Our task as researchers was to make sure players would understand the new paradigm. Halo 2 won so completely that it’s hard to imagine how online play worked before.Īgain, I’m really glad I wasn’t able to kill it. This description sounds incredibly mundane and obvious now, but that’s because this system succeeded so well that it became the new standard for multiplayer games going forward. The ranking system is set up by match type, so you might be #25 in the Assault mode, but only #78 in Slayer. At any time, they can just push some updates to Xbox Live, and everyone will be playing new games. They can also be positive that all the rankings will be consistent, since nearly everyone will be playing on the same maps with roughly the same number of players. By guaranteeing that everyone is optimized for the same type of game, Bungie can ensure that all of the games will run smoothly. “While this might sound weird at first, it’s a good idea for a number of reasons. In an interesting twist, the gametypes, maps, vehicles, and just about everything else are set by Bungie. Here’s how GameSpy described the Halo 2 system in an article published before the game was released: The image below is a near-final pre-release screenshot of the “Optimatch hopper.” (The terminology we used proved not to have the same staying power as the system itself.) Free for all, Big Team Battle, etc.) and then Bungie would choose the map, gametype, and opponents. In contrast, the proposed Halo 2 system took almost all choices away, replacing them with a system where players only got to choose the general type of match (e.g. It was routine to see lobbies that proudly announced “no snipers” or “ free-for-all only.” The lobby creator had the ability to set up a highly curated experience, allowing just the maps and game modes that they liked, kicking out players who didn’t play their way. The great advantage of these lobby systems was control. If the lobby turned out to be occupied by jerks or more talented players, you could back out and choose a new lobby to suit your tastes. Players would select a lobby from a list, reading short descriptions to decide which one was right for them. Instead, the default solution to finding other people to play with online was to use lobbies. Prior to Halo 2, most online games didn’t have matchmaking. Halo 2 artwork Microsoft/Bungie The innovation This story is one of the other times, when two otherwise competent researchers drew the wrong conclusions about an innovative piece of game design and made bad recommendations, and how the game succeeded in spite of that. Usually, public discussions about games user research focus on the times we were right, the times when data fixed game design. This is a story about a time when I failed to be a good prophet, where my attempts to project research data into the future led to a conflict between the research team at Microsoft and the design team at Bungie. Our job was to use qualitative and quantitative techniques like usability studies, playtests, and surveys to give design teams insights into how their games would be received after they were released. Both of us were trained scientists with PhDs in experimental psychology and early members of Microsoft’s Games User Research team. At the time, most researchers at Microsoft supported three to five titles each, but because this was a major tentpole title for the original Xbox, there were two user experience researchers assigned to help with the game full-time, myself and Randy Pagulayan. Which is why I’m glad I didn’t succeed in killing it in the lab.ĭuring development, Halo 2 was codenamed “Prophets” after the new race of aliens being added to the Halo universe. The development team at Bungie took a bold risk in building a new type of online experience, and it was a massive success and made millions of people happy. During the game’s six-year lifetime, more than 6.6 million players played over 499 million hours of Halo 2 online multiplayer. It held that position for almost two years, and you can make a decent argument that the primary reason Xbox Live survived its infancy was the massive popularity of this single title. Following its release in 2004, Halo 2 instantly became the most popular multiplayer game on Xbox Live.
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