Halo’s co-creator wrote a novel about AI taking over the world

Back in 2019, author Margaret Stohl was handed a manuscript written by Jason Jones, who’s best known as the co-creator of sci-fi gaming series Halo and Destiny. The two had worked together at Bungie, and Jones wanted Stohl’s opinion on a book he was writing about AI taking over the world. It was an oral history of the fictional events, with around 100 characters spread across 40 countries, all detailing the AI uprising from their own perspectives. Pretty quickly Stohl realized that this idea could be much more than a single book. “I was floored but not surprised,” she says of her reaction to the original manuscript. “He’s a worldbuilder who builds at an epic scale. And his worlds are these huge stages that invite in a ton of other collaborators and creators.” The two went about forming a company to develop the sci-fi universe across multiple formats. It’s called Stone Kite, and it’s billed as a “worldbuilding studio.” The idea is to put a whole bunch of talent from different fields in one place — Stone Kite currently has an in-house staff of 22 and a network of more than 250 contributors ranging from comic book artists to screenwriters…