The game industry isn’t exactly the spitting image of diversity or sensitivity. It’s really no surprise that games are full of stereotypes and… questionable content. When a bunch of people who look and think alike spend waaay too much time together, you get some pretty messed up results. But one begins to wonder just how this questionable content makes it all the way into the games that end up on shelves… Having pitched a few games in our time, we imagined trying to pitch a recent game with particularly questionable content.

When you’re designing a game you always have to deal with the limitations of the hardware you’re designing for. Sometimes there just aren’t enough buttons and joysticks and triggers for you to make the game you want to make. But other times it all works out so nicely. I’m not sure which category this week’s strip falls into. You be the judge.

Holy mackerel have I been slammed at work lately.  I wish we could get back to a regular weekly posting schedule, but this has been a total effort just to get the last two strips to you guys the past couple of weeks.

The latest one was one we wrote immediately after the previous one, mainly because we were wondering what happens when developers (besides us) buy games at retail joints like Game Stop.  Personally, we always buy new, just as a matter of principle.  We don’t need to save the five bucks.  God help you if five bucks on a game purchase means the difference between you eating and not eating that week.

But what with LBP copies floating all over the place weeks before launch, we couldn’t help but wonder if the situation for opportunity didn’t arise in a few brick and mortar outlets.

After what was our best-looking strip we took a bit of a break. It wasn’t really planned, but hey, sometimes “real life” happens. Call it fate… call it carma… call it crunch… sometimes you just get busy and silly web comics don’t fit into the mix.

But we’re happy to be back with a very real, very sad strip. We’re not really down with whining about used game sales and all that. We know that we make glorified toys, and if someone wants to buy a used version of one of our toys that’s fine with us. Not everyone minds peanut butter fingerprints on their game discs… go figure.

What pisses us off is when we don’t want to buy used toys.

We are deeply saddened to hear that Microsoft is closing down Ensemble. Not only did Ensemble make awesome games, but it’s also home to some of our favorite game designers. We’re sure these talented folks will land on their feet elsewhere, but our hearts go out to them and their families.

Of course we’re here to poke fun at our chosen career and lifestyle, and the news that Ensemble was at one point working on a Halo MMO kinda cracked us up. Microsoft seems hell-bent on turning Halo into the new Star Wars (we all saw how that worked out), so we put on our thinking caps and tried to come up with the most ridiculous brand-extending products possible…

So… if we were evil geniuses with the Halo brand and unlimited budget, what would we come up with?