Winner

By Matthew Burns

In the largest conference room at Bungie, solid shades were drawn over the windows in favor of dramatic track lighting aimed at a long conference table. About 20 Xbox 360s were arranged in a ring along its walls. Flat-panel televisions glowed blue in neat rows, a few softly looping the Halo 3 menu screen’s somber monks. Just a few feet outside stood fogged-glass-and-brushed-metal access-key doors over gunmetal gray flooring, and at the front desk, uniformed security guards vigilantly protected the interior from unauthorized access, giving it the hermetic, charged feeling of a top-secret research-and-development project.

Every afternoon, this space hosted a playtest of a not-yet alpha version of Halo 3. The playtest was open to all employees, and participating was part of the job. Although I had described myself as more of a single-player guy when I joined the company a few months earlier, I didn’t want to recoil from multiplayer. It seemed responsible to be at least decent at the part of the game that many people—including not a few people at Bungie—felt was the only one that truly mattered. 

Today, we would be playing Capture the Flag. As the rest of the day’s players filtered in, chatting and joking, I picked a profile from the test kit’s list of floridly offensive names. (The studio later issued instructions to its employees to enter only sanitized, serial-number-style handles, so that visitors on tours wouldn’t be subjected to the team’s euphemistic creativity.) I happened to be sitting next to someone particularly brilliant, even by Bungie’s engineering standards, but who was also friendly and approachable—we'd already had several fascinating conversations since I'd started at Bungie.

We exchanged greetings, and after Halo’s trademark racetrack-style four beeps sounded simultaneously on 16 Xbox 360s, a blocky, unfinished version of a multiplayer map faded in from black. The genial mood quickly evaporated. People began to shout at each other in clipped, repeating signals: “By the flag, by the flag,” or “In the center, center.” They questioned the game’s judgment anytime they died with a “What!” or an “Oh, bullshit!” (An odd comeback evolved for the killer—“bull-true!”—and later became a medal in the game.)

I didn’t make any noise myself. I was dying so often, there was no reason to call attention to it. I couldn’t attack or defend effectively; I did nothing but empty clips in a futile effort to help my team, and laugh nervously at the totality of my incompetence.