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Ex-Halo Infinite developers criticise "incompetent leadership" at Microsoft

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Carmelozi

Carmelozi

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
2,158

View: https://twitter.com/Witdarkstar/status/1615866682521833474?s=20

View: https://twitter.com/Witdarkstar/status/1615870908950007808?s=20

View: https://twitter.com/heytred/status/1615817510716313600?

Reminder for those who missed the news, per Eurogamer:

At the end of last year, Halo Infinite's multiplayer creative director Tom French left 343 Industries.


Today, we reported the departure of Halo veteran and head of creative Joseph Staten from 343 Industries, as he returns to Xbox Game Studios Publishing.
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Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/ex-halo-infinite-developers-criticise-incompetent-leadership-at-microsoft

Seems there was a lot of management issues at 343, it's unfortunate that it impacted the devs. Hopefully the new management will fare better.
 
Kyoufu

Kyoufu

Member
Oct 26, 2017
16,582
I don't think you'd have to work there to tell that 343i had poor management.
 
Xando

Xando

Member
Oct 28, 2017
27,286
Who could've seen 343 management being a mess coming?

They had issues for as long as i can remember
 
Hyun Sai

Hyun Sai

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,562
It doesn't matter at Microsoft. They can't make it work, they just buy (CoD), easy peasy.
 
Helix

Helix

Mayor of Clown Town
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Jun 8, 2019
23,738
I'll just post what I posted on the other thread.

Helix said:
343 being built on the back of passionate contractors is just so absurd, you would assume the biggest franchise they fucking own could get some stability by keeping most of the head count full-time. They really need to fuck outta here with this contractor BS because it's actively hurting devs and funny enough even MS as they don't get to retain players if the game is fucked.
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bottom line, 343 and MS' management of it is a shit show and I hope they get their act together.
 
cw_sasuke

cw_sasuke

Member
Oct 27, 2017
26,344
Why bother fixing the things with the big studios you already set up and own when you are expanding and acquiring new ones every couple month ?

Its a bummer but it feels like the priorities where off all the time when it comes to 343 and reintroducing Halo to this generation.
Wrexis said:
It's rare you see Microsoft developers saying leadership is incompetent though.
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Well ex-developer...doubt anyone who is still being paid by them would wanna jump out like that.
 
Fezan

Fezan

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,274
This was so obvious to anyone with how much talent 343 had. Biggest issue for 343 was management and people who were handling the lore
 
Mopr3me

Mopr3me

Banned
Jan 10, 2022
465
Carmelozi said:

View: https://twitter.com/Witdarkstar/status/1615866682521833474?s=20

View: https://twitter.com/Witdarkstar/status/1615870908950007808?s=20

View: https://twitter.com/heytred/status/1615817510716313600?

Reminder for those who missed the news, per Eurogamer:



Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/ex-halo-infinite-developers-criticise-incompetent-leadership-at-microsoft

Seems there was a lot of management issues at 343, it's unfortunate that it impacted the devs. Hopefully the new management will fare better.
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Crossposting from another thread: Yeah I'm sorry but his "they set Halo up for failure" doesn't make any sense at all. Microsoft set up a studio dedicate to Halo and has fully backed the top industry talent acquisition at 343, kept investing in the Master Chief collection that 343 botched, kept investing in Halo: Infinite after its emabarassing E3 showing to make it seem somewhat current gen. It's 343 that is lacking in this case. It's 343 that developed a live-service game where apparantly it isn't so easy to develop content for. If this is the self-reflection of an average 343-employee then no wonder why Infinite is in the state it currently is. Then again, this person only worked on Halo from Jan'15 to March '17, which makes it all the more baffling to make such a general statement really.

Layoffs are horrible on a personal and professional level, but let's not use it as an opportunity to fault MS of everything that has ever gone wrong. Especially in the case of Halo.

So, is the leadership at Microsoft critisized or the leadership at 343? That is a very important distinction.
 
Wesker

Wesker

Member
Aug 3, 2020
1,862
We knew. We always knew. 343i is at fault here though.
Staten was brought on board to righ the ship. Which he did in a good way, I think.

GIve Halo a couple of years and reboot the whole thing. I'd be down with Pablo Schreiber playing him. He was a good chief in the show.
 
DrFreeman

DrFreeman

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May 9, 2020
2,661
Helix said:
many including one of the posters later clarify that they feel MS and XGS are mismanaged too
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Yeah that's what I got from these tweets too, that it's the parent company's management that they have an issue with. So I found it odd that the first few replies took it to mean 343 itself
 
Remark

Remark

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,542
The Contractor thing has always been popular at MS. Getting flipped over there is damn near impossible. Crazy they would do that for game dev where you REALLY need people with knowledge of the backend to stay around and not have to go through the process of constantly training/bringing people up to speed.
 
Patitoloco

Patitoloco

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Oct 27, 2017
23,614
Kyoufu said:
XGS seems woefully mismanaged to me.
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In a way I agree, and it's a shame.

Their mixed hands off but very directed objective-based approach doesn't seem to be working well IMO, many projects are rumored (who knows where the truth lands, but too much noise) to have issues, or have released with issues.

I don't really understand what's causing it though.
 
cw_sasuke

cw_sasuke

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Oct 27, 2017
26,344
Mopr3me said:
So, is the leadership at Microsoft critisized or the leadership at 343? That is a very important distinction.
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I mean MS set up the studio to deliver and produce Halo content - so they signed off on every one who runs the ship there.
Also plenty of other XGS studios had issues in terms on delivering content on time or in the expected quality in the last couple years.

So yeah MS and 343 are at fault, but its not limited to 343 even though they seem to receive the biggest backlash because they are one of the few big MS studios that managed to ship a large title in the last 2 years.
 
cartoon_soldier

cartoon_soldier

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Oct 27, 2017
8,622
The World
There is a reason a lot of 343 leadership was replaced once Staten took over.

Not sure about larger XGS issues, all studios are otherwise thriving in their own ways.
 

Dekim

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,300
Microsoft isn't blameless for the state 343i is in. It's their responsibility to put in competent leadership in 343i for the studio to succeed. That they failed to do so is on them.
 

Scruffy8642

Member
Jan 24, 2020
2,849
Sounds like a systemic issue for MS. Very few of their teams are delivering full stop, let alone quality products. To the surprise of no one, managing like 50 teams is proving a mighty difficult task with failures here and there. Shame really.
 
Kyoufu

Kyoufu

Member
Oct 26, 2017
16,582
Patitoloco said:
In a way I agree, and it's a shame.

Their mixed hands off but very directed objective-based approach doesn't seem to be working well IMO, many projects are rumored (who knows where the truth lands, but too much noise) to have issues, or have released with issues.

I don't really understand what's causing it though.
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It's not a new phenomena really. Xbox's first party division hasn't had the best of times for around a decade now. Cancellations and/or reboots in key projects hasn't given me much hope.

What's even worse though is Phil Spencer throwing money at the problem by acquiring whole publishers instead of fixing XGS's development pipeline at its core.
 

Yoga Flame

Alt-Account
Banned
Sep 8, 2022
1,674
This is mostly 343i issue, the have the largest head count and seemed to have spent an insane amount on Infinite and alot of that was course correcting after they got rid of seniors and brought in Staten. Sure some could be on MS for trusting 343i to deliver but from the tweets they're specifically referencing 343 (not going to take the 'Halo set up for failure' seriously).

People wanted MS to get involved and shakeup 343i, they seem to be doing just that.
 
DominicanGlory

DominicanGlory

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Jul 26, 2018
4,675
I'm gonna say my two cents: To me it seems like the entirety of XGS is woefully mismanaged and needs some form of restructuring yesterday. They have a ton of studios and they can't seem to get anything out the door, inxile, NT, Obsidian were all bought five years ago and have pretty much nothing to show for it. I know development takes time but... There seems to be a pattern here. Fable, Avowed, Everwild, State of Decay 3 were announced ages ago, hell... Senua's Saga was revealed with the XSX in 2019 and seems like a 2024 (hopefully) release at this point.

Think about how many big games have been announced, delayed, hyped and delivered in that same time frame. Horizon FW, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, FFXVI, God of War R, Suicide Squad, Dead Space and other HUGE releases will have been announced, marketed and released before the reveal game for your next gen console.

They're getting bailed out hard by Bethesda with Deathloop, Starfield and Redfall and we all know those were mostly developed while BGS was still independent, I'm curious to see what their output is gonna look like in 5-7 years time once they fully develop under XGS management.

I think adding AB to that mix will produce an even bigger management problem but what the hell do I know?
 

Yoga Flame

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Sep 8, 2022
1,674
"Sounds like a systemic issue for MS. Very few of their teams are delivering full stop, let alone quality products"

In the year Halo, Forza Horizon 5 was released they won publisher of the year. So your quite off the mark.
 
Astandahl

Astandahl

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Oct 28, 2017
9,007
The only real well managed studio under MS in the last few years has been Playground. High quality games delivered in a relatively short timeframe.

The Coalition did also well, but their games were not even close to the peak of the original Gears trilogy.
 
StereoVSN

StereoVSN

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Nov 1, 2017
13,620
Eastern US
Remember, heavy contractor use is Microsoft's policy in general, and overall Xbox division in particular. That's not on the studio here.

Those 10K layoffs, for example, are only permanent employees as MS can (and does) let go contractors without notice.

So studio management was obviously an issue, but so is Xbox and MS approach. It clearly hasn't delivered well so far.
 
HeWhoWalks

HeWhoWalks

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Jan 17, 2018
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DominicanGlory said:
I'm gonna say my two cents: To me it seems like the entirety of XGS is woefully mismanaged and needs some form of restructuring yesterday. They have a ton of studios and they can't seem to get anything out the door, inxile, NT, Obsidian were all bought five years ago and have pretty much nothing to show for it. I know development takes time but... There seems to be a pattern here. Fable, Avowed, Everwild, State of Decay 3 were announced ages ago, hell... Senua's Saga was revealed with the XSX in 2019 and seems like a 2024 (hopefully) release at this point.

Think about how many big games have been announced, delayed, hyped and delivered in that same time frame. Horizon FW, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, FFXVI, God of War R, Suicide Squad, Dead Space and other HUGE releases will have been announced, marketed and released before the reveal game for your next gen console.

They're getting bailed out hard by Bethesda with Deathloop, Starfield and Redfall and we all know those were mostly developed while BGS was still independent, I'm curious to see what their output is gonna look like in 5-7 years time once they fully develop under XGS management.

I think adding AB to that mix will produce an even bigger management problem but what the hell do I know?
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Spot on.
 
Kyoufu

Kyoufu

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Oct 26, 2017
16,582
Astandahl said:
The only real well managed studio under MS in the last few years has been Playground. High quality games delivered in a relatively short timeframe.

The Coalition did also well, but their games were not even close to the peak of the original Gears trilogy.
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Doesn't seem like Fable development is going well for Playground though.
 
Casa

Casa

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Oct 25, 2017
9,501
What's most astounding is that this isn't happening at some smaller, less prominent studio but rather at MS's flagship studio. Halo is the face of the Xbox brand and their most prestigious IP. And yet it's been managed in such an incompetent way for years and they use contractors to do most of the work.

It's almost hard to believe how badly this has gone.
 
Astandahl

Astandahl

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Oct 28, 2017
9,007
Kyoufu said:
Doesn't seem like Fable development is going well for Playground though.
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We'll evaluate that when the game will be out.

I think they announced it way too early. A big open world RPG these days can take even 6 - 7 years with pre-production included, especially if you are targeting extremely high fidelity. Imagine if Sony announced GOW 2018 in 2013/2014 when it was in pre-production.
 
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julia crawford

julia crawford

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Oct 27, 2017
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Honestly, just Halo being expected one year before its actual release really did show a massive mishandling of the workload by mgmt.

DominicanGlory said:
They have a ton of studios and they can't seem to get anything out the door, inxile, NT, Obsidian were all bought five years ago and have pretty much nothing to show for it.
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Hum not sure where this sentiment is from. Obsidian recently released Grounded and Pentiment, and before that Outer wilds, which has a sequel in development, as well as Avowed, inXile released Wasteland 3 and a remaster of the original just two years ago.
 
Neutron

Neutron

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Jun 2, 2022
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I wonder if the people who design the XBox spine art keep getting churned over by the contractor curse too.
 
JahIthBer

JahIthBer

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Jan 27, 2018
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The contractor shit that MS pulls is worrying to me. I wouldn't want them to fire some of the talent left at Blizzard and replace them with some young folks on a 18 month contract.
 
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