--- title: Frank O'Connor interview | TIME description: Frank O'Connor interview canonical: https://time.com/video/FgMPLZch/ og:title: Frank O'Connor interview og:description: Frank O'Connor interview og:url: https://time.com/video/FgMPLZch/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FgMPLZch/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Frank O'Connor interview twitter:description: Frank O'Connor interview twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FgMPLZch/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Frank O'Connor interview > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Frank O'Connor interview [Watch (HLS stream): Frank O'Connor interview](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/FgMPLZch.m3u8) (10:34)  _Published 2010-09-14. Frank O'Connor interview_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:05 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Sinéad O'Connor On Her Conversation with Miley Cyrus](/video/kFCxLv1D/) ### Sinéad O'Connor On Her Conversation with Miley Cyrus [Sinéad O'Connor on Mental Health and the Media](/video/XwPg8Ai2/) ### Sinéad O'Connor on Mental Health and the Media [Sinéad O'Connor On: The Pope & Religion](/video/tgeLsGIV/) ### Sinéad O'Connor On: The Pope & Religion --- ## Transcript >> So, I'm Frank O'Connor, I'm a Franchise Development Director at 343 Industries, which is the studio with Microsoft that handles the Halo franchise. >> And when was 343 established? >> We were established 2 years ago roughly pretty much right around the time where the full Bungie spin off from Microsoft. >> Okay, not coincidentally, obviously. >> So what-- and this the larger question is, what's the future of Halo at this point? >> The immediate future of Halo is Halo: Reach. But you know that the Halo games is typically have a very long lifespan if you think about-- you know, I was playing Halo 3 up until about Wednesday of last week and seriously I've been playing along with, you know, thousands of people. So the immediate future as Halo: Reach getting that shipped getting through this midnight madness event and then of course-- one of the things that makes Halo very cool, a game in very cool franchise is they'll be sustain and then they nurture it. So simple things just making sure the match- making playlists are cool that we're giving people game types that they like. And then there's the learning process there. Once you've launched that, you've got [ unk ] people will gonna like that, you know, I think that the good examples that SWAT wasn't very popular in the last game 'cause people they can leaks and they had different head shape and it made it harder for people to shoot [ unk ] SWAT and Halo: Reach, they have forces player models so everyone has to be as smart so as the playing field. And I think SWAT is gonna be really popular in the, you know, Bungie knows that instead of probably at the top of that but you have these learning process where you look at to serve the democracy what people are voted for game types and you say, this is popular, nobody likes this and you just can't DJ that playlist until you have that really good mix and really perfect mix of things that people like to play. >> So I think most people aware in this of 343 is around the kind of ancillary Halo content. >> Yeah. >> Books, comics, DVD, Halo: Uprising DVD, you know. >> Was that this year or last-- that was-- >> Halo Legends and Uprising. >> Legend Comic Book series. >> Right. I'm getting [ unk ]. >> Lot of stuff out there. >> So, I think the big question is, what the hand or the hand is going to be like in terms of actual games of element? >> Yeah, obviously we're not making any specific announcements and we're definitely keeping our focus on Reach this year. The future of the franchise is-- I can tell you, it has careful hands and that we respect the invention of the work that the company is created. It's just, you know, it's being an incredible franchise. A lot of the franchises [ unk ] with one of the things that makes Halo unique as an FPS is restoring and we have 5 New York Time's best- selling novels, aside from Marvel Comic Book series, action figures, anthologies, the DVD legendary-- a lot of game franchises gets pulled back because they don't have the-- fundamentally, they don't have the richness or depth of universe to do that or sometimes it's just because they're set in much more contemporary universe. There's only so many [ unk ] can sell connected to a franchise. So everything in the Halo Universe is invented for that franchise. So it has a very unique charisma. So it's a lot of work. It's $ 2 billion franchise. So all the ancillary stuff is actually really important and the stuff that we're doing now is not a four- way work. The stories that we're creating or can be connected to the universe in the future, and so we're not doing, we literally not sacrificing any ideas everything has a purpose. Everything will eventually pay off. >> Okay. >> But as we're talked about a new game, it's just too early to talk about and we're focused fully on Reach for the moment. >> Is it safe to assume that the development started and whatever is next? >> It's safe to assume that we've hired a lot of very, very good people in the industry. >> Okay. You know, I think the fans have gotten used to somewhat regular release schedule with the games. >> Yeah. >> I think for the last three or four years, now something Halo has been out in the market. >> Yeah, they're definitely-- there's a 3- year [ unk ] between the 10th poll games, so Halo 1, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo: Reach is a three- year cycle. We had Halo Wars, of course, and then Halo will be a scene both of those fulfilled kind of a-- you can't call, you know, in the case of Halo Wars a million plus selling-- gamer a niche for there is, I mean, RTS consoles in a very small genre and we're I think, we're the biggest selling console or RTS of certainly of this generation but maybe of all time and it was-- for us it was a really, it was a big success too but it's obviously physically, it would really rough for an RTS and I think creatively, that was gonna explore different avenues of the Halo universe what you guys see fulfilled a lot of the same function. It was called Halo 3 ODST, which is pretty important distinction and not just the Symantec one. It was meant as a side story. It was meant as a sort of a jump fiction to the Halo universe. But even and get them like that. It's all believes in copies and introduce in the future 'cause Bungie will not release a game without inventing it and in this case it was far a fight. Based in all the learnings about fire fight from ODST and now you have fire about match- making as far as 4. 32 and you know, it's Forge 2. 0. >> Yeah, it's pretty incredible. I played bunch of it and my initial time with it. So, you know, moving forward, I guess, part of the question is like, from a game play standpoint. What are the sacred cows. What do you not change? >> I think you could make yourself in the corner, where you easily but saying, we'll never change anything. And Bungie is full of [ unk ], I mean that they've [ unk ] has actually changed Halo: Reach, which still feels familiar. But if you think about the radical bloom, it's actually completely do mechanics for shooting. I think the sacred cows are making sure that it works with that kind of control state and making sure that if you're holding or controlling on handing or sitting on the couch, it's enabling you without putting training wheels in your game play experience in there. Basically, the way I always thought about that is I played a lot of PC shooters and that is all about discreet pixel perfect shooting and you put the pixel where you want it. You can do that from us, and did very accurately. I always felt that Halo kinda guessed what you were trying to do and pull up the cursor exactly where you wanted to. So you never, when you're playing Halo, you don't [ unk ] and you'll see it sometimes-- but you very barely ever feel like controls being taken away from you. It's fundamentally isn't-- it's approximating and guessing where things you wanna go and it gets it right. So to me, for an FPS Halo game, that's the sacred cow-- is making sure that you're respecting the player's skill and also respecting the control scheme that console game supplly for that sort of comfy couch experience, and other that, there are no sacred cows. There are no sacred cows characters, stories, scenarios, game prognosis. It just has to be epic and it just has to be also it happens at all times. >> You know, I think that, you know, Halo is in a where position right now in terms of, you guys are kind of waving goodbye, at least Bungie waving goodbye. And there are other competing franchises which are gonna be demanding attention. It's even on the Xbox-- started to play. >> Absolutely. >> So how do you-- how would you ask your audience just to stick around especially when it might be a while before they see a Halo experience again? >> I think the only respect for [ unk ] and make the audience stick around or to come back is to give them something amazing. And this-- I think if you've tried anything else that you're either [ unk ] or it's marketing, I think-- powerful air- conditioner. I think that you ask the audience to stick around by just delivering something amazing and that's really it and of course, that's not easy and there's huge challenges, huge questions still living inside that idea but that's the way to do it. We can't say, don't worry about it. Reach is gonna be the best Halo game of all time. You have to make Halo: Reach the best game of all time because ultimately, people are gonna get their hands on it. They're gonna make that decision. >> Is there deals you plan for Reach? >> There will be a fairly traditional TLC contact client but one of the funny things about Reach is the Forge 2. 0 and you can see this immediately when you play online in the Forge world. Very [ unk ] with that. It's gonna be a lot of really good [ unk ] community yet and I think-- the cool thing is that TLC will give them all the tools to play Forge. Fundamentally, I think that the-- that system was a user- generated content is gonna change the [ unk ] a little bit about our user- generate-- of our TLC content. And actually, the [ unk ] ambition level but-- >> Okay. Is this generated content part of the plan moving forward for franchise and you don't wanna continue to support the way you have been? >> Yeah. If you have an eco- system that runs in south and do have a huge advantage over your competition but ultimately our competition is our last game. I mean, we're not trying to make up our [ unk ]. We're trying to make an amazing Halo game. They're really hard to get-- if you talk about fiction. You could talk about the game play. We have to compete with our last game and feature the-- >> So last question. Where should fans look for their Halo fix? Now, I'm certainly in a game but any-- throughout the very offerings that have the Halo stand? >> So we have one big thing that we have coming out this year is the first novel from Greg Bear who is a Hugo Nebula award- winning sci- fi writer. He's very competent, accomplished art sci- fi writer. He's gonna be exploring the 400 universe and we just got the first complete. I mean, we're working with him for a couple of years on this project. We just have the first editorial draft-- the whole book and if you're a fan of Halo [ unk ], there some stuff from first 10, 11, 12 pages. This is gonna be a totally [ unk ]. So with those guys, for those really hardcore fiction fans, that's the next book to get out because it's got a perfect curtains on what you thought that universe from hundred thousand more years ago was and it's gonna be a lot of surprises and lot of stuff. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Frank O'Connor interview","description":"Frank O'Connor interview","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FgMPLZch/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2010-09-14T19:45:40.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/FgMPLZch.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/FgMPLZch/","duration":"PT10M34S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/FgMPLZch/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```