Sketch writes:

The Penny Arcade Expo kicks off today in Seattle and three days of fun await in the Bungie booth.

We've been teasing our PAX plans for a while now and at last the big day is upon us. The Expo hall at PAX opens to the public at 2pm today and we'll be there, ready to rock.  We will be rocking for three solid days, open to close, for the duration of the show. I know many of you can't make it to Seattle this weekend, which is a bummer, but we also know many of you are already en route or perhaps already here in town. For people attending PAX, here's the quick and dirty schedule of activities for our booth each day (subject to change!):

Remember that we will have Halo 3 multiplayer up and running in the booth all day, every day, including a brand new map, "Assembly" (formerly known as "Purple Rain"). We'll be awarding some random prizes during the day for people who do well in multiplayer matches.  In addition, we'll have all sorts of Bungie people available to chat, answer your questions and hang out.

Here's a run down of the activities as well as some of the people who will be working in case you want to talk to a specific team member or someone in a specific field (i.e. artist, designer, etc...)

BUNGIE is located in Booth #752

Friday (2PM to 7PM)
Activities:
3:00 to 4:00 :  Bungie Trivia Challenge   (flex your knowledge of all things Bungie to win a prize)
5:00 to 6:00 :  Recon Challenge  (2v2 against Luke and Shishka to win Recon armor) 

Meet-n-Greet Staffers:
3:00 to 5:00 Michael  (Engineer)
4:00 to 6:00 Max (AI Engineer)
3:00 to 7:00 Shishka (Matchmaking Designer)

Saturday (10 AM to 7PM)
11:00 to 12:00 :  Recon Challenge (2v2 against Joe Tung & Lars Bakken)
12:00 to 1:00 : Bungie Trivia Challenge
1:00 to 2:00 : Bungie Artist Alley (meet Bungie artists, get cool art signed and maybe even get a custom sketch!)
2:00 to 3:00 : Marty O'Donnell signs soundtracks and mingles with fans
3:00 to 4:00 : Recon Challenge (2v2 vs. Luke and Shishka)
4:00 to 6:00 : Meet Jen Taylor, voice of Cortana. With special guest, security expert Jerome.

Meet-n-Greet Staffers:
10:00 to 12:00 :  DMiller (Designer)
11:00 - 1:00 : Achronos (Bungie.net Overlord)
12:00 - 2:00 : Evil Otto (Artist, Graphic Design)
1:00 to 2:00 : Artist Alley (Lorraine, Isaac, Frank, Ken, Milton, and Vic)
1:00 to 3:00 : Nick (Test)
2:00 to 4:00 :  Ferrex (MP Designer) and Adrian (Engineer)
3:00 to 5:00 : Christian (Designer)

Sunday (10 AM to 7PM)
11:00 to 12:00 : Bungie Trivia Challenge
12:00 to 1:00 : Recon Challenge  (2v2 vs. Joe Tung & Abe Froman)
1:00 to 2:00 : Bungie Artist Alley
2:00 to 3:00 : Joseph Staten signs copies of contact Harvest and mingles with fans
4:00 to 5:00 : Recon Challenge (2v2 vs. Luke and Shishka)
5:00 to 6:00 : Left over prize clearance

Meet-n-Greet Staffers:
10:00 to 12:00 : Achronos
12:00 to 2:00 : Jason S. (Artist), Max (AI Engineer)
1:00 to 2:00 : Artist Alley (Lorraine, Vic, Jason, and Milton)
2:00 to 4:00: Matt (Producer)
3:00 to 5:00 : Jay (Sound Designer)
4:00 to 6:00 : Tim (Production Engineer)


We look forward to meeting as many of you as possible over the course of PAX. And please, be nice, the guys who are helping with the booth this year are not there to debate the BR spread or discuss why map X or weapon Y should be added/removed from Halo 3.

Bam!

lukems writes:

Meet the homegrown Bungie.net Group: The Halo 3 Academy.


The Halo 3 Academy is a Bungie.net group focused on helping other dudes and dudettes through their Halo 3 experience. The Halo 3 Academy's Bungie Favorites entry is now online.

The Halo 3 Academy is a group created to help other players get better.We started in January after helping a few of my friends out and then extended to by recruiting other like minded players who wanted to help other players. Then we opened the group to the public. We grew fairly quickly with several people signing up to get better at Halo 3.

We exist with the sole purpose of helping the community and those members that want to improve their gameplay. We have been very successful so far. We have graduated six players and several others have made mention that the Academy has helped them out tremendously. We have over 25 dedicated Instructors and membership is open to anyone who wants to join. We offer in game lessons, custom games and hold small tournaments. So if you want to improve your gameplay in a friendly community the Halo 3 Academy is the place for you.

The Penny Arcade Expo is rapidly approaching and while some of our plans have changed, we are still planning some goodness for fans who plan to attend.

We've been talking up PAX for a few weeks now, asking our fans to mark their calendars and prepare to be showered in Bungie Love as we hunker down in our booth amidst the craziness of the show floor. We're just over a month away from the magical weekend so it's worth reminding everyone that Bungie will be there and we would love to meet you at our booth. 

We'll be there in full force in booth #752, conveniently located right next to our friends from Rooster Teeth / Red vs. Blue. Visitors to our patch of real estate can expect to find some brand new Halo 3 multiplayer conent, including chances for hands-on play (crowds permitting of course).  Hardcore fans will also have an opportunity to compete in multiplayer matches against Luke and Shishka for a chance to win Recon armor. In addition, many members of our team will be on hand during the three days of the show to mingle, sign stuff, draw stuff and spread Bungie Love. Of course we also plan to make it rain with prizes and swag on a daily basis.

The FanFest party that was mentioned a few weeks ago has unfortuantely fallen upon hard times.  It saddens me greatly to find ourselves in this situation but we have decided to postpone the FanFest for a later date. Our plans and some dependencies leading up to this party have not materialized as expected so we've been forced to delay things for now. I realize this will come as sad news to many of you, just as our team is bummed out over this turn of events. I can say that the grand return of the Bungie FanFest will happen when the time is right and it will be glorious.  I guess if there's any upside to this, it's that we now have even more loot to distribute at the actual booth. 

For the record, we have no plans to make any big announcements or huge reveals at PAX this year. While we will have some Halo 3 multiplayer stuff for you to check out, this is not going to be the "big announcement" many of our fans are clamoring for. Rest assured that when the time is right, we will be making announcements and talking about the stuff we're currently working on. At the moment we do have three distinct projects underway within Bungie - some familiar, some not. Some on a closer horizon, some quite far off. 

In the meantime, I encourage any Bungie fans in the area to please stop by our booth and say hello.  In the coming weeks we will post a more definitive schedule of the various actitives taking place in our booth at specific times so you can plan your PAX agenda accordingly.  If you have special requests, people you'd particularly love to meet or anything like that, please share your ideas in the "Discuss This" link attached to this story.  Stay tuned for more updates as PAX gets closer....

It's Bungie Day! And to celebrate, Hawty McBloggy compiled an awesome array of images and memories from all over the fan community.

Bungie Day is all about YOU - our loyal fan community. After all, we wouldn't be where we are today with our awesome community who has stuck by through the years.  This Hawty McBloggy blog post contains an awesome outpouring of sentiments, memories and some really cool pictures as well.  If you're new to the Bungie community or not really sure what the fuss is all about, check out that page for a good introduction.

Also, some of you may be wondering - "What's up with this unhealthy obsession with the number 7?"  This page offers some insights.

Thanks again to our community and we hope you enjoy Bungie Day 2008!