Stosh at Bungie.net pointed out an article by Pat Miller in the latest issue of The Escapist. (If you're not familiar with the format, like I wasn't, the magazine issue itself is the downloadable PDF file linked at the bottom of the page--Ed.) The article is about Bungie's pre-Halo heritage, the Marathon Trilogy, and even includes a sidebar on the Haunted Apiary (ilovebees) alternate reality game.

Following closely on the heels of yesterday's prognostications in Variety about the Halo motion picture project, none other than Bungie's own scriptwriter extraordinaire, Joe Staten, penned part of a piece to try and calm the nerves of Halo fans everywhere, and give them every possible assurance that Bungie is engaged and enthusiastic about this project-- about Alex Garland's script and about the attitude of producer Peter Schlessel.

Spotted by HBO, an article by Variety says Halo is hitting the big screen in 2007, and while Microsoft (and thus, we assume, Bungie) will be "guaranteed extensive consultation on the project" it will not have final approval on anything.

This week's What's Update by Frankie says that matchmaking playlists will get updated in "September-ish" to include all the new maps where appropriate (since at the end of this month, they'll all be free) as well as some interesting new variations, such as games with more than two teams and oddball games with more than one ball.

Bungie Sightings has a new post up today on their observed progress of Wideload's upcoming Halo engine game, Stubbs the Zombie, as well as an offer of $5 to the person who can guess their answer to this question:

"Stubbs the Zombie is based on a previous Bungie engine. In the history of Bungie (and now Wideload) technical sequels, what sets this game apart from past attempts?"

SketchFactor has posted at Bungie.net a writeup of Bungie's trip to the GPhoria videogame awards, which he attended with Marty O'Donnell, Jay Weinland, and Frankie. Frankie's written his own writeup on that page, titled "an Insider's Guide to Schmoozing with the Stars" and Sketch has also put up a photo gallery.

Eric Trautmann wanted to thank all the Halo fans who purchased The Art of Halo, which has sold quite well and earned him his first-ever (and apparently "big fat") royalty check.

This week's What's Update at Bungie.net isn't much to shake a stick at, but that's because Frankie and the gang at Bungie are busting their you-know-whats on the next game which may or may not be Halo 3. Nobody's seen or heard from Ben yet, but the answer is forthcoming next week.

This week's... ahem.. blogcast by Major Nelson features an interview with Bungie's own Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard. It's the second interview, the first being with a Boeing engineer about the Connexion in-flight Internet service.

SketchFactor has posted at Bungie.net that since the introduction of the modified content detection in AutoUpdate 4 yesterday, more than 2,500 permanent matchmaking bans have been issued by the "self-aware automated Banhammer".

Bungie has rolled out the latest autoupdate-- you now have to download it in order to play in matchmaking on Xbox Live. The update includes code to detect modified content; it also (purportedly) fixes the teleporter bug on Relic.

Bungie.net has a couple of updates today; SketchFactor has posted that the last Humpday Challenge pitted Bungie against Team Korea where Bungie won a best four of five match; next they'll take on Taiwan and Hong Kong.