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| Re: Halo 3: My Musings on my Blog | |
| Posted By: Matt <matt@wideload.com> | Date: 6/25/05 6:09 p.m. |
In Response To: Halo 3: My Musings on my Blog (Diss3nt) Just a few random thoughts and opinions. These are not official or authoritative statements, as I'm representing only myself and not any current or previous employer. - Back in the day, some people said the first Halo was overhyped. Hard to believe in retrospect, but they did. "Three years of hype," they whined. It was practically a guerilla campaign compared to Halo 2's multimedia blitz, but a handful of magazine ads and heavily-downloaded trailers was still too much for some people. (As if Bungie forced people to watch those trailers, read those magazines, or discuss them on fan sites.) The Marketing people at MS didn't really have a clue when they were trying to sell that first batch of launch titles. Halo 2 was a totally different situation: the sequel to the Xbox's biggest success story, a game that was practically synonymous with the console. Is it any surprise they threw so much weight behind it? MS wants every product to outperform its predecessor; right after the first Halo shipped, MS people (please note that I did not say "Bungie people") were already talking about how many copies of the next one they wanted to sell. Any future Halo games will be marketed (please note that I did not say "written" or "developed") with the goal of outperforming the last one. If you can do $125 million in a day, why not $250 million? Those are the metrics by which MS Marketing (note that I did not say "Bungie") measures their success. If you're hoping MS Marketing will just let future Bungie games slide into the marketplace via a side door so only the hardcore fans will know about them, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. There's no way for a Marketing guy to spin that strategy into a good Performance Review come August. The lesson (and it seems you're learning it) is simple: hype only affects you as much as you let it. My (biased) take: I thought it was cool to see a Bungie game get that kind of push - TV commercials and whatnot. (I was especially amused to see it on plastic soda cups; MS was afraid to do that with the first one since it could be construed as marketing a Mature game to children.) But when I put the Halo 2 disc in an Xbox and started playing, I just enjoyed the experience of playing the game. I didn't compare it to the experience depicted on the plastic soda cup. - You shouldn't ever expect a product announcement from any developer (especially Bungie). They've got their own timetables. If you think "based on my calculations and a handful of quotes from people who don't work there, they will announce their next game exactly SEVEN SECONDS FROM NOW..." you will spend a lot of time tapping your foot impatiently. Besides, no matter when they announce, someone will always complain they "announced too early because they wanted to get the Hype Machine rolling." Why not just chill and see what happens? Less strenuous for everybody. - Story is a subjective thing, but gameplay is the central thing. A good game (that is, one that is fun to play) can have a crappy story; a crappy game can have a great story that you'll never get into because the game itself is so crappy. I think Bungie has the right idea: don't beat the player over the head with the story, but make sure there's enough meat there for him to dig into should he be so inclined. The books are a great example of this. I've seen people complain that Bungie doesn't include enough material from the books in the games, as though they should be part of a single interlocking experience where the story arc weaves from medium to medium like a drunk driver slaloming along the Interstate. Trust me: Bungie will never make a game that requires the average player to read a series of novels in order to understand what the hell is going on. But the books are there if you want them...and if you read them and like them, isn't that enough? Another point: you say there's "a lot of explaining to be done," but there hasn't been a new Marathon game for almost ten years and people are still discussing the Marathon story. Don't expect Bungie to put all the puzzle pieces together for you. It probably won't happen. - The reason there are 27 (or whatever) Land Before Time movies is that the first 26 made money. I'm sure #27 will too, given enough time. Dinosaur cartoons for little kids...that's a never-ending money train. If you are stopped at a railroad crossing and a freight train goes by carrying the combined profits from the Land Before Time and its spinoff products, you might as well turn around and go home because you are not going to cross those tracks for a while. (Unless you put some flubber in your shoes.) Bungie has only made two Halo games, so I think it's a bit premature to accuse Bungie of squeezing blood from a stone. As you pointed out, there's a lot you don't know yet (and some you may never). -Matt
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