Bungie explains 'series of stumbles' in ODST marketing

by Ben Gilbert on Dec 8th 2009 3:20PM

From the initial talk of a lower price to a renaming, Bungie's ever-changing plans for Halo 3: ODST left a lot of people confused as to what the final product would be. "I'm no PR expert, but it's pretty obvious the game had a series of stumbles; from the naming, to the initial E3 2008 countdown reveal failure, and finally pricing ... it would definitely be nice to have a do-over for the game introduction," senior designer Lars Bakken told G4TV in a recent interview. "The big takeaway for us is just to never comment on matters that are outside of our control," added community manager Brian Jarrard.

The subject of ODST becoming an "expansion pack," however, was never an arguable point to executive producer Curtis Creamer. "Though ODST was built from the Halo 3 engine, there were enough changes made to the engine that we could not have released it as an expansion in the way that you might equate with a PC game expansion pack ... the ODST executable is not compatible with Halo 3."

The crew of Bungie devs also reconfirmed that "there are currently no plans for any ODST DLC," with all of the studio's resources tied up with Halo: Reach. Hopefully, our thirst for more Firefight maps will be quenched by the inclusion of the mode in future Halo games -- a prospect to which the developers responded, "Only time will tell." Do it for us, Bungie! Please?

Halo 3: ODST Campaign

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Tags: brian-jarrard, bungie, curtis-creamer, dlc, expansion-pack, halo, halo-3, halo-3-odst, halo-3-recon, halo-reach, lars-bakken, marketing, Microsoft, odst, reach, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (80)

they definitely failed on the advertising.

the single ad that i remember for it just wasn't "halo" to me, and it was unsettling (imo).

the We are ODST ad with all the Hungarian people? That was unsettling? Your profile picture is more unsettling thanthat

When you never show a single bit of footage from the videogame in the commercial about the video game, or when a halo game has ever been that exciting in combat.

Well, you can't really blame Bungie. They are developers not a PR company. They were being honest when they called ODST an expansion, but Microsoft had a conversation that i'd like to sum up...

"wait can we sell an expansion for 60 bucks? What's that... no? Hurry shut them up!"

And to be fair, if you are Halo fan, ODST was great no matter what. If you doubt that, just look at the sales numbers.

that was downvoted?

what the fuck is wrong with you people, i didn't say the game was bad, i just said i thought the ad sucked.

But Bungie isn't in charge of the advertising.

And no way can you look at them and say 'you failed' when you compared it to the utter failure Infinity Ward's promotion turned out to be.

You said something bad about Halo.

I love the comparison argument.

"Mussolini was alright, since compared to Hitler, he was a saint."

This is actually incredibly interesting to me because my friends LOVED the MW2 commercials and I know a guy from school who picked it up because of the killer commercial. ODST's Johnson ads were also big hits were I live, and this is the first time I've heard anyone express their disappointment with 'em. In your community were you the exception, or was that the general feeling?

Geez that's stupid Dreaded Fear. You're saying every comparison argument ever is stupid and invalid? What the fuck?

"And no way can you look at them and say 'you failed' when you compared it to the utter failure Infinity Ward's promotion turned out to be."

I'm going to assume you mean IW's marketing for Modern Warfare 2. That being the case, how exactly with the 310 million dollar launch they had was anything they did a "failure"?

You do realize that broke not only ODST's sales, but Halo 3's by 140 million.

The ad was better than the game. Although it was still pretty good i.e. if this was a studios first bash at a game it would be looked upon as a triumph, it was nothing compared to the rest of the series.
I think they should have just left it, this would have created so much more hype for Reach, a longer wait for us to get another halo game would make it so much better when we eventualy get to play it.

@DJ i dont remember if the MW2 sales of 310 were worldwide or not, but Halo 3 had 300 million worldwide sales in the first week, and 170 million stateside

I need a new Mountain Dew flavor to tell me when a new Halo is coming out.

Or doritos?

It'll have to be during my weekly trip to burger king.. /lardo

I bought ODST but I never got the full game out of the $60 I paid because Firefight doesn't have matchmaking which is the dumbest thing in the world.

I'm happy with the campaign and multiplayer disc but Firefight (which was very exciting for me) was a let down since I still haven't been able to find enough people to have a 4 player battle.

I could not agree more. I loved horde mode and was so pumped for the prospect of playing halo horde. However, to this day I have yet to play it with a complete set of 4 people.

Really "smash hit"? Didn't someone make a video mocking one of the ads? Actually, I think a lot of people who don't research games on IGN or Joystiq thought they were getting a brand new Halo game. I think the sales of ODST dropped sharply soon after.

I love Halo and all but Bungie needs to do an overhaul on multiplayer. These are a few things I would love to see Bungie do that will rekindle my love for Halo Multiplayer:

1) Add music while you wait for the matchmaking. I hate just sitting there listening to abstract and bizarre noises like The Flood making love in the background. Music please!

2) I have experienced several matches where all of my teammates just leave at the beginning of the match and I am left to fend for myself. It would be nice to have other players join the match that I am playing in case somebody leaves my team *cough* COD:MW, TF2 Multiplayer *cough*.

3) Add matchmaking with Firefight. I have a hard time playing this with my friends.

Come on Bungie! you can do it!

dropped sharply after? After what? After it sold 2 million in 2 weeks?

You guys don't have 4 friends to play Firefight mode? Really? I had to juggle groups of friends to play FF mode.. I never had a problem getting 4 friends to play. Maybe you need to work on them social skills to get more friends?

if you need ppl to play Firefight mode or 4-player co-op campaign, just post a msg on bungie's website and ask for ppl to send you a friend invite or list their GT so you can send them an invite. that's what I did when I got Halo3 and needed ppl to play with for campaign co-op.

@Abelpc - Some people dont have friends that play computer games all day, these are generaly the people who have better social skills than folk who sit infront of a screen to play ODST all day

@latin_trident: i agree with you... plus: here's the thing i never understood about halo matchmaking-- why do they load the entire map before voting whether to veto the game? it takes forever to load, and then if you veto, you wait again. why not just throw the game title up, vote, then load the correct map-- we'd play twice as many games as we do now.

I feel that "Veto" is the worst multiplayer feature ever created. Like in MW2... these are ALL brand new maps. You haven't had time to hate any of them yet. Maybe it's just that you need to tweak your favorite weapon combo or style of gameply just a tad... And no.. not everyone abstaining from voting is a homosexual or an ignorant member of a minority community.

They also failed on, y'know, the game.

I'm no Halo basher (I've lost many, many hours on Halo 3's fantastic multiplayer), but ODST is by far the weakest link in the series up to now. And yes, I know all the Halo 3 multiplayer is on one of ODST's disc, but that's useless for all the people that already own Halo 3 and have some/all the DLC. Firefight mode was a poor man's Horde, and don't even get me started on short, completely forgettable campaign.

I don't care how bad the advertising for a game is, as long as the final product is quality, I'm more than willing to forgive.

Porker, I couldn't agree more. Frankly, I would say their marketing was a smash hit, because they sold millions of copies of a mediocre shooter.

This game was not a Modern Warfare/Gears Of War/Half-Life quality title. This was more on the lines of Killzone 2/Resistance 2, but it sold twice as many copies.

It's a sad work when you have to announce to everyone, "I'm not a [game here] basher, but.."

Actually I don't really like Halo and I thought it was the best one since 1.

I'm a huge fan and I agree. ODST was pretty shit. Only reason I am keeping it is so I can get the H3 maps off my HHD and the Reach Beta.

Believe me though, Reach will kick ass.

hmm. the campaign was possibly my second favorite of all the halo games actually. and what do you mean by "poor man's" horde? yes the idea was taken from Gear's Horde mode, but it is by no means a worse version or anything. my only complaints with the game were no matchmaking for firefight and the stupid save system (which made me replay most of the campaign).

Wow, I could not have a more different opinion. I happen to have played through all the Halo games, but mostly it has been through loans and boredom rather than concious effort. My favourite campaign were the last 2 I played - halo 2, followed by ODST. It's just a shame it's so short, I would have happily spent another 5 hours playing in new mombasa. Firefight was another pleasant surprise - really entertaining to play, and there's not been a shortage of friends to play it with as of yet.

Biggest letdown? Multiplayer disc. Just the same old deathmatch from halo 3, same old double beatdowns all the time, people leave in the middle and one team ends up with 2 players, matchmaking takes years... it's bad! We've had COD4 now and developers cannot be complacent about simple bugs anymore.

Maybe Bungie is just tired of making Halo games after all these years, and they #"% up a bit on purpose. If they get a chance to make a totally different game, preferably multiplatform, I think they could make something really special.

Bungie is its own company now. They dont even own the rights to Halo. There is nothing stopping them from deciding to stop working on Halo games and work on something else, and they have even expressed that that is their plan several times. But Halo is fun, has a lot of lore, and more importantly is a massive money maker. Better to stuff your coffers full of money from Halo now and use it to fund some of those new games.

I didn't know that so thanks for info. I never liked the Halo games, but I greatly enjoyed the Marathon series back in the day so I feel Bungie will do better on their own.

Bungie's next project (after Reach) is actually NOT a Halo title. They've also said they're looking at other publishers (my guess is EA Partners, like Valve) for release, so it would likely be multi-platform.

Maybe a joint effort with Naughty Dog? :) I hear they are friends (or at least Bungie was included in Uncharted 2s Thank-You list)

http://kotaku.com/5381104/naughty-dog-explain-uncharted-2-thanks-for-bungie-infinity-ward-et-al

I think they got a lot of advice from Bungie in terms of the save films and such. The systems were similar, and they probably got infrastructure advice.

This game had no soul! I'm serious. I bought it for $60 on launch day, played it and beat it in a couple of hours with my friends. Then we played some firefight which was alright... the game was somehow lacking. But I do think that Reach will have soul! judging from those leaked screenshots (could be fake but I don't think so...) It looks epic and I hope it kicks cod's ass next year and goes back to being the King of Live. Also I better get more Halo brand foods next year and more collectible slurpee cups! =)

TL;DR ODST= meh and Reach= King of Live next year.

Bungie's biggest mistake with ODST, by far, was not including matchmaking for 'Firefight', a mode explicitly designed for multi-player. it was bad enough that they failed (again) to include it in the campaign but excluding it for 'firefight' was pretty inexcusable.

it didn't even last two months on the 'Top 10 most played games on Live'.

What about Bungie insisting it wasn't a $60 game at first, and then later announcing it was going to cost $60? That's pretty big PR stumble, I'm thinking.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/12/game-informer-halo-3-recon-3-to-5-hours-earn-recon-armor/

I'm thinking that's why he said "The big takeaway for us is just to never comment on matters that are outside of our control". They had no control over the cost of the game. I suppose realistically, we should have all expected Microsoft to gouge gamer's pockets. They do it every chance they get. From the $100 Wi-Fi adapter, to the few extra Microsoft Points you're always stuck with

IT WASN'T BUNGIE!

It was Microsoft that made it $60!!!

I got the game on black friday for $35. I remember starting it up and seeing a note from bungie saying "This is a story worth telling" I'm not through with the campaign yet, but there's not really much of a story at all. Accidently land on planet, kill grunts and brutes while transparent characters try to figure out stuff you already know. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game, but it's not an amazing story. It's just more Halo 3, and I feel like I still paid too much for it.

Agreed. They need to take notes from the Halo novels, which they seem to be doing for Halo: Reach.

Putting the marketing aside, I thought the campaign itself was great, and was a nice departure from the main trilogy, but it was short as all hell. Firefight was fun, but it was so terribly limited. If you gave even a tenth of the options Halo 3 had in multiplayer, it'd be such a better co-op mode.

As for the Halo 3: Mythic disc and the pricing, well we all know about that. The shit should of been $40 or $50, and we all know that. The only reason I'm holding on to ODST now is for the Reach beta. For most people that's not enough to keep it, but I'm a longtime Halo fan and have spent literally days and days of in-game time playing the past titles. In other words, I wanna play it.

So yea. Here's to more Halo, more quality Halo, more valved Halo, and better marketed Halo. Back to the original topic, it really did get buried this holiday. I saw more Uncharted then I did Halo. That's saying something.

Something's wrong, why hasn't Darth given us an obligatory comment here yet?!

Look down. ^_^

Even the stuff that went "right" for Bungie--stuff they had control over--was bad.

Remember the Superintendent "Keep it clean" teaser campaign that lasted for months? The Superintendent was such a small part of the ODST game, it just didn't track. Just hype.

And Bungie's constant teasing of everything they do--that's in their control as well, and they keep on doin' it...

So, Bungie, to make up for all the botched marketing you and MS have done, can you stop teasing the games and start treating your fans like adults?

"Only time will tell."

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Bungie explains 'series of stumbles' in ODST marketing

Halo 3: ODST Campaign

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