You don't necessarily want more than half of the industry dependent on one or even two engines...that could have devastating consequences.

Like… what?

...have you heard the word "monopoly" before? lol I thought it was pretty self-evident that you don't want an incredibly large portion of an industry reliant on an incredibly small number of providers of the same resource.

You don't necessarily want more than half of the industry dependent on one or even two engines...that could have devastating consequences.

Like… what?

He brought up how game development costs have dramatically risen over the years. I suggested that a possible solution to that problem could be to invest into the tools used to create the games. The goal being to streamline workflows so that devs have an easier time quickly creating. For example, I always think of this awesome demo Kojima did showing off features of the Fox Engine used to build Metal Gear Solid 5. In just minutes, he's able to build a convincing scene. Cool stuff.

Fascinatingly enough, Chris Butcher remarked at GDC several years ago that it was, quite frankly, going to become infeasible for the vast majority of the industry to create their own engines in the future. That's why Destiny is technically still running on a modified BLAM engine. You simply can't start from scratch anymore. You're right that investing in tooling is important, it's just becoming difficult to do that properly in and of itself.

Which is why engines like Unreal Engine 5 are making it way easier to do stuff like that MGS5 demo showed. I'm not a developer, but all the features and things they are highlighting are about making creation far easier and more streamlined. CD Projekt RED has decided to switch to Unreal 5 for their next Witcher game instead of their engine they've been using for everything. It just makes more sense to me that a big company does nothing but maintain and create an engine, then game devs take that engine, which is itself flexible and customizable, and create their games from that.

There's so many cool games that just would not exist without Unity. Seems to me like game engine creation WILL be something game developers just don't do in the future, and they'll be all the better for it since they can spend resources on actually making the game and not just getting the tech working.

The benefits of using engines like UE and Unity are vast (though Unity is becoming more of a questionable choice as of late), but there's also that ever present specter of consolidation on the horizon. You don't necessarily want more than half of the industry dependent on one or even two engines...that could have devastating consequences.

It's no question, though, that UE5 enables some mindblowing possibilities right out of the box.

Again, read my posts. There was complaining. It was not the majority of posts. Most people were perfectly happy with 2, 3, and even Reach.

Squid's insistence is admittedly making me question myself though, maybe the wayback machine has a lot of those pages? I'll check it out later.

The difference you are seeing is not in the sentiments but in how they manifest. Whether then, or now, the way people express sentiment online, the way we perceive that sentiment, it has never been a statistically accurate sample of overall sentiment.

The data set is skewed, first and foremost, by who is online to express such sentiment. You must then consider how the general online sentiments and mentalities, the general gaming sentiments and mentalities, and the platforms via which people express themselves shape behavior and the sentiments themselves.

Not only does negativity have a compounding effect (which means it was going to be worse now, as time has passed, regardless of any other changes in the actual games themselves) but as the internet population grew, these online behaviors and mentalities leaked back into the real world more strongly, as well.

The Halo games themselves have a part to play in how people have responded to them, that's a given. However, the nature of discourse and fandom has changed so dramatically that it'd take several research papers to even have a modicum of confidence to say what all has contributed to these differences and to what degree.

At this point books have been written about how the media, and social media in particular, rewards negativity, and how that's changed how people think about themselves and each other. It's a downward spiral.

I strongly suspect that the reaction to Halo 2 in the present online climate would've been quite raucous. Bungie was forgiven for their mistakes as what they did manage to land was novel in that specific moment in time. They were saved by serendipity, especially when you consider the interviews that discuss how Halo 2's multiplayer was looked down upon by the rest of the dev team.

I think that's exactly right.

He brought up how game development costs have dramatically risen over the years. I suggested that a possible solution to that problem could be to invest into the tools used to create the games. The goal being to streamline workflows so that devs have an easier time quickly creating. For example, I always think of this awesome demo Kojima did showing off features of the Fox Engine used to build Metal Gear Solid 5. In just minutes, he's able to build a convincing scene. Cool stuff.

Fascinatingly enough, Chris Butcher remarked at GDC several years ago that it was, quite frankly, going to become infeasible for the vast majority of the industry to create their own engines in the future. That's why Destiny is technically still running on a modified BLAM engine. You simply can't start from scratch anymore. You're right that investing in tooling is important, it's just becoming difficult to do that properly in and of itself.

Which is why engines like Unreal Engine 5 are making it way easier to do stuff like that MGS5 demo showed. I'm not a developer, but all the features and things they are highlighting are about making creation far easier and more streamlined. CD Projekt RED has decided to switch to Unreal 5 for their next Witcher game instead of their engine they've been using for everything. It just makes more sense to me that a big company does nothing but maintain and create an engine, then game devs take that engine, which is itself flexible and customizable, and create their games from that.

There's so many cool games that just would not exist without Unity. Seems to me like game engine creation WILL be something game developers just don't do in the future, and they'll be all the better for it since they can spend resources on actually making the game and not just getting the tech working.

He brought up how game development costs have dramatically risen over the years. I suggested that a possible solution to that problem could be to invest into the tools used to create the games. The goal being to streamline workflows so that devs have an easier time quickly creating. For example, I always think of this awesome demo Kojima did showing off features of the Fox Engine used to build Metal Gear Solid 5. In just minutes, he's able to build a convincing scene. Cool stuff.

Fascinatingly enough, Chris Butcher remarked at GDC several years ago that it was, quite frankly, going to become infeasible for the vast majority of the industry to create their own engines in the future. That's why Destiny is technically still running on a modified BLAM engine. You simply can't start from scratch anymore. You're right that investing in tooling is important, it's just becoming difficult to do that properly in and of itself.

I said almost everything people complained about in H4, they doubled down on in H5. Meaning the art/sound redesigns, favoring player focused abilities over sandbox based design, and the removal of features previously available (H5 launched with no Forge, broken Theater, no file share, bare-bones custom games options, no splitscreen, etc.)

H5 tightened up the combat and brought it much closer to OG Halo than Halo 4

Eh, no? With H4 being what amounts to a Reach mod, the core handling was essentially unchanged. same with H2A.

H5 represented their first major changes to the BLAM engine, and it felt way different. Aim assist features were cranked way up to account for abilities such as sprint, thrust, and clamber. The crosshair was moved up to the middle of he screen.

Honestly, I feel like Halo 2 was the other Halo title to really shake things up. While it was definitely more sandbox based than Halo 5's changes, it took some of Bungie's sandbox elements and made them inherent, which I preferred as I never liked Bungie's implementation of equipment at any point in the series. Halo Infinite is a good compromise, IMO, but it only works because most of the equipment they designed feels good to use. I never felt that way with Halo 3 or Reach. Halo 5 and Infinite's "abilities" both felt good to use, their impact on the sandbox aside.

You cut out the point of that sentence.

I was irrelevant to my point.

I saw that pull quote in the video, and I would like to know the context.

Boom.

As expected, the quote doesn't say what it seems to say out of context.

What? Yes it does.

"We had people who we hired who hated Halo" is not changed when you add "because of 'X,'". They hated Halo, it doesn't matter why. Also doesn't matter what they wanted to add to the game they hate, they still hated it.

Bear with me for a moment, as this may not seem relevant at first.

"We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of 'X,'" says O'Connor. "But what that really meant was, 'I feel like this game could be awesome because of 'Y input' that I'm going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I'm passionate about proving it.'

Players are often atrocious at providing feedback. More often then not they try to offer it by pointing at specific things and saying they're broken and/or offering advice on how to make things better. This is not optimal, as the player often does not understand what the intention behind the decisions was, and what they think is broken might be a side effect of another decision with decent reasoning, or it could be the result of a bug but the feedback doesn't point to the actual problem. Ideal feedback is given in the form of feelings and (missed) expectations. I feel like this should be faster/slower, I'm struggling to do x, y, z, etc. etc. Basically, people very rarely know what it is that is wrong, and incorrectly attribute the issues they are facing.

Frank saying, "But what that really meant was," stands out to me as a very important part of this passage, and frankly he should've left the first part out entirely. What Frank is doing here is noting that there were people who had misplaced emotions. Initially, they thought they "hated Halo," but after digging through that "feedback" with said individuals, they rooted out what those individuals' actual feelings and issues were. They didn't actually hate Halo, they had issues they thought could be solved. 343i hired some of those folk who made solid arguments, that they saw as valuable additions to challenge the status quo (because everything can always be improved) as they did not want to get complacent and just churn out carbon copies of what came before.

Here's another cool bit from that article that I actually hadn't read before.

"It's during that time you're questioning yourself: 'How is this going to work, will it be as I envision it in my head?" says Holmes. For Halo 4, he says there were a few epiphany moments that helped boost the morale of the team. One of the earlier ones that Holmes recalls was when the team completed a small piece of the Halo experience that he described as a "very traditional" Halo. User research showed that people thought it was a lot of fun, and it showed that the team was capable of making a Halo game that was true to what the series was about.

343 scrapped it, Holmes says, as it was too traditional."

Neat.

Now, I do agree that this may be an issue. I personally thought Halo 5 and Infinite were very good attempts at rejuvenating the series. I personally feel Halo 5 was a radical shake up ala Halo 2, though in ways that I can definitely understand the alienation some fans felt. Infinite is, IMO, the best Halo game since Halo 2 (mechanically speaking) as it feels like the Halo 3 I would've preferred. The question is...was the game they scraped like Infinite? That'd have been a terrible call. However, if they created nothing but a carbon copy of Bungie's Halo games...I do think, as of that moment in time, taking the risk to innovate was the right call. That's what Bungie would've done, after all.

Again, read my posts. There was complaining. It was not the majority of posts. Most people were perfectly happy with 2, 3, and even Reach.

Squid's insistence is admittedly making me question myself though, maybe the wayback machine has a lot of those pages? I'll check it out later.

The difference you are seeing is not in the sentiments but in how they manifest. Whether then, or now, the way people express sentiment online, the way we perceive that sentiment, it has never been a statistically accurate sample of overall sentiment.

The data set is skewed, first and foremost, by who is online to express such sentiment. You must then consider how the general online sentiments and mentalities, the general gaming sentiments and mentalities, and the platforms via which people express themselves shape behavior and the sentiments themselves.

Not only does negativity have a compounding effect (which means it was going to be worse now, as time has passed, regardless of any other changes in the actual games themselves) but as the internet population grew, these online behaviors and mentalities leaked back into the real world more strongly, as well.

The Halo games themselves have a part to play in how people have responded to them, that's a given. However, the nature of discourse and fandom has changed so dramatically that it'd take several research papers to even have a modicum of confidence to say what all has contributed to these differences and to what degree.

I strongly suspect that the reaction to Halo 2 in the present online climate would've been quite raucous. Bungie was forgiven for their mistakes as what they did manage to land was novel in that specific moment in time. They were saved by serendipity, especially when you consider the interviews that discuss how Halo 2's multiplayer was looked down upon by the rest of the dev team.

It's very hard to enjoy things publicly nowadays, even things that are of pretty good quality. That says something.

It didn't exactly "work great"

I take it you didn't actually watch the video in question.

Excluding a few minor visual glitches, it worked pretty great. Even on the launch model XB1.

Around the 14 minute mark, they say they have no idea why it was cancelled as it's nearly in a finished state.

Yeah, it's frustrating to see it in action and not know why it wasn't delivered. That said, Digital Foundry saying they have no idea why it was cancelled is not the same as them saying there is no good reason for it to have been cancelled.

I'm confident there's a severe bug of some kind. A father and son playing for a few hours isn't exactly the most rigorous test plan--certainly not vigorous enough to pronounce a feature nearly finished.

The problem is that 343 promised they could deliver before they knew for sure--way before.

If they had mentioned it closer to launch, perhaps with a caveat, the walk back would've been less dramatic. The way it was handled was a mistake--a mistake that deserves criticism.

I think the disconnect here is some people see the criticism as too quick to assume bad motives. We don't know why split-screen was cancelled, so there must be a bad reason. It's a very cynical time, and cynicism is considered sophisticated. It's actually naïve. The majority of people don't get out of bed thinking of how they'll disappoint other people. They think they're doing a good thing. If we keep this in mind, maybe we could become a little more humble, and perhaps we could begin to have productive conversations again.

You're being an ass.

Damn, now you're gonna start calling people names for no rhyme or reason, too? Must be something in the water lol.

Ya know, a few people calling me an ass on the forums was quite helpful for self reflection of my online persona.

As your friend, shut up.

Haven't seen you online for a while. Where you been?

You're being an ass.

Damn, now you're gonna start calling people names for no rhyme or reason, too? Must be something in the water lol.

In the past, you aided me from my social blindness with a post of those exact words, now re-framed. Felt prudent to return the curtsy, as I at least was grateful for it. And I hope, despite the blithe response, you'll reconsider your words. You've pushed past comments with good taste here, in part perhaps due to the topic being something deeply passionate about.

Sir.

Random HBO thread I just came across while trying to decide how Halo 2 was received on the internet:

Cody's Dream

That reminds me of my dream.

(And really, those two positions aren't mutually exclusive even for a single person.)

Squid's insistence is admittedly making me question myself though, maybe the wayback machine has a lot of those pages? I'll check it out later.

Here's an interesting one that backs up at least the idea that other people at the time had a sense there was a large negative reaction:

The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.

As your friend, shut up.

Haven't seen you online for a while. Where you been?

You're being an ass.

Damn, now you're gonna start calling people names for no rhyme or reason, too? Must be something in the water lol.

Squid's insistence is admittedly making me question myself though, maybe the wayback machine has a lot of those pages? I'll check it out later.