Sometimes cross-media products for video games come off as obvious byproducts of a marketing department. 343 Industries franchise development director Frank O’Connor, however, asserts that Halo products are designed to fulfill specific needs.
“Our marketing people at Microsoft actually only market our games, ” says O’Connor. “Our marketing people don’t work on books, or the novels, or the comics. Every single one of those products, what you might call ‘ancillary products,’ was designed to answer a specific need. Fans wanted this; fans wanted to know this story.”
O’Connor said that Halo paraphernalia are “a community effort.” He noted that the comics and figurines released are not part of the game product cycle.
“[Someone says,] ‘I want a Master Chief action figure,’ and we went and made that happen. And, ‘I want to know more about this angle of the universe’ or ‘this back story in the universe,’ and we just went and made it happen. Everything has answered a question,” explains O’Connor. “We’re literally looking at making a grunt plushie this year, and not because — well it’ll probably sell a lot and make a lot of money — but because it’s the single most-demanded item that we haven’t fulfilled in the franchise history. ‘I want a grunt plushie!’ But the weird thing is, it’s the hardest core fans that want that.”
“It’s just trying to make sure that you reach a state where 100 percent of that demand is met successfully, He added. So yeah, I don’t worry about saturation, or overexposure, because all of these things are what our fans want, one way or another.”
Source: Gamasutra
