Round-Up: Halo 2 Cusses, UCLA Game Music, NIS Newness

Today's Friday wrap-up includes news on an important swearing survey for Bungie's Halo 2, a new game audio-related university program, and fresh announcements from niche publisher Nippon Ichi, as well as the latest GameSetWatch weblog posts, product news, and Gamasutra job postings. - Weblogger Josh Smith has posted an account of his informal survey into the frequency and nature of profanity in Halo 2 over Xbox Live, which has for some time held an ill reputation for off-color remarks. Over the course of 33.9 hours, Smith recorded 275 instances of "f*ck," with the second-place profanity being 121 instances of "sh*t." Racial, sexual, and homosexual slurs were fairly common, with over 40 occurrences of each. Most profanities averaged between one and two occurrences per hour, with the exception of "f*ck," which garnered an average of 8.11 times each hour. - The UCLA Extension Program will host a nine-week course on Composing Music for Videogames in the spring term, to be taught by composer Lennie Moore. The course will examine the challenges and requirements specific to video game soundtracks, which often must loop naturally and sometimes dynamically segue into other themes, depending on the onscreen action. Students will be able to examine current video game audio hardware and composition tools, in order to complete assignments in creating adaptive music. More information is available at the UCLA Extension website. - NIS America revealed more of its 2006 slate at a press event in San Francisco on the 9th. In addition to the already-announced Ar Tonelico for PS2 and Generation of Chaos for PSP, the company showed off Disgaea 2: Cursed Memory, a sequel to the company's breakthrough strategy-RPG, and Blade Dancer, a multiplayer RPG for PSP licensed from Sony of Japan. All four titles are scheduled for a 2006 release, which indicates that the company is expanding beyond its original plan for two titles per year. - New posts on Gamasutra sister weblog GameSetWatch include info on a fresh Intellivision 'TV game' release, as well as new info on Ziff Davis and Future Network game site launches and plenty of recent additions to the Life Meter video game illustration site, among others. - Also updated today: the latest Gamasutra job postings, including positions from Acony, Collision Studios, Factor 5, iKuni, Midway Games and Webzen America.