I got a chance to talk to Fred Schmidt, NCSoft's producer of E3, earlier today about the whole E3 fine.

For those of you who missed our post on Friday, NCsoft was fined $5,000 for being too noisy on the show floor. The publisher received a warning and told to stop their Mutaytor show, but decided to go ahead and let the performance group do the final two acts and just pay the fine. Schmidt said he just put it on his credit card.

Apparently, Sega has been complaining about NCsoft all week. The once console publisher had a meeting room out on the show floor that was right next to the NCsoft stage and they told the show management that they couldn't hear one another while the band was playing.

After several complaints the show folks went to the booth and staked it out with little devices to test the decibel level of the show. E3 rules say you can't go above 85 decibels and apparently NCSoft was hovering right at the limit. On Thursday they popped over for a few seconds and received a written warning. On Friday it went over again by two decibels and they were told to stop the show or face fines. They decided to just foot the bill and let the fans enjoy the rest of the Tabula Rasa music.

Schmidt says he thinks NCSoft was being picked on because they are one of the larger publishers on the floor that aren't part of the ESA. This year's NCSoft exhibit was the 20th largest in the whole show and cost $2.8 million to put on, he said.

Earlier in the week, Schmidt added, two of the dancers were pulled from the middle of a routine because they were wearing short shorts, which the management deemed inappropriate.

Is it just me, or is the ESA trying to take the fun out of games? —Brian Crecente