Over all, people like free stuff. I like free food, I like free games. Recently it’s been leaked that Halo Infinite will have free multiplayer, the website could be wrong but man if this is true I would be really disappointed. No, it’s not because Fortnite is free to play or COD Warzone is and that I think 343i is “catering to kids and wanting to make halo into fortnite.” The reason why I am worried is because of Destiny 2.
“What does Destiny have to do with Halo?? They are two different games!” Well there are some similarities with how both Bungie and 343i’s gaming communities act.
Destiny 2 at launch was horrible, maybe even worse than Destiny 1. If Bungie wanted their game to be populated they would have to listen to the community and as Halo fans know, companies in the gaming industry suck at listening to it’s community. Listening to the community is hard and expensive, at least it was for Destiny. It was impossible to please everyone and keep people engaged with the game. Their active players were leaving left and right a few weeks after each update because Bungie could not make deep content which would last until the next big DLC. Instead Bungie went free to play, they added seasons which are smaller content drops with a battlepass, and only really add a substantial amount of content once every year. With this the community became even more upset with these shallow updates but Bungie doesn’t need to care about their community anymore.
Since Destiny 2 is now Free to Play, they don’t need to worry about people leaving the game and instead will always have a playerbase because every time someone quits the game, another picks it up for free and is likely to buy expansions and microtransactions.
I am scared that if Halo Infinite becomes free to play 343i won’t have to listen to it’s community. They won’t have to create good content because the players who leaves will just get replaced. Maybe I am being to pessimistic. So far 343i have listened to some of the communities’ criticism which makes me excited for Halo Infinite. I don’t know I just hope they aren’t making the game free to play just so they won’t have to worry about making an amazing game worth coming back to for months / years and instead make a mediocre game.
Either way I will play the game, whether I will be paying 60 dollars or not. I just hope they don’t choose the route Bungie chose and that they actually make amazing content.