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At 343 industries there is a mentality embraced by the developers of playing the game and not just creating it. In order to have confidence in what they have created, each employee is expected to experience the game while it is being made.

Halo 5
Halo 5

“Sometimes when things are really busy, the only chance we get to play the game is when we’re testing changes we’re making. You test all around your code, you make sure the thing you changed works, you think about all the things that are most likely to break because of your change… and then you play the game.” Lead engineer of Halo 5: Guardians campaign Josh Lindquist said himself. He believes it’s very important for everyone at 343 to play Halo 5 for themselves.

A lot of companies have embraced this type of approach, experiencing what they have created before others do. This allows them to find out what works and what doesn’t and if anything needs to be improved.

“Not just because of the studio mantra, but also because playing the game is the only way to be confident that you haven’t screwed something up in epic fashion. So you play the game. And sometimes, when it’s late at night and you’ve had a particularly rough day, you forget that you’re testing a fix and you lose yourself in the experience you’re creating. Those are some of the best moments in game development,” Lindquist told Xbox Wire.

The industry has been working on Halo 5: Guardians for the past few years and the game will finally be launching this Oct. 27. This game will be an Xbox one exclusive and the first, fully new instalment to arrive on Xbox One.