be too specifically developed. This immersion has facilitated the use of the Halo series' multiplayer mode for live digital puppetry, as in Chris Burke's machinima talk show This Spartan Life. Cultural impact Merchandise BusinessWeek listed the Master Chief among several video game characters who have been branded beyond their respective video games, "helping them transcend the very medium in the process". The Master Chief has been used in marketing on a variety of products, from 7-Eleven Slurpees to T-shirts, controllers to Mountain Dew, and costumes to motorcycle helmets. Several action figures of the character have been created to market of the Halo series, including lines by McFarlane, Jazwares, 1000toys, and Mega Bloks. One2One collectibles produced 1:2 scale busts of the Master Chief. Marketing for the video games focused heavily on the character of the Master Chief, including "The Museum", part of Halo3s "Believe" campaign, the Halo4 live-action trailer "Scanned", Halo5s Hunt the Truth, and Infinites "Become" campaign. The heavy merchandising was considered necessary for the game franchise; Ed Ventura, director of Xbox's worldwide marketing, said, "We want to be in the hearts and minds of our fans as much as we can." Reception In an article in Time, Lev Grossman said the Master Chief represents a "new kind of celebrity for a new and profoundly weird millennium" and was a symbol of the increasing legitimacy of video games as an art form. IGN, Kotaku, Glixel, GamesRadar and The Sydney Morning Herald described the Chief as "iconic". Master Chief has been called the de facto symbol for the Xbox console, Microsoft, and for a generation of gamers. The recognition of Master Chief has spread to mainstream culture; Madame Tussauds in Las Vegas has developed a wax sculpture of the Chief. At the ceremony, Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy called the Master Chief a hero of the times as much as characters like Spider-Man and Luke Skywalker were for previous generations. Downes realized his character was such a huge hit only after children lined up around the block for his autograph a year after the game shipped. The character has appeared on lists of the best video gaming characters by UGO, Empire, GamesRadar, Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition, Complex, and Time. IGN suggested that the dramatic death of the character could be one of the most powerful events in gaming. The faceless nature of the character has alternatively been praised and