By Burt Helm

WEIRD THINGS.  "We became this weird little island in the middle of this gigantic company," Soell says. While Jones remained as creative director, Seropian became more of a bureaucratic shield. "A large part of my job became insulating the team from Microsoft fingers," he says.

Still, there were, and continue to be, culture clashes. "We felt it was our right to speak our minds, especially if our minds were unhappy," Soell says. Veterans rejected corporate paperwork -- things like self-assessments and goal-setting. "I think the first goal I wrote this year was 'Don't die,'" says Marty O'Donnell, the chief sound designer. "We feel like saying, 'We're not you guys, don't make us do your weird things.'"

Former Executive Vice-President Peter Tamte says Bungie was determined to remain an "independent renegade." In 2001, for example, it released a bogus online announcement about an upcoming game called Pimps at Sea, spawning rumors across the gaming community. "Bungie," Tamte says, "was going to be Bungie."

THE SINGLE LIFE.  As long as they can retain creative control, however, the developers see advantages. The prime one: financial resources most entrepreneurs could only dream of. For O'Donnell, that meant using an 80-piece orchestra for the Halo soundtracks, instead of the synthesizers he was used to. Bungie can also utilize Microsoft's game testers -- a crack team of engineers. In Chicago, that job was simply divvied among the staff.

But several on the business side have departed, including Seropian and Tamte, who started their own gaming companies. Jones, Bungie's creative visionary, is one of the few who remain from the old days. In a sign of changed times, Microsoft's PR representatives do not grant requests for interviews with him. "I loved working" at Microsoft, Seropian says. "But it wasn't what I wanted to be doing, which was being an entrepreneur and running my own shop."

Now, Seropian heads Wideload Games, which plans its first release, Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without a Pulse, next year (see BW Online, 12/23/04, "A Gaming Player's New Set of Rules"). Will the product be different without the Microsoft muscle? A statement from Wideload's Web site gives some indication: "We're going...to reach out to everyone who thinks the best games are the ones made by a small group of oddballs, without interference from money-grubbing suits or marketing bozos," it reads. "If you want formula, go suck on a bottle."

Microsoft may have recreated the entrepreneurial spirit within its walls. Then again, there's nothing quite like the real thing.

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Helm is a reporter for BusinessWeek Online in New York