’t trying to do some sort of allegory” about any religion or political situation.
Next, he shared, “Maybe you know this story, but one of our main characters, the Arbiter was not the Arbiter during the whole time we were making Halo 2. The character’s name was the Dervish. And we had recorded all the voice. I had directed all the actors and everybody was using the term Dervish. And then we found out that like this could be seen as an insult because there is an Islamic figure known as dervishes. So we had to change it. We were forced to change that name to a different name. So we came up with the Arbiter.”
A screenshot from Halo 2: Anniversary (2020), 343 Industries
“I was never happy about it,” he continued. “I thought this is an artistic choice. This is what we had from the beginning. We were not making any sort of political or religious comment. We had tons of religious imagery: the ark, halo, the Covenant. All of these things are sort of imbued with religious terminology. So I didn’t see why the Dervish was a problem, but we were forced to change that.
“I could see that the bigger the producer the more fingers would be in the pie trying to mess with things,” he concluded.
A screenshot from Halo 2: Anniversary (2020), 343 Industries
What do you make of Elon Musk teaming with Marty O’Donnell to make a new video game studio?
NEXT: Baldur’s Gate 3 Actor Claims Diversity-Driven Storylines are Being Cut Throughout the Gaming World
[…] Explains Why DEI And The Woke Mind Virus Kills The Art Of Video Games ∟‘Halo’ Composer Marty O’Donnell Says If Elon Musk Starts A Video Game Studio He Will Come Out …– Alyssa Mercante Bounces from Kotaku as Gaming Website She Led Is Decimated with […]