Well, this is something that I've addressed already in this video I did for GFC, but when I cover an important issue via a GFC video, I never say everything that I want to say, a result of not being good at commentating and simply forgetting things because I'm a durdle. On top of that, this is such an important issue that I felt that it was worth expanding on. A couple days ago, Axilo told me that only 2,500 people were playing the Halo CE remake, and only another 5,000 were playing Halo: Reach. Now people on YouTube bring up these scarily low numbers all the time, but Axilo's someone I trust, so I really doubt that these numbers are very far off. Yes, Axilo told me this at around 2 in the morning Pacific time, but these are still some shocking figures.
One thing that I didn't address in the GFC video was how this crisis came to be; the video was merely full of ideas to turn things around. Obviously, this isn't that relevant now, since actually doing something to fix all this is of a much higher priority than sitting around theorizing the reasons behind everything going downhill, but I like sharing my thoughts with the community and this is definitely something that I want to contribute my 2 cents on.
The obvious culprit here is Call of Duty. Call of Duty has always been a solid franchise, but with the release of Modern Warfare 2, the game exploded, plain and simple. Its release shattered several records, and within months of its release, numerous YouTube superstars emerged off of its success. It also led to a plummet in Halo 3 activity; for several months after its release, the majority of my Xbox Live Friends were still playing it. Keep in mind that a lot of my Xbox Live Friends are people I meet through my YouTube channel, which is a channel dedicated solely to HALO. So why exactly was Call of Duty a sleeper hit up until Modern Warfare 2? Well, I really don't know, and I don't have a theory that I strongly support. My best guess is a brilliantly executed ad campaign, but from what I saw, there wasn't anything incredibly extraordinary about how the game was marketed. Another theory I have is that because Modern Warfare 2 was such a massive step down in terms of competitive viability (otherwise known as a massive step up in "noob friendliness"), it made the game more accessible to the casual gamer, who constitutes the majority of the gaming population.
All of us know by now that Call of Duty is by far the strongest video game franchise in existence and probably the strongest video game franchise in the history of gaming. Every Call of Duty game since Modern Warfare 2 has had the same record-shattering effect, and when it comes to gaming videos on YouTube, it has been absolutely dominated by Call of Duty. So why does this game have so much staying power? This I have several answers for.
First of all, as I proposed and supported in excruciating detail in this post I wrote explaining my perspective on the whole seemingly-eternal Halo vs. CoD debate, Call of Duty is nowhere near the competitive title that Halo is and is a pretty accessible game overall due to its severely limited skill gap, which allows even the worst of players to go into a game and rack up a couple kills. Before people start complaining about how that is exactly what a douchebag snobby Halo fanboy would say, I would like to point out that I own Modern Warfare 1 and 2, have enjoyed them thoroughly, and have no problem with the series' lesser competitive merit. The last part is because the quality of a game shouldn't be determined purely off of its competitive viability. Gaming is still a recreational activity, and people who think of games purely in terms of how well it lets them "wreck noobs" take gaming far too seriously. Anyways, in the end, this, like I said before, makes Call of Duty more accessible to the everyday gamer. And speaking of accessibility, a very, very powerful advantage that Call of Duty has over Halo is that its multi-platform, which maximizes their potential player base.
The next thing I want to touch on is post-release exposure and the online community for video games, two things that are heavily tied together. Post-release exposure is attention that video games get after their release. The online community is the communal aspect behind the game that isn't playing it (forums dedicated to the game, montages, MLG). The more of these 2 things a video game gets, the stronger it is, and the cool thing about them is that they feed into each other. The online community creates more post-release exposure for the game, this post-release exposure drags new people into the community, some of these new people become part of the online community, and the cycle continues. Simply put, Call of Duty has been getting a TON of post-release exposure. How? Through YouTube, the most powerful tool and medium for post-release exposure on the planet. And how exactly did it come to reign over YouTube? Because it has a group of incredibly intelligent, talented, and charismatic commentators.
Not delving into commentaries ASAP is one of the biggest mistakes the Halo community has ever made, albeit an understandable one. Montages have been around in the Halo community for forever, so that's pretty much what most people understood the Halo community on YouTube as, a montage making one. Yeah, we have Machinimas and stuff, but montages have been the driving force behind Halo's post-release exposure for over 5 years, a phenomenon that was heavily fueled by the rise of Airguitar901's channel and my own. Simply put, the idea of making commentaries never really dawned on us. I've been watching Halo videos on YouTube for the longest time and visiting Halo2Forum.com for even longer, and prior to 2009, the commentary boom, I NEVER saw a single Halo commentary.
So why is commentary so powerful? Why does it kick the crap out of montages? Similar to the benefits of Call of Duty being a more casual game, commentaries are simply more accessible to the average gamer. As much as I love montages, they, for the most part, appeal to a very narrow segment of the Halo population, let alone the gaming population. Montages are absolutely dominated by plays with the most skill-intensive weapons, mainly the sniper, BR, DMR, and Pistol. This is because montages are primarily made by hardcore players. The average player hops on for a couple hours every week or so; he doesn't have a deep enough connection to the game to record himself playing it, edit this footage together, and post it on the super hostile Internet for the world to see. And because these videos are made by hardcore players who play a certain way, their game footage is naturally the most accessible to those of a similar level of dedication to the game, in other words, other hardcore players who care passionately for the game like I do. To us, those sniper killtrocities and overkill outBRs are awesome, because we've used these weapons a ton and we know how challenging it is to get these types of plays. To the casual gamer though, it's just a bunch of kills with the same 2-3 weapons that melt into one monotonous blur. I'm not just pulling this out of my ass either; I have strong evidence supporting this assertion. If you never visited Bungie.net from 2008-2010, you should know that Bungie used to regularly feature my content on their blog, which was smack-dab on the website's homepage (a favor that I will forever love them for). Each time they featured one of my videos, that video got something between 5-50k extra views, and with these views always came a bunch of YouTube comments from the Bungie.net community, which is dominated by the casual Halo population. What I noticed is that pretty much whenever Bungie featured a non-Salaya montage on their blog, that montage would get a bunch of comments saying something along these lines.
"Why can't people get kills with weapons besides the sniper or BR/DMR? It gets really boring."
A lot of people discount this statement as some lame "noob philosophy", but these people really need to see things from the casual gamer's perspective. The casual gamer doesn't care about getting sick snipes and outBR's all the time with a 100% headshot percentage. The casual gamer often sticks to his starting weapon, grabbing the sniper if it happens to pop up but preferring to use fun weapons like the needler and spiker when they can. Sure, they can appreciate a good sniper overkill or two, but when a montage is about 90% comprised of those good sniper overkills, it becomes boring for them, because they naturally can't relate.
Meanwhile, gameplay commentaries have something for everybody. My friend Rajan, who follows a bunch of CoD commentators, introduced me to them, and even though I'm not a hardcore CoD player, I was immediately drawn in. Why? Because these commentators clearly had charisma and intelligence, two of the qualities that I admire the most. Even though most of the commentaries focused on their thoughts of the game, they were presented in way that was easy to follow for anybody, which obviously includes me, and were structured and delivered very nicely. On top of that, they often discussed topics that weren't gaming-related at all like monogamy and morality, discussions that literally anybody can follow and take part in, along with stories from their personal lives that all of us can personally relate to. In short, commentary is tremendously powerful because it capitalizes on a universal, human character. From what I've seen on a YouTube, thousands of people are like me; they watch these gameplay commentaries mainly for the commentary, not the gameplay. And of course, for the people who don't like commentary, there's still something in these videos for them in the form of a sick gameplay. To illustrate my point about commentary, just take a look at these titles, and tell me which one is more appealing.
"I Hate My Teeth" (A Commentary from Hutch) and "Quiggy :: No Soul - A Halo: Reach Montage"
Even as a Halo fan who loves montages, the first one draws me in more. The first title is an interesting statement that anybody can understand. The second title is a collection of words that only a certain piece of a certain population can understand. The first title trumps the second in terms of both appeal and accessibility.
The fact that commentators can connect on a deep level with their fans is a powerful asset for their respective communities, because it makes the community more of a community instead of a mere collection of fans. Because the Call of Duty community has these great champions for them such as Hutch and SeaNanners to galvanize them, it's easy for the Call of Duty community to unite behind a certain cause, whether it's helping a sweet video become viral or fixing a flaw in the game. The Halo community lacks such figures. Sure, we have people like Kampy and Dutchy with massive fan followings, but they don't really take advantage of their dedicated fanbase by making commentaries to connect with their fans on a deeper level and expand their chances of reaching out towards super casual Halo players and non-Halo players. Also, Machinima has been instrumental in the CoD community's success. I remember back in 2008 when Machinima only had a 100,000 subscribers or so; now it essentially runs all video game media on YouTube. The majority of the gaming titans of YouTube are where they are now because of Machinima, and most of these guys were made famous by Machinima because of Call of Duty and because they are very loyal to Call of Duty. Another great thing about the Call of Duty community is that their champions are often times creating other champions. I've seen a lot of dual commentaries from popular commentators done in order to raise attention for new, talented, up-and-coming commentators, and given how powerful the champions are, it isn't long before this new guy is bringing attention to the new up-and-comers. This quickly became a cycle, and since then, Call of Duty's initial dominance has been fueling its further dominance.
Call of Duty is only one part (though still the major part) of the bigger issue I'm trying to get at here, the bigger issue being that there's simply more competition now. Many other games (pretty much all sequels as well) have followed in Modern Warfare 2's footsteps and simply exploded. Battlefield 3 has been getting its fair share of attention recently, and a couple months back, Portal 2 and Crysis 2 were in the spotlight. As soon as Halo came out, it became the poster child for the Xbox. I don't even remember how many times people told me, "The only reason you buy the Xbox is for Halo", when the Xbox was a new gaming console. Halo 3 was in the same vein as Halo: CE when it came out; the Xbox 360 wasn't that well established yet, and it needed a defining game to make it appealing. Halo 3 was that game. However, it's been years since then, and naturally, Halo 3 has fallen out of the limelight and other games have come in. I would also like to point out that Call of Duty fucked over Halo chronologically as well. Casual gamers aren't very loyal to any particular video game series; they tend to drift between games and what they stick with is usually what's the newest. So even though Halo: Reach had a very strong release (stronger than that of Halo 3's), it all went to hell when Black Ops came out 2 months afterwards. Now why didn't this happen with Modern Warfare 1 and Halo 3, I don't know, but what I do know is that my channel was doing ridiculously well when Reach came out (getting upwards of 75,000 video views a day) and then proceeded to tumble downhill after Black Ops happened (down to 15,000 to 40,000 video views a day).
So we have clarified that Halo definitely has a lot more competition now and that the spotlight is much harder to get, because CoD simply has so much of it and is gaining more and more of it every day. But has the series itself become weaker? Specifically, did Reach fuck over Halo by being a shitty game? Reach sold more copies than Halo 3 did, so why didn't it retain its player base and community better?
This is a pretty tough question, because in order to answer it properly, you have to put your personal preferences aside and evaluate the game from the casual gamer's perspective. This is because, like I said before, the majority of the gaming population is casual. Therefore, changes that cater to the casual gaming population are favorable. Here's a shitty commonly brought up reason why Reach is NOT a weaker title.
"Reach murders the skill gap and allows noobs to easily kill good players."
No, fucking NO. Every time I see this rationale, I want to reach through the Internet and slap whoever said this repeatedly. First of all, this is, 95% of the time, simply a complaint from the Halo 3 kids who got good at Halo 3 and couldn't adapt to Reach. From what I've seen in MLG and what I've experienced playing Reach myself, its skill gap is fairly similar to that of Halo 3's, especially with no-bloom. The only time the skill gap in a game should matter is if it's essentially completely annihilated, turning every game of Halo into the equivalent of SWAT rockets. Reach did NOT do this. Again, we have to keep in mind that the majority of the gaming population is casual. While we view the "dumbing down" of the game as a decrease in a quality, the casual player views it as a favorable balance shift, which gives them more of a chance against good players. Not many people like picking up a game and going 0-50 in their first 100 matches. In other words, the smaller the skill gap, the more accessible it is for the average gamer. In fact, one of the reasons why I think Halo 3 was so successful is because it was considerably "dumbed down" from Halo 2, mainly through the stupidly powerful Assault Rifle and the broken beatdown system, which made trading 1 for 1 easy as fuck. In Halo 2, you really didn't have much of a chance to do any damage against a good player with a Battle Rifle or sniper in his hands. In Halo 3, especially with the shitty spawns, it's pretty easy to take out a solid sniper or BR guy given how broken the AR is, especially if you pulse. This is the reason why I abhorred Halo 3 and simply couldn't play it if I wasn't playing with friends or on a 1 month; however, I acknowledged that this smaller skill gap was healthy for the game and its community.
Something I do think weakened Reach though is the lack of a ranking system with levels that try to be indicative of your play skill. Like many people have said before, the ranking system is indicative of how much you play, not how good you are. Personally, I don't give a fuck about ranks, because I don't care that much about the game anymore, but I do acknowledge the fact that a ton of people do, even a lot of the casual players. Now, the casual player doesn't have the "50 or bust" mentality that a lot of the more hardcore players have, but they are aware of their level, and it is something that they strive for, something that drives them to play that extra game or hop online that extra day. Even when the level system meant nothing in Halo 3 due to the BS true skill system, people buying their 50's, and 50 being much easier to get when it wasn't even possible in Halo 2 without cheating, people cared about it. Of course, with every level system, there's going to be people that try to break it (bought 50's, modding, boosting, host booting), but I really think that it would help the game more than it would harm it.
Lastly, the community is far too splintered over this Halo 3 vs. Halo: Reach thing. Of course, there's going to be this backlash from the previous generation with the release of every Halo game (When Halo 2 was released, a bunch of Halo 1 players saw it as a failure, when Halo 3 released, a bunch of Halo 2 players saw it as a failure, etc), but it dies out pretty quickly, just in time to let the new game blossom. This doesn't seem to be the case with Reach. It's been well over a year since Halo: Reach came out, and I'm STILL regularly seeing comments attacking Reach while lauding Halo 3. Yes, freedom of speech, yadda, yadda, yadda, but there comes a time when you need to put your contempt aside and act in a way that's beneficial to the community as a whole. Again, I hated Halo 3, but I still loved the Halo community, and I still loved watching Halo videos. While I could have only uploaded Halo 2 montages and complained about how shitty Halo 3 was in the comments section of every single video I posted, I didn't. I had no problem with people complaining about Reach initially; it was bound to happen and all of us need to vent, but now it's become an incredibly annoying broken record. When a new game comes out, we want the newcomers who start off in this new game to feel welcome. We don't want to make the environment seem as hostile as possible towards them by constantly attacking the new game.
So, in conclusion, why do I think the Halo community has been in such decline recently? First of all, the Call of Duty monopoly, which is heavily backed by Machinima. Call of Duty is the driving force behind Halo's downfall, because the populations are so intertwined and it has a much stronger capability of drawing in new fans. I really think that a lot of the casual CoD players would be playing Halo if it had simply come out after CoD did, and while CoD has stupendous growth, Halo has negative growth. Second, Reach needs a ranking system. Lastly, the Halo 3 community is whiny as fuck, and they splinter the community terribly. Sucking Halo 3's dick and bashing Reach in every Halo 3/Halo: Reach/Halo 4 video got old forever ago, and it scares off the new Halo fans, who, by definition, started playing in REACH.
I was originally going to outline a course of action to revitalize the Halo community in this post, but it's long enough already, so I'm going to make a separate post for that, hopefully soon.
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