Unpopular opinion: opening up Halo Infinite as a platform for additional highly-skilled creators who may monetize their creations is good for consumers/players

Games Halo Infinite
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#1

Edit 8/6/22:

Changed thread title to more accurately reflect the below pivot from monetizing forge to turning Halo Infinite into a platform for optional high-bar content submissions to a marketplace for more content at lower costs to players.

Edit 7/31/22:

I’m really glad people pointed out issues of forge monetization or even a marketplace of forge creations. It’s been tried before in other contexts and failed or destroyed passion of what was creativity and fun for the sake of creativity and fun.

I would pivot the thought of a marketplace and the content that fills it as very custom-made materials that 343 didn’t make but made via the same or similar development tools that 343 uses. Rearranging 343 modeled, textured, and embedded into forge compared against new models, particles, textures, emblems, armor, etc created first in Maya or Blender and via development tools injected into the game engine for use in a separate self-contained experience or added to the retail MP game.

It would be a high bar of polish and originality to be able to publish to the marketplace. PvE or PvP experiences that fill a content void.

Is Garry’s mod a decent comparison? Based off of half life 2’s source engine (Valve) but ultimately had new functions and materials that were made and itself was a framework for new creations.

Projects within Garry’s mod are community-made (like forge), but Garry is editing on top of the source engine.

Marketplace content would have their original starting point via the slipspace engine, or some sort of development tools where they’re making wholly new assets built out of new programming and high-end toolsets arranged within slipspace for used within the retail game or as a separate game.

Original post:

What if, a big if, forge was part of the game package we all know and love (free with campaign purchase or bundled into multiplayer somehow) and had the same feature sets as we’ve seen leaked with scripting and such and then also had a way for content creators to sell their works?

Now imagine talented content creators being able to monetize their forge creations in a marketplace. There would still be the community as it has been, same forge and features all free if the creators aren’t selling their works, but high-end, forge-created scenarios, skins, etc created by indy studios or talented groups would be able to put their works in a marketplace. I would pay for excellent forge-made scenarios with stories and awesome craftsmanship even if it’s not made by 343.

Not only would “community forge” creations still exist and be free, bigger projects and ideas have incentives to put their development weight behind halo and create new game modes, scenarios, maps, etc.

Imagine content creators being able to make armor, skins, other decorations and such and it being in a marketplace alongside 343’s stuff.

It creates competition between 343’s artists and outside developers. The thing is, if 343’s Halo Infinite is a platform and marketplace not unlike Minecraft’s marketplace, than 343 itself can focus on the core platform and primary story telling and let outside studios take on risks and rewards for high-end development of forge scenarios, maps, customizations, game modes, etc. 343 takes on an App Store-like role to further develop the forge sandbox of features and collect 15-30% of sales.

Creating competition via content creation on Halo Infinite as a platform would transform the player experience.

The “free-to-play” model isn’t free, we all know this. Creating competition amongst creators to generate unique and engaging material is what I want most and would hope to see out of the fears of a “monetized forge” scenario.

Charging individuals to download and use forge doesn’t make sense.

A creator/developer subscription tier with access to 343 help documents, developer forum, and freedom (within reason) to develop, publish, and collect a fee for an independent dev’s labor for excellent content at the time of sale, this makes a lot of sense.

2 Likes
#2

I really would rather forge creations be driven by passion rather than money.

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#3

No, I’m all for people creating armors coatings and armors and HOPEFULLY one day armor materials and patterns.

But forge? No. Nothing about forge should be monetized. It’s what’s keeping halo going these days outside of HCS.

Many players stay for PvE and nutty games, to lock premium maps curated or Corp is just another way to destroy halo, it’s not creating competition it’s just stuffing wallets and starting to get dangerously close to nft’s.

In many ways it’s no different.

Bought via imaginary currency? :heavy_check_mark:

Set up so only people willing to pay are about to boat about it’s access and freely show it off while simultaneously restricting access and creating an already huge divide bigger in the community? :heavy_check_mark:

Groups who will sit in maps like these in custom games making it hard to enjoy the nature in ways that are player friendly? :heavy_check_mark:

There are a THOUSAND reasons as to why this is literally the worst idea, and a very good reason it’s an unpopular opinion

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#4

Imagine a gaming company making a game because the player base supports them. Not because money is the only thing considered success.

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#5

It depends on what games you’re looking at… mobile games? Sure, those aren’t free… or at the very least, they’re riding that line as close as they can. Something something diablo immoral.

But Forknife? Apex? Fall guys? Rocket league? Warframe? Roller champs? Splitgate?

Those games are pretty decent and there’s nothing stopping you from playing, only issue being if you wanna look cool you better bust out the wallet, and while Infinite follows that same criteria, Halo players have the added issues of needing to still buy the campaign for full price, and the expectation that there would have been a larger selection of earnable cosmetics aside from capstones. But that’s a mini rant off topic of the main point.

This I don’t mind, warframe has this (Tennogen) and it works well as far as I know, at least, I like seeing what the community makes. I am not opposed to the idea of paying for a player made skin…

But I have no desire to buy a map just so I can play “Ghostbusters”, “Fat kid” of “Duck hunt”… there’s no A.I. script AFAIK so forge would literally just be maps for certain game modes, and even then, a better route would be the Gears 5 “Escape” method, and even then, I would’t want that to be monetized, that just sounds awful.

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#6

I can see where you are coming from and Halo Infinite would benefit from something like Minecraft’s marketplace but only if it was cosmetic, not with Forge. If there was an in-game credit system like Reach I would gladly tip creative forge creators for their work. Perhaps instead of money, we can give talented forge creators a xp boost/ grant or a challenge skip instead.

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#7

For sure. Agree 100%. A long-form thought:

I think of 343/Microsoft as a monopoly on Halo Infinite’s content. Microsoft rightly should assert their ownership as they see fit. The only source of content is via 343. They’re going to make their content but something has to pay them since programmers and developers and the creative minds there have to feed themselves, their families, etc.

It is a given that the game, a software, has to generate revenue and the same limited resources for creating content and platform maintenance and improvement have to compete for developer time. Why aren’t basic quality control parts of halo STILL not addressed? The money to pay for humans to fix it are allocated to some other task.

With a monopoly, like Bell of yore, the juggernaut monopolist doesn’t have an incentive to improve things for customers; they simply devise ways to unfairly extract money from their customers who don’t have any alternative options. (People used to have to rent their clunky landline phones…). Evil capitalism is monopolistic behaviors that hurt consumers, not money itself. Bell was broken up, the physical phone lines became a “utility” so any company could rent space on the lines and new business formed to compete and innovate for consumers. Competition in the telephone industry leads us to today, despite the areas in need of improvement, where we have cell phones, interoperability between competing services, interoperability of changing services, etc. Consumers benefited from the breaking up of Bell, we benefit from that action today.

Enter Halo Infinite as a software platform for the community, content creators, and independent studios. The community works as it has done, let it flourish as previous and let passion come up with its innovations.

Parallel to the community in its idealistic form, also have a marketplace (not unlike an app store) where people who are passionate can also innovate and compete for content, customizations, “mods”, etc. More than just forge, a development environment and a way to add really custom works to the game as a service.

A marketplace where creators “sell” their works creates competition and is a breeding ground for innovation; simultaneously it would solve two things:

  1. more content for those of us starved for more Halo and
  2. more of 343’s resources (time and money) spent towards the platform (bugs, missing features, network, servers, and in-universe story telling).

Let 343/Microsoft open up Halo Infinite so it pays for itself and new really great content exists at little or no “time costs” to 343/Microsoft.

1 Like
#8

you dont understand what OP is saying though: forge will still be free to access and you will have all the features and more that you saw in halo 5 forge. you’ll even be able to scale objects and props with plain ol’ forge.

i know it would help a lot if we all pitched in 60 bucks for forge, but it would help a lot more if we paid a subscription for advanced forge tools and basically dev kit support. i think as it is, Mark VI mjolnir VR helmets for Christmas are a reality as long as 343i programming contractors are retained for the development of these mind blowing features.

probably you have to buy a new Xbox Series VX or Series VS for Christmas to go along with your Mark VI mjolnir VR helmet if you want to participate in VR enabled game modes, community made or otherwise officially endorsed.

#9

i promise you dude if Mark VI mjolnir VR helmets come bundled at the same competitive price point we’ve seen the xbox, 360’s, one, and series x/s so far, EVERYBODY is gonna wanna fly a VR banshee in forge for Christmas.

#10

Monetization of Forge at any point is only going to encourage more spending for things that shouldn’t have had a price tag to begin with. It’s bad enough we’re paying more for armor from past games.

The mere idea of paying for more advanced tools to use negates the entire idea Forge presents. Giving the community access to a mini-dev kit to play around with and create fun modes for their friends to enjoy.

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#11

i know i hope at least one of my forge maps is included for a season in the social community content matchmaking playlist.

though i would offer a word of caution surrounding the “open[ing] up” of Halo Infinite; we are in an age of emerging cyber threats with very real consequences if advanced dev tool kits aren’t scrubbed for Rising Bash Calls to the Chrome Depots that Check In on our super cool advanced forge toolz

#12

Leave it to the Halo community to try to create its own paid mods fiasco. I just have no words.

4 Likes
#13

Everything you just said sounds like pure Can Cer for the halo community. Restrictive game modes? External hardware requirements? What is this Steam?

The nodes are already a basic dev kit.

Player made maps are a literal rotational feature in halo 5

And curation of vr tech should be in an ENTIRELY different platform than halo infinite. What you’re asking for is halo Fortnite vr. And honestly it’s extremely disturbing.

No one asked for a free halo, everyone here was willing to drop 60-70 bucks or more. They did this. And now you guys are trying to HELP them FURTHER monetize this game series? Do you actively want to divide the community further? The communities is basically in shambles for this game. Between technical issues, cosmetic and monetization there is such a large cry out for them to stop nickle and dime’n us;

And now you want to monetize it further with a subscription package to forge+? Sorry BLAM that. Ill suffer a few more Lazer tattoo removal sessions and get the halo ink off my body before I pay for a subscription service to something that has been an integral part of a beloved game series since 2007.

These ideas will continue to pull apart the game and turn it into a further hot pile of garbage. Arguably as bad as the initial idea to have this game be a hero shooter like overwatch.

1 Like
#14

What if forge is exactly as you’d expect it to be (free, accessible, file browser, etc) and concurrently a marketplace exists of non-343-made content?

#15

How does the player base support game developers if not through an exchange of money for service or products?

#16

Keep forge as-is and as expected, file browser, custom games, etc.

Separately a game developer group of hobbyists write, direct, and publish PvE storylines with wholly new armor models, skins, story-specific vehicles, audio, animation, etc and spent 20,000 hours on the project. Should they be able to sell their storytelling to willing buyers who also unlock MP skins and effects featured in the story or must the 20,000 hours of dedication be unrewarded? The hobbyists should or shouldn’t be able to offer their custom-made content to willing purchasers?

As a platform/marketplace people willing to risk their time for compensation would be able to afford to take more risks and create more worthy content.

All the while, 343 continues on its course developing its prime storylines, maps, seasons, and separately there are unique materials created by both forgers and then those who create wholly new materials not already in forge that are added to the game for the after review from 343.

#17

This has already been time tested to be a horrifical bad idea.
Bethesda ATTEMPTED to do this with mods,

All that ended up happening was tons of content being stolen from Free mod makers and repackaged as paid content on a store front.
They didn’t offer any support systems for stolen and reposted content.
They can’t, that system was too expensive and labor intensive and could not be automated.

The reality is:
Player monetization SOUNDS great on paper,
In a perfect world where no bad people exist, and people were unable to lie, and people didn’t take advantage of each other. Yeah, it would be a perfect Utopian feature.

But we don’t live in that world,
We live in a world where, if you give bad people the opportunity to do evil things.
They will.

If you give people a monetary incentive,
people will harm each other for money, they will steal, they will lie, they will do everything in their power to waste other peoples time to make money.

Hell you see it happen outside of games,
In game development, in development markets, in Roblox game developers.

It would be the creation of an unregulated market that will be rife with abuse in every sector.

2 Likes
#18

This is the fear I’m trying to conquer with this post.

Let forge itself be as you’d expect it to be. Separately consider someone or some group having an option to publish highly-produced and polished content, made with forge and development tools. Forge doesn’t let you import new armor models, new warthog decorations, import new emblems, audio for new AI models, audio for new announcers, create new armor effects, add new decorations, new skyboxes, etc.

Customization of halo doesn’t have to begin and end with what is already in forge. I’m talking real awesome from-the-ground-up creations. Stuff worth paying for.

Free stuff stays free, people, groups, and studios who take enormous risks should be able to reap some sort of reward.

As stated in other replies, creating a competitive environment (for money as the reward) of new content creation solves the player base’s thirst for new stuff, is a pressure-release valve for creators who spend inordinate amounts of time making utterly new materials to be packaged into the game, and frees up 343 to focus on making the platform robust and feature-rich.

#19

I didn’t know about this. Great contribution to this thread.

I read some old threads on Reddit from 2016. Seems like there was a lot of bs that happened and other people’s works were stolen/repurposed.

If copyright infringement could be mitigated, would it be worth trying?

Software developers protect their works by asymmetrical encryption or read-only “exports” of the software.

Curation of marketplace would be important. 343’s cut of sales would, in theory, support the necessary resources to check source code and hold the content creators up to high standards and on-brand creations. (Can’t have Pokémon show up in some part of the game via the marketplace without GameFreak/Nintendo having a say.)

Valid concerns, though, bringing up Bethesda and Skyrim mods.

#20

Interesting, because what I said went right over your head. Most know shops don’t “need” to be added to any game to support any company.

Shops are the plague to gaming.

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