We will continue to focus on these and have seen great support and reaction from our community as our attendance, participation and viewership continue to grow. Based on feedback coming out of Summer Season 2016, we added back in open LAN events to our roadmap, and for the first time this year, Halo World Championship LAN qualifiers were all open events. So while there’s definitely some hard science involved in the numbers, settings and logistics, there’s also a great deal of art and diplomacy involved in finding settings, venues and timing that works for a global community. We do see interesting feedback on a region by region basis, and the idea that our esports competitors and viewers are all in monolithic agreement – I’m sure I don’t need to tell you – is faulty. Not only did we get feedback about the game content, rules and tournament setup, we also got and continue to get, really useful feedback about how brackets, tourneys and open events are, and could be better set up. We have lots to do still, but our plans for the future are built on that foundation and a commitment to learning what fans and players really need from a title and adapting and evolving the core nature of our sport.Ĭynopsis: What were the primary takeaways from the fans from Halo’s 2016 season/World Championships and how are you leveraging that into growing support for 2017 play? There are lots of fun multiplayer games, but eSports requires a title that is genuinely balanced, watchable and exciting to both play and broadcast. We hired some serious competitive gamers during the development of Halo 5 that we called “pro team” and their focused, singular role was to ensure the core game and its component features, could stand up to those rigors. Throughout the following years, with Halo 3, Halo 4 and now Halo 5, we’ve learned from past successes (and some of our own mistakes) and gone back to our roots of symmetrical, balanced and nuanced gameplay, to try and create something that’s appealing to mainstream folks certainly, but also something that can withstand the rigors and demands of the professional scene. Much of the DNA of Halo eSports was germinated in that transition, and with professional and fan made organizations running their own tournaments, it was for a while the defacto console eSports title, along with Street Fighter and a few others. Not to mention creating thousands of indelible friendships – and maybe the occasional enemy!Īnd when Max Hoberman and the guys at Bungie approached the online multiplayer modes for Halo 2 – the central focus was on trying to recreate that hypersocial “couch” feel that the LANs introduced, and finding ways to match players based on skill and specific mode interest. Although the lack of online seems at first blush like a limitation for that game – it actually engendered a culture of collaborative competition and “real-life” events. It was before Xbox Live, and so to play competitively, even hobbyists had to create mini-tournaments and daisy chain Xboxes and TVs together with LAN cables. With the Halo Universe deep in the game and exploring new frontiers, Cynopsis eSports chief Chris Purcell – and mastermind behind the April 12 Cynopsis World eSports Summit – asked Frank O’Connor, Halo Franchise Creative Director at 343 Industries, about Halo’s legacy in esports, and what we can expect in the year ahead.Ĭynopsis: Given Halo’s influence on pop culture, could you rewind us to discuss the evolution of the game as an esport and the growth strategy for the Halo Championship Series and World Championships?įrank O’Connor: Actually I think our evolution goes all the way back to 2001 when Halo Combat Evolved first launched. ESports is exploding, as Millennial-heavy communities engage in global tournaments that can offer paydays in the seven figures.
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