So, I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a conversation at a game industry event go something like this…

General introductions, followed by explaining that I’m a game writer (and yes indeed, that game writers are good for something), followed by information about their company, followed by a line like: “You should come work for us, we’re trying to get into the women market and could really use a woman on the team.”

Well, thanks.
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Without fail, GarageGames takes it away indie style. I recently got a chance to talk with Tim Aste, who is the Director/Producer and one of the three full-time artists on the development team for the upcoming Fallen Empire: Legions game coming out from popular indie tool provider GarageGames. Classic indie production process where roles are shared in a close team. Fallen Empire is a browser-based FPS that will be launched at InstantAction.com.

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Company of Heroes, long time established in the Real Time Strategy genre, continues to develop its visual quality and coding ease with the Essence Engine. And of course, it also recently won the “Best PC Game” and “Outstanding Innovation in Gaming” awards at the Elans. I got a chance to speak to Relic artist Damian Pannell, who worked on modeling, textures, and gameplay aspects of the vehicles and tanks. It’s nice to get a chance to check out leaps in art that are local to me in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia–a mecca of game industry.

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With the introduction of player voice in Mass Effect, BioWare is taking on change in its writing style and company culture. Kevin Barrett, Director of Design at BioWare Edmonton, shares insights on these changes in a company that established itself as the premier developer behind text-branching role-playing games such as Baldur’s Gate and continues to promote the importance of writing in games.

“It may not seem like a big deal, but giving the player’s character a voice has really opened the door to cinematic presentation of dialogue exchanges. As soon as you go from mute player responses to cinematic, interactive dialogue, the writer’s responsibilities evolve significantly.
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ECD Systems is holding its yearly contest for independent games. Voting began March 14, and they’re still taking submissions. The winners are up to the public, which means you still have a chance to make it if you enter your game!

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So what’s it like being an artist working with a handheld like PSP? Nathan Phail-Liff, Lead 3D Artist at Ready at Dawn Studios, knows just what goes into making a successful and visually pleasing game within the limitations of the handheld world from his work on God of War: Chains of Olympus. And if you ask me, the graphics are so stunning that it looks comparable to anything you’d find on console.

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Hey, good news for anyone who wants more 3D support out of Torque X 2.0. For those of you who are out of the loop on game engine goodness, Microsoft’s (essentially free) XNA game engine also has a compatible engine from popular independent games developer and distributor GarageGames–Torque X. Torque X allows developers a chance to deploy and test their game on retail Xbox 360 units through Microsoft Creator’s Club.

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If you’re a woman or minority, heads up for a new $45,000 scholarship from the ESA Foundation for students pursuing game education. To be applicable, you must want to attend for full-time study at accredited four-year colleges and universities. Although applications for this round are due on May 15, 2008, the ESA plans to add fifteen more scholarships for fields including graphic design, computer science, animation or programming, digital entertainment or software engineering.

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Although already well known for its dialog interaction in past role playing games, BioWare’s interactive narrative game play was upgraded by strides when it went for increasing the emphasis on designing cinematic interactive dialog in Mass Effect. This is where Ken Thain, Lead Cinematic Designer at BioWare, stepped in and got an opportunity to incorporate his past experience with making machinima into the actual core game play.

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Massive Entertainment Lead Artist Rodrigo Cortes gave us insight on the art development of World in Conflict, a real time tactical game with a heck of a lot of artistic details that flesh out the environment and the combat during gameplay. For all you console gamers out there, keep an eye out for this PC title as it gets ported to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in the fall.

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