I met Pete Parsons before Halo came out, as he was going around the country evangelizing the first-person shooter on the Xbox game console that Microsoft was about to launch way back in the fall of 2001. I recall his enthusiasm as marketing director at Microsoft, always promoting the idea of doing a pioneering shooting experience on consoles that, frankly, were inferior to the PC. Now, Parsons is still doing the same thing, only he is promoting Destiny, the next shooter from developer Bungie.

As chief operating officer at Bungie, Parsons must help lead the 350-person team do the enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work in bringing the persistent world of the always-connected Destiny to life. Activision Blizzard is planning on publishing a series of Destiny titles over the next decade, and Parsons will play a big role in making that happen.

Parsons left his job at Microsoft to become the COO at Bungie after Halo launched. In 2007, he left Microsoft to start Meteor Solutions, a viral-marketing startup, and worked double duty for a time. As Bungie prepared to leave the Microsoft fold and move on to a new franchise, Parsons came back. He returned to the studio in 2010. Parsons is now fully focused on getting Destiny out the door and managing the culture and talent inside Bungie’s 80,000-square-foot headquarters in Bellevue, Wash.

After a few years of secrecy, Bungie finally revealed concept art from its new game universe while announcing that Destiny would debut on the PlayStation 4 (and likely other platforms). We visited Parsons at Bungie HQ last week, and here’s an edited transcript of our conversation.

GamesBeat: You must feel good right now.

Pete Parsons: [Laughs] Well, I think it feels good to be Bungie right now. We’re always about doing great things and ambitious things. That’s because we have such a great team, because we can do that. It’s a great time to be at Bungie. It’s an energy that many people haven’t felt since some of the earliest days of Halo. That’s exciting. We still have a lot of the old guard around, but we’ve been able to bring on a massive amount of new talent.

GamesBeat: Did somebody in particular sell you on the idea of Destiny? I think you came in after it started, right?

Parsons: No, we’ve all been working from the very beginning. Well, it depends on how you look at it. Destiny has been an idea bouncing around since even before the technology to make it existed.

Destiny is very much a product of everybody at Bungie, but its inception comes from Jason [Jones, co-founder of Bungie]. This is very much a vision that Jason has. Then, he gathers a small group of really talented people who have been here a long time, and they begin hammering on it. It’s had multiple incarnations until it finally landed into what it is today. That’s fun to watch. Not just on technology, but art and story.

GamesBeat: It sounds like you did have options, though. Was there a point where you bought into Destiny and said, “I want to do this too?” For 10 years or whatever it will be.

Parsons: As naïve as this may sound, if Jason believes in something and he’s ready to go for it, I’m in. No joke, I still walk in the door every day and think, “Who gets to do this? This is awesome, to be a part of this thing.” Even when I’m having a shitty day, I feel that way. There are so many other things I could do that, for me, wouldn’t be as satisfying or as interesting. They might be enriching. They might satisfy some level of my curiosity. They might be exciting. But there’s something about these people and this place.

GamesBeat: Did you feel any tug when Halo went off in another direction, with Microsoft’s 343 Industries, and then Bungie went its separate way with Destiny?

Parsons: Personally, I did not. I love the Halo universe. I think it’s great. It inspires me. It inspires my children. They’ve never played, but they know the universe. One, though, I’ve spent a lot of time with Halo. Two, the mythic science fiction of Destiny immediately attracted me. It was that first image … It’s a simple image, but it took weeks of back-and-forth to put together. There were a few images already, maybe three or four, but they didn’t speak to what it was. The moment that image was done, it was like, “That’s it.” That’s the game. That’s the idea. That’s a place that I want to be.

GamesBeat: Is that published now? Which image is that?

Parsons: I don’t know if it’s ever been published. It was just this very striking image that had that feeling of — this is not purely a science fiction universe. It’s not just about two big military-industrial complexes smashing into each other. It’s a place with myths and lore. There’s a guy with sci-fi armor on, and yet he’s got a rifle that looks like it’s from an ancient desert somewhere. It was super cool. That certainly spoke to me. I didn’t look back.

At the time, we were working on both Halo: ODST and Halo:Reach. I still love the Halo universe. It’s an interesting place. But I think what we’ve been able to do is create an incredibly deep fiction and a place that you’re going to want to be in.

GamesBeat: You had a leak. You had some interesting reactions. What was it like, looking at the reaction from the inside?

Parsons: You’re never really excited when you first learn that a leak happens. Then you get to see the reaction. We had this really quick thing. We said, “There’s a leak happening. We can either say nothing, or we can say, ‘Yeah.’” Instead of looking at images that we didn’t want you to see, let’s give you one that we want you to see. So, we released the picture of the Fallen. When our community, who we love, reacts so positively to an image — “Oh my God. That’s so great. That’s a place I want to be in. I can’t wait to learn more about that” — we go from, “Oh, man” to “Sweet!” Within less than half an hour, we were like, “This is the course of action. Let’s go.”

Pages: 1 2

A lucky screen grab indicates the first three Halo games and hit perspective-platformer Fez might make the jump from Xbox to Steam. If true, it would mark the first appearance of Microsoft’s billion-dollar Halo franchise on Valve’s billion-dollar game-streaming service … and its first official appearance on a non-Microsoft platform.

The Escapist reports that listings for Fez, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 appeared in Steam’s content database — a first step before any game goes live on the service — and were discovered by two programmers, “Pavel” and Martin Benjamins using the CDR tool. Hackers used CDR to view Steam’s complete game content database. All four listings have since been removed.

This would also mark the first PC ports for both Fez and Halo 3. It also leaves an open question around Halo 2; Its multiplayer servers are scheduled to shut down next week.

While none of this constitutes a confirmation that Microsoft’s premiere franchise is indeed heading to Steam, all four did appear in a screen-grabbed list that included games already confirmed for release on Steam;

• La-Mulana
• The Splatters
• Octodad: Dadliest Catch Beta
• Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition (Duke Nukem 3D+)
• Super House of Dead Ninjas
• Fez
• LucasArts Test App
• Fast and Furious 6
• Lococycle
• Yogventures!
• Hardware
• Hardware (Demo)
• Dyad
• Cut the Rope
• Shadow Warrior Complete
• Hardware (VIP)
• Hardware (Internal)
• THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIII
• Retro/Grade
• Resident Evil: Revelations
• THE KING OF FIGHTERS 2002 UNLIMITED MATCH
• THE KING OF FIGHTERS ’98 ULTIMATE MATCH
• Quantum Conundrum 2
• Halo 3
• Halo 2
• Halo: Combat Evolved
• The Witness
• Angry Birds Space
• Angry Birds Seasons
• Second Life

Benjamins also discovered a Halo 3 game hub. Steam game hubs are official groups people use to share user-generated content, mods, screenshots, and the like.

We’ve reached out to both Microsoft and Valve for comment.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Gears of War is bombarding the childrens’ toy market this month. French toy manufacturer Meccano has created a range of construction sets based on the violent, Mature-rated third-person-shooter gaming franchise, and it is marketing them heavily at boys 8 and over. The sets are on sale at toy stores in the U.S. and the United Kingdom (one place you can find them is at Toys ‘R’ Us). Nickelodeon, Disney XD, and Cartoon Network have also been running advertising spots for the toys on U.K. television  in the lead up to Christmas despite a target demographic that should never have played the games.

Wandering around Toys ‘R’ Us with my two children last week, this marketing strategy and the in-store placement of the new Meccano range struck an odd chord. Nestled snugly alongside pictures of Sonic the Hedgehog and brightly colored constructable cars, Gears of War protagonist Marcus Fenix’s face staring out from its Meccano box looked strangely out-of-place. It made me wonder why such a range is being aimed at young children.

Aspiring gamers

I contacted Meccano (U.K.) to ask why it’s targeting such a young audience, and whether it’s concerned about cross-promoting Mature-rated games to that demographic. “The Gears of War range is targeted at 8+,” said a spokesperson for Meccano. “Our focus is on vehicles from the game as well as characters and weapons, which is not dissimilar to Mega Bloks’ Halo models. The ambition of the range is to broaden Meccano’s appeal to younger modelers as well as to older modelers who are also gamers and who will be familiar with the 18+ game.”

The Halo Mega Bloks range is a similar concept to Gears of War Meccano line. First released in 2009, Halo Mega Bloks — based on Microsoft’s series of first-person-shooter games — are found prominently displayed in most major toy stores. It’s easy to forget that Halo, too, is a gaming franchise aimed at a mature audience.

“It would seem a tenuous proposition to aim [Gears of War] toys at 8 year olds based on a license they ‘shouldn’t’ know,” said Sean McGowan, a toy industry expert and senior analyst at Needham & Company, via email. “But aspirational marketing is nothing new, is it?”

“The success of the Halo toys tells us two things,” said McGowan. “Firstly, that kids like what their older siblings  – or even parents — are doing, and a watered down toy version lets them participate. Secondly, that collectors who are ‘of age’ like to have toys depicting their favorite properties.

“I can tell you that the median age of buyers of Halo blocks from Mega is much older than the average for their blocks, so maybe it won’t actually be little kids buying Gears of War toys. But, still, you have to wonder how it could be a responsible idea.”

Epic Games: We don’t market Gears of War to children

I approached Microsoft to discuss the Gears of War and Halo toys and the implications of involving young children in the world of Mature-rated games. “Generally speaking, video game figures and collectibles are not necessarily created with a younger market in mind, so we would not look to comment on Halo-branded items,” said a Microsoft spokesman. It also declined to comment on Gears of War Meccano, leaving that to Gears developer and intellectual property [IP] owner Epic Games.

“It’s always been the stance of Epic Games that we don’t market the Gears of War series to children under the age of 18,” the studio said in a statement. “We do not condone the actions of Meccano, and we will do everything in our power to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

When asked for more details on the license negotiation, the studio issued an additional statement: “Epic Games owns the Gears of War IP and we advise our licensees on high-level branding for the franchise. We vigorously support the ESRB/PEGI ratings system. If a licensee comes in conflict with that, we make every effort to correct the situation.”

That is a strongly worded response, showing that Epic Games is not at all happy with Meccano’s use of its license. What it means for the future of Gears of War Meccano toys, though, is not totally clear.

A case for the ESRB?

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) provides video game age ratings for the benefit of consumers, helping keep unsuitable games away from minors. But its jurisdiction doesn’t extend to related products, meaning the sale and marketing of these toys do not contravene ESRB regulations.

“ESRB enforces guidelines that prohibit inappropriate target marketing of Mature-rated games to children,” Eliot Mizrachi, the ESRB’s director of communications, said in a statement. “These restrictions pertain to ads placed in media [in the U.S. or Canadian markets] whose audience is known to be composed of a certain proportion of children but do not apply to ancillary products that may be associated with or related to a Mature-rated game.”

The European equivalent of ESRB ratings is the PEGI system, overseen by the Video Standards Council. When asked about the Gears of War toys, the VSC was unconcerned . “There does not appear to be any attempt to directly use the toys as a means of selling the game which, in any case, is legally restricted to 18-year-olds and above,” VSC Communications Officer Gianni Zamo said.

Mega Call of Duty?

With no guidance from the ESRB or VSC on the sale of such toys, responsibility seems to fall on the shoulders of individual companies. Where there is a clear market, though, it will inevitably be targeted. Mega Bloks’ success with Halo has set an example for other mature gaming franchises to follow, and Needham and Company analyst Sean McGowan said he would “not be surprised to see MegaBrands do toys tied to Call of Duty, too, considering their link to Activision through Skylanders.”

For the time being, Gears of War seems set to continue its infiltration of the toy store, with blind-bagged figures joining the fray. Soon being traded in a schoolyard near you.

You can see the initial TV advertisement for Meccano Gears of War below. Meccano/Erector (U.S.) director Robert Grey told me there is no plan to run such television spots in any North American market.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Welcome back to Extra Hearts, GamesBeat’s dating site for our favorite game characters. We’ve already seen a few romantically hopeful guys and gals from the digital realm create their own profiles, but today we’re looking at Master Chief’s page. Yup, the green-tinted Spartan from Xbox’s popular first-person-shooter series is looking for a little love. I guess he’s really just a sweetheart under all that armor and emotional turmoil.

Let’s see how John-117 does in his mission to find a soul mate. Just don’t expect him to put any rings on any fingers.

Likes: Shooting, driving, and sleeping in.

Dislikes: Onion rings, hula hoops, donuts, bagels, bracelets, wheels, and Cheerios.

Why I’m here: I’ve been going at it solo for a while, but everyone tells me I’m more fun in multiplayer.

Our first night: I can go all night as long as you give me time to regenerate.

Politics: Green party. SEE, CORTANA?! I DO HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR!

Faith: I believe in believing. Believe.

My best feature: Probably my face.

Comments:

More Profiles:

• Peach
• Chell
• Kratos
• Samus
• Aerith
• Mega Man
• Luigi
• Kerrigan
• Nathan Drake

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Zynga has lots of veterans like Jim Veevaert, a general manager of the social game company’s studio in Seattle. An 18-year pro, Veevaert was previously cofounder and president of production at Jerry Bruckheimer Games and an executive producer at Microsoft. He led the production of of big budget games, such as Halo 3, Viva Pinata, and Gears of War. In 2011, he gave up hardcore games and joined casual game maker Zynga, which is often accused of being a copycat. Now he’s leading teams that create social games like Ruby Blast. Veevaert says now that he’s had a taste for designing games as a service, with daily updates and analytic feedback, there’s no going back. He has kissed the console development world goodbye. We caught up with him for a cup of coffee at the Casual Connect game conference in Seattle. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Tell us about your early days.

Jim Veevaert: At Vivendi, I was the executive producer on the Half-Life franchise. We were starting this thing called the Mod Pack, which I wanted to do. I was a big proponent of it. [The company] said, “We don’t need to do a Mod Pack. They’re all free.” I said, “No, I think this is a really good idea. We could use Counter-Strike, and it would be really cool.” They said, “Nobody’s going to buy that.” I ended up having to convince Vivendi. They said, “Nobody in sales is interested in something like Counter-Strike.” I thought it was really going to catch on. I pushed it and pushed it. I had to shove it into the retail channel. They loaded in maybe 100,000 units, and it was just like, whoosh! Like that. Never looked back. It was amazing.

We even helped start Gearbox. When we did the first add-on pack for Half-Life, Opposing Force, that was the beginning of Gearbox. That’s how we got them started. It was pretty cool. Good days. What I like about this industry now — what’s so great — is that it’s so reminiscent of the way the industry felt back in the early ’90s: small teams and getting games done quickly. Being really close to the product. Making progress on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis. It’s amazing. We can sit down, brainstorm out a design, and have a prototype of that design in two to three days. On Halo, it would be like…. We had to have a meeting. We had to have a conversation, talking about design and environmental art. We’d have meetings about how we would execute pulling the systems together. It would take a lot longer. The results were great, but it was a huge operation pushing Halo 3 forward.

GamesBeat: Mark Pincus mentioned that they had more than 100 developers working on CityVille. I thought, “That sounds like the team for a console game to me.”

Veevaert: I know. We’re operating on a much smaller scale, but we’re looking at…. Ruby Blast — what we just did. We’ve already got a mobile version of it running right now. It’s working on iPhone. We’re going to be doing it on iPad and iPhone. We’re looking at how we’re sort of cross-developing. We’re doing a new IP, as well, the same way. We’re developing platforms and connectivity at the same time. That’s what’s really fun. Working with a handful of developers and just figuring out what’s the best way to make the game work. How fun can we make it? How will the PC connect with mobile? What is a unique experience or gameplay mechanic that we can apply in mobile that’s linked, in case somebody never connects to the web? We’re also finding that there’s not necessarily a great process for that. People who play one game don’t always go and play on mobile, as well. We need to make sure the experiences are stand-alone enough on mobile and the PC.

GamesBeat: Do you have the same developers on social and mobile?

Veevaert: Absolutely, absolutely. That’s what’s fun. Having to design for the smaller screen and make it more…. Like in Ruby Blast’s case, we had to collapse it, shrink it down, and experiment. How far can we push the visual effects on the iOS? If it’s not iOS, what if we start working with Adobe Air? So we work within the technology some way or another and see. That’s what’s been fun: leveraging technology.

GamesBeat: The Kixeye guy, Will Harbin, was getting really excited about Flash 11.4. It’s using more hardware acceleration to make really fast 3D games.

Veevaert: Oh, it’s incredible. It’s actually getting to the point where you can do that. You can bring in 3D games and start pushing it. But Flash 11 adoption isn’t as high just yet. Most of the audience is still on Flash 10. We’re being very mindful of that. We’re looking at it with Ruby. It was the case with Ruby Blast that we had to do two versions. We did a Flash 11 version and a Flash 10. Flash 11 is catching up, but Flash 10 is clearly the dominant one.

GamesBeat: Making two versions sounds difficult to do.

Veevaert: Well, what’s interesting is you have a certain amount of people who just have software renderers. No hardware acceleration in their computers. So we have to make the game fun for people who’ve got a 4-year-old computer and still want to play. They won’t have any hardware-accelerated effects, but for people who have great laptops and great computers, why not leverage all that technology? That’s the thing that’s interesting. In console, you had a unified platform. You knew exactly what you were developing to. Here we have to scale high and low. It’s like back in the PC days, when you had to support everybody. Windows 95 and 98, remember that?

GamesBeat: So does choice of technology also matter? Like when Mark did that demo of four players on the Bubble Safari game. If you start moving to synchronous multiplayer like that, then technology matters again?

Veevaert: Well, I think it does matter. It matters that you have a good chain. I think it will still work in software mode, but if you take advantage of hardware acceleration, then yeah, it’s absolutely going to be better. Loading times are still great, so that’s not the issue. It’s just a playable framerate. That’s what we can find out, depending on what people’s connection speeds or processors are like. It’s a matter of how it scales.

GamesBeat: Do you wish you had your Halo multiplayer developers to go to work on that?

Veevaert: I should! I should talk to Bungie and see if they want to do it. The thing that’s interesting to me is I’ve been thinking a lot about the casual gamer. What is a casual gamer anymore? Is this somebody who plays on their phone for a few minutes a day? You were talking about CityVille, where somebody can spend way more time playing a game like CityVille than they could a “hardcore” game. Up to 300 hours a year playing it — that’s far more than somebody might put into a game like even Oblivion or Halo 3, depending on how much they want to spend. So I’m curious as to your thoughts. What is a casual gamer? Is it someone who just plays for a short period of time? Or is it the style of game? And then what denotes a casual game?

GamesBeat: It seems like everybody has some kind of split personality these days.

Veevaert: I mean, aren’t you playing some games on your phone? I’m sure you are.

GamesBeat: Yeah. And if I don’t have enough time to play hardcore games, then I’m only playing these smaller games. So am I still a hardcore gamer?

Veevaert: Yeah! If you haven’t done your routine 14 hours a week, then you have to give up your status as a hardcore gamer. It’s funny because all the guys on my friends list who are core gamers, and all the guys I work and develop with — we’re all playing the same casual games together. I just think that now, the persistence of entertainment has spread so far with mobile that it’s sort of leveled the waters across the board.

GamesBeat: Do you see it as a question like, “If you had infinite time, what games would you play?” And you could sort people out better that way. I would go back to a lot of these console games if I had 60 hours to kill, but then there’s a lot of people who would never get there even if they had all that time. They’re only going to play casual titles.

Veevaert: So I’ll challenge you again because I like going back and forth. I don’t have the time I used to have five years ago to sit down in front of the TV, throw a game in a console, and get invested in it. Because I know, even in something like Dead Space 2, I had to finish that game. I had to go from start to finish. Or Red Dead Redemption. I had to put my 23 hours in and finish the game. I didn’t feel like playing it incrementally: half a level today and come back to it next week. You have to be on it every night to stay in the experience of it. I found that, as far as my own lifestyle, that just doesn’t fit anymore. I’m curious about you. Does that still work for you?

Pages: 1 2 3

At the crowded geek conclave known as Comic-Con in San Diego, Calif., Microsoft and 343 Industries introduced the full trailer for their upcoming promotional film based on the adventures of Master Chief. Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn is a five-episode live-action series starring a young ensemble cast. The first episode will launch on the Machinima Prime YouTube channel and on Halo Waypoint beginning October 5.

Forward Unto Dawn tells the story of a group of United Nations Space Command cadets who are training to become soldiers in the war against the Covenant (it’s set before the Chief took care of all that business). The boot-camp facility comes under attack, which gives the cadre of beautiful people a chance to act tough and shoot things.

Sorority Row filmmaker Stewart Hendler directed Forward Unto Dawn based on the script penned by Smallville alums Todd and Aaron Helbing. It stars a  plethora of young up-and-coming actors who have had roles in The Twilight Saga (Daniel Cudmore as the Master Chief), Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Mike Dopud), and Dance Academy (Tom Green).

The Halo franchise isn’t new to elaborate prerelease marketing campaigns. Los Angeles-based Stan Winston Studio and New Deal Studios built the gigantic Halo 3 Believe diorama to promote that game’s release, which resulted in an amazing TV spot.

Microsoft will release Halo 4 for the Xbox 360 worldwide on November 6.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Microsoft’s Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb posted his regular activity roundup for the Xbox 360’s online network, and the Minecraft mania flows strong on the lists.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition nabbed the top position for bestsellers as well as sliding in behind long-standing champions Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops for unique-user counts. Other titans felt the squeeze: Battlefield 3, Halo: Reach, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Gears of War 3 trailed by significant margins.

Here’s the punchline: All of this happened in Minecraft’s first week of release.

Creativity spawns popularity, or so the legions of Minecraft’s stalwart community believes. Originally released for the PC on November 18, 2011, the open-world tinkering title arms players with pick, axe, sword, and other tools while throwing open the floodgates of crowdsourced content, resulting in masterful works such as a recreated Westeros from Game of Thrones and Portal’s test chambers.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition launched on May 9, promptly fashioned a golden sword, and smashed digital-sales records on its first day in the wilds. Its 1,600 Microsoft Points ($20) cost, unusually large for an XBLA title, and its lack of a modding infrastructure didn’t prevent the acclaim rolling in.

Check out Major Nelson’s activity lists below. If you’re playing Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, what have you created so far? Let us know in the comments!

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops
3. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
4. FIFA 12
5. Battlefield 3
6. Halo: Reach
7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
8. NBA 2K12
9. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
10. Gears of War 3
11. Grand Theft Auto IV
12. Trials Evolution
13. Forza Motorsport 4
14. Mass Effect 3
15. NHL 12
16. Madden NFL 12
17. Halo 3
18. Red Dead Redemption
19. Saints Row: The Third
20. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)

1. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
2. Trials Evolution
3. The Walking Dead
4. Fable Heroes
5. Fez
6. Pinball FX2
7. Awesomenauts
8. I Am Alive
9. Castle Crashers
10. Family Game Night
11. Fruit Ninja Kinect
12. Bloodforge
13. Toy Soldiers: Cold War
14. Gotham City Impostors
15. Toy Soldiers
16. Trials HD
17. Dungeon Defenders
18. Full House Poker
19. Peggle
20. Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012

Top Indie Games (Full Versions purchased)

1. CastleMiner Z
2. CastleMiner
3. Total Miner: Forge
4. The $1 Zombie Game
5. FortressCraft: Chapter 1
6. The Impossible Game
7. Avatar Paintball
8. Avatar Deathmatch
9. Fortress Wars
10. FLIRT
11. End of Days: Infected vs. Mercs
12. Avatar Legends
13. Flight Adventure 2
14. Toy Stunt Bike 2
15. Solar 2
16. Firing Range 2
17. Miner4Ever
18. Avatar Air Wars
19. Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy!
20. Attack of the Zombie Horde

Games for Windows Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

1. Grand Theft Auto IV
2. Age of Empires Online
3. Batman: Arkham City
4. Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition
5. Microsoft Flight
6. Batman: Arkham Asylum
7. DiRT 3
8. Gotham City Impostors
9. F1 2011
10. Resident Evil 5
11. Fallout 3
12. Street Fighter X Tekken
13. Toy Soldiers
14. Fable III
15. BioShock 2
16. Colin McRae: Dirt 2
17. Bulletstorm
18. F1 2010
19. Street Fighter IV
20. Section 8: Prejudice

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Bungie Studios is in the process of severing its final ties to the Halo franchise and has shut down the multiplayer stat-tracking on Bungie.net. To commemorate the hundreds of thousands of years gamers have racked up playing various Halo titles online, Bungie has released the all-encompassing infographic seen below.

“We have followed your careers with great interest here on Bungie.net,” read a blog post on the official Bungie site. “…[Y]ou have gifted us a mountain of heroic moments to memorialize. It is with a sense of awe that we step back and admire the impact that you have had on our games and upon our studio. Thanks for sharing your stories with us.”

In less than a decade, players have logged 20 billion online multiplayer matches played across all Halo titles. If only homework, dieting, and curing diseases were all as easy as teabagging random nubs over Xbox Live….

Click on the image and then again on the next page to see the full resolution version.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

By the end of the year, we may finally solve one of the biggest mysteries in the gaming world: Why do red and blue Spartans hate each other so, so very much?

At Microsoft’s recent Spring Showcase 2012, we learned that 343 Industries has some grand plans for Halo 4, the sci-fi first-person shooter due out this holiday season for the Xbox 360. What are these plans? Heck if we know. The studio, who’s taking over franchise-development duties from Bungie, only teased us press guys with a few tiny morsels, never revealing much. But if you keep your eyes open, if you listen carefully, and if you talk to the right people, you might be able to glean a few juicy bits…like we did below.

Read on to see what we’ve discovered about Master Chief’s next adventure, and watch 343′s brand-new video documentary at the end of the second page to see if you can mine some more info from the elusive developers. Also check out our other news and previews from the Xbox 360 Spring Showcase.

1. The progression system won’t just be cosmetic

By earning enough experience in the Halo: Reach, you can unlock new shoulder pads, visors, visual effects, and other accessories for your online avatar. Too bad they really didn’t mean squat. “Armor upgrades — they were definitely aesthetic [in Halo: Reach],” says franchise development director Frank O’Connor. “And it works for a lot of people. I get an awful lot of [private messages] because I have some weird, fancy armor that people are obsessed with. So it matters to some people. But the reality is that they don’t have any impact on your game, other than it sometimes makes you a bigger target.”

That’s going to change with Halo 4, though details are non-existent at this time. “One of the things we wanted to do with Halo 4,” says creative director Josh Holmes, “was introduce a progression system that allows players to unlock things that not only change the way their character looks but also the way their character plays…that empowers players to make choices that have a meaningful impact on their gameplay experience in multiplayer. That’s a big change, but it’s one of the things we’re most excited about.”

2. On-screen icons will point out where weapon pickups are…for a special reason

New in Halo 4 are visual icons that point out which weapons are nearby (similar to Crysis 2 or Gears of War 3, only without the need to hold down a button to scan). This will be useful for newer players who haven’t yet memorized where every gun spawns, but it might also serve a deeper purpose, too. “We mark the shotgun for a reason,” says O’Connor. “There will be a very specific reason why the icon’s there that you’ll learn about later.”

3. Large feel-good text will tell you how you killed someone

In the brief demo that we saw, the words “Headshot kill!” or “Melee kill!” will flash on the screen when you’ve killed someone in the corresponding way.

4. Halo 4 will be higher resolution (but still not 60 frames per second)

Word is Halo 4 will run at a resolution of 1280×720, up a tad from Reach’s 1152×720. But if you’re hoping for Call of Duty’s silky smooth 60-frames-per-second speed, you’re out of luck. Halo 4 will remain at the series-standard 30 frames per second.

5. You’ll be able to customize loadouts

“You have the ability to choose from a wide arsenal of weapons and abilities that can be a part of your character’s individual loadout,” says Holmes. Right now, no one outside of 343 knows how much more ambitious this will be compared to what Reach offered.

6. Power weapons may not be on set timers

We’re hearing that power weapons may not respawn in at set intervals, adding some unpredictability as to when rocket launchers, Spartan Lasers, and WMDs may reappear on the battlefield. The point of this is to make sure experienced players won’t dominate matches by running timed circuits to grab all the best goodies.

Pages: 1 2

As the gaming culture matures, a handful of impressive fan films paying homage to popular titles have continued to emerge. First, the “Escape from City 17” Half-Life shorts from two years ago set a new standard with their Hollywood-lite production values, then earlier this year Modern Warfare and Portal received similar treatments. Now another Valve-published game, Left 4 Dead, has been reimagined in this live-action eight-minute film.

Check back shortly for our exclusive interview with the film’s creators from Northern Five Entertainment, the same production company responsible for The Resistance web series that was picked up by Starz Media last year.

Full disclosure: The author of this post is in a relationship with Meagan Marie, who appears as Anya Stroud in this video.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Halo: Reach

This game fits into the epic story arc, taking you right back to the beginning of the events leading up to first Halo game released in 2001. If you’re a Halo fan, you already know how this game will end without even playing it, because it is a prequel. That gives the game an overarching sense of fatalism. You can only be so happy when things turn out good for the good guys since you know they’re part of a losing cause. As much as I’m happy to play another Halo, I’m sad that it’s all coming to an end, for now. (Microsoft has a new internal team, 343 Industries, working on other Halo titles, even as Bungie moves on to something new.)

The game’s story is based on the novel, Halo: The Fall of Reach, the first in a series of books set in the Halo universe. But even if you know the ending will be tragic, you still want to follow the  journey. It is a tale worth telling, full of heroism, much like how Homer’s Iliad begins in the midst of the Trojan war and ends before the fall of Troy. As on the plains of Troy, Halo: Reach is the scene of individual acts of heroism in the context of a larger war. The death of each hero is a tragedy unto itself, amid a battlefield of unnumbered tears. It makes you feel like, even though you as the player have a bit role on a vast stage, you are at the critical point in a great war.

The book chronicles the creation of the Spartan III warriors, an elite group of fighters who are humanity’s best hope against the Covenant, the collection of alien races who are bent on wiping out humankind. To the aliens, the planet Reach is just another place to be “glassed,” or laid waste via wholesale destruction. It is the last stopping point on the way to Earth and home to the military command of the United Nations Space Command, or UNSC, which holds the human galaxy together. The planet is beautiful, full of natural landscapes and big cities, and in sweeping scenes Bungie reminds us now and then that it has created an entire planet. The new game takes place on Reach, but it does not follow the story of the book, which explains the slight difference in the titles between the game and the novel.

Halo’s critics say there isn’t enough new material in each new Halo game. But to me, Halo games are always fresh because they’re mash-ups of my favorite things. The Halo games consistently please with their combination of game play, intensity, story, music, sound, graphics, and excellent voice acting. I don’t see too much reason to mess with that formula in the name of providing something different. Halo games are memorable for their unique and unmistakable experiences, and this one is no different. I give it a rating of 95 out 100 — near perfect, but with a few small flaws.

The cultural phenomenon of Halo

The Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 games starred Master Chief and his artificial intelligence companion, Cortana. This game does not. But that doesn’t seem to bother fans, who bought more than 3 million units of the game in its first 24 hours as it went on sale Sept. 14. The game generated more than $200 million in revenue on its first day, compared to $170 million for Halo 3. Microsoft calls it the “entertainment event of the year,” eclipsing the three-day opening box office receipts of Iron Man 2, Toy Story 3, and Alice in Wonderland.

The original Halo became such a smash hit that it established Microsoft’s place in the video game industry. It helped the Xbox cement its place among hardcore game fans, becoming part of the mass culture for a whole generation. More than 36 million units have been sold, generating revenue in excess of $2 billion. Microsoft has the No. 1 online game service in Xbox Live because of the Halo series, and that service is now generating $1 billion a year in revenue.

You don’t get to this level of business success on pure hype; you have to make your game into a cultural phenomenon. Bungie did so by making a series of good choices. Bungie, a developer of games for the Mac, envisioned the original Halo in the late 1990s. Ed Fries, former head of Microsoft Game Studios, scooped up Bungie for less than $30 million in 2000 as one of many bets on Xbox-related content. That deed earned him an angry call from Steve Jobs and a promise that Microsoft would support Mac games. The Bungie team, headed by Jason Jones, Alex Seropian and Joseph Staten, rewrote the game for the Xbox. Marty O’Donnell provided a musical score worthy of an opera. And in less than 11 months, they created a launch title that was played by 80 percent of the people who bought the first Xbox.

The first game pulled together a lot of different pieces of the video game art form. Bungie figured out how to make a first-person shooter game work on the game console, providing just enough assistance so that it was possible to hit targets with a game controller instead of a mouse and keyboard. That may not sound like a big deal, but it was huge, setting the stage for the mass migration of shooter fans from the PC to the console. Many other games tried but failed to capture the right nuances for controlling a weapon with a game controller with buttons and analog sticks.

The story of the original game was inspiring, the pace was pulse-pounding, the sound was riveting, and the music was haunting and lofty. You could jump into vehicles that had realistic physical behavior, and the setting on the ring-like planet Halo was breathtaking, from the waterfalls in its first scene to the indoor scenes of vast Covenant spaceships. All of these things explained why the first game was such a masterpiece, and the continued care and feeding of the franchise has created fans who will buy anything made by Bungie. That’s why Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is working on a Halo movie.

It’s hard to believe Bungie is walking away from all that in the hopes of building something better. I savored this game, playing it over the course of a week, rather than powering through it in a couple of nights as I did with Halo 3. I knew this game would be the last of its kind. I played the new game on the Heroic setting, which is one step above Normal and is the most appropriate setting for gamers who have played Halo before. It took me about a week of one- and two-hour game sessions to finish the single-player campaign. The salve for me is that I can play the multiplayer version for weeks or months.

The nuts and bolts of Halo: Reach

The main job of this prequel is to set the stage for Master Chief and his story. The action is intense, and it’s almost always preceded by long cinematic segments (mini films, really) that convey the latest twists in the story. You find that, besides defending Reach, you have to keep the enemy from getting its hands on the vital secrets of the Office of Naval Intelligence and the research of Catherine Halsey, the creator of the Spartans.

While there are nine major levels in the single-player campaign, each section is divided into its own set of chapters with pithy titles like “And the horse you rode in on.” With each new level, the game introduces you to a new feature or ability. In the very first level, the new feature is companions. You are introduced as Noble 6 (either male or female, depending on your own choice), the new replacement for a team of five Spartans. Each of the characters has a different specialty. You learn what those abilities are in the initial firefights where you learn the Covenant have invaded Reach. You could think of Noble Team as The Six Samurai (modeled after Akira Kurosawa’s classic film, the Seven Samurai).

I quickly found that I needed those companions just to stay alive. I had to play some sections of the game at least 10 times before I could proceed to the next section. It seems a lot tougher than past Halo games, in part because of the addition of new enemies that are tougher to kill than usual. The fighting is gritty. You have to fire at enemies a lot of times before they die, first knocking out their shields and then taking them out. In the meantime, other enemies surround you. You have to toss grenades at the tougher ones and switch weapons as needed. Inevitably, the fighting gets so close that you have to butt them with your gun in a desperate melee. That is business as usual for Halo.

The second level, dubbed Nightfall, introduces more breadth of play as you have to be a sniper, quietly taking out Covenant sentinels. It is here where you first use the hologram. When you tap your left bumper, the hologram sends out a decoy version of a Spartan that draws the fire of enemies. It turns out to be most effective later in the game when you are fighting the tank-like Hunters, which can only be taken out from behind.

In quick succession, you get to experience new levels in Warthogs (which are dune buggy style vehicles with big guns mounted on the back), helicopter gunships, tanks, and the final frontier — space combat. The space scenes are some of the best I’ve played in a sci-fi game. You shoot off into space in a rocket in a very dramatic liftoff scene. Then you have to fight other spacecraft that are attacking a human space station. While other games have failed to get the mechanics of flight simulation right, Bungie has made it easy and natural in Halo: Reach. Just as it made the controller work in shooting targets, it has also made the controller work really well as a flying instrument. You spend most of your time aiming, steering and shooting. You don’t have to worry as much about accelerating or decelerating.

The space combat scene is followed by a firefight in zero gravity. There is no sound in this battle,  and the physics of zero gravity change the way you fight. You can jump and fly forever, or toss a grenade that goes for a great distance. It’s one more element that makes you feel like you’re playing a brand new game, not the sixth game in a series.

The game isn’t perfect

The characters of Noble team get more airtime than the usual video game side kicks. But I miss the personality of the wise-cracking and emotional Cortana, who constantly accompanied Master Chief. In Halo: Reach, when the Spartans take off their masks, they reveal their own unique character traits. The problem is they are all of the tough-as-nails Marine variety. You get to know these characters a little, but the common trait they share is the courage to sacrifice themselves for other members of the team or the larger mission. If there is a flaw in the game, it is that you don’t get to know them nearly as well as you get to know the characters in games such as BioWare’s Mass Effect 2, which is another of the great games of the year.

The characters come and go. And you don’t learn much about your own character at all. In other words, there is too much action, and not enough back story to each of the samurai. I guess that means that Bungie should have added more cinematics to the story. As with the long cut scenes in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (the best game of 2009), the movie part of the Halo: Reach game could have conveyed more character depth and thus more emotional attachment. Thanks to its flaws, it’s no surprise that Halo: Reach is coming in slightly below the review scores for the first three Halo games and below games such as Mass Effect 2 or Red Dead Redemption.

As far as game play goes, Bungie took away what it gave in Halo 2 with dual-wielding, or the ability to hold a weapon in each hand. That turned out to be far too powerful in the hands of veterans playing multiplayer games. And it made the single-player campaigns much too easy as well. In this game, you can tap new options such as load-outs with different weapons. You can use different enhancements for your armor, such as lock-down mode, which makes you invincible for a few seconds. You can also fly around with a jet pack for a limited time, or sprint at double speed for a burst of time. By and large, this is a good trade. But players may feel frustrated they can’t dominate the Covenant as they once did.

Multiplayer promises to offer billions of hours of fun

I am looking forward to playing a lot more multiplayer. You can play different versions such as Capture the Flag or classic Slayer (where you kill everybody). The new features such as jet packs will get a lot of use in the multiplayer combat. Multiplayer is always a joy because you get rewards and rankings based on your performance. With the new Forge mode, you can create your own maps for multiplayer combat. And with Theater, you can watch your own achievements and tell the world about them. When it comes to sharing, Bungie is on top of social media.

I started my first multiplayer game with the expectation that I would be slaughtered over and over. I actually managed to come in second place, mainly because I got my hands on a sword that gave me the ability to slay the enemy with a single stroke. The multiplayer gaming is what justifies the game price of $60 or more. Gamers have spent billions of hours playing Halo games online, and this one is likely going to be very similar. Overall, this multiplayer interface is much more streamlined. It matches you with other players quickly and it loads fast. That’s pretty impressive, considering that millions of players are going to be playing it all at once.

An opening for another sequel

Is the ending worthy of the Halo reputation? I won’t spoil it. But it is familiar in that everything comes to a spectacular head where much is at stake and the hero has to save everything, at great sacrifice. In that way, the story is very similar to that of Red Dead Redemption, which is also one of the best games of the year.

Not all ends in disaster for all of the characters in the Halo: Reach game. A couple of characters separate from the group in what seems to be a path for a sequel to Halo: Reach. If Microsoft continues with the Halo: Reach story, it could pursue the path taken by those characters. Given that there are seven novels now, Microsoft’s internal studio, 343 Industries, could take many different story paths. Bungie created an entire universe and Microsoft could publish a game every year and still not run out of material for games.

Halo: Reach is one more example of how the Halo universe could stay with us for many years to come. Whatever Bungie is working on for its new universe, it better be good. Because they’re walking away from a game franchise that has won loyal fans like no other series. I’m glad that Bungie has delivered a great game for its Halo swan song. But I’m still hungry for more adventures and frenetic game play. That’s the mark of an outstanding game. Bungie is quitting the Halo universe while it’s still in top form.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---