It may have required some background knowledge of 300 and Chris Hecker to understand, but the Joystiq webcomic lovers chose via parliamentary procedure 2P Start's entry as the best webcomic of last week.

Second place went to Penny Arcade and third from Scott Johnson's Extra Life. Thanks to everyone who voted and be sure to let us know of any gaming comics you stumble upon this week!

If you've followed the Game Developers Conference at all, you probably heard about Maxis programmer Chris Hecker comments that the Wii is nothing more than two GameCubes duct tape together (though, to be fair, that's a 0.5 upgrade from comments that the Wii is "GameCube 1.5"). We're willing to wager that "Product X is just two Product Ys duct tape together" is on track to becoming a popular phrase in gaming circles.

Kim Pallister of Microsoft Casual Games has risen to Hecker's defense, which ultimately led to an apology we feel was somewhat coerced by his overlords at EA and Maxis. The major point in Hecker's argument is that having an innovative control system "should not give them a 'get out of jail free card' on the fact that they have delivered an underpowered machine," according to Pallister's interpretation. And by underpowered, Hecker is referring to computations and not the graphics system, which puts his rant in line with what he said last year that the PS3 and Xbox 360 also underperform in terms of computational power while focusing on a graphics-heavy system.

We're not going to take sides on his point that Nintendo needs to "recognize and push games as a serious art form," though the statement does make for a great discussion. We will say all three companies have pushed for more involvement with independent developers. (Microsoft has Castle Crashers and Roboblitz, Sony has flOw and LittleBigPlanet and Nintendo has Line Rider and possibly Telltale's Sam & Max.)

Don't forget about the heap of praise that the IGDA community gave Hecker just last year after winning the Community Contribution Award. Though, to be fair, that award is just two IGF awards duct taped together.

The developers rant is typically a highlight of the Game Developers Conference. This year, to mix things up a bit, there was a heapin' serving of publishers rant. Eric Zimmerman emceed the event and this is what the publisher had to say:

Alex St.John (CEO and co-founder of Wild Tangent): The former Microsoft employee went all out against Vista. Speaking about how most games ended up being broken. Essentially it all came down to that Vista's security is so tight that it views "everything as dangerous." St. John said that Vista moves everything around to the point where he says, "It's the only self-breaching security system I've seen in my life."

Richard Hilleman (Electronic Arts): This is where the theme for the rest of the rant came about. Leadership, leadership, LEADERSHIP! Although offending some people who believed that alpha males do not help, it was an issue across the board that a stable and competent leadership is lacking in the industry. Hilleman said that people in the industry want to think vision is more important, or reaching for that shining light on the beacon hill. But he says that the people he is seeing and teaching are not capable of providing the leadership for the million dollar projects that come their way. They can't lead beyond groups of three. Once again, the overall theme was leadership, leadership, LEADERSHIP!

On the first day of the Montreal International Game Summit, Chaim Gingold and Chris Hecker presented a keynote on the topic of "advanced prototyping," specifically as to how it pertains to Spore, the game that currently occupies their time over at EA/Maxis. The same talk, given at the 2006 Game Developers Conference, was rated higher than any other presentation, including Will Wright's, their boss's. Before the keynote, Joystiq had a chance to chat with both Chaim and Chris, and discuss their impetus for joining Maxis, the evolution of Spore, and the relationship between Maxis and EA.

You're both at Maxis now. How did each of you get there?

CHRIS HECKER: We both started full-time the same day, actually.

CHAIM GINGOLD: Yeah. I was at Georgia Tech doing a masters program in integration design and technology, and there was a required internship over the summer. My advisor asked me "where are you going to work?" And I was like "I don't know." She was like "Didn't you have an interest in working with games?" and I was like "It would be fun to work with Will Wright, not that that would ever happen. That would be totally crazy." And then one day I got an e-mail from him, saying "We're looking for interns." And then an hour later I got an email back saying "You got it." And so I got the internship, and at the time there were like four or five people working on Spore. That sort of really small team, and I spent the summer working on that. Everyone was crunching on TSO [The Sims Online], and when I got done they asked me back, so I came back.

When was that?

CG: I've been there four, five years now.

CH: So, I was working in indie games for, like, eight years, and my wife was basically paying the mortgage. She kinda had the high-powered, executive job. And then, we had a baby, and she decided: "Well, I'm quitting. It's your turn to actually work." And I was like "Uh-oh! I guess I'm going to have to make some money." Indie games don't pay that well.