Ghôlsbane was sifting through some Bungie employee data, and ran across David Joost’s website; David was Director of Sales at Bungie before the Microsoft buyout. The top news post (obviously written last fall sometime) discusses the long, strange trip Dave’s been on, with respect to Halo sales. Interesting tidbits…

Catching up on older news… MeatSaw points out that he’s sponsoring a poster design contest over at the Gearbox forums; the person with the best Halo-related poster design wins that design printed on 11×14 (or larger) poster paper. It’s just for fun – so go check it out! (Contest ends on February 26.)

More lanfest pics from the Offensive Tetraboxing event this weekend here at HBO: Konrad9 put up a bunch, (GT)Juggler put up some at Halo GT (including a couple of Konrad’s shots), Blood put up about 50 shots at Bloodgulch.com, and Have Blue posted his own set (including some early pics of my vandalized car – more stuff was added after that last pic was taken). More as we find ’em! There’s a pretty cool shot of the four downstairs projectors at once in HB’s collection. Update: Blackstar put up a collection, as well. His movie focus is evident in the preponderance of shots that include the Film Oasis crew – but there are plenty of good people shots.

We didn’t get a chance to post this on Friday, as we normally do – but Red vs Blue posted a new Public Service Announcement this week, in lieu of episode 23. It’s out for everybody now – for sponsors in Hi-res (as it has been since Friday), and for casual visitors in 320×240. Go see what happens when NASA goes overboard…

Quick update, since we missed one yesterday, and I’d hate for the Guest queue to grow TOO long… today’s Guest One One Se7en comes from Nukerman53, and is a takeoff of some very early Stuntmutt strips. Check it out!

There are going to be many, many updates about this fanfest – pictures, writeups, the works. I’m sure several of them have already been posted to our forum; I haven’t had time to find them yet. I did get a link from Brad Griswald, one of the participants yesterday; you can find it on his ‘Not So Late Show’ website. Three pages of pics… go look!

So here I sit, finishing up an interview with the Film Oasis guys, trying to figure out how far behind I really am because of yesterday’s Fanfest… Over the course of the next couple of days, I’ll do my best to catch up, but please be patient. Stuff isn’t gonna go up in the order it came in here… it’s gonna go up in the order I remember it. First up: a forum thread filled with some hilarious images. The Burninator injected some One One Se7en images into Halo… and eventually BOLL took the concept to its absurd (but just as hilarious) extreme. Check it out!

Yeah, we had all sorts of plans; webcams from multiple places through the house, rotating Halo PC entrants, and on and on… everything fell by the wayside when the playing started. Offensive Tetraboxing kicked off last night; the first of almost 40 guests showed up a bit after midnight, and the first round of Halo gaming continued until 3 am. 4 hours later, folks rolled out of bed, munched through breakfast, and set up gear… and by 10:30, we had more than 30 people playing. Film Oasis, the house that made the DIscovery Channel Halo documentary last year (and that is making a Halo 2 documentary right now) is here, and filming the fans, the action, the food… it’s a blast. We don’t have a lot of content to pass along right now, because frankly, we’re just playing too much… but we’ll at least shoot along a group shot of a subset of the visitors. (They couldn’t all fit in the frame.) There aren’t any names yet – but we’ll add ’em in the writeups. (You SHOULD notice KP standing up in the back – pretty neat, since he has only one knee.)

This week’s Frankie’s Bungie Update is here at HBO – and contains some rather momentous news. A Halo 2 release timeframe has been set – for Fall, 2004. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether the relief at knowing overcomes the disappointment of having to wait another several months… (And congrats to those who procrastinated about c0ld’s release date contest – your chances are much, much better now.)

Sep7imus was the first to point out this news item on Truth and Reconciliation:

Halo 2 will ship in Fall, 2004.

The news item also includes a brand new multiplayer screenshot. Mmm, bumpmapping… (Note: A number of people have been confused by the title of this news item. The game is NOT named “Halo 2: In Reach of Fall”. This is just a reference to the title of novel The Fall of Reach.)

Hehe – c0ld vengeance is offering to pre-order Halo 2 for one lucky forumgoer. Guess the release date, win the game. Read the rules in his forum post.

Narcogen has posted Part Three of the High Ping Bastard’s Guide to Halo over at Rampancy.net – this one looks at gametypes, and how high-ping players can benefit from certain strategies. An interesting read.

Hey – we stopped mentioning the incremental updates on the Halo Flash game under development over at 343GS.com some time ago… but the new features in it now merit another look. A Silent Cartographer-like intro, new sounds, plasma grenades… it’s getting there! (Check the Projects page.)

One One Se7en comes back to Linda – who might be dangerous with more than just a sniper rifle…

Halo: Resolution continues its Matrix-like theme… but the corn is coming.

Eight Fan Fiction pieces today:

• Scope (Prologue), by The Silver Spartan
• The dank, dank, swamp: a comedy poem, by crashedwarthog
• A Killing Glare (Part 1): Cadet 787, by MadJackal
• Neverland: Plans for an assault, by SOS.Odin
• Halo:Sgt.Johnson’s War Chapter 1:Earth , by Sgt.Johnson
• Forced Betrayal (Chapter 5: A New Ally), by CoLd BlooDed
• Getting to Ones Mind, by CoLd BlooDed
• Air Force Wing: Part 3, Consequences, by teemus

I’m likin’ this new submission frequency…

elmatto dropped by our forum to point out an old comic he started drawing about him and some friends playing Halo. It ends rather suddenly (he put it down to lack of interest), but the art style is pretty interesting to me.

Hijack found an interesting article about game marketing over at the Hollywood Reporter, via EvilAvatar.com. Beth Featherstone, Director of Marketing of Microsoft Games, talks about how much trouble it can be to market a game with no fixed release date, using Halo 2 as an example. (There are tidbits of nice info in there, too – like the fact that Halo 2 has over 20,000 lines of dialogue in it already.) Give it a read – but don’t look for a fixed date yet!

Recently, Nintendo cut the price on its Gamecube to $99 (making it cheaper, amusingly, than its Gameboy Advance SP product), in an attempt to regain market share. (It worked; Nintendo sold more Gamecubes in the US in 2003 than Microsoft sold Xboxes.) There’s an article on CNN Money today that suggests that MS might be considering a price drop to the same level by Labor Day – preparing the market for the Xbox 2, maybe as early as next year. (An intermediate drop – to $129 – might happen between now and E3, in May.) Good news for Bungie gamers, anyway… the platform your developer favors is that much cheaper to snarf up! (Thanks to Mr Yun for the heads-up.)

Comics, Part II: Today’s Guest One One Se7en comes from Gram shows why taunting in multiplayer isn’t always a good idea.