Some intriguing comments have been dropped by Epic Games stalwart Cliff Bleszinski about Kojima Productions' Metal Gear Sold franchise. According to the Gears of War 2 dev, they won't be following the MGS storytelling strategy which he referred to as "on the way out." What's the full score? See it in the full article and tell us what you think.

 

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.

 

After having recently announced his community-driven MMO, Dave Perry, the former Shiny Entertainment boss, has announced that he has another project for the developer community. Develop Magazine reports that over at the Game Developers Conference 2007 Dave Perry has invited everyone in the games industry to submit markers to the Google Maps powered Gameindustrymap.com.

Just so you aren't left clueless, Game Industry Map is a wiki-style Map of  of the videogame industry. The map is set to include studios, colleges, outsourcing companies, freelancers, publishers, and even the gaming press. Perry calls this self-funded project a "gift to the industry." Perry had this to say about the community-powered endeavor:

This site picks up on two fast-growing trends – community and user generated content – the videogame industry is still relatively young and we already have a great community spirit which we hope to nurture for the benefit of industry as a whole. Plus we get to show the rest of the world just how widespread we are, employing creative talent all over the planet.

The result is that it immediately becomes the most accurate information available in the world, it will grow daily, and it’s shared to all. We expect to see everyone using it, job hunters, press, gamers, college students, investors, even agencies that would like to see just how prolific this industry is.

...As the Internet has proved, businesses grow when you connect people, and my goal is to simply help drive that growth. I’m not looking for any donations, not looking for any sponsorship, I am looking for teams (especially new ones) to just put themselves on the map.

The project currently has a team that has put up the first 1,000 markers. It is expected that the community itself will eventually fill in the blanks.

Ah, if only the user-generated, homebrew-ed world of those entrenched in web 2.0 could spread to the rest of the world. If only.

Anyhow, feel free to fill Perry's map in yourself if you wish. Our read-link below should lead to the the map. It's important to note that the thing is free and it's still in beta.