Everyone’s saying it: things just aren’t what they used to be. Where are the real heroes, you know? The titans who built the games we grew up with? Are they all gone? Are they all departed to Eressëa, never to return?
Oh, they’re still here. Well, my mistake.
This I have learnt from recent posts by Elliott Gray, UI designer on Bungie’s Marathon, made in response to players lamenting the studio pitching itself as “The creator of Halo” when—so suggested our disgruntled player—the individual workers who originally made Halo have long since moved on.
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Problem with that take is: plenty of them haven’t moved on. Gray sprang into action, rattling off a list of 40 developers at Bungie who are still around from the Halo days. “Damn,” wrote Gray, “I’ll have to tell this to Chris Butcher and Jason Jones and Tom Gioconda and Dave Gasca and Mat Noguchi and Bob Glessner and Lars Bakken and Tyson Green and Dan Miller and Shi Kai Wang…” and so on, you get the idea. Here’s the full list of devs Gray named in a slightly more digestible format:
- Chris Butcher
- Jason Jones
- Tom Gioconda
- Dave Gasca
- Mat Noguchi
- Bob Glessner
- Lars Bakken
- Tyson Green
- Dan Miller
- Shi Kai Wang
- Eric Elton
- Steve Cotton
- Sam Jones
- Mark Uyeda
- James Haywood
- David Allen
- Eamon McKenzie
- Ben Wommack
- Rew Davis
- Tom Burlington
- Mark Flieg
- Dorje Bellbrook
- Justin Truman
- Stosh Steward
- Matt Richenburg
- Paul Lewellen
- Mark Goldsworthy
- Javier Burgos
- Blake Low
- Derek Carroll
- David Aldridge
- Sam Arguez
- Brad Fish
- Mike Hoffman
- Matt Kelly
- Brian Frank
- Jason Sussman
- Drew Shy
- Dan Callan
- Matt Kelly
damn i’ll have to tell this to chris butcher and jason jones and tom gioconda and dave gasca and mat noguchi and bob glessner and lars bakken and tyson green and dan miller and shi kai wang and eric elton and steve cotton and sam jones and mark uyeda and and james haywood and https://t.co/oagpKZKPOyMarch 15, 2026
Which is, uh, quite a lot of names. Enough names that I’m fairly certain Bungie can reasonably get away with continuing to call itself the studio that made Halo. It’s not an exhaustive list, either: “This is just the people I know off the top of my head who worked on a Halo title who are STILL at Bungie,” wrote Gray.
Chiming in to back Gray up was Mark Noseworthy, former Destiny vice prez who was laid off from the studio in 2024. “In addition to Elliott’s truth nuke below, there’s a lack of appreciation in the OP’s post for cultural and technology legacies,” wrote Noseworthy. “People pass those down, piece by piece, as new people join and others leave a company.
“It’s one of the reasons the feel of Bungie games have remained strong for 25 years (even while the gameplay team members have changed multiple times). The Ship of Theseus is a good metaphor because it is BOTH the original ship and the NEW one at the same time. Not a dunk at all.”
