Quick: Which personal-computer-pioneer-turned-new-media mogul is about to dazzle America with a new computer-animated smash hit? Steve Jobs? Well, yeah. But don't forget about Bill Gates. On Nov. 9, just days after Disney floods theaters with The Incredibles, the latest moneymaking machine from Jobs and Co. at Pixar, Gates will unleash his own animated superhero: a green-armored, machine-gun-wielding soldier named Master Chief, the star of the Xbox videogame Halo 2. Preorders guarantee that the game will reap at least $80 million on day one, far more than The Incredibles is likely to earn its first day— indeed, far more than any motion picture in history has made in a single day.

Gates, for one, isn't surprised that videogames are generating such huge numbers. ''Movies are great,'' says Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, ''but games like Halo 2 take the experience one step further. They allow you to be the character, the director, and the audience, all at the same time.'' Just ask all the Xbox owners who've waited three long years for the sequel to Halo, a man-versus-alien thrill ride that has grossed around $225 million. Fifteen-and-a-half million people now own an Xbox, and many of them bought their console just to play Halo. The new game — which cost upward of $20 million to create — retails for about $50. No matter how you do the math, the release of Halo 2 is a major event, even though videogames still fly under the mainstream radar.

Flying under the radar comes naturally to the game's writer-director, who once pursued a career in the CIA. Joe Staten, 34, is the philosophical ringleader of Bungie Studios, a 60-odd-person cadre of shy coders who toil in a Microsoft cubicle farm in Redmond, Wash. Staten has spent the past three years laboring on Halo 2 — and the last few weeks grabbing naps in the sleeping bag he stashes under his desk. It's hardly the life that Staten once thought he'd lead. But after graduating from Northwestern's drama school, he realized performing wasn't in his blood. The acting bug squashed, he went on to earn a degree in military history, writing policy papers on ethnic conflict. Then he applied to become a spy. After two years of psychiatric evaluations, polygraph tests, and background checks with his college roommates, the CIA turned him down. ''That would have been a pretty exciting career,'' he admits. ''But I'd also probably be dead by now.''

So Staten did what any failed spy with a degree in acting would do: He turned to writing videogames. His first effort, Halo, pitted Master Chief against aliens hell-bent on attacking Earth. Halo wasn't particularly innovative, but it came wrapped in a pretty package: The visuals were cinematic; the lush vistas included snowcapped mountains and breathtaking waterfalls. And the music was evocative, effectively using choral chanting and moody jazz. But what really resonated with fans (who include such A-listers as Julia Roberts and Justin Timberlake) was the game's multiplayer mode. ''You get so consumed in the game that your brain feels fresh when you finish playing it,'' says music producer Nile Rodgers, who worked with Incubus and Hoobastank on the sequel's soundtrack.

Die-hard fans will notice that the core gameplay in Halo 2 remains largely unchanged. The most impressive new feature is the ability to wield two weapons at once. But the biggest step forward is that Staten's story about an invasion of Earth is now told from the perspective of both the humans and the Covenant aliens. Since Master Chief was already well established, Staten and his father, a professor of theology, developed a set of religious beliefs that could explain the Covenant's actions in the sequel. They zeroed in on the idea of the Halos — 10,000-kilometer-wide ring worlds — as utopias, safe havens in a universe filled with terror.

Clearly, there are political and religious dimensions to Halo 2 that were absent from the first game. (''You could look at [the story] as a damning condemnation of the Bush administration's adventure in the Middle East,'' admits Staten.) Such provocative themes were bound to come under the scrutiny of Microsoft's legal team. Even as the game was getting its final polish, lawyers forced Staten to change the name of an alien antagonist, arguing that it carried Muslim overtones. Staten objected. Nonetheless, some of the voice actors (who include Michelle Rodriguez, Ron Perlman, and Miguel Ferrer) were called back to rerecord dialogue only weeks before the final version was delivered.

That bump now behind him, Staten and his team are focused on the game's huge rollout. Despite a leaked version of Halo 2 that hit the Internet in mid-October, Toys ''R'' Us is expecting Harry Potter-esque lines when it opens its Times Square store at 12 a.m. to start selling the game on Nov. 9; 6,500 other stores across the country are joining in the midnight madness. Gates hopes a big opening day is just the start of a juggernaut. A new online-play feature will ''make Halo 2 a much bigger phenomenon than Halo, because it's more of a social experience,'' he predicts. Microsoft also expects the game to have a halo effect on sales of the Xbox system, which remains a distant second to Sony's market-leading PlayStation 2.

The only thing left is the Halo movie. Producers call, but Bungie is playing hard to get. ''We delete voice-mails without even listening to them,'' says Bungie manager Pete Parsons. Staten says their anti-Hollywood stance is about staying focused on making great games. To that end, he's busy at work on several projects, including the possible resurrection of Phoenix, a non-sci-fi project that Bungie spent two years on before putting it aside to finish Halo 2. But right now he's more concerned about getting back into the regular rhythms of life — like sleeping in his own bed.