What is a halo moment?
In that case, I read it two ways: 1. Nothing to do with Halo. Instead, Walker is talking about the “ah-AAAAHH!” moment when the clouds open, the shaft of light from heaven strikes you and your purpose on Earth is made clear, except he’s a designer and so he’s talking about opening a hotel-room door and walking into the interior for the first time. That’s how I read it, and I work in the games industry. It didn’t occur to me that he might be referring to the game. 2. If Walker is referencing the game, then he is probably talking about the fact that the Halo trilogy’s design philosophy is based upon the concept of “thirty seconds of fun”. To quote from Wired 15.09: “The idea was to have Halo repeatedly immerse players in hectic battles that would last for half a minute — just long enough to create heart-thumping chaos and the risk of death — before offering a respite.” If a non-games designer i
I had sort of split reaction to the phrase “halo moment” – I’m an avid Halo 3 player, and I just finished a degree in Psychology in June. My first thought was that it could be a moment that is so common as to be cliche in Halo multiplayer games (ie getting killed/killing someone on The Pit level by camping the sword spawn). Either that, or a moment of the above-linked “halo effect”, but with people (ie you meet a new person who cracks a great joke; you may be more likely to think better of that person in other areas.
A “halo moment” is a “moment that matters”, the key moment that influences all the other non-moments in a particular sequence of actions. Apparently Brian Walker of IDEO’s Smart Spaces referenced it in a talk recently.
> I read and listen to a ridiculous amount of games journalism, have played through all 3 Halo games multiple times, and have never heard anyone refer to a ‘halo moment’ before reading this. I’m sure some guy in his mom’s basement just spit out a mouthful of Red Bull upon reading this so by all means, please correct me if this is a common phrase. People seem to be using it in the sense of “that was a CLASSIC moment” when they record clips of their gameplay to circulate on YouTube. So a particularly good kill, or a particularly embarrassing mistake or anything that is noteworthy. It helps to know that it isn’t official; there isn’t a part of the game called a halo moment. I thought it might be connected to Cortana moments, but I’ve never played Halo. http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Cortana_Moments I heard the phras
