Jason Jones

Jason Jones (born June 1, 1971) is an American video game developer and programmer who co-founded the video game studio Bungie with Alex Seropian in 1991. Jones began programming on Apple computers in high school, assembling a multiplayer game called Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete. While attending the University of Chicago, Jones met Seropian and the two formed a partnership to publish Minotaur.

Following the modest success of Minotaur, Jones programmed Bungie's next game, Pathways into Darkness, and worked on code, level design and story development for Bungie's Marathon and Myth series. For Bungie's next projects, Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, Jones took on a more managerial role as project lead. He served as director on the 2014 video game Destiny.

Early life Jones became interested in programming in high school and learned Applesoft BASIC and 6502 Assembly on an Apple II. When Apple released its Macintosh line, Jones's family purchased a Macintosh 128K, but Jones never programmed much for it. After high school Jones got a job programming for a computer-aided design company on PCs, before going to college the next year. In his off time Jones said that all he ever did on the Apple II was write games, "and it seemed logical to continue that on the Mac," he said. "The first thing I did on the Mac was to port a modem game I'd written called Minotaur from 6502 Assembly on the Apple II into MPW C on the Mac. I was still finishing that when I came to college. By that time, I knew I wanted to write games."

Career Jones met Alex Seropian in his second year at the University of Chicago. In 1991 Seropian had founded Bungie and published his own game, Operation: Desert Storm. Seropian was looking for another game to publish, and they decided to work together to finish Minotaur. While Seropian did design and marketing, Jones finished the programming. Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete shipped in April 1992;

Bungie focused on the Mac platform due to familiarity with the platform and ease of use. "The PC market was really cutthroat, but the Mac market was all friendly and lame. So it was easier to compete," Jones said. Pathways was successful enough that Bungie moved from a one-bedroom apartment to an actual office. which was also released for Microsoft Windows. The Marathon series was followed by a series of real-time tactics games, starting with Myth: The Fallen Lords in 1996. Blam! evolved from a real-time strategy game to a third-person shooter to a first-person shooter called Halo: Combat Evolved. Jones role in development was unlike Marathon and Myth, where Jones was involved in developing more than half the levels and much to most of the story. Instead, he was the project lead and a manager, barely providing any code to the game. He would read war journals by authors such as John Kinkead and Winston Churchill. Around the same time, a glitch in versions of Myth II was found to entirely erase a player's hard drive; this led to a massive recall of the games right before they shipped, costing Bungie nearly one million dollars. Composer Martin O'Donnell said that this recall created financial uncertainty in the studio, though accepting the offer was not something "Bungie had to do." Jones and Seropian refused to accept Microsoft's offer until the entire studio agreed to the buyout. Jones led the development team that created its sequel, Halo 2, and served as director on a new video game series, Destiny. He was listed in Next Generations top 100 Developers in 2006 and 2007.

After the release of Halo 2, Jones took a sabbatical from Bungie, not knowing whether he wanted to continue making games. As Jones returned, his involvement with Halo began to diminish, He desired to build a new intellectual property. Jones worked closely with colleague Jaimie Griesemer who was working on his own internal project named "Dragon's Tavern" which Griesemer described to be a "third person fantasy game" a few weeks before vestment matured from the Sony purchase of Bungie. Jones previously held the title of Chief Vision Officer as late as 2021, which was included in the layoff notice provided by Sony.