With Game Pass, Microsoft treats me like a player.
With Halo Infinite, Microsoft treats me like a consumer.
There’s a huge difference between the two.
With Game Pass I know what I’m getting. I can play first party titles day one, and there’s a rotating selection of third party games. I’m told in advance before games leave the service, and if I want to purchase them to own permanently, I get a discount. I’m playing games I never thought I would, and I’ll keep paying $15/mo for Game Pass Ultimate for as long as I’m playing games.
With Halo Infinite I feel like I’m being manipulated. Core customization features from previous titles are withheld from me, and artificial barriers are put in place to frustrate me into paying money to unlock cosmetics. It feels like 343 designed a monetization system with a game instead of a game with a monetization system. As it stands now, I won’t be paying $10/season for a Battle Pass.
And yet, I really want Halo to succeed. I want a huge playerbase, thriving Forge creators, and a ton of weapons, maps, cosmetics, and game updates coming from 343. I want cool gameplay clips, Craig-level memes, and a happy community all sharing in a game we love. I want this Halo to live up to its moniker of “Infinite”, and be stuffed with fun for years to come.
Let’s face it, Live Service games are a genie we can’t put back in the bottle – but can they exist with a more straightforward, honest model for monetization?
Another service I pay for off-and-on again is ESO Plus. For those who don’t know, Elder Scrolls Online has a ton of content in a confusing web of DLC and Chapters. This is all available separately, or you can pay $15/mo to unlock everything but the latest Chapter, and have some perks like a permanent XP boost, a monthly allotment of Crowns, and crafting material stored outside of your main inventory. I can go just about anywhere in Tamriel, do some quests with any group I want, and have a great, relaxing time without the stress of feeling like I’m missing out on something. As long as I’m playing ESO, I’m happy to dish out the money. I’d love to say the same about Halo.
Would an optional monthly subscription work for Halo Infinite? How would it work? Would you be willing to pay for it if you felt it was a fair trade?
Let’s explore some options. Admittedly some of these ideas are half-baked creations I was thinking of while grinding Bot Arena games until 4AM, so feel free to tell me what works or what’s dumb, and what your thoughts are on this.
Throw the Unggoy out with the bathwater
Before introducing a subscription plan, let’s keep Halo Infinite’s gameplay and scrape off everything else. What is included for every player for free?
There should be a progression system where XP is granted from the score of your game (“score” being kills in Slayer, caps/defends in CTF, etc) This promotes playing any game type and as a reward, you rank up. There should be an ungodly amount of ranks with cosmetics that can only be unlocked by ranking up or achieving in-game milestones. If you see someone with some cool gear from this list, you can look at them with respect instead of disdain.
For earning more XP, daily login and win rewards like Halo 5 are fine, but weekly challenges can take a hike. Weekly challenges could work if they were more generic and didn’t lend themselves to affecting gameplay – but I say get rid of them completely and replace them with Commendations like Reach and Halo 5.
Commendations are milestone rewards to the grand sum of all of your actions taken in game. They’re not timed challenges , they’re career challenges . Bungie always let you look at a gross amount of data about your gameplay. 343 followed suit initially, but now we only have your last 100 matches available on some 3rd party site. I want it all tracked. Every bullet fired, every medal, every win, every bot I’ve killed. Incrementally increase both the milestones and the value of XP rewards, and reward me for playing the game how I want to and when I want to.
While we’re at it, give players more incentive by turning all of these Commendations it into a Leaderboard. Who of your friends has capped the most flags? Who in the world has the most headshots? What bragging rights do you have? There’s other ways to drive player engagement instead of artificially extending unlocks.
The idea of armor coatings and color selection is a hot mess, but that’s largely been solved by BakaStep’s amazing post here and on Reddit titled “A Compromis That Works for Everyone… Armor Coating Customization Feedback / Suggestion”. (Not sure if I can link here, but search for that.) If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend. We’ll just take that and roll it into this.
These changes satisfy a lot of complaints from the Halo community; there’s a base level of customization, a constant flow of progression, and gameplay-based unlocks. But still, 343 is a business and they want more money. How will you give it to them?
A FOMO-free store
It’s fine to sell cosmetics under 2 conditions:
- I can buy what I want when I want
- The price is straightforward and fair
The current store in Halo Infinite feels like I’m window shopping to a store I can’t enter. Missed that stupid pose with a stick? Sucks for you. Come back later. It might be there. Maybe.
Instead, show me everything. Give every item a rarity and price on that rarity, and keep pumping that -Yoink!- out. $1-10 for any single item (shoulders come packaged together like Twix), with discounts on buying bundles, and rotations on sale items.
Cosmetics can also be purchased with earned in-game credits like Reach, yet at inflated prices. You can earn that EOD helmet through gameplay, but maybe you just wanna pay $4 now? Either way, it will be here for you when you decide.
That could be enough right there, but businesses love Monthly Recurring Revenue. They put their MRR on graphs and talk about it in conference calls. Battle Passes are a way to forecast MRR. With a $10 Battle Pass every 3 months, that’s effectively $3.33/mo from every player who buys it. The only problem is… the current Battle Pass sucks. Limited time events and leaked future plans are also sparse of content. I want new cosmetic options, not a bunch of Challenge Swaps and (real time!) XP Boosts. If 343 wants consistent money from me, why not just be up front about it?
Premium subscriptions and their perks
Here comes the meat of this hairbrained idea.
ESO Plus and Game Pass work in the same way where I’m basically renting content with a few perks thrown in. How could we apply that model to Halo?
For a monthly fee you could claim the following perks:
- Permanent XP Boosts
- Included and exclusive cosmetics
- Armor Hall slots
- Store discounts and deals
- Complementary credits
- Early Access or some -Yoink!-
And as long as you’re crying about this idea, let’s put it into Tiers:
Heroic - $5/mo, +10% XP Boost, all Rare and below items in the store included, glowing blue nameplate
Epic - $10/mo, +15% XP Boost, all Epic and below items in the store included, glowing purple nameplate
Legendary - $15/mo, +20% XP bonus, all Legendary and below items in the store included, flaming gold nameplate
With this system you basically rent cosmetics and show other players you support the game via a special nameplate. If your subscription lapses, you’re back to what you’ve bought or unlocked.
With all these customization options at your fingertips, you’ll also have additional Armor Hall slots for your different designs, similar to “costume slots” in other games.
Permanent XP Boosts and store discounts give you options between spending your time or money.
But what else can be thrown in to sweeten the deal?
Advanced Theater Mode
Are you a content creator? Want to make machinima? Place cameras and keyframe their movement and focus like Rockstar’s GTA editor. Unlock Spartan poses and animations to bring your ideas to life. (Dude remember BungiePro?)
Featured Forger
You make the best maps and game modes. Want to have more visibility in the global File Share for your Forge creations? Get your content listed in a dedicated section that highlights how serious you are. Get early access to new base maps and objects.
Match Composer (sorry)
Rotating Playlists got you down? Want to play only CTF instead of a more general Objective playlist? Play exactly what you want and work on your Commendations. Just like you did in MCC for free. (Oh god I’m sorry again for this one)
Design your own bot
We all love Meowlnir, but we’re growing a bit tired of seeing those cat ears. Pick any cosmetics and build a bot that goes into the roster. Immortalize your Spartan or make some brightly colored goofball with a dumb name because he’s gonna get farmed in Bot Arena anyway.
And there’s one final thing to address here…
But what about Whales?!
It sucks that every Live Service game design document starts off with “Call me Ishmael”, but here we are.
Whales are a tricky thing. We hate them because they buy up all the overpriced crap, but we talk about them with some degree of reverence because they keep the game free for everyone else. Does such a necessary evil have to exist though?
I brought up Game Pass as it’s an example of one of the many thing Microsoft is doing right. PC development is a first class citizen now. They made the Adaptive Controller for disabled gamers. Phil Spencer gets up on stage and says things like “When everyone plays, we all win”. It gives you these warm fuzzy feelings that they actually care about you. But the same parent company that came up with these wonderful policies doesn’t reflect them in its subsidiary. You don’t have $20 for the color white? Eat -Yoink!-, someone else will pay for it.
Surely the money spent by a small group can be amortized by the entire population of players. If 200,000 players signed up for some level of subscription, that’s $1-3 million MRR not including the in-game store. It’s a more consistent influx of money that can lead to staffing decisions and paying devs and artists for their work. There’s a psychological benefit for the community as well. Instead of scoffing at some player with flaming footsteps and realizing this whole system is a depressing scam, you can say “oh, he pays for this instead of Netflix”.
Unfortunately there’s little market research to determine if this works, because this whale-based monetization strategy was born from predatory mobile games and has become the status quo. But like every infomercial says, “There HAS to be a better way!” I’m just saying, it would be great to be treated with a little more respect. I’m happy to support any company that remembers I’m a human being and not a wallet.
So that’s what I got. I feel like as bad as MCC was technically when it launched, so too is Halo Infinite’s monetization strategy. We got an amazing game and sandbox, but a Big Oof on everything else. Realistically, I’m sure 343 will make some minor adjustments based on the community’s feedback, but at the end of the day it will still benefit them instead of us.
In any case, this was a fun thought experiment and I enjoyed writing it.
What are your thoughts? I can already poke a bunch of holes in this idea, so I won’t be offended if you -Yoink!- all over it. I’m just trying to find some solution that satisfies players who want to play, players who want to dress up, and 343’s bank account alike.
TL;DR - Cosmetic rental and perks for a monthly fee, a real store, in-game unlocks
