: Microsoft shut down the stats API, claiming
: they didn't have the resources to do it.. but the work had already been
: done by Bungie and all they had to do was re-deploy the API servers. And
: they did.. but only for themselves for use with their app.

: Overnight, a wealth of apps were killed off and community challenge / game
: stat sites had to resort to screenscraping or shut down. Which is strange,
: since Microsoft now essentially had to pay for MORE bandwidth to handle
: the screenscrapers.

[...]

: But it feels that at some
: point, Microsoft and 343 shifted to a harsh "do it our way, or don't
: do it". They became heavily top down in how content makes it into
: Halo.

There are some things which people will do that you may not like, that may even be expensive for you but, that you cannot stop them from doing.

You can try to clamp down, make it difficult or impossible to do. But this is the incorrect approach. It costs you to implement these things for an utterly uncertain effect on revenue. You may think it will save you money, but then they might find another way around that costs you even more. You may turn off people to your product and create ill-feeling towards your company.

The correct approach, even if you don't like or understand what they're doing, is to give them the tools and systems necessary to do what they're doing anyway, but in a better way, maybe even under your supervision. You might even be able to bring it into your revenue stream with a fee of some kind. Now, you might not be able to actually make a direct profit but, you can at least start to offset your costs. Plus, you can now show it off as a feature and generate good-will for your forward-thinkingness as a company.

Let me give you the example of digital music downloads. For years people wanted digital copies, they had computers that could make them from CDs, computers that could play them, internet connections to share them, then they started getting these little devices that could play them on the move.

The music industry at large resisted this SO HARD for SO LONG, "it's piracy!" "it's theft," "stop stealing music!" But there weren't good legal ways for so long. People wanted to do it, could do it, and try as they might the music industry couldn't stop them.

Looking back it looks pretty stupid doesn't it? Legal digital downloads now make up a huge portion of revenue. How much revenue did they lose out on in those years where they refused to provide digital copies? Who knows. iTunes is a household name which grows constantly into more areas, meanwhile HMV (a bricks and mortar media store in the UK) has gone out of business.

Now I'm not saying MS is going to go out of business any time soon. What I'm saying is that the Next Big Thing might be that thing some people in your community are already doing and you don't quite understand. You're never going to win by fighting against it, so find a way to let them do it, do it even better and turn it to your advantage at the same time.

As Sun Tzu once said, the greatest General is not the one that wins all his battles, the greatest General is the one that wins without ever entering battle.*

Back to Halo just to wrap this up. Where Forge is today is directly out of Bungie applying the correct response in a similar situation. They made a feature to do one specific thing: change weapon spawns quickly and easily in-game. But people took that and started blocking off parts of maps with crates and adding in jumps and radically changing how things played.

Instead of going 'ew, no, why are you doing that? It looks so bad!' Bungie said 'Um, ok, if you really want to do that we can help you do it better.'

Now, would anyone think of launching a new Halo game without Forge-the-map-maker?

Nope.

*This is a horrible mis-quote. But he wrote something to the effect of this in the Art of War.