Earlier this month 343 Studios announced that they would be trying a new tact with Halo; multiplayer in Halo: Infinite is going to be free to play.
Cue my college budget reaction... Followed by...
What would this mean for the Halo I know and love? Would things change? Fortunately, it appears that 343 did their homework, and they are not going the route of many Free to Play mobile games that optimize on finances. Instead, Halo: Infinite is set up to engage new users and widen the Halo diehard community.
The post that follows will use the ideas of capital as outlined by Malaby [1] to outline a few of my primary concerns around how a F2P system might have changed the experience alongside discussion of how 343 is heading off my concerns at the pass.
Can we start with the fancy hats? I remember back when I started playing multiplayer in Halo that I never had the coolest hat which was honestly just as well because it meant no one expected anything of me. Not only did I only play as a guest(1), which meant I could never actually have my own rank, but I never had anything to show for my progress. We had one Live account at home, and it was shared. Because of this, I was not able to take part in collecting cultural capital in the form of custom loadouts that could signal my expertise.
Having armor as a status symbol makes certain decisions easier within the multiplayer game universe. For example, if the Spartan with the flaming head came up and punched me for picking up the sniper, I wasn’t even mad. They were probably right on and going to do way more good with that than I was. If I had the ability to nab the Banshee before the enemy, I certainly would, but I would usually pass it off to the player who was better suited to use it than I was. I could pretend that these are moves of altruism, but it;s more akin to reciprocity where I’m expecting a win in return, or at the very least some cover fire while I try to make headway on the objective.
A shift to Free to Play often includes a “Pay to Play” (P2P) scenario where players can accelerate their ability to gain equipment and other artifacts (like cool armor) by pumping more real-world money into the game. While this is one thing when you’re vying for a top spot on a leaderboard, it’s another when you’re in a battle royale with other players, most of whom haven’t sold a kidney for the Christmas hat. Add in the potential for fancy equipment a ‘la the Warzone debacle of Roze Skin (made privy to me by another blog espousing Halo’s virtues), and I was worried for my safety.
I am already most likely to be used as a mobile spawn point for my Invasion partner. The increased likelihood of me dying, repeatedly from people who bought all the fancy stuff was bound to happen. Unfortunately, the degeneration of the status symbols also hold the potential of creating distrust in the system, and the system includes the players. If you can’t trust the artifacts that your teammates have, can you trust their competency with the power weapons? Doubtful.
Furthermore, the transition of "real world" money into the market capital of a game can greatly distort the power dynamic. It isn't a fair fight when some weapons greatly outperform others. In this way, the game begins to mimic the "real world" complete with privilege of being able to afford certain luxuries that perpetuate inequity in play.
343 seems to have headed this off at the pass by encouraging everyone to play their own game. By allowing players to progress their Battle Pass at their own pace with no expiration date, as well as assuring players that Battle Pass items will never appear in the store, Halo Infinite promises to level the proverbial playing field in terms of time and monetary investment [2].
Related to the ways we interact with perceived experts is the idea of social capital. While I am almost always playing split screen with my partner, we are very rarely in a party. We simply don’t know that many other people who play Halo. This is one of the challenging aspects of Halo as verbal communication seems to have fallen out of favor on the platform. Without a full party, it can be hard to get in sync with your team. Knowing who is going left and who is going right can make or break a match. Fortunately, the F2P model will allow more people to join in the fun. With a reduced buy-in threshold (reduced since you do still need to have Xbox Live Gold), it is likely that Halo Infinite will see a large growth in its fanbase.
343 is planning for those players who are coming back to Halo after a long-term hiatus as well as those who are brand new to the franchise. The plan is for an AI Academy to exist as a player training bootcamp [3]. This removes the failure to launch scenario of those players who have limited connections to the fandom of the established franchise, essentially bypassing the need for social capital.
References
[1] Malaby T. (2006). Parlaying Value: Capital in and Beyond Virtual Worlds. Games and Culture. 1(2):141-162. doi:10.1177/1555412006286688
[2]Mercante, Alyssa. (2021) Halo Infinite multiplayer is doing free-to-play the right way. https://www.gamesradar.com/halo-infinite-multiplayer-is-doing-free-to-play-the-right-way/.
[3] https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/news/inside-infinite-september-2021
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