Gearbox Rumored to be Working on Halo 4

I think all the theories and reasoning being brought up for its success are all noise, really. When you have to start theorizing why something is successful you're probably just over thinking things. The fact is it's probably just a really good game.

I share similar sentiments towards the Metal Gear series as of recent, 4 really didn't do anything for me, but it doesn't stop me from understanding why others like the game and what makes it such a huge success.

Though I still hold the original game in very high regard, so maybe I'm partial to it.

Quote from Furyo

I think what most of you guys aren't seeing is the generation gap there is for this game. If you think of guys who were born after 1985, Halo on the console is to them what Doom was on the PC for us. Even Goldeneye was our game and not theirs, they were nearly 12 then. To that generation, like my own cousin's, who I need to tell everything about the Sega vs Nintendo days, what Sonic used to be like and so on and so forth, Halo was the very first shooter they ever played.They could have played other shooters before, but they were either too young, or just not enough "in the know". No other shooter caught the mainstream audience like Halo has. Couple that with Microsoft's marketing department, quite possibly the best in any company, and you get yourself the halo phenomenon.

I was born in '88 and my first shooter was Wolfenstein 3d. My first experience with videogames were a pack of Shareware games on CD in DOS when I was 5.

I learned to read thanks to adventure games!

Born in 77 and my first shooter was duke3d

Jetset, obviously there will be exceptions thrown here and there by Mapcorians, but really if any of us considers himself part of the mainstream audience, he really needs a reality check. The very fact we're spending time online discussing things makes us part of the top 1% of the most savvy gamers around, let alone the fact we actually make games for a living (well many of us at least).

And even if Duke/Wolfenstein/Doom were your first shooters to play, no one will argue that you had to be in a pretty particular group of people to know these games even existed when they came out. You had to have the PC that would run them, something very few people were even interested in at the time, and there was no marketing to speak of, this was all word of mouth, you played these games because you had heard about them or someone had given you their copy.

When you compare those days to the huge marketing effort that a few games like Halo and Gears of War get from Microsoft, the differences are just gigantic, and yes to the vast majority of young gamers, Halo may be the gateway to other shooters, but it's less than likely the other way around.

I've seen CS mentioned, but even that, when it came out even officially, wasn't anywhere near as mainstream as Halo's marketing campaign. And in pure practical terms, before Steam, playing Valve multiplayer games still belonged to the Stone Age of video gaming. Again, as far away from mainstream as you can possibly get. It took dedicated hardcore fans and players to even care downloading that new patch and that new update every so often. As a reminder, steam only came out in 2003, two years after Halo was already rocking the xbox world.

Quote from Furyo

I've seen CS mentioned, but even that, when it came out even officially, wasn't anywhere near as mainstream as Halo's marketing campaign. And in pure practical terms, before Steam, playing Valve multiplayer games still belonged to the Stone Age of video gaming. Again, as far away from mainstream as you can possibly get. It took dedicated hardcore fans and players to even care downloading that new patch and that new update every so often. As a reminder, steam only came out in 2003, two years after Halo was already rocking the xbox world.

I dunno, I wouldn't call the most played PC game of its time far from the mainstream. Chances are if you played PC games at all, you knew what CS was. A lot has changed in the last 8 years with all the 'hardcore 'casual' non sense that gets thrown around. Most PC gamers in general were dedicated to it, downloading patches was as normal as anything else. There wasn't really a 'mainstream' or 'underground' that I can remember, it was just gaming.

I completely agree, if you were a PC gamer you knew about CS. The question is do you consider 2000 era PC gaming mainstream? I certainly don't. For the past 8 years now, the advances in terms of ease of use and general user friendliness of gaming as a whole continue to be exponential. Steam is responsible for making this happen on the PC, but Microsoft and Sony, and even more recently Nintendo reached the untapped part of the gaming market and got a lot more people playing, and finally got gaming a mainstream audience, so much that even general media now can't help itself but talk about video games daily...

I'm saying it's in these new people you find the majority of Halo fans. And this is precisely why the previous posts in this thread relating to how Halo had not invented anything got me to post. It's exactly because these new gamers had nothing to compare Halo to in their own knowledge of the gaming market that it grew to its cult status. And this is why I'm saying it's to them our own Doom and Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem, there was nothing else when these came out that could even withstand the comparison

I guess I just find it weird to discuss these things on the basis of generalizations of who bought what, when, and why. I mean, thinking about it, the PC was probably the most 'casual' centric platform for the longest time. When you look at games like Civilization, The Sims, Combat Mission, and the flight sims of the mid to late 90's, you have games that probably weren't being played by your average gamer. But again, that's a generalization in itself.

There's just so many unknowns in trying to determine things about certain groups of gamers that leaves room for a lot of interpretation and guessing that I distrust.

Sorry, it's my marketing background coming up again. I used to be paid to come up with that kinda crap you know

Quote from Furyo

And even if Duke/Wolfenstein/Doom were your first shooters to play, no one will argue that you had to be in a pretty particular group of people to know these games even existed when they came out. You had to have the PC that would run them, something very few people were even interested in at the time, and there was no marketing to speak of, this was all word of mouth, you played these games because you had heard about them or someone had given you their copy.

I was FIVE. I played them pretty much randomly, they were included on a CD of shareware games. I had the computer because back then my mom heard on the news that "computers" where this huge growing industry and everyone involved were billionaires and you could easily get in now and be instantly rich without effort so she took a night course in computer science or something and had to buy a PC to go along with that. I don't remember anything about it except it ran DOS, the programming language she used on it included smily faces as characters ( :monocle: ), and on the front of the tower was a button marked "Turbocharge" that changed an LED readout next to it from 16 to 32. I'd push it when I was doing bad at a game.

Quote from Furyo

I completely agree, if you were a PC gamer you knew about CS. The question is do you consider 2000 era PC gaming mainstream?

Yeah, dude. Gaming in general not so much, but within gaming PC was definitely the huge overpowering dominant force in 2000. It still is worldwide, but has slightly less attention in America.

Im with ya jetsetlemming, born in '88 here and played Chopper Commando on our family's first computer. But Furyo has a point in that we're involved now in game design now on this website and we've most likely been involved with games for a good chunk of our lives. A lot of people our age now back 8 years ago probably checked out of gaming after the super nintendo. I think PC gaming may have been mainstream but it was about to pick up a lot of speed and get to where it is now.

Back on topic: Anything on if Gearbox is working on Halo 4? That would be... interesting.

Gearbox did after all make the greatest expansion/sequel ever in the shape of opposing force. Hell, I even think opfor is better than hl.

I'm born 86 and have never even played halo, probably because I haven't owned a console since I sold my snes... To me it looks like another generic shooter and so far the only good that has come out of it is red vs blue.

And yes, wolfenstein ftw, funnily enough sometimes you didn't know if it was germans or plants you were pumping full with lead.

Quote from Inveramsay

Gearbox did after all make the greatest expansion/sequel ever in the shape of opposing force. Hell, I even think opfor is better than hl.I'm born 86 and have never even played halo, probably because I haven't owned a console since I sold my snes... To me it looks like another generic shooter and so far the only good that has come out of it is red vs blue.

And yes, wolfenstein ftw, funnily enough sometimes you didn't know if it was germans or plants you were pumping full with lead.

Plants don't yell HALT.