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 Originally published in Pillbox, a section of the Carnegie-Mellon University Tartan, November 15, 2004.
It's not every day that you get to help take over the world, but on November 9, nearly two and a half million people took Bungie Studios tantalizingly close to that goal. Bungie Studios was founded in 1991 in Chicago to make games for Macintosh computers. This company has always claimed that they wanted to take over the world. Meeting modest success in the '90s, the company wowed the computer press in 1999 with a presentation of their newest project, a game called Halo. A year later Microsoft bought the small development firm and decided to make Halo a flagship title for their upcoming game console, the Xbox. Halo launched alongside the Xbox on November 15, 2001. Three years and five million copies later, Halo is still in the 10 top-selling Xbox games month after month. The juggernaut, however, is just getting started. Halo 2, Microsoft's feverishly anticipated sequel, was released last week. Selling nearly 2.4 million copies in the first twenty- four hours of retail availability, Halo 2 made $125 million on opening day — earning $10 million more than the box office record-holding movie, Spider-Man. World domination, it seems, is but a few steps away for Bungie Studios. Adrian Perez is a programmer at Bungie Studios and a 2001 Carnegie Mellon graduate in computer science. He programmed the damage system and parts of the user interface, as well as portions of the graphics code in Halo 2. "Every single expectation we had for this game, from the number of pre-orders to the number of concurrent live users to the amount of production time we needed, has been wildly underestimated," said Perez. The company thought the Halo series would be big — but never this big. Halo and Halo 2 chronicle a far-reaching space epic set 500 years in the future. The Covenant, a conglomeration of alien races bound by a religious pact, are at war with humanity, and the humans are rapidly losing ground. The games' main character, a cybernetically enhanced soldier simply known by his rank — Master Chief — has to help turn the tide of the conflict and save mankind. Along the way, the ship he is on is attacked while in orbit around a giant, planet-sized ring called Halo, complete with artificial environments and some rather nasty indigenous life. The sequel finds Master Chief back on Earth defending our home planet from the first stages of Covenant assault. In between these plot elements there are plot twists stacked upon political intrigue stacked upon religious doctrine to create a remarkably deep story that sets the series in a league of its own. According to Matt Leighty, a senior in mechanical engineering, "The story got you involved. It wasn't your typical 'kill this dude, and you know, the war is over.' You felt like you advanced through the game." Leighty was one of more than 150 people who stood outside the Electronics Boutique in Squirrel Hill in the hours before the store opened for a special "Midnight Madness" event at midnight on November 9 for the release of Halo 2. These fans and their friends braved freezing-cold temperatures and late-night drivers honking their horns and shouting out their windows to be some of the first people on the eastern seaboard to own Halo 2. Many proud game owners left the store with beaming grins, but for others in line, it was a bittersweet moment. "I plan to sleep alone for many nights following tonight," lamented sophomore professional writing, creative writing and social and cultural history major Janet Jay, as her boyfriend waited in line to purchase his pre-ordered copy. She understood the draw of the game, though, and did not hesitate to admit that even she was sort of looking forward to it. "I'm a firm believer that running around and destroying your enemies is as fundamental to the human condition as eating or sleeping; I'm happy people are satiating that part of their id with something interactive rather than watching professional sports," said Perez. Where Halo and Halo 2 really excel on that level is in multiplayer combat. The built-in networking capability of the Xbox allowed Halo players to link up their systems to a standard Ethernet network and set up games in which up to sixteen players worked together — or against each other — in team games like Capture the Flag and standard "killeverything-that-moves" deathmatches. Scott Lowry, a senior business major in line at Electronics Boutique, made the bold claim, "It's one of the best multiplayer games of all time." The multiplayer capability is what brings people back again and again. Justin Weisz, a graduate student in computer science and president of Carnegie Mellon's Online Gaming Society (OGS), explains, "Bungie is just really good at creating a community and keeping its members happy." In Halo 2 that community is being brought online for the first time on Xbox. Taking advantage of the Xbox Live subscription service, Bungie's website (www.bungie.net) offers complete statistic tracking for any player in any match, including a "game viewer" which will show a map with player locations marked by small icons. "Their stats system is insane," said Weisz, and it is just one of those touches that makes Halo such a fan-focused game.
Evan Sundwick
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Even when the first Halo game came out, multiplayer was a big deal. Dedicated gamers would haul their Xboxes and TVs to "LAN parties," where they would link up with other players and play games all night long — and sometimes all day. The OGS held one of these parties on the evening of November 8 to celebrate Halo 2's launch. The group set up Xboxes and projectors in Baker Hall A51 and played Halo until shortly after midnight, when they switched over to Halo 2.
All this success is leading up to the fact that video games aren't just for kids anymore. The average age for people waiting in line at Electronics Boutique for Halo 2's midnight release was at least 22, probably higher. "Our entire generation was playing games when we were kids; we were the primary demographic," explained Perez. As that demographic has grown up, so has the gaming industry. David Murray, a senior in Computer Science and vice president of OGS, foresees the trend continuing in the future as the gaming generation continues to age. "By the time that we're senior citizens, the entire world population will have experienced gaming in their lives, or will have seen people gaming."