Halo's former creative director tells Activision to hire the people Xbox just cut
Frank O'Connor, who ran Halo's creative direction for years, used a LinkedIn post to urge Activision to hire laid-off Bungie and Halo Studios staff, and laid out three directions the series could take now that it is out of Halo Studios' hands.
Activision now owns Halo's future. Frank O'Connor, who spent years as the franchise's creative director, has some advice about how to start, and the first item is a hiring list.
Hire the people who were let go
In a LinkedIn post shared over the weekend and reported by VGC, O'Connor told Activision to "Hire Bungie, Halo Studios and other laid off folk who are bursting with talent and ideas that got nerfed or shut down over the years." It is a pointed line: he is not only pointing at available talent but at ideas he says were blocked inside the organisation that employed them.
Three ways to make a Halo
O'Connor also sketched three directions Activision could take the series. The first is the conservative one: build a traditional Halo sandbox aimed squarely at core players, designed so it can scale outward to a wider audience later. The second is the risky one: make something structurally different - he floats a new take on first-person shooters, or an action RPG - leaning on storytelling and the strength of the setting rather than on familiar Halo mechanics.
The third is the one Activision already knows how to do: apply the publisher's own progression systems and business models to produce an annual spectacle sustained by continuous content updates. O'Connor lays it out as an option rather than a recommendation, but anyone who has watched Call of Duty will recognise the shape of it.
How Halo got here
Activision took control of the franchise following Xbox's September restructuring. Halo Studios was cut back to supporting its existing games rather than leading a new entry, and Activision assembled a separate team built specifically for Halo, kept distinct from its Call of Duty operation. That is the context O'Connor is writing into: the studio that carried the series for over a decade is no longer the one making the next one.
Why it matters
Halo's next game is now being shaped by a publisher with no history with it, at the same moment as a large pool of people who do have that history are out of work. O'Connor is one of the few people who can credibly connect those two facts in public, and he has.
Why it matters
Halo is being rebuilt by a publisher that has never made one, weeks after the people who did make them were laid off. O'Connor's post is the clearest public argument yet for what Activision should do with the series.