this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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Halo

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The State of 343 Industries Summary (self.halo)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by ShadowCat to c/halo
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This is a summary of the long thread from Bathrobe Spartan which you can find here: https://x.com/BathrobeCast/status/1812578845108625769

343 kept losing people in 2023 & 2024. Lead to more outsourcing content. Contracts not being renewed. 50-60 people let go on top of the >100 laid off.

Some roles transferred to MS/Xbox Team instead of being internalized at 343.

343 still relying on contractors, staff are not pleased to see leadership has not learned from the production of Infinite.

Less than 280 employees as of May 2024, with 30% of them related to Game-Content-Production, the rest are business oriented roles & producers.

Not enough positions have been opened to fill the gap from what it was before 2023. ~32 permanent positions opened in 2023 & 2024. Not enough staff to be "Production Ready".

343's budget has been severely impacted and controlled. This is why recruiting took longer and pushed people to leave. Key roles couldn't be replaced in time to finish content left.

Halo Infinite didn't meet its commercial goals but made enough to justify finishing the content already contracted with external studios, but not enough to justify doing more than was started. Quote from an ex employee "No we made money, we made a lot of money. But when I walked into the test bay to test the latest build EVERY FUCKING DAY the guy running it said "why bother, they are gonna hate it anyway" that's demoralizing. I would love to tell you what we worked on, but I can't and won't, not just because of the NDA but because I'm being loyal to the company. I still want to work there. It does bother me people praise Pierre, like, who do you think mandated Forge Maps going forward..."

Partnered forge maps not being high quality is due to to 343 being tied to legal obligations to fulfil the contracts but not enough time left to polish.

As the product did not reach its commercial goal, projection implied it wasn't worth contracting new content outside cosmetics. Meaning no new sandbox additions.

During 2023 & 2024, many employees helped other Xbox studios on their products as most Infinite content was handled by contracted studios.

343 shifting to a new production method, separating "Leading development" and Production. Hiring lead positions to do the concept and pre-production in-house & handing off the production work to other studios, similar to Halo Wars 2. Recruiting less content-creating roles and more lead profiles to test, iterate and validate content and gameplay before working with external studios to go full production. 2 studios are currently partnered to work on 2 separate projects this way. Both still in pre-production. One is a bigger scale PvP oriented project. At least 2 years before any release.

Aim of this new production method is to help produce content for games at a reliable pace and more cost effective. Hopefully won't lead to reproducing what happened with Infinite.

Remaining 343 staff have echoed they feel like 343 Industries isn't as much "The Home of Halo" as it was promised to them. They hope this new method of production will be the best for the franchise.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

It makes me sad to see so much of AAA game dev boiled down to business metrics. I'm sure a lot of it was marketing, but that's not the type of talk you hear in interviews and documentary footage from the big name game devs 15 years ago or more. They were focused on making a great game, not making sure their project hit ROI goals cooked up by people outside the industry with ideas divorced from reality.

The profit was the reward for a good product, not the purpose.

It seemed to be the job of good studio leadership to keep that sort of shit away from the creatives and let the creatives do what they do best as much as possible. Sure sometimes you'd end up in a situation like MGSV, where it got so over budget with no end in sight that you'd have to push it out the door, but I'd much rather have something where what's there is polished to near perfection than these games that are 100 miles wide and an inch deep.

Yes, technically you hit your bullet point goals of having more verticality, of having an open world, more movement options, etc. On paper you can check the boxes off for all the elements you wanted to put in the game and marketed it as having. But if each of those elements is only the bare minimum to meet the metric and move on, then they're going to suck. Sucess as defined by pure business process rather than any measure of actual quality.

[–] JoeKrogan 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

For me I would have preferred if they finished the story instead of locking armor colors behind a battle pass and wasting time with stupid cat ear armor. It ruins the immersion of the game for me, seeing people with flaming auras and kill effects etc.

They just had to finish the story and deliver good maps and forge for multiplayer, allow armor customization for free and sell map packs and story dlc.

[–] ShadowCat 3 points 4 months ago

I personally don't mind some of the less serious cosmetics but I 100% get why others don't like it. But selling us colours which we've been free to select since the first game was a terrible decision, I still can't even choose the combination I'd like to have.

But yeah, story dlc and map packs I would be much happier to buy than a different shade of red, as long as they were actual dev made maps and the dlc was actually good

[–] sploosh 0 points 4 months ago

Meanwhile, I think it's hilarious to make people rage by killing them over and over and over again wearing kitty ears and pink coat of paint.

[–] NOT_RICK 6 points 4 months ago

Sounds not great

[–] CluckN 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Infinite had a rough launch. It was hard to justify paying $60 for infinite when the Master Chief Collection filled that same void. I also remember forge taking almost a year to come out for infinite.

[–] ShadowCat 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Well Infinite was free to play it was only the campaign you had to pay for. But even considering that, previous games you'd get the campaign and multiplayer in that one price, but for Infinite is was just the campaign and at launch it didn't even have co-op like previous games

[–] RightHandOfIkaros 3 points 4 months ago

It didn't launch with splitscreen co-op like previous games, or like Bonnie Ross (rest in pieces, you're not missed) literally PROMISED on behalf of the company would never happen again after Halo 5 didn't launch with splitscreen co-op. Literally the next game they made broke that promise.

[–] RightHandOfIkaros 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I guess hiring all those people who hate Halo to work on Halo was a bad idea, huh?

Rumor has it, 343 refuses to hire anyone from Bungie that worked on Halo, even now. If this is true, it explains everything.

"Why bother, people.are gonna hate it" is a terrible way to look at it. If you know we are gonna hate it, then you know WHY we are gonna hate it. If you know that, then change it. Its not a hard concept.

We want Halo, and it feels like 343 is hellbent on giving us anything BUT Halo. Seriously, they have 4 mainline games to compare their test builds to, and a million threads online about what people don't like. And it seems like 343 just completely ignores all of that. Doesn't sound like 343 wants to make Halo at all, which doesn't seem to match up with these employee quotes.