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Community Evolved is a book by that will explore the past decade of Halo's fan community whilst interviewing respected members that have made significant contributions to it. The authors wanted to explore every aspect of the community from professional e-sports players and fan artists, to film makers, to talk show hosts and everything in between.

This book aims to highlight the major ways in which the Halo community has banded together to support themselves, the Halo series, and even people who have never played the games. Community Evolved—through the eyes of Halo community leaders—showcases the various transformations the Halo community has undergone in the first decade of its existence.



The Halo franchise has brought many people together from all across the world and allowed us to share a mutual passion for the universe, the gameplay, and the story. As the franchise marked its ten year anniversary recently, the authors wanted to celebrate that milestone by turning the focus to the real people that made it possible... not the developers, but those who made Halo the success it has been: the fans. This has been done through a wide variety of mediums and activities over the years, such as fan fiction, machinima, traditional art, untraditional art, photography, video game level design, song, poetry, and much more. Halo is more than a video game and the community is a lot more than just a collective of video game fans.

This book stands as a testimony to the community's passion, dedication and hard work.

WHO IS INVOLVED?

Community Evolved will feature interviews with some of the most notable members of the Halo community within each of its chapters. These people have contributed to the fan community in numerous significant ways over the past decade and we are happy to recognize their contributions and hear their stories told in their own words.

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Some of the guests are as follows:

Claude Errera, (Louis Wu) owner of halo.bugie.org

Sundance DiGiovanni, founder of Major League Gaming

Chris Burke, (Damian Lacedaemion) This Spartan Life talk-show host

Kelli Dunlap, (Goosechecka) owner of GrifballHub

Nicholas Alexander, (WARHOLIC) ForgeHub

Jeffrey Fischer, (NOKYARD) GrifballHub. ForgeHub

Zach Wigal, founder Gamers Outreach

Dustin Pettigrew, (DustStorm) Podtacular

Specific details about the guests are available at CommunityEvolved.com.

WHERE TO PURCHASE
Non-backers can get a B&W hardcover copy of the book via Lulu.com for $28.



WARHOLIC
How did this project get started, who was involved in that first conversation and when was that conversation held?

David Fuchs
Well Dani started up Forward Unto Dawn in 2010 after the chaps from Ascendant Justice left to join 343 Industries. Isaac Frankel (Postmortem) and I joined up shortly after that. In 2011 we were talking about doing a collection of the more timeless Forward Unto Dawn pieces, maybe in a print or ebook collection.

Kicking around the idea, especially after HaloFest, we decided that Forward Unto Dawn shouldn’t be the real focus—I think Isaac first broached the idea of centering it on the Halo fan community specifically. So in mid 2012 we started up drafting ideas about what we wanted to cover.

WARHOLIC
What is Ascendant Justice? Is this a community forum?

David Fuchs
Ascendant Justice was a fan site started by three folks focusing on the lore—the precursor to sites like Forward Unto Dawn and Halo Archive, basically. They got off the ground in early 2008 with a series of really great hindsight articles going through the story of Halo 3. Eventually two of the folks, Cocopjojo and Mr. Vociferous, ended up joining 343 Industries early in its formation.

WARHOLIC
May I ask what positions do they hold at 343?

David Fuchs
Lore stuff. Coco ended up taking a job at Bungie at some point I believe, but Vociferous (Jeremy Patenaude) is now I believe a lead writer. He does stuff like managing miscellaneous fiction, or projects like the Halo Visual Guides. I believe he was also in an episode of “The Sprint” with Frankie and Brian Reed.
Early on in Halo Waypoint’s life they also did things like the “Different Way to Campaign” videos

WARHOLIC
Glad to hear of their success through community writing efforts.
Can you tell me a little bit more about your writing background and why you felt compelled to write a book about the Halo community?

David Fuchs
I’m a motion designer by profession, but I’ve always enjoyed writing; ended up with a Creative Writing minor out of university. Like my Forward Unto Dawn cohorts, the Halo universe is pretty vast and it’s fun to play around in it—that’s why it’s got such a great fan community. Some people Forge on it, some people write fan fiction, and some of us like to be “historians” of it, for lack of a better word.

Honestly from the beginning I don’t think any of us really thought about just how wide and varied that fan community was. Dani talked with Claude Errera about the project early on, and offered support and helped us focus and gather guests. Part of the reason it took so long to realize the project was that interviewing guests made us realize that we had to talk to other people about another aspect of the fan community, who led to other people to talk to, et al.

WARHOLIC
I agree this community is filled with incomprehensible diversification. To simply cover one aspect of it would have been leaving too much behind. I'm glad you decided to stick through this process to help create a well rounded perspective. Was there anything you learned during this process that you didn't know about previously?
As a community member yourself, what drives you to be so passionate about Halo?

David Fuchs
I think most of it I probably didn’t know about, really. I got my start on Halo.bungie.org, so I really didn’t pay attention to the goings-on of a lot of the wider community. I also didn’t really become active until the Reach era, so I missed out on a lot.

WARHOLIC
What do you think it is about Halo that created this wonderful community?

David Fuchs
I think it’s mostly just that Halo provides a big enough tent for people to find something to do. There’s a value I think in entertainment, and there was a certain value in the olden days when everyone was watching the same five shows on the same three channels. It bound people together in a certain sense with a common culture.

Now with cable TV and the internet and the explosion of music and film and games it’s a lot more fractured, but there’s still the ability for something to be a glue.

I think there’s a bit of a chicken-or-egg question when you ask how Halo got a community, because in some ways there’s no right way to answer it. Did it become popular because it provided stuff for people to latch onto, discuss, and share? Or did its popularity just help foster the spaces that allowed for fans to come in later and call it their own?

WARHOLIC
Correct, is it the game or the community that brings people in? That answer has changed over time since Halo's first inception.

David Fuchs
I think interviewing guests for the book everyone had a different answer, but I think a lot of it just came down to Halo being a big blank canvas for people to make their mark.

Just like Master Chief being a faceless character for much of his existence pulled a lot of people in, things like Forge are basically just the adults throwing a bunch of LEGOs out, and the kids going to town with them. They come back into the room and are amazed at what people have been up to while they’re away.

WARHOLIC
Can you share some of the names and community roles of some of the individuals you interviewed for this book?

David Fuchs
We had artists like TDSpiral and Levi, machinima creators like This Spartan Life’s Chris Burke and RvB’s Burnie Burns, Walshy and Strongside for sports, and podcasters like Podtacular’s Duststorm. We also interviewed some notable Forgers including Pete the duck, Nillapuddin, as well as "featured" interviews with Nokyard and this guy “Nicholas Alexander” whoever that is

WARHOLIC
Haha...kinda rings a bell How does it feel to finally complete this project? How many years has this book been in production?

David Fuchs
We launched our campaign in October 2012, and we sent it out to backers the week before Halo 5 launched, I believe.
So yeah it took a while
Definitely nice to get it done, especially after the long wait our backers had to suffer through.
Writing and crowdfunding a book would be much easier now that we’ve got the first one done, but after the experience I don’t think we’d want to do another one

WARHOLIC
What form is the book in and where can everyone go to purchase it?

David Fuchs
This is a beautiful hardcover book retailing for $28 a copy which anyone can get through our store page at Lulu.com.