We’ve never needed to put an ESRB-style warning on One One Se7en before… but maybe a POBE1 warning would be more appropriate. Yeah. I had nothing to do with this one. Yeah.
1. Pissed Off Bungie Employee

Video number two for the day – this is a teaser trailer for a montage video coming out soon, from Mikeman27 and Nefarious Dan. It was released on our forum last week, but got minimal feedback… so they submitted it to the MPRRS, where it passed. The large frame around the content is actually there on purpose; it’s an attempt to keep you from full-screening the vid. (Mike assures me that the final vid will be of higher quality, and won’t need this limitation.) Timing’s quite good, action is suitably frenzied. 13 mb, in WMP9 or QuickTime formats.

A number of movies have passed our own Movie Peer Review Rating Service recently; the first is quite small (1:50, just over 5 mb, in both QuickTime and WMP9 formats) – it’s a trailer for an upcoming 8-episode machinima based on the novel The Fall of Reach. The project is coming from a British Clan, and their website contains more info about the project (including a call for voice work). The video itself is predominantly cutscene footage, from both Halo and Halo 2, with some nice timing and coordination. Check it out!

We got a note from Gene, a member of HaloZination, a German Halo 2 clan which has been working on a machinima series – there are currently three episodes, downloadable from their website. They’re all in WMP9 format, and range from 45 to 75 mb apiece. Without understanding German, this one makes very little sense… but we haven’t heard of a lot of projects that aren’t in English, so if you DO speak German, give this one a look!

Anton P. Nym found, over at the Escapist, an article on machinima, as well – and again, Red vs Blue is held up as an example of how to do it right (along with Randy Glass, and his latest (non-Halo) work) – but mostly, the author laments the huge amount of mediocre work available on the net, and suggests that if the RIAA gets involved, at least the number of “just-plain-crappy videos” (his words, not mine) would decrease. Eh. (I was also unhappy that many of the example links at the end of the article were dead ends.)

The New York Times article we mentioned yesterday is online now (free registration required, or visit bugmenot.com for a username). NB was right – it’s a great article. It focuses pretty heavily on Red vs Blue, while looking at the field of machinima in general – go read this!

Over at Halo2Forum.com, there are three new movies to grab – P3MBY made a second montage (QuickTime format, 117 mb) – lots and lots and LOTS of sticks. On the same page, you’ll find a link for KwicK’s Montage (WMP9 format, 50.7 mb) – P3MBY is a member of the same team (xT Minnesota) as KwicK. And then, in this thread, you can find a link for Xpl0d3r’s ‘Things I Learned While Playing Halo 2’ (WMP9 format, 62.6 mb) – I think it boils down to ‘don’t be stupid’, but I’m not sure. That’s a lot of bytes to download!

A couple of net reviews out there for you – Xbox World Australia has given the Multiplayer Map Pack a once-over (they liked it, but would have appreciated some single-player love), and Gaming Horizon has pinned down Halo 2 (yeah, the game, not the map pack) – if you’ve read any of the hundreds of reviews that were published a few months ago, you’ve seen their gripes before (and their kudos, too). But there it is.

Fan Fiction writers must be focusing on the 117 Words contest – in the last 5 days, there’ve only been 8 new submissions. Go read!

NB writes to say that on page 20 of today’s New York Times Magazine is an article about machinima and Red vs Blue. I couldn’t find it online yet – probably will show up tomorrow, since the Magazine section is part of Sunday’s paper, even though you can buy it on Saturday – but it sounds like it’s worth reading!

As you may or may not have noticed, the Seeker link we had on the right side of this page is gone. It turned out to be more resource-intensive than Subnova could handle (a full explanation is here). If the situation changes, we’ll be sure to let you know!

The Codex Series, Episode 19, is now online – ‘Power Plays’ is the second-to-last episode, and has some great scenes in it. Great action, nice suspense… go watch! The final scene will be posted at 7 PM Central time (that’s midnight, UTC) next Friday night… they want as many people online as they can get. Go watch this episode and start building your anticipation!

That Weasel dropped a note letting us know that the Third Annual Rockets on Prisoner Awards has officially kicked off. There are 9 video categories and seven sub-categories – and the public is encouraged to participate by nominating videos of their choice. (Each person gets 1 nomination per day for the next 7 days – so be sure to keep going back.) Voting begins on August 17, but there should be plenty of interesting stuff between now and then. Check it out!

Bytesector has posted an interview with the 2005 Canadian Halo 2 Champion (from the Worldwide Halo tour tourney concluded this past June. Some of his answers threw me for a loop – but overall, it’s an interesting read.

OperationMEDUSA points a new stats program, currently in beta-test, called ZenStats, being coded by JonathonZenith. (The front-page interface isn’t done yet – but the stats themselves are pretty impressive!) Give it a look.

There’s a really interesting article over at the Economist, looking at how games have become a major form of entertainment in our society. It touches on the controversy surrounding some games, and explores some of the uses that games can have. (It also points out, in a stark graph, the inverse trends in the US in the past 10 years – as video game sales have increased, violent crime has decreased; while there’s not necessarily any correlation between these two, the graph should help illustrate that it’s it’s harder to argue that video games create violent monsters.) Halo 2 is held up as a prime example of the new complexity in games (both technically and intellectually) – if you’re keeping track, you’ll find story spoilers here. Overall, it’s a piece that suggests that the current controversy is simply a matter of folks who grew up without games not ‘getting it’, and once ‘the young are old, and the old are dead’, we’ll move on to fighting about something else. Wonderful to see pieces like this in magazines like the Economist. Several people sent us a link, but it looks like DPowers90, on our forum, was first.

Yeah, that’s the lesson in the most recent Weekly What’s Update, posted over at Bungie.net. Pretty simple, eh? Looks like there are still lots of people who don’t understand what that means. Oh – and if nobody solves the ‘Hi, Ben’ thing by next week, Frankie says he’ll spill the beans. Get to work – you want to EARN this, don’t you? And on a pretty sad front, it looks like Shishka’s last day at Bungie is now over. We’ll miss you, Shishka! Go read. (There was supposed to be hints of The Next Big Thing, but that was just a tease.)

The Halo CE Chronicles episode 14, ‘Searching’, has been released – a description of the episode can be found on the website, and the video is available for download in WMP9 (24.5 mb), QuickTime (22.6 mb), and streaming Flash (9.3 mb) formats. This one reveals some of the motivation driving the Station Commander, and sets the stage for some action-filled episodes – check it out!

My kids and I have been going through the newest Harry Potter novel in the evenings – I think Stuntmutt may have permanently scarred me with today’s One One Se7en.

Samir Patel pointed out Incoming, a mod for Half-Life 2. (It was a mod for Half-Life first, and we mentioned it about 3 years ago.) It’s not a Halo mod – but it DOES ‘feature elements from [Halo] as a token of appreciation’ (specifically the Warthog and the Spartan armor). Go check it out.