Bungie: Halo MMOG Would Be "Pretty Challenging"

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Bungie: Halo MMOG Would Be "Pretty Challenging"


The Bungie [http://www.halo3.com/] PR Director Brian Jarrard says it's not quite that simple.

On the surface it may seem like most of the groundwork has already been laid for an epic MMOG, but Jarrard claimed such a game is actually "hard for [him] to imagine," adding that while the idea has apparently been kicked around, it was always on a casual basis. "They are like our lunchtime discussions at the studio," he said in an interview with Warcraft [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/a-halo-mmo-would-be-pretty-challenging-bungie], equals dollar signs...'"

Rumors of a Halo MMOG have been swirling for years, and evidence of an early prototype in development at Ensemble Studios was recently dug up [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/86428] by Gamasutra. The project was shut down in mid-2007, before its existence was ever officially confirmed. "It was interesting when that whole thing came to light, there was more there than we ever really thought there was. I don't know, we've had a lot of heated discussions - there's a big, vast, rich universe, but then again it's hard for me to imagine," Jarrard added.

He also acknowledged one of the biggest design challenges facing any MMOG based on popular, well-established franchises: In a world populated by Jedi, nobody wants to be Trooper TK-421. "Everybody wants to be Master Chief, they all want to be the Spartan. You'd have to create a whole new layer of fiction and new characters that don't currently exist - not that it couldn't be done," Jarrard said. "I don't know if I would want to invest and become a Warthog mechanic in a garage, when all my friends were out there kicking ass on the front lines. I'm sure there's probably enough there to work with where something could of come of it, but I think it would have been pretty challenging."

Jarrard's comments were echoed by Blizzard [http://www.blizzard.com] CEO Mike Morhaime, who said in a separate interview that companies who undertake to build MMOGs rarely have any real concept of what they're getting themselves into. "I think everyone who hasn't done it will probably underestimate the logistics behind it - we certainly did," he said. "You focus on the things you are used to but you don't necessarily realize how difficult it is to scale up quickly and with an MMO you have to factor in providing 24/7 customer service, multiple languages... And that's not just hiring all those people to do customer service because internally within the organization you still have to support your employees and that's a whole lot of management infrastructure that doesn't exist before the launch."


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Blind0bserver

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Mar 31, 2008
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Personally, I find the transition of taking the intellectual property from an FPS and applying it to an RTS (meaning Halo Wars) to be a stretch already. I have no idea how a developer would pull this off, let alone if it would even work as a playable game on that large of a scale.

I can guarantee that I'm probably not going to play a Halo MMO if it ever gets made, but I'll be following what happens with it closely. I just want to know if it's practical as a game or if it'll crash and burn.
 

bittman

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Sep 11, 2008
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Malygris post=7.74012.818360 said:
Jarrard's comments were echoed by Blizzard [http://www.blizzard.com] CEO Mike Morhaime, who said in a separate interview that companies who undertake to build MMOGs rarely have any real concept of what they're getting themselves into. "I think everyone who hasn't done it will probably underestimate the logistics behind it - we certainly did," he said. "You focus on the things you are used to but you don't necessarily realize how difficult it is to scale up quickly and with an MMO you have to factor in providing 24/7 customer service, multiple languages... And that's not just hiring all those people to do customer service because internally within the organization you still have to support your employees and that's a whole lot of management infrastructure that doesn't exist before the launch."
Never a truer statement ever made. For every good MMO, there are at least 1,000 bad ones. For reference, there are only 5 good MMO's.
 

Amnestic

High Priest of Haruhi
Aug 22, 2008
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Vanguard1219 post=7.74012.819157 said:
Personally, I find the transition of taking the intellectual property from an FPS and applying it to an RTS (meaning Halo Wars) to be a stretch already. I have no idea how a developer would pull this off, let alone if it would even work as a playable game on that large of a scale.

I can guarantee that I'm probably not going to play a Halo MMO if it ever gets made, but I'll be following what happens with it closely. I just want to know if it's practical as a game or if it'll crash and burn.
Take one part Tabula Rasa, two parts WoW, five parts Halo canon, add a pinch of Star Wars galaxy, mix and boil for 5 years of development time and perhaps at the end of it all you'll have a decent, or even quite good MMO.
 

raemiel

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Jun 8, 2008
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Do we really need a Halo MMO?

We've had the triology, an RTS coming up and that Recon expansion announced. This is all in a fairly short amount of time too. Arguments of quality aside, just because a game (and then series) has been massively successful doesn't mean developers have to keep churning out more and more games. A huge playerbase in the other games of the series in no way means that an MMO is going to be successful or is even needed.

Flogging a horse, dead or otherwise, is done all too much in the games industry. Planning to make an MMO just seems to reek of dollarsigns in executives' eyes.

The article's point is they massively misunderstimated the reality of creating an MMO. This further indicates it was an idea devised just to further cash in on the series instead of an actual plan to make a MMO because it would be good.
 

stompy

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Jan 21, 2008
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raemiel post=7.74012.820137 said:
We've had the triology, an RTS coming up and that Recon expansion announced. This is all in a fairly short amount of time too. Arguments of quality aside, just because a game (and then series) has been massively successful doesn't mean developers have to keep churning out more and more games. A huge playerbase in the other games of the series in no way means that an MMO is going to be successful or is even needed.
But, but, look at World of Warcraft! We will to be as popular as them, and we'll rake in the cash! If Blizzard can do it, so can we... I mean, how hard is it to make an MMOG? /Suit's response