firehose

Alan Tudyk is bringing his wry comic stylings to Adult Swim’s Newsreaders. He's taking over for Mather Zickel, who hosted the first season of the mock newsmagazine show/Children’s Hospital spin-off. Zickel won’t be returning for the already-confirmed second season, due to his commitment to the Will Ferrell/Adam McKay sitcom Bad Judge.

Having been recently dropped from being a series regular on Suburgatory, Tudyk will now lead a Newsreaders team that includes returning correspondents Alison Becker, Beth Dover, Dannah Phirman, and Ray Wise. (Kumail Nanjiani, meanwhile, is also moving on to other projects.) Tudyk is best known for his work in Firefly and A Knight’s Tale, as well as for providing the voices of Wreck-It Ralph’s King Candy and Frozen’s Duke of Weselton. For a glimpse at his sarcastic hosting skills, check out his interview with Nathan Fillion below. [via Splitsider.]

Source

The latest update to Facepunch Studios' open-world survival game Rust, which is still in Steam Early Access and very early in development, its creators say, removes zombies from the game, replacing the undead with wildlife.

"Yep. We did it. We decided we couldn't hold off any longer," developer Maurino Berry wrote on the official Rust website. "The longer we keep zombies in — the more complaints we'd get about removing them. We are forcing ourselves to deal with it. We are no longer a zombie survival game!"

Rust began as a clone of another zombie-infested open-world survival game, DayZ, according to Facepunch's Garry Newman. He wrote last year that "we are sick of fighting zombies" and that non-zombie elements, "like mutants, wolves and whatever," were interesting, diverse threats.

"But your biggest enemy is always going to be other players," Newman said at the time.

Rust's zombies have been replaced with red bears and wolves, which are "just plugging a gap for now."

"All will be revvvealed [sic]," Berry wrote.

Other changes in the Feb. 6 update to Rust can be read at the game's official website. For more on Rust, check out our Overview video of the PC game.

After some difficulties in pre-production, work is getting underway for Jurassic World, the fourth film in the Jurassic Park series. Director Colin Trevorrow tweeted last night that principle photography for the action flick will begin this April and — surprisingly — shooting will be done on film, not digital. Trevorrow says that both traditional 35mm film and large-format 65mm film will be used by cinematographer John Schwartzman (Armageddon, The Amazing Spiderman, Seabiscuit).

65 film is rarely used, particularly in the 4K digital era. Each frame is significantly larger than a traditional 35mm frame, making the film extremely sharp. It's likely that select action scenes will be shot in the large format, similarly to Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. However, it's not yet clear how the film will be released in theaters — it's doubtful that it will be projected in 70mm, as few theaters can handle the film. Instead, the movie will probably be offered in IMAX.

Traditionalists will be pleased with the choice to opt for film instead of digital, which has steadily taken over Hollywood in the past few years thanks to its convenience and cost savings. Perhaps more importantly, the move means Jurassic World will visually match the three earlier Jurassic Park films, which date from 1993, 1997, and 2001. Such visual cohesiveness is something that directors like George Lucas and Peter Jackson eschewed in favor of new technology in the Star Wars prequels and The Hobbit, respectively.

Trevorrow has already shown an interest in keeping the fourth film true to the series' roots. In a separate tweet last year, the director said in no uncertain terms that the dinosaurs in the movie would not have feathers — despite evidence from paleontologists that many were covered with them.

Jurassic World will star Chris Pratt, and is set to be released on June 12th, 2015. No plot details have been revealed yet, but information from Louisiana's film offices reveal that some of the film will be shot in New Orleans this June.

Veteran Sonic game designer Takashi Iizuka is overseeing the production of Sonic Boom, but main development is entirely in Western hands due to Sega's desire for Sonic to be more appealing to Western audiences.

Speaking with Polygon, Iizuka said the decision to give developer Big Red Button creative control over Sonic Boom and have Sanzaru Games work on the 3DS title was part of Sega's overarching plan to make a completely Westernized branch of the Sonic franchise.

"As part of completely thinking about the West, we wanted to make sure we had Western game developers and make it a part of Western television," Iizuka said. "We wanted to make sure it was developed best for Western audiences primarily; this was very important.

"The whole thing started with the television series," he added. "Our previous series, Sonic X, was made in Japan and influenced by Japanese anime; the main audience it was made for was in Japan, although it came to the West as well. So Sonic Boom is something made specifically for the Western audience. For the TV series to be successful, we pretty much had to make it for that audience, and the games tie into that strategy."

Sega of America producer Stephen Frost told Polygon that keeping Sonic Boom in Western studios was important for the projects' "synergy." Frost said Sega picked Big Red Button because its team — led by Uncharted and Jak and Daxter veteran Bob Rafei — had experience with character-driven adventure games.

"One of the things is, if you think about it at a high level, all the key aspects of this new initiative for Sonic, whether it's the cartoon, the game or the toys, is centered on the Western side, and we wanted to be unified in that," he said. "It's very challenging to create an initiative like this where everything works in a nice synergy if you have a lot of people scattered around the world. Granted, we're doing our [animation] stuff in France, but really, the leads of each group are at Sega of America. And it was really important — I think this is where many other initiatives might fail — is that we really we see each other every day, we're talking to each other every day, and that was really important.

"This game is not just about speed."

"Sonic Team is great and they make really great speed-oriented games, but this game is not just about speed," he added of the title's emphasis on combat. "Speed is an important aspect of it, but exploration, combat and the strong narrative of the storyline are very big aspects of the game, more so than I would say in the past. So again, we wanted a strong storyline and art design that Western audiences can resonate a little bit better with the synergistic relation for all of us at Sega of America is why we drove toward a Western developer across the board."

According to Rafei, Sonic Boom will have a narrative focus and will follow a "wide linear" gameplay approach; it's not a true open-world game, but a series of classic sandbox levels branching out into more levels in a spoke-like system.

"There's moments where you're funneled back to the main gameplay and we have to do that also for the necessity of cooperative play, where we didn't want to have the two characters venture off in two different directions," Rafei told Polygon. "It's a classic structured game, so we have the critical path, and part of our project pillars, among many, was to make sure that it's accessible to new fans. So we want you to be able to finish the game but for fans who want more, you will have to find the additional, the secondary paths and all the hidden secrets."

When asked if action-adventure sequences like those in Uncharted inspired Sonic Boom's gameplay, Rafei did not shy away from the comparison. Big Red Button is utilizing familiar adventure game conventions and ideas, he explained, but the emphasis was on making sure the gameplay didn't eclipse the game's defining Sonic elements.

As for the blue hedgehog's new scarf — it's not incorrect to say it was pulled straight from the closet of Nathan Drake.

"I was part of the team that created Uncharted, so it's hard to take the DNA out of that."

"We were exploring different outfits and we went through a lot of iterations and the scarf was something I've used in the past and it works for me and it works for the character," he said. "Really, the history of that comes from the old western days, with John Wayne, and as a kid watching a lot of those westerns, that really stuck with me. And you see the use of the afghan in a lot of action movies because of the soldiers and what's happened with more association with the Middle East. So that DNA made its way into what makes a character action hero nowadays."

"I was part of the team that created Uncharted, so it's hard to take the DNA out of that," he said. "We're making the games we want and want to play and it's hard not to tap into, what feels right to you. And given our past with a lot of team members worked on Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, so you want to make sure we're not just doing the same thing. We took the best of what we know from those games and applied it to what works for Sonic canon. That was really important to us, not to make another Ratchet and Clank game or another Jak and Daxter game. It was important to make sure that it feels like a Sonic game."

Frost added that a more combat-oriented Sonic game would allow the personalities of Sonic's companions to be expressed more fully. Each character will have specialty abilities that speak to who they are and how they interact with the world. For example, Amy can clear out swathes of enemies with her hammer and Knuckles can knock out opponents with brute strength. The action focus also ties into the exploration component of the games, Frost said, which will in turn feed into character and story progression.

When asked specifically about the redesign and inclusion of Amy, who's been consistently regulated to a less-than-influential side character in many Sonic games, Rafei said that it was the team's goal to not make her, as well as the other companions, feel like a subordinate character. Amy will be more "capable, agile and graceful" for Sonic Boom, with her own powerful attacks and positive personality. Although it wasn't a bullet point Big Red Button had to pursue, Rafei said having Amy standing out of Sonic's shadow was a positive outcome of wanting all characters to stand out.

"I want to bring more girls into gaming and have them play characters that they can associate with and not feel like they're created by just a bunch of men," Rafei said. "I want her, if it's just me purely, and I'm sure the Sega team agrees with me, I want her to be see as a very capable character adventure character in herself. If she was to break out and have a game of her own you'd probably get an idea of what that would look like based on this game."

"Sonic is about joyous movement."

Sonic Boom will also emphasize cooperation among the characters, offering two to four-player co-op against a new enemy that is "darker and more foreboding than Eggman is." But franchise veterans will still feel comfortable in this new Sonic, Frost said, because the game still follows Sonic's principles of fast-paced movement. But this time around it's not just about Sonic, with Tails, Knuckles and Amy each getting their chance in the spotlight.

"Not specifically towards that but for me, Sonic is about joyous movement," he said. "Everything he does is that too maybe. But it's a key thing. The reason we repeat this stuff is because, from a foundation sense, it's what so important about these properties. And we wanted each character to navigate and do everything in their own unique way that really sells their personality. For example, Amy is very graceful, she's like a ballerina. Everything she does which would normally be difficult for someone, she does with so much fluidity and grace. And yet, it balances out because she's so awesome."

Iizuka confirmed that there are currently no plans to bring the Sonic Boom games or cartoon to Japan; the show will launch in North America and France later this year, while the game is "coming soon." He also noted that the Japanese Sonic Team will continue to make Sonic games parallel to Big Red Button and Sanzaru's games, although he could not comment on their publication to PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.

The very idea of All-New Marvel NOW! is to try something new with the company’s legion of characters, and I can imagine that Wolverine presented one of the biggest challenges. People like Wolverine a lot, so putting him in an altogether different situation than readers are used to seeing, or somehow altering the DNA of the character, is risky. There’s a reason DC basically left Batman untouched in the transition to The New 52, after all.

To its credit, the first issue of the new Wolverine series by writer Paul Cornell, penciler Ryan Stegman, inker Mark Morales and colorist David Curiel, takes both of those huge risks. They take Wolverine out of readers’ comfort zone. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work.

The easiest description I can come up with for this new take on the character is that Cornell’s script pulls a Superior Spider-Man on Wolverine. No, a supervillain hasn’t entered his brain and taken over (at least not that we know of), but the driving question of the series so far seems to be, “Just how far is this guy willing to go?”

The inciting incident here is something that actually happened several months ago in the previous Wolverine series (also written by Cornell): Wolverine lost his healing factor, which means that he’s no longer effectively invincible. That major change has turned Wolverine into a “Rogue Logan,” as the opening story arc’s title indicates, and led him to join a team of mercenaries and/or thieves working for a crime boss who goes by the name The Offer.

It has also driven him to start packing heat, something that inspired a bit of controversy in the buildup to this issue’s release. Wolverine’s gun definitely plays a part in the ending, which is meant to come as a huge shock to readers, but the scene where he actually decides to start carrying is fairly mundane. Now that he’s without a healing factor, he simply goes to Black Widow to help him with some target practice. He even notes that he used guns plenty of times during his time as a soldier in World War II.

And that is the ultimate downfall of this story. While it’s strangely invigorating to see Spider-Man committing heinous acts in the name of what he believes to be the greater good, for Wolverine this isn’t behavior that’s all that shocking. This looks and feels different, considering the circumstances with Wolverine’s powers, but we’ve seen Wolverine kill before. It wasn’t that long ago that he was leading a black-ops X-Men team whose entire deal was killing. He says outright that he’s used guns before. And yet all this seems clearly intended to shock.

Even the shock of Wolverine working for a crime boss is dulled by what seems to be an obvious ploy on Logan’s part to get to Sabretooth somehow. Wolverine going undercover is also something we’ve seen him do. The trouble with the question “Just how far will he go?” is that Wolverine has already gone there.

Stegman matches the extreme feel of the story with an extreme take on the art. While it’s really nicely crafted (and Morales’ inks and Curiel’s colors complement it well), it’s exaggerated to the point of what seems like parody. The take on Logan I’m most reminded of is when Darick Robertson drew him in the infamous crossover with Garth Ennis’ Punisher back in 2002. That story wasn’t particularly complimentary toward the old Canucklehead (he was shot in the genitals, had his face torn off, and run over with a steamroller), and this one isn’t either. The Logan who wears a crazy look on his face and says “Q.E.D and ipso fatso” isn’t the same mature, intelligent and even occasionally tender guy who’s been heading up the Jean Grey school over the past few years.

In that sense, the new Wolverine #1 is certainly a shakeup, but in the end, it feels a bit like a regression.

Ryan Stegman Talks Drawing Wolverine

Installation art has a long history of shocking and surprising people, though there are now concerns a very realistic looking statue of a man sleepwalking in his underwear may have gone too far. That statue, quite literally called "sleepwalker," was made by sculptor Tony Matelli to promote his latest exhibit at Wellesley College's Davis Museum. The only problem? Wellesley College (where the statue was placed) is an all-female school, and the surprise sculpture not only spooked some students upon its arrival, but also became "a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for some members of our campus community." That's according to an online petition to have statue relocated, penned by a Wellesley College student that's now been signed by some 600 supporters.

Showed up with little explanation

In a statement to The Boston Globe, both the Davis Museum and Wellesley College's president acknowledged the controversy the work created, but made no promises of relocation, saying "the very best works of art have the power to stimulate deeply personal emotions and to provoke unexpected new ideas, and this sculpture is no exception." The rest of Matelli's exhibit is still slated to run through May 11th.

A shot of the statue posted by the Davis Museum last month. (Facebook)

The Android version of EA's Dungeon Keeper does its best to prevent users from providing negative feedback.

It's typical for an app to ask the player to submit a review after it's been played for a few hours. A prompt appears, pointing to the app store, where the player can select 1 through 5 stars and leave a blurb of text.

If the player selects the "1 - 4" stars option, they're directed to a private feedback submission page. Only if the player selects the "5 star" option will they be taken to the Google Play page, where they can leave any rating they wish along with a blurb. The system is designed to make good feedback public and visible, and to allow EA to keep negative feeback hidden so it can be dealt with privately, or ignored entirely.

People react strongly to feeling censored, which helps to explain why this news is gaining such traction on social media. It doesn't help that EA executives point to the game's high star rating to deflect criticism of the title's pay-to-play mechanics. It's true that the players can provide feedback to the company, but it's also true that the mechanism to do so has been weighted rather heavily to favor positive feedback.

People react strongly to feeling censored

Now to be fair, on many occasions the publisher and its senior employees have responded thoughtfully to their audience's feedback, though not before dismissing it outright: The initial SimCity launch; The Code Wars criticism; The worst company in the world award.

There's a recurring tenor to EA's communication with the public: it's argumentative, tone deaf and sometimes a little nasty, followed by an inevitable mea culpa. It's an issue we've discussed before.

The most recent example of EA's poor communication is Battlefield 4. The publisher's flagship franchise title was supposed to be an audacious, spectacular, modern first-person shooter; an experience that justified the next-gen consoles; and a shot across the bow of rival publisher Activision's Call of Duty series. The game sold well, especially so on PC, but the early adopters were rewarded with an all but broken multiplayer mode. Problems persisted through the holiday season, never getting entirely quashed, despite a number of patches.

EA has half-heartedly responded to a swell of criticism by rewarding players with bonus content that rewards players for playing Battlefield 4 on EA's timetable. On a recent earnings call, EA's COO Peter Moore said he believed softened consoles sales of Battlefield 4 had to do with the transition from current to next-gen consoles, and not "we believe, linked to any quality issues." In the same call, the EA executives cushion their language, referring to "some" users having troubles.

This is Ben Kuchera's attempt to play the single-player game in January on the PlayStation 4.

This is my attempt to play multiplayer around the same time on the Xbox One.

EA has shown little ability to discuss these issues openly, or even to admit they exist. Compare the Battlefield 4 statements with the company discussing the controversy of Dungeon Keeper's design in the following exchange.

"At the time of this interview, App Store ratings currently sit at 4 out of 5 stars and Google Play ratings sit at 4.5 out of 5 stars. We're also seeing a lot of game downloads and in-game engagement so that tells us there is a large group of people who are playing and enjoying the game," EA Mythic's Jeff Skalski told Tab Times. "Obviously, this is counter to some of the angry reactions we've seen around the internet, so we're still trying to look at all of these data points."

That data point is largely due to how the app pushes you away from negative feedback on Android devices, although the rating system seems to work as expected on iOS. It's designed to allow positive feedback to be reflected on the storefront, but negative feedback to go directly to EA, bypassing the public aspect of the star system entirely.

"We’re always looking at new ways to gather player feedback so that we can continue to improve our games. The 'rate this app' feature in the Google Play version of Dungeon Keeper was designed to help us collect valuable feedback from players who don’t feel the game is worth a top rating," EA told Polygon. "We wanted to make it easier for more players to send us feedback directly from the game if they weren’t having the best experience.  Players can always continue to leave any rating they want on the Google Play store."

EA is bypassing the public aspect of the star system entirely

The ratings pages may change, but EA will walk away with more people knowing that Dungeon Keeper exists. Sure, the company's found a way to anger vocal players, but what's the worry if they can continue to tell stock holders it didn't hurt sales? We can also expect to see this trick on more games; if there's anything mobile has taught the industry it's that "good" ideas are easily copied.

It helps when you can control how the players rate or your games, or at least stack the deck in your favor. All press is good press, right? Let that be the company's unofficial slogan.

Ever wanted to be drawn by Jill Thompson or Colleen Doran? Or get Julia Baritz to draw your mom as a superhero? And in the process help fund a documentary about the history of women in comics?

Well, here’s your chance. Sequart, the organization that produced Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods, The Image Revolution, and other comics-related documentaries has teamed with Respect! Films for a Kickstarter to produce a new film, She Makes Comics. Check out their video pitch and see some of the rewards after the jump.

For $1,500, backers can actually be drawn into a comics page that will be used in the film, to be drawn by either Jill Thompson or Colleen Doran. Editor (and current ComicsAlliance contributor) Janelle Asselin will review a comic and provide notes for one comic-creating contributor who throws in $500. For $175, you can get a drawing of your mom (or anyone else) as a superhero.

The film itself will be directed by filmmaker Marisa Stotter. Here’s how the Kickstarter describes the project:

The documentary will mostly be an oral history told by the key figures themselves. It will feature interviews with significant female creators and executives from the major eras of comics history. The women who changed comics will be telling their stories in their own words. We will also feature insightful commentary from observers both inside and outside of the comics industry: experts, scholars, writers, artists, actors, filmmakers.

As of Thursday afternoon, the project had raised about $8,500 toward its $41,500 goal, with 28 days left to go. Though the team has conducted a few interviews already, it’s still planning to travel to 10 more cities to interview 35 more people. Plus, there’s 800 hours of editing to do.

The Voice Actor Documentary Starring Your Favorite Cartoon Stars