Chronique:Halo Bulletin 23/10/2013
23 octobre
Original
Pieing is the act of throwing a delicious confectionery delight at a person or people, and can often be an act of political disagreement. Or, if you work at 343 Industries, it can also be a loving, philanthropic act in which you meticulously aim and forcefully chuck desserts at your co-workers to raise money for charity. Just last week we held our very own pie-throwing event, where employees could purchase a pie, throw it at someone's face, and the proceeds were donated to a very worthy cause.
Earlier in the week, an email was sent to the entire studio notifying everyone that they could anonymously nominate someone to be hit in the face with a pie. This excited many, and also resulted in several employees sending an immediate follow-up mail letting everyone know that they would be sick that day. Come Friday morning, a hit list of would-be pie recipients hit our inboxes, and as some started to make pies in the kitchen, others crept away to their cars and left work several hours early. In retrospect, I cannot blame them.
The afternoon kicked off with bs angel announcing the rules of the event (Always, always aim for the face!), and wide-eyed team members lining up one after another to get a pie (or seven) thrown in their general direction. Some strategically wore coveralls, while others held up signs threatening to do away with our budget, or worse, Friday morning donuts. Others actually went home. I wasn't kidding.
Upon the conclusion of the festivities, we did what any mature working group of adults would do with leftover pies. Oh yes, an outdoor food fight battle royale commenced. This resulted in some people slipping in pie, others being covered in pie, and those with electronics and small children heading for the hills. A few employees washed off in the bathroom, only to head back outside and get pelted with a brand new pie (after seeing this, I decided it was best to not go back outside). Most drove home covered in sugar and likely did permanent damage to the interiors of their vehicles.
In the end, we made a pretty huge mess. In fact, I believe some unlucky employees are still pressure washing the studio walls and parking lot as we speak.
While it was one of the most fun and memorable (and maybe a little crazy) things to happen within the walls of the studio, I'm even prouder to say that the funds raised during those few hours of unbridled fun were put towards sponsoring some very special Make-A-Wish Foundation wishes. We have had the privilege and honor of fulfilling wishes in the past, and thanks to last week's events, we now get to be the benefactor of some as well.
If you think our particular method in madness sounds like a slightly ridiculous way to accomplish our goal, you're absolutely correct. If you think that people will jump at the opportunity to throw a pie at their manager or co-worker, you're also correct. Thankfully, our efforts were not only put towards making one another look absurd (this is pretty typical), but also towards a good cause.
Naturally, the Matchmaking team took time out of their busy schedule to pie and be pied. Thankfully, they also found the time to put together an update for next Monday. So, let's check out what's coming to Halo 4 next week.
Matchmaking Playlist Update
We've got some new stuff coming to Halo 4 Matchmaking on Monday, and one of these is Neutral Flag CTF. The tug-o-war game type has been a favorite in previous Halo titles, and we're looking forward to its Halo 4 premiere. If you haven't yet had a chance to play Neutral Flag CTF, let's break it down.
Neutral Flag
Neutral Flag uses the same map layouts as currently offered in the Capture the Flag playlist, but places a single flag in a neutral (central) position on the map, and either team is able to capture the flag by bringing it back to their own base. This generally results in a fantastically chaotic rush to the middle of the map, with one team frantically running the flag through the smoke and gunfire back to their base. After a flag is captured, it is returned to the neutral position, so be sure to time when you capture the flag!
We'll be offering Neutral Flag on the following maps. Check out each map's image for the location of the neutral flag stand.
Pitfall
Monolith
Skyline
Rangarok
Exile
Additionally, we've removed Abandon and Meltdown from the Capture the Flag playlist due to community feedback and gameplay flow, and reorganized the voting options to prominently feature Neutral Flag. We hope you enjoy this game type and look forward to hearing your feedback on the game type, map selection, and more.
Community Forge Ricochet
The Halo 4 Ricochet Forge Contest presented by Certain Affinity and the Community Cartographers has come to a close! Over the past few weeks, aspiring Forgers have submitted their finest creations for consideration, and the top six finalists have been selected and will be featured in the upcoming Community Forge Ricochet playlist. While I've had the pleasure of dancing on these community created canvases, I recently sat down with NOKYARD, one of the Community Cartographers, to gain insight into the Ricochet Forge Contest and learn about each of the six maps that will be available in the playlist.
- Hey, NOKYARD here.
- One of my favorite tasks as a Community Cartographer is to sift through contest submissions and assign them a preliminary pass/fail grade based on their adherence to the contest rules. You may think sorting maps would be mind numbingly boring but I take great delight in cracking open a freshly baked Forge creation to see how the builder interpreted the recipe.
- In past contests, more builders got the recipe wrong than got it right so narrowing the field was a fairly straightforward process. That wasn't the case with this contest. Out of all of the maps that were submitted, only 30 were disqualified for being mini-games, disqualified for technical infractions like not supplying Ricochet Goals or not featuring basic necessities like Respawn Points, or were sent packing for other rules-related transgressions. This left many, many fully functioning Ricochet maps to test. Night after night, we played your creations, discovering some creative and impressive maps along the way.
- The most difficult phase of any contest is narrowing the field down to the final handful, so we applied the original contest specifications to each entrant. Maps which best adhered to the guidelines were moved forward until only six remained. The six finalists in the Halo 4 Ricochet Forge Contest are:
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