Geoff Johns and Jeff Lemire are two of the most prolific creators in the comics industry right now. But though they're both heavily involved in shaping DC's New 52 universe (Johns with Justice League, Green Lantern, and Aquaman and Lemire with Justice League Dark, Animal Man, and Frankenstein), fans have yet to see the two creators work together on a series. That's set to change this October thanks to Vertigo's new anthology special, Ghosts. The issue will include a short story called "Ghost for Hire," written by Johns and illustrated by Lemire.
Ghosts is an oversized one-shot featuring a variety of both established creators and newcomers, with every story featuring a ghostly theme. Appropriately, the issue is scheduled to ship on October 31. On their Source Blog today, DC released a preview image from "Ghost for Hire."
"Ghost for Hire" by Geoff Johns & Jeff Lemire
Lemire commented on his partnership with Johns. "It was a real thrill for me to work with Geoff," he said. "I've written with him before, but to get to draw for him was really special. To be honest, I wasn't sure what kind of ghost story Geoff would deliver and I was pleasantly surprised with "Ghost For Hire." It's whimsical and fun and it has heart. When Geoff said he wanted to do a story like all the old Abbot and Costello movies he watched as a kid it really clicked for me!"
Continue below for more preview art from Ghosts.
"The Dead Boy Detectives in Run Ragged" by Tony Litt & Mark Buckingham
"Treasure Lost" by David Lapham & Paul Pope
"The Dark Lady" by Gilbert Hernandez
“The Night After I Took the Data Entry Job I Was Visited By My Own Ghost” by Al Ewing & Rufus Dayglo
Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following Jesse on Twitter, or on IGN.
World’s First eSports Congress Convening on September 21 in Valencia
DreamHack and Twitch invite video game industry luminaries to discuss the future of eSports
Valencia, Spain – September 6, 2012 - Valencia eSports Congress is hosting a one day event with video game industry leaders to discuss eSports development, media opportunities, and the rise of live streaming. DreamHack is organizing this landmark event while Twitch is sponsoring it and overseeing the streaming.
“DreamHack has a track record of working with all types of professional gaming leagues including ESL, CPL and will continue to do so in the future,” said Robert Ohlén, CEO of DreamHack. “Valencia eSports Congress will be a great way to bring more awareness to eSports and meet each other in real life.”
To bring awareness to the burgeoning eSports industry, DreamHack is partnering with Twitch, the leader in live online video game broadcasting.
"eSports has arrived as a major force in the video game and entertainment industries," said Kevin Lin, COO of Twitch. "There is a need for the entire eSports ecosystem to get together to discuss a host of pressing issues on the business side of the equation including advertising, infrastructure, competitive standards, video content and delivery and more. We're proud to be a part of it."
All panels will be moderated by industry veteran and renowned host and caster personality Paul ‘Redeye’ Chaloner. Some of the industry representatives include:
Alex Garfield - Team EG
Alex Lim - IeSF
Alexander Kokhanovskyy - Na’Vi
David Ting - IPL
Göran Hellgren - Telia Sonera
Ilja Rotelli - Blizzard
Kevin Lin - Twitch
Matthieu Dallon - ESWC
Michael O’Dell - Team Dignitas
Ralf Reichert - ESL
Robert Ohlén – DreamHack
Russell Pfister - NASL
Sam Matthews - Fnatic
Simon Whitcombe - CBS Interactive
Sundance DiGiovanni - Major League Gaming
Tomas Hermansson – DreamHack
Zvetan Dragulev - Own3d.TV
Team managers, event organizers and journalists are encouraged to apply to participate in the event. Interested parties should send an abbreviated resume and an explanation of why they should be part of the Congress using the contact form provided on our web site. We also have 250 seats in the Auditorium where you can attend to see the panel’s live. Tickets are currently available while supply lasts.
Twitch (formerly TwitchTV) is the world’s leading video game broadcasting network where more than 20 million gamers gather every month to watch and interact around the games they love. Twitch’s proprietary video delivery platform and infrastructure form the backbone of a distribution network for leading video game broadcasters including pro players, tournaments, leagues, developers and gaming media organizations. Twitch is leading a revolution in gaming culture, turning gameplay into an immersive entertainment media experience. Learn more at http://twitch.tv.
About DreamHack
DreamHack is the World's Largest Computer Festival. DreamHack's roots and core is the LAN party, with the major events DreamHack Summer and Winter, where participants bring their own computers and connect to the Internet in a large local area network which basically BECOMES the Internet by sheer scale. DreamHack is also Sweden's first consumer-oriented trade show / event / festival for computer games, game consoles and computers. The events are a platform for tournaments in eSports, knowledge and creative competitions, concerts by famous music artists, lectures by game developers and much more. Learn more at http://www.dreamhack.se
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Contact: Chase Access Communications for Twitch 415-810-0995 chase@accesspr.com
So FrightFest happened at the weekend, with the good, the bad and the ugly of the horror film industry descending on the Empire Cinema in London’s Leicester Square to shock and scare thousands of gore-hounds.
The weekend was a resounding success, but if you couldn’t make it down, the following are five of the best flicks that played (alongside the brilliant Sinister, which we previously reviewed here).
Sleep Tight
My favourite film of the festival, Sleep Tight is less an out-and-out horror and more a dark, psychological thriller in the tradition of Hitchcock’s very best. Luis Tosar delivers a grandstanding performance as Cesar, a quiet doorman working at an upscale Barcelona apartment. But below that unassuming surface, Cesar is something of a monster, creeping into his most beautiful tenant’s room at night and doing… well you’ll just have to watch the movie to find out, but rest assured it’s suitably sick and twisted.
V/H/S
Horror anthologies tend to be a mixed bag, and V/H/S is no different, though when it’s scary, it’s bloody terrifying. The wrap-around story finds a group of unpleasant pranksters breaking into a supposedly deserted house to retrieve a VHS tape, and while there they find footage that makes up the rest of the movie. The likes of Adam Wingard, Ti West and Joe Swanberg direct, and the film features the first chiller to tell its story purely through Skype. The undoubted highlight is a very novel twist on the devil worshipping sub-genre.
Berbarian Sound Studio
I’m not even going to pretend I understood this one, though while the vague plotting is frustrating, the bizarre sound and imagery stays with you long after the credits have rolled. Hunger Games star Toby Jones plays Gilderoy, a shy and retiring sound engineer invited to Italy to work on horror flick The Equestrian Vortex. But things turn strange as soon as he arrives at the titular sound studio, with life imitating art as the horror bleeds from the screen and into his life. As Gilderoy endeavours to retain his sanity, the film too starts to lose the plot, but it all looks beautiful, and as an homage to Italian Giallo, it's spot on.
Grabbers
So three serious choices, but what about something a little more light-hearted? Cockney’s vs. Zombies went down well with the FrightFest crowd, but for me Irish effort Grabbers narrowly edged the East End pensioners out. Playing like a cross between Tremors and Whisky Galore, the film stars Richard Coyle as a disillusioned Garda with a drink problem who is lazily seeing out his years in a sleepy coastal town. But when an alien invasion hits, Coyle’s character is forced to step up to the plate, no-more-so than when a scientist discovers that the aliens are allergic to humans with a high blood alcohol level. As ridiculous as it is entertaining, Grabbers is perfect midnight movie fare.
American Mary
Jen and Sylvia Soska – the directors of Dead Hooker in a Trunk – return with what may have been the most talked-about film at the festival. Ginger Snaps star Katherine Isabelle plays Mary Mason, a medical student who enters the shady underground world of body modification in search of a quick buck, and soon finds it taking a terrible toll on her own psyche. Brutal, gripping and genuinely horrifying, American Mary is the kind of film that FrightFest was created for, and should be sought out at the earliest opportunity.
Chris Tilly is the Entertainment Editor for IGN and is finding it hard to sleep after all that horror. His idle chit-chat can be found on both Twitter and MyIGN.
Today the video game industry was hit with some sad news. It was announced that Nintendo's official magazine, Nintendo Power, will be closing its doors. The magazine published its first issue in 1988 - and long before most people even knew what "online" was, it was providing gamers with unforgettable memories and tasty game news.
Later today we'll be running a feature looking back at some of our favorite things about Nintendo Power magazine, and gathering together all of our favorite memories. In the meantime, take a look at the covers below, which represent some of the best from the publication's 24 year run. We're sorry to see you go, Nintendo Power - thanks for the cool covers and great memories.
Did we miss your favorite cover? Tell us all about it in the comments below!
Audrey Drake is an Associate Editor at IGN and a proud member of the IGN Nintendo team. She is also a lifelong gamer, a frequent banisher of evil and a wielder of various legendary blades. You can follow her wild adventures on her IGN blog and Twitter. Game on!
With every insider source, industry bigwig and nerdy blog suggesting that James Gunn is in the lasergun-blasting sights to direct Marvel Studio's next mega-movie franchise 'Guardians of the Galaxy', it's a fair presumption that many of you are questioning who he even is.
Ignore the erroneous and credibility-evaporating double whammy on his cinematic CV though (Scooby-Doo and - zoinks! - Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed), and there are more than enough reasons to start getting excited.
Remember - Kenneth Branagh, Jon Favreau and even Joss Whedon were controversial choices when they were picked. And look how nerdgasmically well they turned out.
The Guardians of the Galaxy have faced Blackbolt, the Phalanx, Blastaar and even Thanos (the purple scrotum-chinned one from The Avengers post-credits cameo), but their biggest challenge will be winning over the popcorn-munching masses.
So rather than spend time focusing on broadening their appeal, choosing a fanboy who's edged into the mainstream to lead the charge could cover all the bases.
Slither and Dawn of the Dead (which he directed and wrote respectively) tick both 'black comedy' and 'fantastical horror' boxes, Tromeo and Juliet and Lollipop Chainsaw show he knows a thing or two about subject matter that's weirdly, wonderfully nuts, and The Specials and Super prove his affection for (and ability to subtly mock) the superhero/comic genre.
Add to that the fact that he's long-time friends with Marvel uber-mascot Joss Whedon (one of Gunn's first ever jobs was co-writing a TV pilot for Whedon), and a long running, personal love affair with comic books, and it's fair to say that he's one of the few directors working today who can truly 'get' a tale involving psychic pooches, monosyllabic talking trees, killer anthropomorphic raccoons, and space-spanning tales of life, death and everything in between.
He'll Assemble the Right Cast
With The Avengers now sitting proudly above every Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean as the third biggest movie ever made, Marvel's in the position to choose a cast of their dreams.
But the Guardians of the Galaxy have never been a team comprised of flashy A-Listers - their inherent appeal comes from the fact that while they may have universe-imploding powers, even a fraction of the die-hardiest comics fans could name them all without a quick flick through their Marvel Encyclopedia.
Seeing a Jolie/Pitt/Depp amidst the line-up would not only be distracting, it'd miss the whole point of the team (though we wouldn't mind seeing any of these picks in the Rocket Raccoon role).
Thankfully, Gunn has experience assembling indie stars with just the level of star power to entertain the fanboys and dazzle the newbies. From Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, and Rainn Wilson in Super, to Elizabeth Banks and Nathan Fillion in Slither, Gunn's proven he knows how to straddle that line.
And while we know Nathan Fillion gets his name thrown into the fanboy hat at every new movie announcement (*internal monologue override* - BECAUSE HE'S AWESOME), we genuinely can't think of anyone better for Star-Lord - the sarcastic, witty and eternally out-of-his-depth everyman who's the heart of the team.
Throw in prior form with Gunn in Slither and Super, and the aforementioned relationship with Fillion-manwife Joss Whedon, and this is one time where we're actively hoping for a bit of nerdy nepotism.
He Has Prior With Genre Smorgasbords
Not since the Rom-Zom-Com has a movie so potentially screwed with Netflix's admin department. Part sci-fi, part space-opera, part-drama, part-horror and part-comedy, the latest Guardians of the Galaxy comic incarnation is a masterclass in deftly balanced storytelling - and the film looks to be following suit.
The concept art shows a version of the modern intergalactic gang ready to rock, and one guaranteed to hit some kaleidoscopic story beats. There's Drax the Destroyer (a very serious and ruthlessly vicious warrior), Groot (an inadvertently comedic tree giant), Gamora ('as deadly as she is sexy' alien killer), Rocket Raccoon (Han Solo meets an Ewok by way of an enormous spacegun), and Star-Lord (a heroic albeit flawed, superpower-imbued human).
Not only will the right director have to juggle all those wildly differing personality types and group dynamics, but they'll have to introduce Marvel's entire galactic universe, along with a whole cast of practically unknown characters - and keep it relatable to audiences throughout.
Gunn seems perfect, having played with hyper-violence, black comedy and satirical superheroing in Super, and out-of-this-world ridiculousness and surprisingly affecting character drama in Slither and Dawn of the Dead.
He'll Take (Batsh*t-crazy) Risks
Whether you're a fan of his work or not, it's hard to deny Gunn is one to put his balls on the line in the name of a creative punt.
While many loved Super for its mad-as-a-bag-of-cats protagonist, and po-faced poke at Hollywood's genre darling, there were just as many who weren't too keen on a superhero flick boasting a mentally ill hero who brains perps into comas with a pipe wrench, or a sexually deranged sidekick who rapes her costumed mentor.
It's also a brave (some would say insane) man who steps up to remake one of the most beloved, iconic horror movies of all time, and while 2004's Dawn of the Dead wasn't perfect, it was far, far better than any could have expected.
And Lollipop Chainsaw? We can't see Shigeru Miyamoto following up his 252nd Mario with a game about a zombie-murdering, chainsaw-wielding, erotically suggestive cheerleader anytime soon.
While the quality and success of his work has been variable, there's been one constant - an unfailing drive to embrace nutso, creative risks in their gloriously deranged entirety.
And when you're talking about one of Marvel's most surreal teams ever, you need someone who's as uncompromising as they are a little crazy.
Grand Theft Auto III – one of the most important and influential games ever released in the gaming industry’s history – was originally slated to come to the North American PlayStation Network today after receiving ESRB certification earlier this year. However, the plug has been pulled on the release of the game, at least temporarily.
At the top of the PlayStation Blog’s post regarding the PlayStation Store’s weekly update, it says this:
“Note: Due to an unforeseen complication, the Grand Theft Auto III PS2 Classic is not publishing with today’s Store post. We will update you when a new release date has been identified. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Why the game has been pulled at the last minute remains to be seen. We’ll update when we learn more.
Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.
The games industry is a very broad artistic church. From architecture to sound engineering, almost every artform is virtually represented in some way, and all at various stages of evolution. Although many games can’t manage to tell a story more complicated than Roger Red Hat, by comparison gaming’s orchestral scores and electronic soundtracks are held in the highest regard.
It’s fair to say that gaming’s contribution to music is one of its biggest success stories. These days, videogame music is played in concert halls around the world, and its creators are some of the most respected people in the industry. But what exactly is music’s contribution to gaming? After all, music is not a fundamental component in the development of a game, insofar as the game will continue to function without it.
Yet the pervasiveness, quality and success of videogame music indicates it is more vital than may initially be apparent. So what can we learn from music’s influence on gaming? How does it affect the player’s experience? And to what extent can it influence the way games are created? To answer these questions, I spoke to three members of the games industry who have tackled the relationship between music and videogames in very different ways.
Jack Wall is one of the game industry’s best known composers, having written music for the first two Mass Effect games and the likes of Unreal II and the Myst series prior to that. He is also the co-founder of Video Games Live – the touring concert event which had its debut in 2005. Currently working on the score for Black Ops 2, Jack believes that music plays a crucial role in the development of storytelling in games. “Music is the unseen character. It's the emotion behind the actions of the player. It's gently there to show the game designer's intention. It's totally collaborative with the developer.”
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Music is the unseen character. It's the emotion behind the actions of the player. It's gently there to show the game designer's intention. It's totally collaborative with the developer.
This is the relationship between music and games that we are probably most familiar with. Music can be used to accentuate the actions of the player, to provide certain emotional cues and communicate the tone of the current level or scene. In some ways this scoring of a game is similar to creating music for a film, designed to run in concurrence with the events being played out on the screen.
But even the most directed games must take into account one massive variable: the player. With a complex game like Mass Effect, this can include how long a player is in a particular area, transitions between peaceful and combat situations and the choices the player can make. “It's really not until I start to see gameplay that I truly know what to do with the music,” Jack says. “As soon as I see a decent rendering of a level I can get a beat on what the music should do.”
Interestingly though, music does not always follow the pace of the game. Sometimes the opposite is true. An example of this is the end-run[Minor Spoilers] from Mass Effect 2, composed by Jack before this part of the game was developed:
“Casey Hudson came to me fairly early and said, ‘I'd like you to start by writing the end music for the game. [Spoiler] There's going to be this suicide mission and I want it to feel like you're taking your team and rushing in to save the universe’. He was giving me permission to write a truly kick-ass piece of music. No visuals and no timing. He wanted to get the music done so that when he was piecing the ending together, he'd be listening to that piece of music.”
When music begins to directly influence not just how a game is experienced, but how a game is actually created, things become really intriguing. Sometimes music can be the basis upon which entire games are built. Since the advent of home and commercial computing, it has been possible to break down digitised music into its component parts. The resulting information can be used in the creation of levels and environments – and the most successful example of such a game is 2008’s musical rollercoaster Audiosurf.
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Audiosurf can visualise not only the music as it happens, but also the music's future. Players can see the music coming to heighten their feeling of anticipation.
“A big part of it was just wanting a better music visualiser,” says Dylan Fitterer, Audiosurf’s creator. “There were a few I enjoyed, but they quickly became boring and my mind would wander. I wanted one that could create a better listening experience by focusing my attention on the music.”
The path to creating a more engaging music visualiser involved making it interactive, compelling the player to react to something directly linked to the music. Audiosurf further differentiates itself from standard music visualisers in more fundamental ways, as Dylan explains. “It analyses the entire song before the player starts listening. This way Audiosurf can visualise not only the music as it happens, but also the music's future. Players can see the music coming to heighten their feeling of anticipation.”
Audiosurf approaches music from the opposite direction of Mass Effect. Whereas Jack creates music for games, Dylan has created a game for his music. At the same time, however, both games share a striking commonality, which Dylan goes some way to explaining. “I'm excited to have found a tight relationship between gameplay and music. Because it's a game, Audiosurf is a better music visualiser. Gameplay goals serve to focus the player completely on the music. Because it's a music visualiser, Audiosurf is a better game. Replayability is my most important ideal in game creation, and music gives Audiosurf unlimited replay.”
Here we have a conceptual feedback loop in which the music and the game complement each other. Music becomes more powerful, more evocative, when the listener is involved in an activity linked directly to it. In turn, those actions that become associated with the music are themselves heightened. This applies equally to Mass Effect and Audiosurf, even though these games implement music in very different ways.
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Game Scores are often freely or procedurally rhythmic and can have strange formal structures, all emerging from the player’s inclinations.
One man who has put considerable thought into the theoretical similarities between gaming and music is David Kanaga, the co-developer behind the upcoming maverick indie title Proteus.
“Many of us are not accustomed to perceiving the time-structures (rhythms/forms) of videogames as musical,” David says. “They are often freely or procedurally rhythmic and can have strange formal structures, all emerging from the player’s inclinations. These rhythms and forms tend to more closely resemble free jazz and other improvised music than they do the film scores or pop forms that a lot of game music takes its inspiration from.”
Proteus strips away many of the conventions we have traditionally come to associate with videogames, foremost amongst which are a predetermined challenge or objective, and the ability to directly interact with the environment. Interaction is only possible through the game’s music, which changes dynamically depending on the player’s location, the time of day, the season, and so on. Every tree, animal, and building emits an individual noise, the sounds gradually layering themselves as the player explores the game’s islands.
“Music in videogames can be so interesting because you’re creating a musical space, a field of possibilities, rather than a musical script. This allows the composition process to be infused with improvisation/play at all times, even as a final product. And because of how the computer is good at handling data, and manipulating it, it’s possible to delineate the boundaries of the spaces in dynamic ways that haven’t really been possible until now.”
Proteus sits somewhere in the between Mass Effect and Audiosurf in terms of how it plays with music. Like Mass Effect, the music alters depending on the actions of the player, but at a layered, note-by-note level rather than in specifically composed chunks. And like Audiosurf, the music is directly related to the layout of the level, except the relationship is inverted, so the movement of the player dictates how the music evolves. This results in a curious psychological effect where the player is encouraged to explore and experiment without any direct instruction.
Randy Pitchford has said he is "astonished" no Borderlands clones have appeared, claiming that the games industry is rife with plagiarism.
The Gearbox boss explained to Gamasutra that Borderlands deliberately didn't target the Call of Duty crowd, and he's surprised no one has tried to mimic Gearbox's creation as a result.
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We're in an industry where people do nothing but steal from each other.
"I'm actually astonished that we're about to launch a sequel and no one's stole it from us," he said. "The formula's right there. No one's stolen it yet. That's weird.
"We're in an industry where people do nothing but steal from each other. That's kind of interesting, isn't it? Not that I want anyone to steal it, or I'm challenging people to steal it.
"When talking about Borderlands 1, it was really confusing, because on one hand we gotta scream from the highest mountain to get attention because it's a new IP. On the other hand, it's like, 'S***, we don't want to tell people our secret because then they're all gonna copy it because it's so good.'"
Pitchford goes on to explain that the original Borderlands set out to distinguish itself through its graphics, as well as more RPG based gameplay. He says that the decision was made not to emulate any other titles, as that would pretty much rule out being able to surpass them.
"You really have to put in a lot. You have to really go for it and spend a lot," he claimed. "You have to basically not only out-brute force the market leader, but you have to out-clever them. The game has to be better.
"It's kinda like Jerry Garcia. He said something like, "You don't merely want to be the best at what you do. You want to be the only ones that do what you do." If you're the only ones that do something that people find as valuable? You don't have to worry about competition. Like,Borderlands has zero competition. It doesn't have to worry about that at all."
Borderlands 2 is due out on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on September 18 in the US and September 21 in the UK. For more information on the game, check out our preview or watch the video below, where we chat with Randy Pitchford himself.
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.
