Rams bemoans the lack of real "Halo news" and blames that for the infrequency of his column. I can relate. It seems like there was more news (or at least more newsmongering) before Halo actually came out (for any platform). There was anticipation, rampant speculation, and a lot of fun. HBO and Rampancy were among the first, but quickly many sites, including BG:H, started up as the Halo and Bungie community exploded, first in anticipation of Bungie's latest game and later, Microsoft's new console and the buyout debate that followed. Rampancy, like many sites I suppose, was sideswiped by the buyout. It caused many problems in the fanbase and the fansite base for several reasons. There was a disproportionate number of Mac users among site administrators and highly active forum members in the early days. I'm a Mac user. The guy who started Rampancy (then called The Core, Tyson "Ferrex" Green, now of Bungie) was and still is a Mac user. (Hope I'm not getting you in trouble, Rex.) Noctavis, who was going to start HaloNews.com and later joined the Core, was a recent Macintosh convert at the time (for which I will take a fair amount of the credit). Regardless of how silly or impractical it is, a lot of Mac users didn't really like Microsoft, and the idea of Bungie, a longtime developer of Mac games (even though Myth was a crossplatform release) being purchased to make games for MS new console stung a bit. Some protested vociferously. Others simply drifted away. However, that was a bigger problem for some fans than it was for most site admins. Anybody willing to devote the time and money to contribute to a fansite wasn't going to be put off by an extra couple hundred dollars to buy a console. I bought an Xbox just to play Halo, but I'm actually pretty happy that I did. It's a decent system. I have other games for it, and I play those, too. I read a lot of the console flamewars with some amusement, because they are a lot like the computing platform debates I used to get into myself... except a lot more puerile, with the words "suck" and "faggot" used far more often. (Although these days, I'm seeing more occurrences of phrases like "towel head" and "camel f***er", to which I can only say... grow the hell up, guys.

Here's a list of links to items about the Fanstock event held in August at Gearbox Software's headquarters in Plano, Texas. HBO by Louis Wu Subnova by Shishka Battleground: Halo by Dark Helmet