- Obi Wan Stevobi
- |
- Exalted Mythic Member
Posted by: Jujubes
Posted by: ColdEmbrace
Posted by: Obi Wan Stevobi
Question about render to video, stats, API, etc.
Not too long ago, you said that Bungie pro would make it's return someday. Not too long ago, 343 also announced that it would discontinue API support. Now, surely a few people at Bungie understand how big web content and stats have become for the Halo community. I can think of at least a dozen popular community sites built around advanced stat collection, reporting, and service records. These sites will have to go back to screen scraping stats, if they are even provided to the extent Bungie has. It may even mean the end of much of their functionality.
Now that the Halo community and subsequent fan sites are made to choose direction between the franchise they were built around, and the developer that built that franchise, is there anything you can say about future plans to add web features to your games? Did you find render to video worthwhile? Was making an advanced API worthwhile?
These are things that don't necessarily increase game sales, and I would assume that is why other developers do not put the time and effort into them that Bungie has, but they do strengthen the fan community. Has that community been important to you, and do you plan to keep expanding that support in the future? This is an excellent question that is well worth answering. Leave it to Microsoft to kill something awesome like the Bungie-era Halo stats API. I miss the Bungie-era Halo world already.
Well, the API was new to Reach, but Bungie at least turned a blind eye to site scraping, and it was their depth of service record reporting that made the stat sites so appealing anyway. It's something you simply can't do with most games. No one offers a service record like Bungie, let alone advanced features like online clip sharing and rendering. There are communities out there with tens and hundreds of thousands of users out there on Halo stats sites, and many tournament sites have started to take advantage of Bungie's stat reporting to track team and season stats, etc. I'm sure the devs and followers of those sites are eagerly waiting to find out what direction the sites now take. If 343 isn't going to offer the support that they depended on, they will be looking to whatever Bungie's next game is. I'm wondering if the level of service record support Bungie gave to Halo was an afterthought, or do they intend to make that kind of detailed attention to everything they make from now on.