DNCzZ

I’ve been thinking a lot about the conversations happening around Halo creators lately, and I wanted to share my perspective after spending nearly five years in this community. I want to acknowledge that I have been given opportunities through Halo. I got to play Halo: Campaign Evolved early. I’ve been invited to Grassroots events as a guest. I’ve met some incredible people and had experiences that I’ll always be grateful for. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t frustrated looking back at the last five years. I dedicated a huge part of my career to Halo. I built my content around it, created things specifically for this community, showed up for events, supported HCS, raised money for charity, and kept trying to find new ways to make Halo entertaining for my audience. And after nearly five years, I feel like I’m standing in almost exactly the same place I was when I started. There were so many opportunities over those years where Halo could have helped smaller creators grow alongside the franchise. Instead, it often felt like the same people received the same opportunities, exposure, access, and support over and over again. I can’t speak to whether there was a literal “blacklist.” I wasn’t in those rooms, and I’m not going to pretend I know something that I don’t. What I can speak to is what it felt like being a creator trying to build something in this ecosystem. There was absolutely a feeling that being close to the studio and being part of the right circles mattered. Grassroots was supposed to create opportunities for creators and help grow the Halo community, but too often it felt like success within that ecosystem depended on already having access to it. Creator programs should exist to be a pathway for opportunities, not a prerequisite for it. Today I have to prioritize my job outside of content creation because I can no longer stay afloat being just a content creator in the Halo space. I still create. I still care about Halo. And I don’t regret the community I’ve built or the things I’ve made. But I do wonder what the last five years could have looked like if more opportunities had been used to actually develop creators instead of continually reinforcing the people who had already made it through the door. I don’t think every creator was owed success. I certainly wasn’t. But I do think Halo had an incredible generation of passionate creators who wanted to grow alongside this franchise, and far too many of us were left feeling like there was never really a path to get there. Whatever comes next for Halo under @Activision, I hope that changes.

So many people tend to forget about accessibility regarding this topic. What might seem like a dumb UI decision to you may be exactly what helps someone who’s new to games or has never played before. Don’t be so arrogant.