Journalist Bloomberg Jason Schreier announced that he is working on material related to the situation in the studio 343 Industries… So he reacted to comments from readers in Twitter…
“I don’t like to talk about the stories I’m working on until they are published, but yes, I’ve been interested in the situation at 343 Industries for a while now.” told Schreier.
Indoor studio Microsoft was in the spotlight after a press conference at which the gameplay of the shooter was presented Halo infinite… The video left many in disbelief because of the visuals, and some of the shots were taken to memes.
The shooter is positioned as a flagship project for Xbox series xbut it looks like it has lagged behind, even by the standards of the outgoing console generation, according to many. Prior to that, it was also known about the high turnover in the team of creators, which worried many gamers. And, apparently, the fears were justified.
Complete disaster
Of particular interest are reviews of 343 Industries experience written anonymously by former employees on the portal Glassdoor… So, a former software engineer said that the studio is having huge problems with the engine. Slipspace Engine and additional development tools. Game builds kept crashing and tests systematically failed for a variety of reasons.
He describes a situation where the build was stable for only a few hours, after which everything broke again. Because of this, the engineer was forced to postpone further work on the files due to another emergency. The studio was aware of the problems, but attempts to fix them led to new ones, which generated an endless loop.
Some of the complexity comes from terrible source code, but this is a common problem for large companies. What’s not so common is 343 Industries’ bid on contracted contractors. The employee was himself a contract worker, and he does not exclude that more than a third of the programmers worked on an hourly wage basis, and the situation among artists and designers is even worse.
With human resources, everything is pretty bad: there are about 12 vendors or “senior” programmers for one talented employee, who do not even know the basics of the technologies used, because of which they cannot improve anything.
Zero liability is 343 Industries’ main concern. There are absolutely incompetent people in the top management of the studio.who manage to avoid layoffs, although the games from the series Halo the audience is getting worse, and the company is in a state of chaos. This is reflected in the Halo Infinite builds, because there are no consequences after failures.
“Advice to management: take responsibility for the disaster you created and step down. Honestly, I don’t know if it is possible to save the project at this stage, if you just destroy everything and let the new team do the recovery,” he said engineer.
Too many contractors
If you study other reviews, you may stumble upon similar opinions. So, an employee who has worked for more than five years complains about problems with the technological base and the lack of feedback between management and employees, which would allow a sober assessment of the current state of the project.
Another anonymous person complains that about 38% of the work time is wasted due to incompetent bosses.
Apparently, the problems have been accumulating over the years, because veterans told the newcomers the same thing. Often times, team members are driven into a dead end by bad ideas, and management realizes this too late. And due to the fact that a significant part of employees work under contracts, there is a staff turnover. People are prevented from renewing their agreement after 18 months, and Microsoft is unable to provide full-time positions.
This is complicated by the fact that contractors are deprived of all the bonuses that are due to full-fledged team members. For example, some were left without paid leave. But do not forget that part of the salary has to be given to recruitment agencies.
“If Microsoft policy does not allow contractors to work for more than 18 months, then do not hire so many contractors,” the ex-designer said indignantly.
The working atmosphere in the studio is far from ideal. In order to achieve their own goals, the bosses responsible for the design of the story campaign are ready to spread rumors and frame colleagues, they also have “favorites”… The management does not draw conclusions from the “analysis of the flight”, although they do not skimp on the promises of the chiefs.
“Stop preaching ‘risk’ when the risk is only about repeating the mechanics of the best games on the market right now. The Halo games were amazing and unique experiences that allowed them to dominate the industry. It’s okay Halo remains Halo. honest: with this attitude, we feel like you’re trying to sell an experience that we don’t like, “said another former software engineer.
A third software engineer adds that there are structural problems at 343 Industries that are difficult to fix. The bosses have little understanding of how the studio works in day-to-day mode, and does everything to please the bosses from Microsoft.
Presumably, the problem with contractors extends to other internal divisions of the corporation. And this creates the main problem – the lack of continuity, because a person has only 18 months or less to complete the task.
Another ex-employee claims the studio is “technically bankrupt”: the code is overloaded with fixes, and the infrastructure is so fragile that employees have not been able to test new content for weeks.
The lack of additional communication channels also negatively affects the work – communication takes place by e-mail.
“Personally, I would recommend starting from scratch: at the moment there is too much debris to manage, and to minimize the amount of the project, which belongs to developers who do not have the right to vote in its development,” – stated in the description.
It’s worth noting that the reviews above were written in Q1 2023, so they clearly refer to Halo Infinite. However, they cannot be completely trusted, because we are talking about anonymous messages from people who no longer work in the studio and can take revenge on the employer. But it should be noted that all people write about the same thing: overloaded source code, staff turnover, and incompetent management.
Production hell
Blogger Insider Confirms Information about Crisis in 343 Industries Richard Masucci (YouTube channel ReviewTechUSA) who has worked on several projects Xbox Game Studiosincluding Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Age of empires IV and Halo infinite… He confirmed rumors that Infinite is in “production hell” right now.
The initial concept of the shooter was to allow players to explore the entire Halo as a whole: you could get from one end to the other on your own. The project was based on a graphics engine Unreal Engine 4, but in the end the team switched to Slipspace Engine, and the scale of the project was cut: now it is not a ring, but a set of several large “islands”. This is done in order to control the progress of the players, therefore forget about a full-fledged open world…
The transition to a new graphics engine has created a lot of problems, which was reflected in the recent demo. The video was originally prepared for E3 2023so it is about four months out of date.
The Halo Infinite build was launched on a special devkit codenamed Condor… This is a mid-range PC that developers use to work with tools, not gameplay demos. However, in the trailer shown a little later (apparently, we are talking about what is presented a little higher), the version of the shooter launched on the devkit was already demonstrated Scarlett (Xbox series x), so it used improved resolution, shadows, and so on.
Whether it is worth trusting all this information, it is still impossible to say 100%, although the same theses reinforce suspicion. And Schreier’s material should be the link.
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