Is #fire343 an overreaction?

 The climate is changing

I have had my eyes on the turning and changing world of video games for a very long time now, ever since I started noticing some of my favourite franchises not improving from entry to entry, but slowly getting worse, and wondering why that might be. I still remember when I first encountered the concept of a Season Pass and wondering what that was (for me it was in Bioshock Infinite) and of excessive DLC, soon to be coined 'Microtransactions', during the rise of Modern Warfare 3. I don't just remember how I felt in that time, I remember scouring the public sentiment to try and figure out what these terms were and how other people felt about them, to disseminate how much of a concern these issues should be to me, or if this is just how thing have always been. Hindsight of course informs me that videogame fans have been more permissive than they should have been in the past, but even in their most vitriolic and upset I can't say if I ever seen as visceral a fan backlash as the 'Fire343' Hashtag.

When first I heard of this, my gut reaction was very similar to what I've heard a lot of mediators voice; "That seems a bit harsh, doesn't it?" I saw one post in particular who quoted this as a typical case of 'taking things too far' and reiterating that 'firing 343 won't help Halo Infinite'. But then I got to really assessing this movement and considering whether this is just a wild flare up that had sporadically caught on. I mean, no doubt this is a small fire started by one individual that caught on when others saw it; there's no way that everyone had the same 'burn the forest down' plan when it came to handling 343 at the same moment. But extreme actions don't pick up fuel for the sake of them. Usually it's the extreme takes that shake the level-headed out of the lurch and make them go "Yeah I'm pissed, but I'm not that pissed." Somehow this hashtag managed to cross that sense barrier and hit the nerve of the general public. I don't think people are blowing their emotions out of proportion, I think they're finally voicing what they've been feeling for a while. But why do they feel this way?

Well, as I discussed previously, 343 were handed a franchise that was red hot when Bungie left it behind. It's hard to quite picture now, especially for someone who wasn't a Halo fan back in the day, but when I think back I do remember Halo as one of those games that everyone had. Right next to Red Dead Redemption and the GTAs; Halo was just a staple of the gaming consciousness. I even hear some people claim its fame was to the point where even non-gamers had heard of it, but I can't confirm that from personal anecdotes. Still, I wouldn't be surprised. Halo was bigger than big- it was positively massive; and what has become of all that? In the years Halo seems to have shrunk into a, still big, but not outgoing cult game. Halo fans still flock to the franchise, but they're rarely crossing the hands of new players. I wonder how many younger gamers even know who Master Chief is, whereas that would be a ridiculous thought to have in the early 2010's. And some believe 343 is responsible for that drop-off.

Because, well they sort of are responsible! Bad release after bad release that fans don't want to shill for has led to a community shrivelling up and a fanbase not growing like it used to. Halo hasn't totally vanished into the ether or anything, it's still a big title; but nowadays it's not even in the same league as Call of Duty; whereas once it was a genuine contender. The failures of 343 were long and well documented up until the release of Halo Infinite, after which people just hit their boiling point. Maybe it was indignation of having waited upwards of 5 years for a game that launched feeling incomplete in one of it's most core pillars, the multiplayer. Maybe it was the gall of inciting and recycling Bungie's infamous 'Ten year journey' speech in reference to a live service that hasn't managed to impress for a single year. Maybe it's the abrupt cancellation of co-op despite making implicit promises that it would be coming, and the apparent simplicity of such a feature feeling so galling. Maybe it's a little bit of everything, but fans have had enough.

It is a little gauche, to go around calling for someone's blood, or indeed, their job; but I understand the desperate anger of aggrieved fans.  Bare in mind that this isn't just the kneejerk kick off after one failed project that didn't live up to what fans wanted; this is a decade of falling short of promises. A decade of bad decisions, bad direction, bad narratives and bad performances from a game company that is devoted solely to making Halo games. It's kind of galling that it's taken fans this long to turn around and question whether 343 deserve to still be on the job. As many people have pointed out; normal people don't get ten year's worth of leeway under the impression that they have to get it right eventually. Normal people get fired.

The most common sense refute of this has been what I mentioned earlier; the argument that Halo Infinite won't be saved by firing it's developers. But the rebuttal comes just as easily; there is no saving Halo Infinite. 343 have rotated through countless staff, including key personnel, and every iteration of the company over the past ten years has kept one thing common to it; being woefully underprepared for the projects they embark on. Whether that was rebooting the franchise, Halo 5 or trying to turn Infinite into a Live Service; every step along the way has seen a falter and slip up to the point where it's obvious that something fundamental isn't working. This isn't a case of "Oh, they just need a few more years to get used to the franchise" nor is it "Just a bit of reworking will really put the team back on track." This is, "tear out the infrastructure, open up the brand to other developers because we need some new blood up in here!"

The straw that broke the communities back was the moment where one of the 343 team shared the team's renewed focus in extolling the competitive nature of Halo's Multiplayer, like the franchise has always championed. Only, no. The fans, former Bungie devs and anyone with a history in Halo had to scratch their heads at that one, because Halo was designed as a 'party game' to be enjoyed between friends of differing skill levels and experiences in a fun enabling environment before anything else, competitive play was never it's sole heart. It just speaks to an inherent and systemic dissonance between what fans who love Halo think the franchise represents, and what it's current caretakers want to create for it; which is a recipe for friction and disaster as the last decade has proved extensively and repeatedly.  If they don't even know what the franchise they're working on is; how can we trust them to keep it healthy and alive?

Microsoft and 343 are doing their best to roundly ignore this, probably somewhat hurtful, rise of dissent in their consumer base in the hopes that cooler minds will prevail and everyone will forget what they were angry about. And honestly, they probably will. People move on quickly like that. But after people forget, the core issue doesn't get magically solved; and people are just going to get more disillusioned by the game franchise that they used to love the next time it messes up. This is a call to Microsoft to take action to protect a franchise that they themselves supposedly consider the heart of Xbox, and if they're not willing to do it then maybe Halo doesn't deserve it's forever prominent place on all Microsoft marketing for the example and expectation that it sets. Is firing 343 the way to start changing that? I don't know, but letting the public know they recognise the problem would at least be a solid start.