What Happened to Halo?

I know this is a sports blog, but every now and then, I try to add my views on other interesting topics -- like video games. Besides, video games is a sort of sport for those smaller kids who couldn't make it on the baseball/football field or basketball court due to size, hand-eye coordination, or physical toughness. It's competitive, requires a heightened sense of hand-eye coordination with your thumbs, and at times can be a male-bonding experience, just like a game of poker or pick-up hoops.

It wasn't always like this though. Video games were rarely a team concept, but things really started to change right around Y2K.

The greatest thing to ever happen to the video game industry was the game of Halo, released by Bungie for the new Microsoft console Xbox right around 2001. But first a little background on the history of video games.

Growing up (depending on how old you are) people can remember Pong on the Atari, Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt on the Nintendo, or Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo. Video games took over the world almost overnight. Kids replaced playing board games, action figures, and Legos for the interactive and visual stimuli of video games. Heck, kids got so addicted that they almost completely stopped going outside.

The phenomenon was amazing. Parents hated buying video games, but their kids demanded them. I now see five-year olds mastering a Nintendo DS in airports or in the back seat of Mama's SUV. It's heroin for the advanced young mind!

The thing parents hated was their kids locked in their own room, by themselves for hours rather than playing with the neighbor kids. Most video games involved only one or two players for years. Eventually it to advanced to four players with James Bond on the Nintendo 64, which swept dorm rooms in 1997. But then, Microsoft had a brilliant idea...

Nintendo vs. Sega were the two powers that clashed from 1984 til about 1994. Then Sony stepped in with the original Playstation and overtook Sega and got far ahead of the Nintendo (because Nintendo caters to housewives and little girls). Playstation made the switch from cartridges to CDs, which were cheap and easy to produce and offered thousands of games to be produced at a very quick pace.

Microsoft had the monopoly on PC computer software for the entire 1990s, but rarely dabbled in video games. Many "gamers" who played video games on their PC computer instead of the Playstation or Nintendo would hold "LAN parties." LAN parties occur when a small group of computer nerds would gather together on a Friday night and bring their entire computer, monitor, keyboard, Cheetos, and mouse for a night of Unreal Tournament or Duke Nukem'. It's like they already knew that there was no chance of sex, so they willingly accepted that fact, and played computer games until 4 o'clock in the morning.

Bill Gates, or some LAN party employee of his, realized the potential gold mine within the video game industry. Microsoft released the Xbox (virtually a mini-computer) with four game controllers (a big advance over the Playstation 2) and the new ability to link up to four systems together using an ethernet cable, just like the computer geeks used in their LAN parties.

The new technology was far superior than any existing system, and thus was more expensive than the competing gaming systems (Playstation 2 and Nintendo Gamecube). At first, the Xbox launch was a bust because it released fewer games than the PS2 and was more expensive. People didn't see the need to spend $300 for a new system that didn't offer any new games than their current $200 PS2 and the thousands of games already available.

But Bungie (a new gaming software company under contract from Microsoft) developed the perfect game called Halo that would bring Unreal Tournament potential to everybody without the hassles of a LAN party. No monitors, no heavy computer drives, no software or video card issues, no keyboards or mouses. Just bring your TV, your box, your game, your controllers, a router and some cable and PRESTO. Instant magic!

The game was seamless, kills were easy and plenty, there was no lag -- just plug in and kill! If you died, no biggie. Instantly respawn and go out and die again! The campaign mode for one or two players was incredible and helped you advance your weapon skills. But now on Friday nights (and every other night of the week), you would assemble your crew of four, six, eight, ten, twelve, or sixteen players play the perfect game of capture the flag complete with vehicles! Virtual G.I. Joe style battles of epic destruction with hundreds of kills per game were now the norm.

The instant it was over, the first thing out of everybody's lips was "Again!" The losers wanted a rematch, and the winners wanted to prove it was no fluke and wouldn't hesitate to humiliate their friends once again. Players would swap teams to even out the talent base for closer, more competitive games with more drama as the kill count reached the final number to achieve ultimate fantasy nerdery.

Halo was just as easy as a pick up game of basketball, but didn't require a gym, sweating and you could play all hours into the night.

I didn't catch on to the phenomenon right away, I wasn't what one would consider a "gamer." Sure, I liked video games, but when I did play, it usually was sports or two-dimensional fighting games. I even tried a little four-player Halo a few times and became frustrated going through the rookie phase of getting smoked by better players. But soon enough, I was playing 'til three o'clock in the morning on weeknights of my senior year in college.

Male competitive bonding was morphed into video games. Friendships were created with complete strangers you normally wouldn't chill with at school. People formed little Halo clans and even submitted teams into city tournaments with intramural style names and matching uniforms. Halo saved the Xbox and really put Sony and Nintendo on their heels. (even to the fact that Nintendo had to re-think everything with the concepts brought in with their new Wii system).

Halomania was so rampant that the buildup for Halo 2 was HUGE. People were pre-ordering copies one year in advance. The line to pick up a copy was hundreds of people long at every Game Stop across the country in October of 2004.

The new feature of Halo 2: on-line play. Halo 2 opened with record-breaking sales. You could now log onto a worldwide online Halo 2 experience offered through Xbox Live that kept stats and offered various styles of Halo play. Once you logged onto your online account, Xbox live would give you instant access to 10 other players out of the pool of thousands just wanting the same Halo experience that swept the nation.

In my opinion (not with the opinion of sales numbers), this is where Halo went all wrong. No longer were you playing Halo with your buddies for bragging rights. You were now playing with a bunch of unknown trash-talkers who thought they were the best Halo players in the entire universe.

Little 10-year old kids would start smack-talking to invisible people they had never even seen before. People on your own team would turn and kill their own teammates just to be tools. People would quit a game halfway through the game just because they were losing, or just because they were bored and felt like it.

You also experienced internet lag, because so much information was going through the ethernet cable, that there were unexpected pauses and delays. There were too many new weapons and the maps were not symmetrical and made no sense for two simple teams of Red vs. Blue. Now everybody was just running around killing people, with no strategy, and just the hope of finishing with the most kills to increase their online profile ranking.

The funny thing is: a lot of the online problems occurred because the Xbox was not capable of handling the overload of Halo Nation. Eventually the Xbox 360 was launched with more power to handle such a task and Halo 3 would soon launch.

Halo 3 surpassed Halo 2 as the grandest video game launch ever (including sponsors from Mountain Dew and 7-Eleven), and things seemed to be a lot smoother with the superior technology the Xbox 360 system provided. But still, Halo 3 was just a copy of Halo 2 but with better graphics and a few new maps and features. The creators of Halo 3 didn't really try to make anything new or exciting. Basically they made Halo 3 and exact copy of the cartoony Halo 2 and "fixed" most of the online problems with faster online speed.

When I log onto Halo 3, I still feel like I am running around, spraying my machine gun, and none of my teammates will communicate or cooperate because they are too busy trying to get the most kills to reach the next level of their online ranking. I wasn't finishing games with that same "Again!" excitement that I experience with the original Halo with my buddies, because I would immediately be launched into the next game with 10 totally new tools not willing to work as team to accomplish ultimate victory.

The online experience took away from Friday night with the boys, because now people no longer needed their posse to play Halo. No need to call your friends and get together for competition, because things were all individual again. You logged online alone, played with complete strangers, and got out when you wanted. It was no longer an "event." It stopped bringing friends together. People wouldn't come over any more to play, because you just sent them a message online and started playing against various faceless enemies.

It's almost like comparing basketball with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in the 80s to basketball and the ego-centric Michael Jordan of the 90s. The Michael Jordan effect on basketball set it back 10 years until the new version of basketball created with Steve Nash is now bringing the game back to its glory years.

Luckily, Xbox 360 released a game in between the wait of Halo 2 and Halo 3 entitled Gears of War. This game gets things back to the basics. A few simple weapons fought in small and symmetrical maps that encourage strategy, skill, teamwork and war tactics. It's not as fast paced as Halo with instant respawn after each time you run around and die, but it goes the extra mile to bring players back together to work towards winning as a team.

Hopefully, with the sequel to Gears of War, they don't go overboard like Halo 2 and its replica-only-with-a-newer-Xbox (Halo 3) and ruin a good thing that they already have in place like our friends at Bungie did with Halo.

But even if Halo 2 & 3 didn't change my life like the original Halo did, the future still is bright in gaming world. If video games have come so far in the past 25 years -- not to mention the new concepts of the Wii and Rock Band already in place -- I can't imagine what video games are going to be like in the year 2025 with your teenage kids. I CAN'T WAIT!