Throughout my early childhood, I played games with a passive mindset, not really thinking
much about anything happening on screen.
I never really considered how a game was balanced or what made certain modes fun.
I just played games, whether it be on my own or with friends.
And then in 2004 I got Halo 2, and in a way, it felt like my eyes had opened for the first
time.
There is a lot to praise about Halo 2.
It popularized online shooters on consoles, it provided a campaign mode that built on
the concepts of the original, telling an engaging story through multiple points of view, and,
most importantly to me, it gave players the tools to create game modes tailored to them.
My middle school years are defined by the time I spent in my friend’s basement playing
Halo 2 with anywhere from 4 to, on those few glorious occasions, 16 people.
For a long while we played the typical modes: deathmatch, king of the hill, and, of course,
capture the flag.
But we started to notice a trend of certain people always winning, and while we tried
our best to balance out teams, it had mixed success.
Especially with bigger groups, some players just weren’t very good, and even if their
teammates carried them to victory, it wasn’t all that fun for them.
So, we started to look for some different ways to play and somehow came across a custom
game mode called Zombies.
Zombies, or at least the version of it we played, required everyone to be on the same
team except for one player who started as the zombie.
They would get to use the energy sword and try to infect the rest of the players by killing
them with it.
The other players would get to use a shotgun to try to hold off the Zombies for as long
as possible, but, if they got killed by one, they’d switch teams and become a zombie.
Zombies got so popular throughout the Halo 2 community that Bungie ended up making it
an official game mode in Halo 3.
I bring this up not just because it was a lot of fun to play, but because it was one
of the first examples I had really seen of players using customizable rules to make an
incredible game mode, and it got my friends and I to realize that there were far more
ways to play Halo 2 than we ever imagined.
Our lan parties shifted from the modes that made the Halo series famous to a slew of custom
games, that, for the most part were...not that great, but it didn’t stop us from having
a ton of fun coming up with ideas and testing them out.
During weekdays, I would get home from school, boot up Halo 2, and play around in the various
maps trying to create unique modes we could play on the weekend.
One of the things I focused on most was trying to create modes that were fun for both skilled
and unskilled players, so I always tried to come up with rulesets that hinged on things
other than shooting ability.
Together with my friends, we made complicated games like a rules heavy version of what amounted
to be cops and robbers where whoever had the rocket launcher or energy sword would try
to gather the rest of the players up and lead them to a designated jail—of course, the
fun part for this one was breaking the rules and trying to escape; we made simple games
like a competition to see who could drive a warthog around the upper circle of Foundation
the longest as everyone else tried to kill them; we made chaotic modes like king of the
hill on midship with no shields and rocket launchers only.
Whether it be through bringing in our own out-of-game rulesets or tweaking modes that
Halo 2 already offered, we found so many new ways to play the game that allowed for everyone
in our group to have fun.
While Halo 2 is far from being the first game to offer custom modes, it was the first one
that I found myself engaging with because of how simple it was to test various ideas.
Where making a custom mode in something like Warcraft 3 or Tony Hawk’s Underground took
a fair bit of time to design and get to a playable state, creating and testing game
modes in Halo 2 was quick and easy.
The options were obviously far less robust than those other games, but I found that the
simplicity of creating a custom mode in Halo 2 made it far less daunting to experiment
with, and it’s ease of access got me to think about game design in a way that I wouldn’t
have without it.
Also, literally everyone I knew was playing it, so while plenty of other shooters offered
a similar or greater level of customization, Halo 2 gave me a reliable playerbase to test
out my dumb ideas.
It was a gateway viewing games through a different lens.
I started to look at games for what they could be instead of just what they were.
After Halo 2, when I played a multiplayer game that wasn’t balanced well for my group
of friends, we’d brainstorm ways to change the rules to make it more fun for everyone.
When I found a single-player game to be too easy or I had already played through it once,
I’d come up with little challenges to add a new layer of difficulty, like beating pokemon
by only using my starter.
All of these experiences got me in the habit of not only considering what makes a game
fun but also thinking about what could make it even more interesting, which is something
I still do today.
Beyond Halo 2 getting me to think about the design of various games and modes more deeply,
it also gave me a greater appreciation for the simple act of exploration and experimentation
in a 3D space.
It become my mission to figure out the secrets of every map.
Trying to discover glitches and practicing the ones I had heard about from other people
became one of my favorite things about Halo 2.
From doing superhops on Ascension to tank flips on Zanzibar, I messed around for countless
hours, experimenting with the various elements of the game and exploring every inch of Halo
2’s massive multiplayer maps—always hoping to reach places that seemed impossible to
get to.
Halo 2 is one of the first game I remember thinking, “Oh, it’d be cool to get up
there.”
and then actually being able to get up there, whether that be through platforming, vehicles
or glitches.
The sense of accomplishment I felt when I got to the top of something I probably shouldn’t
have been able to get on top of has informed how I approach roaming in an open-world, and
it is almost certainly why I spent so much time climbing everything in Breath of the
Wild.
One of the most special things about messing around in Halo 2’s multiplayer maps was
the fact that it felt like a communal experience.
The height of Halo 2’s popularity was at a time before YouTube, before it was easy
to have a tutorial showing players how to do stuff.
Meaning most people learned about the glitches from someone else, whether that be a friend
or some rando on XBox Live.
Shout out to ButterFlakes373.
Of course there were written guides on how to do the various glitches in Halo 2, but
in my personal experience and the experiences of my friends, we either figured stuff out
on our own or learned it directly from another person.
And there is a power in that.
I felt good when I shared knowledge about a map with someone else, and I was always
intrigued to learn more from other people.
All of this built a sense of communal discovery, and it felt like, in some regards, Halo 2’s
player base was united in curiosity.
That is until a lot of people used the game’s exploits in toxic ways.
Regardless, one of the things that makes Halo 2 so unique is that players felt like they
were a part of what made the game special.
Without players a lot of the game’s potential never would have been discovered, and that
is not typically the case with video games.
As a player, it made me feel like my opinions about the game had value because I had found
fun ways to play it differently than the developers and intended.
It got me to realize that players can bring so much to a game when given the tools to
do so.
That feeling of being a part of what makes a game tick is highly appealing to players
and since Halo 2, I’ve seen that side of gaming grow a fair bit.
Halo 3 built off its predecessor and created Forge, which opened a new realm of possibilities
for custom modes and maps, and many other titles have followed this trend.
A little game called Minecraft came out allowing people to build and goof off in a massive
world, and many also went off and created custom games and servers in order to experience
it how they wanted to.
Modding is more popular than ever and has brought new life to a ton of games.
Even the popularity of speedrunning and challenge runs seems to be tied to the idea of people
wanting to discover new ways to play a game.
Obviously there are many titles that have spurred this sense of creativity in players
and it has gotten them to consider what goes in to good game design.
Given the popularity of Halo 2, I think it influenced a lot of people at the time who,
like myself, could be considered a “filthy casual” to look at the potential of a game
differently.
To start thinking about what makes it fun and how the rules of it could be shifted to
better suit the group of people any given person plays with.
Halo 2 made me start actually thinking about game design instead of just taking everything
I saw on screen at face value.
It kindled my curiosity about what makes a game special, and that curiosity is why I
started making videos about games in the first place.
What I’m saying is blame Halo 2 for this channel.
Halo 2 came out at the perfect time for me.
I was at an age where I was just starting to think about things more critically, where
I was questioning everything.
I was in the optimal headspace to consider what could make a game more fun, and the tools
Halo 2 offered, let me branch out and have fun in ways I never would have thought to
before.
On the surface, Halo 2 is a game about killing stuff, but I will always remember it as one
where I searched for new ways to play, going from someone who played games just for fun
to someone deeply interested in a game’s design.
And that is how Halo 2 changed the way I looked at games.
Thank you for watching.
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