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| Frank O'Conner, Bungie | // article | ||
| 1. Back in the infancy of the original Halo, what were your hopes for the series? Frank O Connor: Halo actually started its life as a real-time strategy game for the Macintosh, but the guys here at Bungie had so many story ideas that eventually it grew out of that genre and into a first-person shooter. It also grew out of the Macintosh and into the PC, then initially it was an Xbox-exclusive title. It went through a lot of evolution and it sounds quite drastic, but actually it was a very smooth process. As it became more fun to use the vehicles and the physics that the guys had created it became obvious it should be an action game rather than an RTS. Luckily it ended up being the game we all know and love today! 2. Has the series surpassed your expectations? Frank O Connor: The success and the expansion of the halo universe is certainly something that caught Bungie a little by surprise. We're always ready for these things but the fact that we now have a range of action figures, a Marvel comic book, toys, games, New York Times best-selling novels and best-selling original soundtracks is always surprising. I don't think Jason Jones could have predicted that back when Bungie first started. But it's an absolute pleasure to see the universe that we love expand and be so fondly embraced by the fans in the community. 3. Halo 2 is very popular on Xbox Live. How are you going to continue to support this game in the future? Frank O Connor: Halo 2 continues to be one of the most popular games on Xbox Live and my personal prediction is that we'll take over from Gears of War again eventually, even if only for a short spell. I think one of the reasons for the continued popularity of Halo 2 on Xbox Live is our matchmaking. It's so user-friendly and it makes it so easy to find a game with the huge population of players. That long-term success has been great for us as developers but also fantastic for the fans, so we want to reward the people who play Halo 2 online. One way we're going to continue to do that is to update matchmaking playlists. We watch them very carefully to see what's popular, what's unpopular, what's causing cheating and so on. One thing that's unpopular with the fans is when we have to kill a playlist, like when we killed Team SWAT recently. The reason we have to do that is because we have a huge playing population and sometimes we need to balance out the playlists by making sacrifices. That's the hard part, but we will have some surprises and treats for Xbox 360 Halo 2 players in the coming months. Keep an eye on Bungie.net to see more about what they are. 4. Can you give us some more details about the downloadable Halo 2 maps that were recently announced? Frank O Connor: We did announce that one of the things we'd be doing to keep the Halo 2 community playing the game is that we're going to be making some maps. We haven't announced how many we'll be making - there won't be dozens so don't get too excited - and we haven't announced what the maps will be. But you will enjoy them. Trust me, I've played all of them and they're all fantastic. We have been asked why they're only available on Xbox 360 and the simple fact of the matter is that we simply don't have enough resources to build the maps and test them for both Xbox and Xbox 360. They're both very different and we just don't have the manpower. We had to pick one platform or the other so we picked the one we think will have the largest Halo 2-playing population by next year, and that's Xbox 360. We know that's bad news for original Xbox owners and I don't just want to tell people to go out and get an Xbox 360 because I know that's not always possible, but if you're a big Halo fan then I think you should probably get a 360 next year anyway. So I apologise that the maps will only be available for Xbox 360, but I know the fans will enjoy them and I think they'll inject a lot more life into the game before the arrival of Halo 3.
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