Back in its Hayday Halo 2 had some absolutely impressive custom games. Even without forge it still had plenty of good times. People would search through their friends list and join the ones playing their custom games. I have some of my best Halo Memories from Custom games.
When forge came out the customs were even more incredible but all the more rare. The reason was the Halo community shrank when Call of Duty was released. With less people playing it was harder to find a large custom game full of people.
These days if you want a custom game such as Speed Halo in Reach, everything needs to be organised before hand. I’d go to the Halo Reddit or Halo general in /vg/ and look for some players who’d want a game after a couple of hours of waiting I’d set up Halo Reach and suddenly half the people who said they’d turn up never do and the party size has only like 6 people in it.
If we had an internal custom games browser like the file share browser dropping into a custom game could be so much more simple and It would also promote custom games as a feature.
> The Layout could look roughly like;
>
> (Host Players Name) (Game Type) (Map Name) (Number of Players) (Joinable Y/N)
Highlighting the selected game and pressing “A” would automatically place you in the match.
This would make Custom games easier and more accessible to New Halo Players and would easily make them keep playing Halo longer through the sheer fun these Custom Games can provide.