More layoffs are happening in the gaming industry, this time from NCsoft. But it's not as drastic as rumors that circulated this week claimed. Details after the jump.

It's a bit late, but given the timeliness of Jeff Brown's opinions of late, we thought this might clear up some air on the ESA issue. It appears that a copy of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) document accounting for the financial transactions at the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has made it to the hands of the media, and what has been discovered might be the real reason why major members are bailing from the premiere software organization. Check the full article for more details.

Activision, Vivendi, NCsoft, and Her Interactive have already dropped from the E3. It seems that another company is going to jump ship from the upcoming event. From the looks of things, id Software might soon follow suit as they are unsure about their plans for E3. Find out more in the full article.

Normally, a major event such as E3 would have all the big name companies attending it.  This year will be different, though, as five publishers have decided to drop out of the event altogether. Part of the reason may be due to reported bad blood between them and ESA president Mike Gallagher. More on this after the jump.

You know what they say: it ain't over 'til the fat Draenei sing. Or dance. Or, well, whatever it is they're good at doing these days. And despite World of Warcraft musical composer Jason Hayes not currently working for Blizzard, he still recounts his experiences with the developers in a positive light.

Hayes had a recent interview with GameSpot AU, talking about the obstacles and nuances of the creative process behind music for award-winning MMO franchise. What caught our attention in the interview, however, was talk of his other projects and possible future prospects. Looks like his future is promising - and from the point of view of us gamers, Hayes' dropping of hints in the interview makes us hopeful. Especially with the mention of StarCraft 2...

GameSpot AU: You weren't credited in the Burning Crusade soundtrack or trailers. Did you have any involvement with the projects?
Jason Hayes: I've since gotten involved with NCsoft. It's a different developer, and we're doing a brand-new title for them; a really huge game that isn't announced yet, but it should be very soon, and it's really exciting.

GS AU: Will you be working on the StarCraft 2 soundtrack?

JH: You never know. NCsoft precludes a certain amount of cross-involvement, but you know, Blizzard and their game worlds are so much in my bloodstream now, and I have such an affinity for that, that I certainly am not admitting to myself I won't be involved with things in the future. I hope to get involved with other Blizzard enterprises, because I still have so many friends there, and they just make incredible games.

Interpret that as you will. We're just giving the guy some props for being such a sport with the people he works with. And if his ties to the gaming developers are strong enough, we can expect a lot of good things in the near and far future.

You can check out the rest of the interview behind the Read link below.

 

Tandem Events recently announced that NCSoft's Richard Garriott and Microsoft XNA Group's Chris Satchell will be keynoting the event at the second Develop Conference & Expo to be held in Brighton, UK this July 24-26. With speakers such as game legends Peter Molyneux to also appear as speakers at the event, the two will tackle issues with creativity and community and the future of the MMO game.

Satchell's main speech will dive into Web 2.0 keeping two of the four key themes of the conference in mind: creativity and community. Using online social phenomena such as YouTube and MySpace as examples, Satchell will expound on how the gaming community drives Web 2.0 direction and development and how it will effect the online gaming scene.

"Lord British" Garriott will share his vision of the future massively multiplayer online game and the possibilities that can be achieved by developing for the medium. Garriott will also share his experiences in developing games and share it with the budding developers of the European community.

The organizers of the event, Tandem Events, have also announced that the conference already has an amazing line up of speakers slated, stating in the official press release that "the speaker line up is already reading like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the video game industry." Event director Andy Lane concluded the announcement, saying:

Develop is still three months away, but already we have a fantastic line up in place – of both speakers and sessions – for conference delegates, who will be travelling to Brighton this summer from all over the world. It goes without saying that we’re delighted to confirm Chris Satchell and Richard Garriott as two of our keynote speakers.

The Sims creator Will Wright is slated to deliver a keynote speech at the ScreenBurn festival according to GamesIndustry.biz. He will be joining other notable figures and companies taking part in the event, including NCsoft, Sony Online Entertainment, Areae's Raph Koster, Warren Spector, Midway, Atari, MTV and BioWare.

The ScreenBurn festival is a gaming event recently added to the SXSW Interactive Festival. The event will also feature the ScreenBurn Arcade, 20 different panel discussions on gaming, tournaments and new technologies and games available to the public for the first time.

"We introduced ScreenBurn to the SXSW Interactive line-up in 2006, and received an overwhelmingly positive response," offered event director Hugh Forrest. "Building on that success, we added more gaming-related programming in 2007, plus will launch the two-day ScreenBurn Arcade."

SXSW Interactive takes place in Austin, Texas, March 9-18, with ScreenBurn scheduled for March 10-13.

If MMOs, FPS, and mechs are your thing, then you better check out Exteel, NCSoft's new "free to download, free to play" game.

Why? Because Exteel features all three. In this game, players get to control Mechanaught "a powerful bipedal walking war machine", which can be tweaked according to your taste. You get to choose from a variety weapons, "from razor-sharp melee blades to devastating siege cannons". There are four gaming options to choose from: Death Match, Team Death Match, Territory Control, or Last Stand.

Anyway, this game went on closed beta stage about a month ago (that's the 17th of November, to be exact), and now they're offering signups for Open Beta. Interested? Click on the "Read" link below.

There's a feature on writer Wynne McLaughlin on Austin American-Statesman... What? Who's McLaughlin? Well, he's got several screenplays and television scripts to his name. He's also got a lot of writing credits on sci-fi and detective shows.

What's that? What does he have to do with gaming? Wait a bit okay? We're getting there.

McLaughlin you see, is a professional game writer and designer at Austin game publisher NCsoft Corp. McLaughlin says:
 

With Tabula Rasa, I am writing dialogue and alien names, but I have to be able to physically put that into the game and understand how to set that up and what events happen within the game.

His job in Tabula Rasa basically requires him to come up with reasonable sounding terms and techno-babble such as "Tinchtu Herb" and "Stim Dus." He says that a most useful tool when doing his job is Google. He uses it to make sure that there isn't already a word like that or to better understand the Latin origin of certain words and concepts he has to work with. In his words: "It's a writer's best friend."

What's interesting about this is that his job hardly existed ten years ago, but now that the industry is maturing and there is an increasing need for more mature and complex plots. Face it, it's not just about the graphics and the speed and the twitchy-ness of the games anymore. The gamers are growing up, and they're demanding better more involved in-game experiences.

Now, there aren't many pure writing jobs available in games. A lot of the jobs available require an unusual blending of creative writing and technical know-how. It pays good though as salaries can range from $30,000 per game to more than $100,000 a year for someone who writes and designs.

One has to keep in mind though that writing for games is something almost alien compared to writing for novels or movies. For one thing, more writing is done for games, especially the ongoing massive-multiplayer online games. A screenplay averages about 110 pages. A game can contain thousands of pages of dialogue. Imagine how many pages of script there are for those 60+ hour RPGs?

A lot of guess work is done to try to predict what a player will do in each situation. Why is that? Because writing for games isn't about having the best dialogue or the most realistic or compelling characters, it's about satisfying the player. For some game genres, it's about making the player feel like he's the star of the show. For others, it's about immersing the player and suspending disbelief as much as possible.

Whatever the genre, the story, or the design/setting of the game is, all of that should give the game a lot of sense. Just a little career idea for you if you think you've got whole worlds spinning around in the mysts of your mind and you're into gaming.

EverQuest II's mysterious "Sage of Lore" always leaves clues about Norrath in History and Lore boards over at the EQ2 forums. As such, he has gotten quite a following. With such popularity, it becomes more difficult to keep his identity a secret.

Mysterious no more, game designer Tony "Vhalen" Garcia sat down with Warcry and talked about the lore of EverQuest. Being involved in the creation and maintenance of lore in EverQuest, Vhalen has developed the foundation lore of the EQ2 universe. He maintains the lore vision and primary story arc, and integrating ideas from other designers.

The EQ2 lore has some elements that didn't make it to the original EverQuest, but that didn't mess up the timeline of events in EQ2. Vhalen has avoided using exact dates because of the nature and mechanics of the game, but he knows where the major events fall in relation to one another.

Players who've enjoyed "The Idol of Everling" (through a concept called "forum quests") have been clamoring for a similar type of quest. And their wishes wouldn't fall on deaf ears, as two new forum quests have already been worked out. Unfortunately, Vhalen's duties are keeping him from implementing the quests at this point.

Vhalen then went to talk about well-known characters like Foci, Lucan D'Lere, Dancer, and The Greenhoods.

Before Warcry lets him go, Vhalen left a bit of "lore candy" to tide us over until the next forum quest: The future of EverQuest II is the key to destiny.