Former Bungie boys form Moonshot Games

Michel Bastien, and used to work at Bungie, now they work for themselves. The trio of former Bungie Software workers has opened a new development studio called Moonshot Games, with the goal of creating simple downloadable games. Headquartered in Seattle, the company features the talents of former Bungie creative director Rob Stokes, former Halo 2 and 3 producer Michel Bastien and engineer Damian Isla.

The company is currently considering which platforms it targets first but wants to make sure that the game they do create and release will be high quality affordable to make and fun. Don’t we all. More info when we have it.

Dean Takahashi to Keynote LOGIN Conference

VentureBeat lead writer Dean Takahashi will deliver the keynote address at the LOGIN Conference Tuesday, May 12th. The 2009 LOGIN Conference is an annual designed to facilitate education and networking in an upscale and relaxing setting for business and development leaders involved with the online game industry The event will be held May 11 - 14 2009 in Seattle, Washington at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel.

Takahashi’s keynote address, “What’s a Wave and What’s a Puddle?”, tries to answer the tricky question of deciding what’s trends are worth getting involved with and what are a waste of time for start-up companies. You don’t want to get to the wave too early, and you don’t want to show up too late.

According to VentureBeat’s calculations, investors dumped $935 million into 111 game and virtual world companies in 2008. But many are wondering if the bubble has fully expanded. Will the weaker sales numbers from the month of March for console games signal a slowdown in everything related to games and game investment? Takahashi attempts to untangle the matter in his address.

Takahashi joins over a hundred industry luminaries speaking at LOGIN discussing a range of business, community, design, globalization, legal and programming and technology topics in dozens of lectures, debates, panels and roundtables. For the complete agenda, check out LOGIN’s complete schedule.

NCsoft Job Cuts Hit NC West Division

It’s been just five months since City of Heroes publisher/developer NCsoft decided to merge its UK and US operations into a singular entity, dubbed NC West. Now comes word that NC West is about to get a whole lot smaller. The company announced today that, due to restructuring efforts at the studio, it would be forced to cut anywhere from 70 to 90 positions from the NC West collective. The UK offices will lose about 50 jobs from creative, IT, community management, quality assurance (QA), and localization. NC West’s UK office will shift its focus away from development duties, instead focusing on marketing and customer support.

Meanwhile, here in the States, it’s been reported that the remainder of the job cuts will be hitting NCsoft’s Austin studio, which has been hit hard after the commercial failure of its Tabula Rasa MMO. The restructuring plan calls for many jobs to be trimmed and relocated to NC West’s Seattle headquarters, with QA teams to be imbedded in studios to work directly with the development teams during the production of games.

It was back in September when NCsoft first announced that it would be combining its Seattle and Austin studios in the US with its Brighton-based UK studio into a singular entity, separate from NCsoft’s main operations in Korea. The idea being that, by operating as a separate subsidiary, NC West would be able to focus more on Western audiences and pull in a higher profit margin from that market. Based on the restructuring news, it looks like the company has had a hard time getting that ball rolling. We wish the best of luck to those affected by the cuts.