Halo & Bungie

In early 2001, I entered the fan community surrounding the video game Halo, which would eventually be released for the Xbox after a long and tumultuous development cycle. I have remained a part of the Bungie community in various guises and to various degrees ever since, though my actual connection to the game (and the later sequel) faded to casual interest.

Later Bungie, or rather a group of contracted studios, ported the original Halo to the PC and Macintosh. I picked up the Mac version and checked it out, finding it largely lackluster—on one hand essentially no different from the already-passé Xbox game, and on the other hand technically flakey and poorly ported. However, there was one essential difference: in this version, the Banshee, one of the user-controllable aircraft, was usable in online multiplayer.

I found myself fascinated with the Banshee, loving how it felt and how it behaved in the air. I had never much cared for it either way in the Xbox game, but then, you only could use it several times in the single-player campaign and not at all in multiplayer. Being able to really sink my teeth into it, and use it against others in online play, was a novel experience, and soon I found myself flying it constantly—indeed, I had essentially no interest in the game itself anymore, just in using the Banshee. Eventually I was playing for hours every day, on the same handful of maps (those with enough space and set up appropriately for flying), and getting pretty good at it.

At some point I was one of the better pilots online—not a patch on decent players outside of the Banshee, I could lose a pistol duel or grenade pitch-off like anyone else, but with my ride I could work magic. I loved it to death. Outside of this, I have never really been gifted at much; maybe competent at many things, but never the best in a competitive realm, at least nothing that interested me. It was a new experience.

I ended up writing some tutorial pieces that I posted to several community sites, discussing use of the Banshee. In part they were for me, as putting my tactics and methods into words helped me formulate and understand them better. In part it was just nice to share what I’d learned.

The only other thing I’ve done of note, aside from a large body of forum posts and other day-to-day bits and pieces, is a sizable quantity of Halo fan fiction contributed to the halo.bungie.org database. Fan fiction is one of the first things I did in the community, and one of the most important to me, though admittedly most people outside of the writerbase seemed to think the entire concept was a little goofy. But it helped me make leaps and bounds in my fiction writing, just as my time on the forums helped my expository writing in the same way. I’ve linked some of my better work below.

On the whole, the Bungie community has given me so much that it’s hard to quantify. You could say that, at such a formative period of my life, I’d have been affected no matter what I was doing, and that may be true; but the particular ways that these folks and activities influenced me are ones that I’m very glad about. I’m a better writer, a better communicator, a more mature person, a finer individual, a tolerable web designer, an experienced hand with online interactions (a skillset that has carried me even further, amongst other communities and sites, to learn and explore other fields and skills), and more. It’s a darned cool thing and the main reason that I’m so fond of such groups . . . and so emphatic that even “newbies,” young members, and “unpolished” folks be treated well when encountered in the digital ether. You can have a big effect on them. Honest.

Banshee Handling Articles

Other Banshee Video Clips

Halo PC Screenshots

Halo Fan Fiction