The lead producer of Halo Infinite, Mary Olson, has left 343 Industries to move on to a different studio. This comes after the creative director Tim Longo also left the studio a few weeks ago. According to Kotaku, Olson has now joined Midwinter Entertainment as a lead producer.
While there was no official announcement by Olson or 343 Industries, it was discovered on Olson’s LinkedIn. This raised some confusion among fans when rumors starting rising up about Olson replacing Longo as the creative director. However, the latest development has been that the community manager of 343 Industries posted an announcement on Reddit saying,
I wanted to jump in and clarify what Tim & Mary’s roles were at the studio because there seems to be quite a bit of confusion here. Before that happens though, I’d like to reassure everyone that the entire Halo Infinite team is rallying behind the game and is working hard to make sure we can execute on its vision.
Tim’s role as Creative Director was to help make creative decisions around the design and direction of the game – whether it was campaign, multiplayer, etc. Mary’s role as an Executive Producer and then Lead Producer on Campaign was to help drive the game to its completion for our holiday 2020 release date – with the latter specifically focusing on campaign deliverables.
On the matter of Olson replacing Tim Longo Junyzsek said that the title of the thread where it said that Olson has replaced Long is far from being correct.
Unfortunately, the thread’s title saying, ‘He was replaced with Mary Olson and she also left,’ is far from accurate. It implies that Mary took over creative control of the entire game, didn’t like what she saw, and then decided to leave. If that’s what actually happened, I could totally understand getting worried – but that isn’t the case, as she was a Lead Producer and not a new Creative Director.
Producers at our studio support designers, engineers, artists, etc. by helping each of them track and hit deliverables. They also ensure the people they support are not overwhelmed with too much work and have all the tools and information needed to hit their deadlines. To put it simply, producers are the ones tasked with making sure the studio is always moving forward – even our Community Team has a producer to ensure we’re tracking our deliverables; blogs, social media posts, flighting emails, and whatever pops up in between.
In the end, he also mentioned his excitement of Olson Joining Midwinter Entertainment, as she joins Josh Holmes, who was the former studio head of 343 Industries. He also emphasized in the end that the title was misleading and that there was no creative dilemma inside the studio, and that there is no writing on the walls.
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