"In Halo 1, there was maybe 30 seconds of fun that happened over and over and over and over again. And so, if you can get 30 seconds of fun, you can pretty much stretch that out to be an entire game."

Or maybe even five games. The succinct secret to Halo's success, that half minute of fun, has long been a mantra repeated by developer Bungie, repurposed by game critics, and presumably whispered by Master Chief himself before he tosses a plasma grenade into a gathering of grunts. It's inoffensive, catchy and it sounds about right. Doesn't it?

"Yeah, it's probably the most famous thing I ever said," says game designer Jaime Griesemer. "For some reason it really resonated with the community and got quoted and repeated to the point where I would hear it from people that didn't realize where it had come from in the first place! Especially with journalists." Like many of you, Griesemer has heard the phrase on podcasts (yes, including The Joystiq Podcast) and read it in several articles, such as Clive Thompson's examination of Halo 3 playtesting in Wired. "Some of the guys at Bungie were calling me 'Mr. Thirty Seconds' for a while ... heh."

If only we had paid attention to Mr. Thirty Seconds for about, oh, 30 seconds longer.