Do you trust Microsoft and it's four flop mutli-failure studio?

 How far does the 'benefit of the doubt' stretch?

I actually lack the years of hard won love that a lot of the gaming world has for Bungie's stint on Halo. I may have played all of the games, but years after their first run when Bungie were already long on my 'do not forgive' list for their conduct when marketing Destiny content. (Twice.) Thus I can honestly say that it was purely on the merit of the sheer quality of the products themselves that I came to find 343 as questionable custodians of the legendary shooter franchise. It's not that I don't think they care, I just don't think they've ever had the right team to pull off a successor to Halo like they've been shooting for all this time. To many it seems like the decision makers behind the franchise don't even understand what it was that made Halo special in the first place, and offer ideas entirely contrary to what the audience vie for. And it is a heartbreaking game of tug and war that fans and developer seem destined to be stuck between for the rest of their collective lives.

Not that it is a simple thing to pick up where Bungie left off for their legendary franchise which was once so massive that it frontlined Xbox sales and branding; but one would think that at some point, with about 10 years on the job, the people at 343 would stumble upon something of a winning formula accidentally at the very least! But alas, you end up getting Halo 4, which had some great individual mission ideas that were ruined by the genuinely badly physically and visually designed new faction, Halo 5 which is said to have a legendarily bad storyline, Master Chief Collection which launched in the sorriest state possible and now 'Halo: Infinite'; so named because it was meant to herald the next 10 years of Halo, only to end up losing so much momentum, goodwill and potential that the team have reportedly quietly scrapped all of it's dreamt-of additions in favour of a brand new Halo game built in an entirely different engine.

Now because I absolute despise the several years of gaslighting that we were subjected to by Bungie after the Destiny 'Ten Year plan' debacle, let me be absolutely clear: Halo Infinite was called the start of the next ten years of Halo. The way it was built, with a focus on open world play that shunned constrained linear experiences, was in order to facilitate the next steps of the Master Chief story as integrated chunks of the single player narrative; maybe even expansions on top of that base product. Just as the Master Chief collection is a platform that collects the first 10 years of the Halo journey, Infinite was supposed to fill that gap for a new ten, and any shift on that model marks a distinct change in circumstance whether the team and Microsoft are willing to admit that or not. And a shift in circumstance that no internal party is willing to share or talk about does not typically engender happy and fruitful behind-the-scenes discussions.

This is worth bringing up because along with these unconfirmed reports of a new Halo game in the works, 343 just faced a cataclysmic rock of layoffs that took out much of the development force behind Infinite and even some of the executives. Although the real important people just moved from one position to another and people are want to do in high-importance positions. All of Microsoft was hit with these layoffs, of course, but the way that some reporters were discussing 343's casualties made it almost sound like the big M had a vendetta against 343 specifically as an underperforming studio tucked under their corporate wing. Thus it rings slightly odd when Microsoft spokespeople come out to then confirm that not only is Halo alive and healthy, but that it is going to continue on under the purview of 343 entirely unabated by the massacre which just occurred at that studio. It stinks of something rotten and aquatic. Perhaps the fishy remains of a deep untruth.

Some have already taken it upon themselves to read between the lines and question how healthy a franchise actually is if it's caretaker needs to publicly declare how not dead it is. I know there's an art of feeling the public pulse and responding to a feeling before it turns into an unfounded 'fact'; but even having to make that sort of fundamental assurance belies the state of a franchise that absolutely does not speak for itself. And does the current outward facing look of the Halo franchise seem healthy? Well it depends. On one hand Infinite's Forge mode is said to be the best the franchise has ever enjoyed and that has alone boosted the game's player count and the franchise just crossed over to television with it's own TV show last year. On the otherhand the actual singleplayer content of Infinite is said to be dead in the water and the Halo show was largely panned by critical fans and pundits. But none of that implies Halo is dead per se.

But what it does say to me at least is that Halo is missing the oomph that it once had. Which is kind of a basic statement when you think about it. Of course Halo doesn't have the brand appeal of the olden days, one merely needs to look at Xbox's modern, largely Master Chief free, branding to see that. But does that mean Halo is doomed to slowly become more and more irrelevant as 343 is slowly stripped of more personnel and resources for each failure they make? Because I can tell you one thing for free- they're not going to get better at making Halo with less people to actually sit down and make the game, now are they? If you ask me, and no one did; what Halo needs is fresh blood. And I'm not talking about new faces joining 343, I'm talking about new directions for the franchise.

Remember Halo Wars? The lauded RTS game which moved Halo away from Master Chief in order to expand upon the wider war with great gameplay and fresh characters and at least one race-bending cast member? Why doesn't Halo do more of that? Blow out the universe of Halo so it moves past the green giant and explores totally distinct genres to get ahold of more people, similar to what the 'Vampire: The Masquerade' franchise is currently doing with it's shotgun approach to games. Why can't there be a survival horror Halo game about being alone in a world besieged by Flood? Or a character driven narrative adventure following a single isolated contingent of the Sangheili rebels in the wake of Halo 2, trying to come to terms with being cut off from the Covenant that they were raised under and eventually coming around to siding with their former sworn enemies at the UNSC?

Halo as it stands is riding on the top of a small bump of a hill heading towards a dire plunge into unknown territory and it's not hard for the casual fan to imagine things will only become worse from here. Say what they will, 343 did not appear to be up to the task of keeping Halo relevant back before they lost 95 jobs, I can't see that changing anymore now. If Microsoft really do care about this franchise like they keep insisting that they do, then it's time for them to really dedicate some effort into proving that assertion. All of these new studios now under Microsoft's purview and not one of them could make a single small companion title to the Halo franchise as a small experimental project at the least? I call bull on that and I call bull on Microsoft sitting atop the burning rubble of an entire department of 343, sipping a brew made from the ground-down bones of all those they sacked and assuring just themselves that "This is fine."

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.