How about a group thug?

At 9 on a Friday night in a sparsely furnished office bungalow in Hollywood, a group of 14 television writers, screenwriters, comedians and assorted tangential friends have gathered around a few television screens. The premiere of someone’s new show? Actually, they’ve come together to play Halo 2, the stunningly successful video game for Xbox.

Most of them have been playing the original Halo on a weekly basis as a group for a couple years. But as this session got started, it became clear that there was going to be some disparity among their skill levels. For some, this was their first time playing the sequel, which was released earlier this month.

“I played for three minutes before I got here, but it clearly wasn’t enough,” said Ken Little (a.k.a. “Weapon-X”), a self-described computer nerd. “I have a job, a wife and two kids, so it’s been kind of hard to fit it in.”

But John Travis, a 40-year-old stand-up comic who plays the game under the name “Dr. Takahashi” had spent at least 15 hours over the past week familiarizing himself with the game to make sure he’d be comfortable with all the “maps” -- the complicated and intricate environments where the action takes place.

Halo 2, like the first Halo, which was released in 2001, is a first-person shooter game, so the player never sees his character’s corporal body, only the guns, swords, rockets and grenades that he uses to blow up and otherwise destroy his enemies. In single-player mode, Halo and Halo 2 tell an elaborate story that involves battling a confederation of aliens, but when played in the more popular multiplayer mode, both Halos become about nothing more than trying to annihilate your friends.

The original is one of the 10 bestselling videogames of all time, with an estimated 5 million copies sold. Halo 2 shows promise of reaching similar numbers with 1.5 million copies pre-sold and $125 million in sales its first day in stores.

Each Xbox can support four controllers, and if there are enough TVs and enough Xboxes, they can be linked to play the game with up to 16 people at once. “It’s kind of like a softball game without moving around,” said Jay Johnston, the tall gravely voiced actor who started the weekly games. “Or like a poker night with blood,” said Jeff Walton, a screenwriter.

During its glory days, the weekly Halo game was played on a large-screen TV at the spacious home of Johnston’s girlfriend and would draw up to 25 participants. But the game has been roving ever since the two broke up about a year ago. This particular Friday it was held at the production offices of three Halo regulars who are working on a pilot for Comedy Central about nerd culture (which explains the “Star Trek” uniform hanging in the hallway). They had already filmed a segment on the Halo crew earlier that month.

The game was spread out over two rooms, each with two TVs and two Xboxes. In the back room, Sarah Altman, an aspiring comedy writer with dark makeup and bulbous black shoes who plays the game as “Sicky,” was getting slaughtered repeatedly by a player named “Cracken” who was in the front room. Altman is one of the few women who regularly attends Halo nights and prides herself on being just as good, if not better, than the guys. But this night, she was not at her best, having played Halo 2 only twice before.

“What? Who’s Cracken?” she asked. “Why are there strangers here?”

“Yeah, I don’t know those guys in the front room,” mumbled Little, who was looking at the screen with marked confusion.

Altman pressed a few buttons and there was a splatter from her section of the split screen. “Ahh ... I just killed Cracken and it felt good,” she said, leaning back in her chair and smirking with satisfaction.

In the front room, Ian Rutherford, Jeff Walton, his brother Ed, and Kevin Jarzynsky sat in a row of office chairs in front of the television, their fingers moving rapidly over the bulky black controllers. Ed Walton, who plays as “PrimaNotra” and works for Jerry Bruckheimer, looked pretty serious in his black wrist guards. These were the four strangers, brought to the game by Travis, and they were killing everybody.

In the back of the room a short, gentle-looking guy in a knit cap who asked to be identified only by his Halo name, “Spooky,” sat with his legs up on the desk, the controller sitting limply in his hands. “Sicky, stop it Sicky,” he said quietly, looking despondent as the words “You have been splattered by Sicky” popped up on the screen.

After the first round the group decided to play in team mode, so Gerry Duggan, a clean-cut television producer, moved into the back room to join Altman, Little and a scruffy producer named Ken Daly against the strangers in the front.

Duggan has chosen the player name “A Cute Baby” because whenever his character is killed, the screen will flash his assailant the words ‘You killed A Cute Baby.” Duggan said he was still getting his Halo 2 legs, but he seemed to be doing better than Daly, Altman and Little, so he took the lead.

“OK, they are all at the top,” he said. “Everybody take the elevator up.”

“Are you taking the elevator up, Sicky?” asked Little, looking confused.

“I don’t know where the elevator is,” Altman said.

“Stay together,” Duggan commanded.

“Copy that,” Daly said.

Altman and Little looked bewildered.

The front room took that round.

Spooky, who sat out that match, walked into the back room looking anxious and said he was taking a cigarette break. “I’m getting depressed,” Little said. “Like an out-of-my-league thing.” Altman agreed and within the next 10 minutes all three of them had packed up their controllers and called it a night.

Some new players arrived, some more players left, but by 11 there were still eight people hanging around, so the group shifted to capture-the-flag mode. Travis, Daly, Duggan and the recently arrived Johnston, who plays as “Captain Oopsie,” took the back room and the four strangers stayed rooted to their seats in the front.

As soon as the game got underway, the back room became frantic with cursing and yelling commands and lots of joking, but in the front room it was all business with Jarzynsky, a heavy-set redhead, leading the crew.

“They are coming in, boys!” he would say authoritatively. “I just need some offense!” Or “A Cute Baby is coming this way! Front door, Rusty!”

The front room beat the back room two games to one. Closing in on midnight, the back room was still getting slaughtered. Needing a change of pace, they switched the battle to all-sword combat. Finally, the front room players began to lose their cool.

“Boy, they really know how to use those swords,” said Ed Walton, sounding young and frightened.

“Let’s huddle up boys,” Jarzynsky said.

“I wish there was a way to hold hands,” Jeff Walton said.