• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Brad Sams: Bonnie Ross left 343 due to management reshuffle, Halo Infinites season 3 delay was the final straw

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Ultimately the buck stops with her. You can’t blame Spencer or Booty,

Blame, maybe not. But it reflects badly on their leadership that the ball got fumbled on such a key IP.

The way I see it, the Forza franchises are well run, but beyond that the rest is a real mixed-bag. And call me a fanboy all you like but I agree completely with Michael from NXG that their portfolio management generally is shockingly bad.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Me reading through the other thread, where people swore and bent over backwards to suggest Bonnie didn't get fired.

seriously-jt.gif
Which one?

This one?

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/anot...3i-david-burger-veteran-since-halo-4.1641451/
R.3bc24614f6ce2c39d6a92fa74197261a
 
Last edited:

Roni

Gold Member
A restructure needed to happen. Something is definitely going on with 343i. Hopefully this means more frequent updates for Halo Infinite
The same thing happening in pretty much every company: the peter principle.
 

SCB3

Member
It means a lot in game development actually.

Do well and most of the credit is yours. Do bad and all the blame is yours.

You have your Miyamoto, Todd Howards, Hideki Kamiya, Niel Druckmann etc take the praise and the fall.
Iwata famously did not take a bonus and gave himself a pay decrease because of the Wii U failing

To think Bungie we’re up for sale not too long ago, imagine giving Halo back to them!
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Blame, maybe not. But it reflects badly on their leadership that the ball got fumbled on such a key IP.

The way I see it, the Forza franchises are well run, but beyond that the rest is a real mixed-bag. And call me a fanboy all you like but I agree completely with Michael from NXG that their portfolio management generally is shockingly bad.
I take it you mean Microsoft?
Their portfolio management is shockingly bad??
Beyond overpromising with Halo Infinite.....what exactly have they been shockingly bad at?
Hell what would you even call the mixed bags?

Forza Horizon 5
Gears 5
Hivebusters
Ori
Flight Sim
Tell Me Why
Minecraft Dungeons
Sea of Thieves
Gears Tactics
Age of Empires 4
ADF
Psychonauts 2 - Not really theirs.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
I wonder how many billions "empowering women in the workspace" has cost big tech companies thus far?

I mean if they are good then fair enough. But anything other than a meritocracy is going to be a -EV play. It's inevitable.
So you're saying it's only because she's a woman and not that it could be that she's just a bad manager?
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
I don't understand according to GAF this was 2021's GOTY, why would they need to completely restructure the management for a game which by NeoGAF's account was... let me get the picture...

1XZH5tS.jpg


A classic great modern retro nobug buggy fun open tight coop calm tense fps adventure...

I mean she should have got a promotion it was so good no one could even agree what it was for GOTY, some time travelers even went back to vote after playing the coop portion of the game (not split screen I assume)

And yes I love bringing up this word map because despite all that no one ever voted based on "content"
 
Last edited:
So you're saying it's only because she's a woman and not that it could be that she's just a bad manager?

No, I didn’t say that.

Microsoft made a big fuss about giving a woman one of the top jobs. And also Bonnie herself has done countless interviews talking about diversity and such. In fact it’s all she seemed to speak about when interviewed about Halo.

She is obviously not great at the job. My point was she was given the position (very publicly) because she was a woman, and not based purely on merit. They didn’t fire her because she is a woman, they hired her because she is a woman.
 
Last edited:

Topher

Gold Member
Genuine theoretical question: Let's say you're the team leader and you're being asked to pull off a live service model in addition to a full sized open campaign. Over the course of development you're realizing it isn't feasible for the window of time you're given(either due to staff size or development time) and you go to your publisher to let them know, but you are then told 'No, they have to be done and released on this date, that's final. Also, fix up the graphics again too.' What is the optimal path in this situation?

No idea. 343 has had many many years so I’m not buying any narrative they didn’t have enough time.
 
Last edited:

Azurro

Banned
Yes, fair enough. But going all in on “we are empowering women”, then pulling the plug on them at the first fault is not a good look either.

As we now see, hiring to fill gender quotas or whatever instead of merit can get very messy. And that is probably why they have not acted sooner because it’s a woman they made a big fuss about when putting her in a top job at Xbox.

It wasn't the first fault, no? I'm not an Xbox fan, but there were multiple issues with various Halo titles right? Plus also the previous ones from what I gather were not up to the standard the Bungie ones had. It's incredible she was at the job that long, I didn't even know she was there for diversity reasons, but if that's right, then it makes sense.
 

ZehDon

Gold Member
I mean, yeah - but I don't feel the need to gloat. Halo Fans wanted her gone, and she's gone. What more do people want?
 
It wasn't the first fault, no? I'm not an Xbox fan, but there were multiple issues with various Halo titles right? Plus also the previous ones from what I gather were not up to the standard the Bungie ones had. It's incredible she was at the job that long, I didn't even know she was there for diversity reasons, but if that's right, then it makes sense.

Halo hasn’t been the same ever since Bungie left. But that’s some big boots to fill and I don’t think they made a real attempt to do so.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
The fix for Halo is pretty simple

1. Spin off MP to GaaS with a cadence of regular content drops

2. Have a dedicated SP team that spends 3-4 years making something spectacular. Reboot it into a more mysterious and isolated adventure that has more diverse gameplay systems and pacing. No more cornball characters
 
No idea. 343 has had many many years so I’m not buying any narrative they didn’t have enough time.
It's less of me trying to excuse anyone, and more of me trying to understand the situation more or put myself in similar shoes. It's very easy to blame one side and one person but I think Clear Clear 's post has a very good point that there may be more to this.

Edit: We simply don't know when they went from conceptual phase to actual implementation, and a lot of publishers will throw developers under the bus by announcing something way, way too soon(when things are still in conceptual phase) to make it seem to fans that a game has been in development for years and years when that simply wasn't the case. All of the leaks and research done on Cyberpunk, Overwatch, and FF7Remake proved this can happen time and time again.
 
Last edited:
I don't blame her one bit. I think 343i did an amazing job in a challenging set of circumstances, one of which the incredible pressure to launch with the console or bust. Once that initial delay happened, a 2 year delay simply would have demolished the Xbox brand and seriously hurt Game Pass. The decision to launch when they did was the correct one.

Bonnie Ross made sure Halo: Master Chief Collection lived up to its full potential. They didn't abandon it on her watch, which many would have forgiven them for doing. That isn't just an ordinary game collection. It's the best ever game collection of its kind ever with so many additional connecting features and enhancements across the entire slat of past Halo games. Shame when Halo Infinite ends up proving just how wrong some people truly were the entire time, likely by the end of 2023, Bonnie won't be there to celebrate that huge turning of the corner. Everybody is free to have their opinions, but to me 343i under her leadership saved Halo as a franchise. Under Bungie it wasn't being treated in those last few games like the massive juggernaut I felt it was. It was a great game, but it seemed stuck in so many original xbox paradigms, especially with relation to how the campaigns were done. Halo just didn't feel like as big a sci-fi epic as it should be.

Mass Effect 1-3 and COD 4 had me feeling like, "Halo needs to feel like it's this grand, like the stakes are this big." For me Halo 4 did that, bringing more of the Halo novels into the games than ever before, and for that I will forever be thankful to Bonnie Ross and 343i for making THAT Halo a reality, and for bringing the type of depth to the Master Chief that had always been there in the best books. Halo 5 didn't stick the landing on story, but I sure loved what it attempted to do, and it dramatically improved Halo's core gameplay and the amount of verticality to be expected in the games.

What Halo 4 and 5 did right is they weren't afraid to dive headfirst into more of the Halo Universes' mysteries, more of the ancient civilization or secrets of the universe that were responsible for the Halo rings. We got shield worlds, prometheans, the didact, the librarian, Blue Team, a badass team of Spartan IVs led by Locke (a character I'm still a huge fan of), we got Laskey, we got deeper, more up to date Halsey stories, we got the UNSC Infinity, the forerunner domain, Zeta Halo, Atriox, the Banished, Jega 'Rdomnai, Escharum (best main Halo game villain to date), The Weapon, we got more RPG elements in Halo, an open world, way more boss fights, mini-bosses via high value targets, outposts assaults, forward operating bases.

What I love most about 343i under Bonnie Ross is they NEVER play it safe, love it or hate it. And going forward I hope that mentality does not change. I even loved the squad commands of Halo 5, and hope they eventually make a return. So, all in all, for 343i's body of work, the metacritics of what they've done under her watch is there for all to see, and it's an impressive body of work they should be proud of. I may not like how Bonnie Ross was dealt with, but I will always respect what she has done for Halo, and I'm as excited for 343i and the future of Halo as I've ever been, and that Halo Infinite Campaign is what makes me so damn confident. That ambition in the campaign was meant to be the "dialed back" vision. I can't wait to see the full fledged plan when everything is coming together for them right with timing.
 
It’s wild to me that people can stand to use Resetera. You’re not allowed to discuss Hogwarts Legacy, Colin Moriarty, and a bunch of other stuff, you’re not allowed to have an opinion really about anything of importance. It’s just crazy to have a forum for discussion but not allow any discussion.

It's just woke gone crazy, and taken too far. Someone says or does 1 thing some people may not like, or heaven forbid is loosely associated with someone who says or does 1 thing, sometimes not even anything actually bad, and it's like a virtual book burning over there. Whacky.

What separates those people from the crazy whacky people who did book burnings of Harry Potter books in the late 90s because they thought "J.K. Rowling is teaching our children witchcraft"? Seems like the same thing to me.
 
Last edited:
Jebus. How do the mods over there survive in the real world?

I gotta keep it real. That same thing happens over here, too. You showcase a tiny bit of backbone in a response to somebody or call it it as you see it, and you're getting a warning over inappropriate behavior. Seems kinda tame and out of step for the kind of discourse I see commonly allowed on here, and I'm certain I never step to deeply into disrespect when having discussions, but the way it's moderated you seem like you have to really cater to specific poster's feelings here or you're pretty much hit with a ban.

But when a certain type of user who maybe has a different set of preferences gets abused and disrespected, there's a higher degree of tolerance and acceptability for that. So neither side is flawless on moderation, and that's just me being honest. And attempts to directly address it with moderation never seems to generate a response or any discourse that doesn't come off seeming like a direct threat of shut up or you're gone. So yea.
 

Matsuchezz

Member
I take it you mean Microsoft?
Their portfolio management is shockingly bad??
Beyond overpromising with Halo Infinite.....what exactly have they been shockingly bad at?
Hell what would you even call the mixed bags?

Forza Horizon 5
Gears 5
Hivebusters
Ori
Flight Sim
Tell Me Why
Minecraft Dungeons
Sea of Thieves
Gears Tactics
Age of Empires 4
ADF
Psychonauts 2 - Not really theirs.
Yiuk!! No wonder why they bought Bethesda and Activision.
 
Last edited:

GHG

Member
I gotta keep it real. That same thing happens over here, too. You showcase a tiny bit of backbone in a response to somebody or call it it as you see it, and you're getting a warning over inappropriate behavior. Seems kinda tame and out of step for the kind of discourse I see commonly allowed on here, and I'm certain I never step to deeply into disrespect when having discussions, but the way it's moderated you seem like you have to really cater to specific poster's feelings here or you're pretty much hit with a ban.

But when a certain type of user who maybe has a different set of preferences gets abused and disrespected, there's a higher degree of tolerance and acceptability for that. So neither side is flawless on moderation, and that's just me being honest. And attempts to directly address it with moderation never seems to generate a response or any discourse that doesn't come off seeming like a direct threat of shut up or you're gone. So yea.


Here We Go Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
 
Top Bottom