The "Halo" series, Microsoft's flagship video game franchise, has helped to give the computer company a niche in the gaming industry. As "Halo 3" prepares to join shelves of other titles at retail outlets on Tuesday, it does not simply follow its two predecessors.
The "Halo" series now boasts numerous toys, two spin-off games now in the works, books, graphic novels and even a live action feature film. Many who are not avid video gamers are wondering: how did "Halo," among so many other video game franchises, become so popular, and what does it mean about how the culture of gaming has evolved?
"Halo" entered the gaming industry when sleek, realistic graphics, as well as interactivity, were taking the forefront the revolutionary game title. Traditional side-scrolling titles that characterized older systems were already on their way out and are now virtually extinct. Between funding by Microsoft and the capabilities of the Xbox game console, "Halo" was set to wow the gaming community.
Why "Halo," though? Why not any of the other would-be hit series? It's hard for even die-hard "Halo" fans to deny that the plot is nothing original. The Master Chief, the main protagonist of "Halo," is little more than a generic super soldier. The Flood, a primary antagonist, can be characterized as little more than a rehash of the Zerg from the legendary game, "StarCraft."
As gaming has evolved, so have the interests of gamers. As a new generation of consoles was released to replace the old ones, gamers became much more interested in open-ended games, control flexibility and the capabilities of graphics. "Halo" had no problem achieving any of these with funding from a giant corporation like Microsoft.
The appeal of a series such as "Halo" is a realistic rendition of Earth that maintains a fairly colorful environment. There is no realistic grittiness that characterizes certain games - instead, there are holographic Artificial Intelligence beings, aliens wearing multicolored armor, special soldier armor that is inexplicably colored lime green and a main character who everyone sees as an unstoppable one-man army. This is, of course, augmented by the game's fairly solid AI and overall capabilities.
Of course, the crowning achievement of "Halo" was its multiplayer capabilities through console play. "Halo" is a solid game, but it is horrifically overrated, and its multiplayer capabilities are what make it so appealing and separate it from the teeming masses of first-person shooters.
Players were no longer limited to playing competitive games on the Internet - they could now subscribe to Xbox Live for $15 a month to blow each others' heads off, complete with voice communication. It isn't so much the fluid communication of the voices via headphones, because the quality can be surprisingly poor. It isn't the seamless Internet connection - people have been timed out plenty of times while playing online. What matters is that "Halo," in addition to being a solid game, explored a new frontier of console gaming.
Being a good game company now means being able to determine what new frontiers players are itching to explore and determining what gamers are bored of. "Halo 2" was well-received but was panned by some gamers for not offering much in the way of new capabilities. With "Halo 3" right around the corner, only time will tell if the series' tremendous popularity and the promises of new content will be able to bring the Xbox 360 the popularity it is rapidly losing to the Nintendo Wii.
The Wii cites a different example of a major frontier that gamers have been craving in games: interactivity. The Wii is the first system where players can make motions with the system's remote controller and see their handiwork onscreen. There has not been a system with this kind of interactivity since the Power Glove for the Nintendo Entertainment System, which was a disastrous failure.
It's working, too. Sony and Microsoft can brag about technological superiority to the Wii all they want, but the statistics cannot be ignored. The Wii has massively outsold PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and continues to be in high demand and difficult to find in retail stores as unwanted 360s and PS3s sit on the shelves.
The consensus was that power isn't everything for a console. Shigeru Miyamoto, the founder of Nintendo, said that his belief when designing the Wii was that "too many powerful consoles can't coexist. It's like having only ferocious dinosaurs. They might fight and hasten their own extinction."
As gaming still continues to evolve and change, gamers will eventually search for something unexplored, some new kind of frontier. Whether Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony or a newcomer to the gaming industry will determine what gamers want and exploit it remains to be seen, but gaming has nevertheless evolved into an enormous business where finding out what the consumer wants is the keystone to success.
