What was only a rumor yesterday was confirmed today, Stephen Reid was one of those affected by the layoffs at BioWare. He confirmed this morning via Twitter and Facebook that he was let go from the company, a sad state of affairs for anyone who looked to him as one of their primary sources for SWTOR info. Here is the rundown straight from the man himself, via his Twitter account-

Today my life’s next chapter starts. Lost track of how many chapters so far… but time to turn the page.

I was one of those affected by layoffs at BioWare Austin yesterday. I got to build an amazing team while I was there, and miss them already.

I’m also going to miss #SWTOR and the community we created. Sure, I know some of you hated me, but hey, I still worked hard for you.

I’ll be Twitter-quiet for a bit, but I’ll be back soon-ish. Doing something, somewhere, and talking about it here. I hope we keep talking.

Last but not least: I was quiet for the last couple of weeks because I was full-on devoted to #SWTOR character transfer. It’s still coming!

Now I’ve got to go, because you don’t want to see a grown man cry on Twitter. Also, I don’t know the emoticon for it.

Don’t lose faith. They’re still devoted to making a great game.

It’s a wide-open space right now. Big, full of possibilities, and scary as hell. Thanks for everything guys.

Good luck with whatever you have planned in the future Stephen, and May the Force be with you.

Today via Stephen Reid on the official forums and twitter we got an announcement from Bioware that they decided to re-invite the testers of the first and only (so far) September beta testing weekend.  Here Stephen gives us a great explanation to the reasoning and the situation behind the change of not inviting weekend testers back for another go.

Read on

Georg Zoller made, what is probably, the funniest post on the official forums in weeks (or evah!). It was a response to one of the people that commented something about Stephen Reid cutting the swimming feature out of the HERO engine while Bioware modified it for SWTOR. I don’t know if the person that made this “accusation” ever again appeared on the forum, since I can’t think of a comback to this post.

Let me fill you in on a secret.

Stephen, in his function as Community Manager, prints the source code of the game engine we are using onto giant paper sheets. Daily. He then proceeds to personally use a pair of oversized, green scissors to cut out vital parts of it. We then scan the results, run them through optical character recognition, synthesize the output into wave files and feed them to the lip synching program that outputs the result using a mockup of Admiral Ackbar placed in an empty test level.

Our valiant IT department has set up a webcam pointed onto a giant 50′ monitor, focused on Admiral Ackbars lips. The image from the webcam is translated to a programmer equally skilled in COBOL and lip reading, who inputs the resulting source code directly from the screen into the source code repository, where it is stored on magnetic cards that are swiped by several dozen interns and flown via pigeon to London, UK, to deliver the latest and greatest demo to the showfloor.

This estemeed gentlemen and ladies, is how games are made.

(In other words – Stephen didn’t cut anything, and decisions on swimming were made long before he even arrived in the building.)

Just like the awesome community manager he is Stephen Reid has no sooner had his feet hit the dirt in Boston and he is already filling us in on what to expect from them at PAX.

In the dev tracker we get the following response on what panels the Bioware developers wil be speaking at during the conference.

Here is the list,  read on and if you are lucky enough to attend, have fun trying to make them all and still play the game!   I wish all the developers and the fans good luck and hope to see some great coverage coming our way soon!

(lucky bastards) 🙂

Stephen Reid:

Hello from Boston!

With PAX East 2011 just a day away – well, give or take about eight hours, given my late post – I’m very pleased to tell you about a few guest appearances BioWare staff members will be making on various panels over the weekend.

Please note, these are not official panels for Star Wars: The Old Republic. They are panels on various subjects that we were asked to provide speakers for. If you attend any of these panels, there is no guarantee that The Old Republic will even be spoken of… well alright, it’s pretty likely.

However, like I said, they’re not official panels for TOR and we’re not aiming to make huge announcements at any of them! In that vein, we will also not be providing ‘official’ coverage of them. However, I expect a few fansites might pop along. (And to them, I apologize for the late notification!)

They’ll all be very interesting panels to attend, and now we have all the details confirmed we wanted to give PAX attendees a chance to organize their schedules around them. So, without further ado, here are the details, in chronological order, as lifted from the official PAX East schedule:

PANEL: Video Game Comics: Lifting the Curse

LOCATION: Wyvern Theatre
TIME: Friday, 10:30am – 11:30am

DESCRIPTION: Comic books based on video games have not traditionally been very well received. While some have sold well, most are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to critics and direct market sales. How can the tide turn? What needs to be in a video game comic to make it worth reading? And could Video Game comics wind up being the savior of the comic book industry? Join representatives from across the comic book industry and moderator Lucas Siegel, Site Editor of Newsarama.com as they figure out how to remove the curse of the terrible video game comic.

Panelists include: Lucas Siegel [Site Editor, Newsarama] and Rob Chestney, [Creative Services Manager, BioWare Austin, and author of Star Wars: The Old Republic – Threat of Peace (Dark Horse Comics)]

PANEL: Interactive Drama: Dialogue as Gameplay

LOCATION: Cat Theatre
TIME: Friday, 2:00pm – 3:00pm

DESCRIPTION: Do narrative games provide dialogue choices that enhance gameplay? Is it important to develop relationships through interactive choices between player and non-player characters? How are interactive conversation choices designed and how important is the user interface? What does it mean to experience Interactive Drama in a gameplay mechanic of dialogue choices?

Panelists include: Jonathon Myers [Co-Founder, Writer, Reactive Games], Stephen Dinehart [Chief Wizard, NarrWare], Dan Tanguay [Design Specialist, Vicarious Visions], Emily Short [Interactive Fiction Author, Independent], Jeff Orkin [PhD Candidate, AI Researcher, MIT Media Lab], Martin VanVelsen [Senior Research Engineer, Carnegie Mellon University], Daniel Erickson [Writing Director, BioWare Austin]

PANEL: MMORPG.com: The Future of Online Gaming

LOCATION: Naga Theatre
TIME: Saturday, 5:00pm – 6:00pm

A panel of MMORPG experts gather to chat with fans on where the online game market is going. With games moving into the mobile space, free to play pricing models and five major launches in 2011 the online market is in for a major year. The panel will have speakers from some of the top upcoming games in the online space plus legends in the industry. Fan will be able to ask questions and get answers from top development studios about upcoming games as we hope to explore where online games will be going for the next decade.

Panelists include: Curt Schilling [38 Studios], Scott Hartsman [Trion], Colin Johanson [ArenaNet], Craig Alexander [Turbine], Garret Fuller [MMORPG.com] and James Ohlen [BioWare Austin]

 

If you make it to PAX, check out these panels, folks!