blog 003: 343i tour
after a 3 year wait, we finally got to visit the halo headquarters..
in 1999, sony made a very pointed jab at bill gates when they began to market the newly announced ps2 as THE centerpiece of the living room. sony had posited that the ps2 would become the only entertainment hardware needed in a household. egads! after all, the ps2 can play CD and DVD, it is computationally robust, it is durable, it has a fantastic library..
microsoft was still trying to establish home computer dominance (only HALF of american households owned a computer around 1999), so bill gates and nem took that shit very seriously. microsoft was functionally cornered into the gaming market in order to compete with sony.
microsoft's first move was trying to buy nintendo— they were laughed out of the meeting. they had no choice but to engineer their own home entertainment vehicle: the xbox. this was also the first time american video game hardware had entered the market since the atari jaguar ceased production in 1996! wow!
parallel to the rushed hardware engineering, microsoft was scrambling for decent titles and franchises to pad the library of their new console. it didn't help that they were a generation behind sony o_o they had no choice but to buy as many random intellectual properties and developers as they could afford.. such as rare and bungie.
compared to its peers.. but at least it looked epic o_O
for the macintosh computer; microsoft acquired bungie by the following year.
there was no way of telling how popular halo would be (or the xbox o_O) so i imagine the bungie acquistion was sort of a shotgun wedding type thing. bungie has ALWAYS had a lot of problems with microsoft due to work culture differences, profit sharing disputes, etc. so tensions rose parallel to halo's popularity. you probably know how the rest of that story goes: halo was a seminal moment in first person shooters (probably the biggest thing since doom? or wolfenstein?) and the console wars continued until consumer access to powerful home computers made video game marketing boring. womp womp.
bungie tried to renegotiate their profit sharing terms with microsoft after halo 2. i imagine halo 2's hellish production contributed to bungie's desire to work on non-halo things. so, after halo 3, bungie bought back their independence from microsoft under two conditions:
- microsoft would own halo after the split
- bungie will make two more halo games (ODST and reach.. zoo wee mama O_O)
it is said that bungie "won the divorce, but lost the baby".. at any rate, 343 industries was founded in 2007 to steward halo inside of microsoft (a step-parent?) and they were responsible for combat evolved anniversary and onwards.
no further comment.
last month, mr. hero and i got to check out the 343 industries headquarters in redmond, wa. it's not open to the public; we fall under "friends and family" 
there was one main museum that was open to non-employees, totally photographable although they asked us not to aim weapons at each other.. which i did.. sorry ron..
our tour guide ron shared some insider knowledge of various marketing campaigns and production for halo and its disambiguations (the multiplayer competition; the tv show; the mega bloks toys). years ago, ron's manager was responsible for archiving the collection of halo goods that serves as the basis of this museum. as an ex-mcfarlane toys employee, she was also responsible for brokering the collaboration that gave us the most badass halo merchandise ever: the mcfarlane figurines. a lot of the rare "one of one" items are broken up and split between bungie, 343i, the microsoft archive, the xbox office, ed fries, probably some mega fans, etc.
i will say that the museum's halo ce & 2 goods were severely lacking compared to 3 onwards— perhaps there was no urgency in preserving marketing goods until halo reached full maturity as a cultural zeitgeist with halo 3 (jen taylor saw cortana for the first time at halo 3's release party! we learned this from an FAQ panel at outpost discovery years ago) but there was also a lot more stuff being made to promote microsoft's gen 7 sonykiller..
video by Mimoco Mimobot via youtube
everything in the museum falls in one of these three categories:
- fan art, cosplay armor and weapons, of various fidelity (including a giant halo 3 rat costume, which i did not photograph >_>)
- official props from cinematic advertisements and tv shows, of various fidelity(heavy detailed metal guns, lightweight foam squishy guns, guns that shoot air, guns that are so realistic they cannot legally leave the building.. even with the big orange tag that SWAT required them to add after an.. incident o_O)
- licensed merchandise, of various rarity (i saw many halo CE, 2, and 3 items that i own in my personal collection AND some stuff that i stock in my shop! no halo 2 condoms sadly.. at least on display..)
check out some of the photos i took:
emile and jun are part of a LIFESIZE sculpture based on the mcfarlane
legendary reach figurine noble team was split with bungie. how cool is that??
(some of ron's wisdom:)
"when you have something good, three things happen—
- it inspires people to do their own thing
- people will change your work a tiny bit and take credit for it
- people tattoo it on their bodies"
for better or worse, all three of these things have happened to anne hero, more than once.. can you believe that?? o_o
-AH
31 july 2024