It’s depressing knowing that from here on out Halo is going to be made by AI and indentured third world servants
Just when you thought the games couldn’t get any worse 🫣
@Momentuum_ Likewise dude, you were always one of the coolest mfkers on here and I loved seeing your name pop up in my feed
hope we cross paths one day, maybe HWC 2030 lol
Found this while I was cleaning
Even though most of these people ruined Halo it was still nice to be recognized.
I got halo 2 twenty years ago for my 13th birthday and like many players at that time I discovered the large online community that existed for Halo. I was an avid cyber athlete and competed in counterstrike 1.6 before getting an Xbox so I already had esports pro gamer ambitions. The thought that you could play video games, for your job, was mind blowing to me. I also saw the potential in the future of esports, It felt like witnessing the birth of pro football or baseball, and we were apart of it.
I played H2 all day everyday, that summer I think I maybe went outside 3 times. I quickly found MLG customs, joined a few random online teams, and I felt confident that I was good enough to compete. I wanted to go to events but I was too young to go on my own, and my parents didn’t support me. I even wrote up sponsorship pitch letters but this was a pre-YouTube world, and I was a little ass kid. So unfortunately competing at Halo 2 seemed like an unattainable dream, it wasn’t meant to be.
But that was okay, Halo 3 was right around the corner and H2 was Fortnite levels of culturally relevant. Surely I would get another chance, so I asked for Xbox 360 for Christmas, like most kids my age. But I didn’t get it. In fact shortly I wouldn’t even get a place to live, the economy collapsed and I would spend the next 4 years couch surfing and occasionally staying in roach hotels. I didn’t sleep in a bed again until my first day of college.
But I still always loved Halo, and eventually years later, around 2013, I got a 360 and halo 4. And I loved it, despite all the flaws, despite all the valid criticisms, I loved it. Because it was halo and I was finally back doing what I always wanted to do. When I came back there was 250 people watching the grand finals of a Halo 4 “major” lan tournament. Halo went from being the biggest esport in North America to a complete after thought. 250 viewers…
Fast forward a few years later and I’ll never forget this moment, I was sleeping in a friends closet when Halo MCC was announced. Finally Halo 2 would be back, I could maybe start again where I left off all those years ago.
I bought an Xbox One, MCC and started practicing my ass off. HCS was founded shortly thereafter and get this, the first open tournament is going to be a Halo 2 tournament. I finally had my chance at proving myself and getting to experience what it’s like to play in the passion pit. But then they changed the first event to H2 Anniversary instead… I was devastated, because H2A isn’t halo 2… it’s H4 with lipstick slapped on it.
So I quit trying to compete, even though I’m one of the few sickos who enjoyed Halo4 it’s not halo 2, not even close. But I still loved Halo and wanted to contribute, I thought to myself I could either be an average Halo pro or one of the best content creators, so I did that instead.
I noticed that while Halo had an official esports league there were still a lot of gaps that needed to be filled. No one was sharing schedules, no one was posting scrim results, or stats, or any necessary shoulder content that every traditional sport needs to be successful.
So I did all that, and I gained traction on twitter which motivated me to take on bigger projects. I started FantasyHCS, initially just with spreadsheets, until I joined up with a dev team and created a standalone fully functional fantasy halo website based on tournament stats. FanrasyHCS would later be acquired by Logitech who proceeded to do nothing with it lol…
After that I eventually wondered, “who was the best halo player ever?” So I researched every major tournament result and compiled them into an easily digestible spreadsheet. It took me weeks to research, format, and proofread all the data. We finally had every placing for every player ever recorded, in one place. It was a big success and it even inspired a similar resource for the CoD community. This was HCS’s inspiration for the notorious “Top 25 players list.” The same list that 343 admittedly paid someone to plagiarize my work, but whatever, that’s standard operating practice in this industry apparently.
Speaking of plagiarism gfinity would later go on to copy one of my tweets word for word lol… this lead to me getting the chance to start and run my own Halo esports website. We would have news, stats, fantasy, analysis all that good stuff. I would get paid a salary, I’d have a team of people who built a similar website in an adjacent game, it sounded like a really cool opportunity. So I took it, quit my job, and two months after Halo Infinite released less than 5k people were playing the game on steam. 343 did it again, they dropped another wet fart on everyone’s heads. 3/3 industries. We carried on for a year, or should I say I carried on for a year because my team disappeared and I was left to run an entire website by myself. I had to watch every tournament, write every article, produce all the social media content, record and manually input all the stats into the website, try and find partners, it was an unmanageable workload for anybody, but I tried my best, I would sit at my computer for 18 hours a day 7 days a week trying to make that shit work, but eventually I got burned out and stopped caring. It was like trying to run an entire cruise ship entirely by yourself, it wasn’t possible but I tried
Once that was done I didn’t really want to make halo content, for free, anymore. No disrespect to anybody still in the trenches but what was the point honestly. I was already established and the potential juice for me wasn’t worth the squeeze. I’ve already made content solely for likes/retweets, and quite frankly in a lot of ways Halo is still in the same spot it was 10 years ago when I came back during the H4 era. We might have 50,000 viewers (totally legitimate btw) but in reality there’s maybe 3,000 people playing the game on steam and on a good day it’s the 30th most played game on Xbox. The halo franchise is in the same spot it was when Halo 4 released, the only real difference is now have an official esports league.
I love watching halo esports, the talent our players display is incredible, and it was achieved through a lifetime of dedication to their craft. The players carry and have carried Halo esports for years and they are truly what make it special. Shoutout LVT for saving halo esports, literally, they keep our scene alive every week. If Microsoft had any sense they would hire them to produce all of their esports broadcasts. Also shoutout HaloDataHive, they really don’t get enough credit or praise for what they’ve built for the esports scene.
So yeah that’s it, I haven’t tweeted in a few years and I honestly didn’t even realize it. This website is vile brain rot garbage so I try not to come here much, my timeline doesn’t even show me halo content anymore… the other issue is a lot of this websites engagement simply isn’t real, and I get zero dopamine trying to farm likes from robots posing as imaginary non existent people
I appreciate everyone who read this, it’s cool being somewhat known in the gaming community, I can’t count the number of times people have recognized my name while playing other games and said hi, and that feels really good. When I see how stats are presented on stream, on social media, I can tell I had an influence on the scene. The fact that people I looked up to as a kid know who I am, and think I did some cool shit, means the world to me. In my mind those are my LAN wins, the impact I made on halo esports. I feel like I raised the bar and pushed the needle forward a liltle bit.
So the plan for now is chill and see what happens with the next Halo game.
If it’s good, if it’s worthwhile, I’ll be back making halo content again. If not I’m blessed enough to have other interests that I’ve discovered during this break and I’ll take everything I learned in halo and apply it there.
@HaloDataHive You are brilliant friend your time will come
Whether it be halo or some other game dev that notices and appreciates what you bring to an Esport
@DavidSsandman Likewise brother I’m still a huge fan of your photography, you are definitely one of the best contributors in the scene, and I couldn’t imagine HCS without you
@Shyway@MarineDotCom So the hackers went on your reddit account and visited rape fantasy subreddits, shyway.... nobody with atleast half a fucking brain believes that happened
Because that's not what happened, that's a (bad) lie
HCS was right to ban you, frankly, where there's smoke, there's fire
@HuNteR_Jjx Viewbotting is the only reason why HCS still exists
Do we really think 50k people are watching the game when less than 2k concurrent play it daily? Tashi has been cheating his ass off for years
@JakeSucky because respawning is quintessential and a core tenant of Halo's fundamental gameplay
(and they tried this before and it sucked)
Keep it out of tournaments and we're good, this game is cooked anyway, let the matchmaking kids play their recycled slop if they want
@Smiley_Police 343 rebranded to HALO studios
(and they re-announced their switch to unreal engine)
Overall a good change, their reputation sucked and 'Halo studios' has better name recognition
also they aren't using Blam anymore which is like 25 years old
@DynamicsRJG Exactly, it's just the same song and dance
If releasing trailers was game development, Halo Studios would be the greatest company of all time
Just look at Infinite, that had a *cool* trailer too and we all know how that turned out
@KmartKnows @Mad_Magic321@HCSProTalk Exactly, I never even listened to the podcast
I just read the DMs (that he leaked lol)
The "collation of halo" or whatever was a stupid idea anyway, nothing was preventing these groups from collaborating to begin with
it's just a weird power grab by some bedroom-org clan kids
@ANCHrGG Respectfully, you have no idea what you’re talking about
“Players are literally creating league rules”
Thats how its always been, for over 20 years
and thats how it should be, let the people actively participating decide what they enjoy
We don’t tell you how to play grifball
@Halo They turned comments OFF for an UPDATE post 🤣
Imagine being gifted one of the world's largest IPs, >$1B in budget, 10+ years of chances, and turning it into the 40th most-played game on Xbox
Fuck 343 and anyone who defends this dogshit company