NCSoft opens up Orange County Office. Pilfers Blizzard programmers.

[schild]

Grimwell.com did some rumormongering on Monday, and I felt the need to follow up on it. Not because it's particularly interesting or life threatening to Blizzard. It doesn't help Geldon's doomcast argument, nor will it be bad for Blizzard in the long run. I'm sure they have the money to buy, well, ANYONE. So straight from the horse's mouth, here's word from NCSoft. If the gentleman who let me know about this wants to step in the thread, I'm sure he will.

Yes, NCsoft has opened up an office in the Orange County area.  Yes, some of the staff in that office came from Blizzard.  However, that group is not involved with the development of Tabula Rasa, as has been rumored.

There you have it. New office. New people. Not Tabula Rasa.

What can we look forward to from this? Possibly a new game from NCSoft. I hope their bringing Alter Life over and I do think it's that. There hasn't been enough word about the American port of the title and then a new office opens? I looked through some press releases and couldn't find any word about untitled games. I could, obviously be wrong.

There are 2 things, I hope, everyone has thought of:

1. NCSoft did not take the programmers who thought bittorrent would be a good idea. They are lazy and deserve to be punished.
2. NCSoft does not assign them to a game already in development.

All in all, eventful week for NCSoft and as I get more news on the Orange County office, I'll be sure to relay it.

[edit: what I mean in #2 (not in development) is that I hope it's not CoH, Lineage 2, etc. But rather, something unreleased here.]

[WayAbvPar]

As long as they don't name themselves The Los Angeles NCSofties of Anaheim, I am all good.

[Llava]

Tonight, on a very special episode of The O.C...

[Viin]

Why can't we get a good game studio here in Denver? shees, all we got is a smattering of Net Devil and a couple of text game developers (who are cool guys).

[Big Gulp]

Why can't we get a good game studio here in Denver? shees, all we got is a smattering of Net Devil and a couple of text game developers (who are cool guys).

I don't understand why all these companies base themselves out of places like California (and hell, I'll include Denver as well.  Outrageous real estate prices, and you guys got Californicated a long time ago).  The south is dirt, dirt cheap.  Florida's state taxes are ridiculously low...  Hell, from what I recall Texas has zero state taxes and real estate won't friggin' bankrupt you.  There's also the much lower cost of living.  Is living in The Land that God Hates really that fucking important?  $50K a year in California is dirt poor, $50K a year in the south is doing pretty damned well.

[Margalis]

Because California has a huge pool of tech workers to draw from, including a large pool of game developers. It's a chicken and egg problem.

[Stephen Zepp]

Louisiana made some huge tax consessions and other advantages to attract software companies, and I even saw an advert for the Isle of Man (somewhere in the British Isles I think?) with amazing incentives as well.

[MaceVanHoffen]

I don't understand why all these companies base themselves out of places like California (and hell, I'll include Denver as well.  Outrageous real estate prices, and you guys got Californicated a long time ago).  The south is dirt, dirt cheap.  Florida's state taxes are ridiculously low...  Hell, from what I recall Texas has zero state taxes and real estate won't friggin' bankrupt you.  There's also the much lower cost of living.  Is living in The Land that God Hates really that fucking important?  $50K a year in California is dirt poor, $50K a year in the south is doing pretty damned well.

This'll probably get me labelled as an elitist, but ... The South is dirt, dirt cheap for a reason:  it sucks.  I'm from the great country of Texas, and I'll never go back.  So many reasons.  When you have a temperate climate year-round, live within a 45-minute drive of simply amazing places (Napa, the ocean, Monterrey, etc), and live and work with other people who generally value diversity rather than conformity and power, well, it's hard for other places to compete.

It's not just California, either.  There are other places in the US like it or close to it.  Arizona comes to mind.  Yes, I said Arizona.  Great state, and the only reason I moved away was to be closer to some very good friends.

Big companies often move to California because employees want to move to California.  All those tax breaks in other states don't help when your employee base (current and potential) don't want to live elsewhere and are in demand enough to refuse to move elsewhere.  The software industry just happens to enjoy that status, which is probably one of its only perks.

EDIT: Oh, and on the subject of salary.  If you're paid $50k in the South, you won't be paid that in California.  It's more like half-again as much, or sometimes double that.  That will still go fast out here, but you'll have more discretionary income.  If you're in one of the few industries that gets that kind of money, you will almost certainly have a better lifestyle.  Hence, another reason businesses relocate to California, because the owners and managers (i.e. people with higher salaries and thus more discretionary income) want to live here too.

[Big Gulp]

This'll probably get me labelled as an elitist, but ... The South is dirt, dirt cheap for a reason:  it sucks.

You'll get no argument from me on that score.  I'm a Michigander, and once I get out of the service if anything I'll move further north, like upper peninsula north or Alaska north.  However, given a choice between California or the south, I'd take the south any damned day.  The laid back west coast bullshit makes me want to kill, and I'll be glad when it finally gets washed into the Pacific.  It's too bad, really, because Washington and Oregon are beautiful, but the people suck.

[MaceVanHoffen]

The laid back west coast bullshit makes me want to kill, and I'll be glad when it finally gets washed into the Pacific.

Spoken like a true DI!  It takes all kinds, man.  The uptight, everything-must-happen-right-now-oh-my-god-I-have-five-minutes-left-in-my-whole-life attitude of most other places in the US makes me stabby.  That's probably why I like Europe so much.  Vive la difference.

[HaemishM]

Mississippi tries to give tax breaks to businessess too, but again, NO ONE WANTS TO FUCKING LIVE HERE. Including people who live here.

You could get paid half what they pay in Cali and be doing about a quarter better than you were in Cali. But you'd be in Mississippi. There's the rub.

Not that I'd ever want to live in Granola Land. Visit maybe, but live? Fuck that. I likes it cheap.

[Viin]

Exactly. Who wants to live in Florida, the place with it's own FARK tag?

I like living in Denver, even if it is sorta high on the price scale. I get paid pretty well so not a huge deal. My gf also gets paid well so together we do pretty well. Though I will grant you that I can certainly find much nicer, larger, cheaper property elsewhere - but would I be able to find a job there in order to afford it? Probably not.

[Krakrok]

50% of the population of the US live within 50 miles of the coast. California has lots of coast. The real thing to do is be on the California Nevada border with your business in Nevada (say Reno, Carson City, or Tahoe) so you don't have to pay state taxes and you're only four hours driving from the Napa/San Fran/Santa Cruz. Or around one hour by plane to Vegas, San Fran, San Diego, Los Angeles, or Portland.

[eldaec]

50% of the population of the US live within 50 miles of the coast. California has lots of coast. The real thing to do is be on the California Nevada border with your business in Nevada (say Reno, Carson City, or Tahoe) so you don't have to pay state taxes and you're only four hours driving from the Napa/San Fran/Santa Cruz. Or around one hour by plane to Vegas, San Fran, San Diego, Los Angeles, or Portland.

If you live in Tahoe you might not pay state taxes, but you sure as hell pay 'everything here is fucking expensive' taxes.

I can't pretend to have been doing much comparison shopping there due to being too busy sliding down mountains, but nonetheless, sheesh, the prices are like being back in the UK.

[atricks]

  The big honking building with EA on it that I can see from my apartment in florida would say otherwise.   EA / Tiburon does have studios in Orlando (In maitland, a metro area town just north of it), and they make the Madden series there as well as NCAA and Nascar.  Which has zip all to do with MMORPGs, but it does exist here.

   I even ventured to their other building on the other side of the lake once for an interview a few years ago, but thankfully didn't take the job.  I made the mistake of telling them about the time I set up the lunch behind EA's meeting rooms at E3 with Garriott and Jake from NCSoft.

[schild]

Rumors that Jon van Carneghem is no longer with NCSoft have been around for roughly two weeks now, as the Might & Magic website Celestial Heavens reported:

Former New World Computing employee David Mullich posted in our forums that NCSoft might have cancelled Jon Van Caneghem's project and will be laying off the designers this Friday. According to him, the artists had previously been assigned to other projects.Expect to see a follow-up to this story soon. Perhaps there is a little hope left for those who hoped to see Jon work on Heroes V.

We finally got confirmation from NCSoft that JVC left and according to the spokesperson "he has left the company to pursue other interests and we wish him all the best."

I've heard "We wish him all the best" a lot in this industry for the past 2 years. I think it's code for, "You created shit for us. We hope you get fucked raw by EA when you least expect it." Either that or the industry has teamed up with American Greetings. This is a cutthroat business. Pretty PR-style respect should have no place in it. May the most evil devious studio win!

[Lum]

It's a cutthroat business where the person who works at the competition could work in your next door office next week, so it's a good idea to burn as few bridges as possible.