Joss Whedon's S.H.I.E.L.D. TV Series to Feature New Characters

While at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting his film, Much Ado About Nothing, Joss Whedon sat down with MTV News and revealed that the Marvel S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series that he's currently developing is "very far" along in the developmental process and that he's already pitched it to ABC - with new S.H.I.E.L.D. characters in place of Nick Fury, Agent Coulson and Maria Hill.

Click the pic to watch the interview over at MTV.

One of the things fans have been speculating about is how involved would Fury and the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team, most recently seen in Whedon's The Avengers, would be on a week-to-week TV show.  Budget-wise and availability-wise.  So this idea of new agents and characters answers that question.

"It's new characters" Whedon stated. "It needs to be it's own thing. It needs to be adjacent, but you don't want to do a show where you're constantly going, 'Iron Man just left, but he was totally here a minute ago.' You want them to do their own thing. What does S.H.I.E.L.D. got that the heroes don't have? To me, it's that they're not superheroes. But they live in that universe. Even though they're a big organization, that makes them underdogs and that's interesting to me."

Source : ign[dot]com

Dota 2 One Million Dollar Tournament Begins

Valve has kicked off its 2012 Dota 2 tournament The International, where teams of highly skilled Dota players will compete for a one million dollar grand prize. If you're interested in watching the tournament as it runs between August 31 and September 2, it can be viewed for free online or though a dedicated client on Valve's Steam digital distribution platform.

Dota 2 has been in beta testing for quite some time and routinely ranks as the most popular game on Steam. Whenever it's ready to officially launch, it will be free to play and have the entire roster of heroes unlocked. A microtransaction system, which is currently live in the beta, will allow players to purchase cosmetic upgrades for things like heroes and item couriers.

Valve also just released Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, an update of its long-running competitive shooter franchise, which was recently reviewed on IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Do Games Need To Be Photorealistic To Evolve Emotionally?

2K Games boss Christoph Hartmann has said that games achieving real-life graphics is needed for the medium to expand into more genres.

Speaking to GamesIndustry International, the company's global president claimed that photorealistic graphics must be pursued if games are to compete with movies.

"Recreating a Mission Impossible experience in gaming is easy; recreating emotions in Brokeback Mountain is going to be tough, or at least very sensitive in this country... it will be very hard to create very deep emotions like sadness or love, things that drive the movies," he said.

"Until games are photorealistic, it'll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now.

"To dramatically change the industry to where we can insert a whole range of emotions, I feel it will only happen when we reach the point that games are photorealistic; then we will have reached an endpoint and that might be the final console."

Predictably, his comments have provoked heated reactions from several well known industry figures, including Peter Molyneux, David Cage and BioWare bosses. But some of the most vehement disagreement came from Markus "Notch" Persson; the man behind Minecraft took to his Twitter to share his objections.

He wrote, "No, Christoph, you LIMIT the number of new genres if you focus on photorealism."

"I had way more emotions playing Proteus than I ever did playing any 2K game."

"Also, Futurama has made me feel sad more than most sad movies can. The Sting, Jurrasic Bark, Luck of the Fryish. Photorealistic? No."

So it seems for now that even though the biggest publishers may be pushing graphical boundaries come the next generation, there are more than enough smaller developers ready to rally round and focus on putting gameplay ahead of presentation.

Will better graphics will give the medium greater emotional clout or not? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

Source : ign[dot]com