Disney shutting down LucasArts

LucasArts, the game-making division of Lucasfilm, is being shut down by the company's new supreme overlords at Disney.

Disney is instead switching video game development of Lucasfilm properties (i.e. Star Wars) to external companies under a licencing model. The fate of 1313, a new Star Wars game internally developed by LucasArts and set between Episode III and IV, is unclear, although rumours have stated that the game has been on hold since late last year as Disney wants all new Star Wars games to focus on the time period of the new movies.

LucasArts was founded in 1982 and worked on some very early home video games before the release of its first big hit, Maniac Mansion, in 1987. That game introduced the SCUMM Engine, which put impressive graphics and a mouse-driven interface into the adventure genre, previously dominated by text inputs. Further games refined this system, such as the brilliant Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders (1988) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), the latter of which may still be one of the very best movie tie-in games ever made. LucasArts adjusted their formula in 1990 with the quirky and enjoyable LOOM, which replaced the typical command system with a music-driven one. In 1990 LucasArts released arguably their best-known, non-Star Wars game with The Secret of Monkey Island, following that up a year later with the epic and superior Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was released in 1992, followed by Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max Hit the Road in 1993.

Following this point, the widespread adoption of 3D technology for games left LucasArts feeling that their adventure games looked outdated. The Curse of Monkey Island (1997) was their last adventure game using 2D animation, with both Grim Fandango (1999) and Escape from Monkey Island (2000) featuring 3D graphics. Though critical acclaim was still forthcoming (rather less for Escape), LucasArts wound up its adventure-producing division in 2003. Many of the people working there went on to found Telltale Games, who eventually ended up producing episodic new Sam and Max and Monkey Island games. Their most recent hit was The Walking Dead episodic game series.

Meanwhile, LucasArts branched into other areas of gaming. In 1993 they published X-Wing, a Star Wars-themed competitor to Chris Roberts's Wing Commander series of space combat games. The critically-acclaimed series eventually ended up comprising four core titles: X-Wing (1993), TIE Fighter (1994), X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (1997) and X-Wing Alliance (1999). Disappointing sales for X-Wing Alliance - accompanying the wholesale collapse of the space combat simulator genre after a decade of success - saw the series cancelled at that point. LucasArts moved into console gaming, working with BioWare to produce the RPG Knights of the Old Republic in 2003 and with Obsidian on the ill-fated Knights of the Old Republic II in 2004. They also produced the action game Star Wars: Republic Commando in 2005.

Increasingly, post-2000 LucasArts was working more and more with external companies to produce their games, with LucasArts often only providing oversight. The most recent example of this is the highly troubled MMORPG The Old Republic, co-produced with BioWare and apparently the most expensive computer game of all time (with rumours abounding about how close the game has come to breaking even). It is likely that these elements also factored into Disney's decision to shut down the company.

Sad news for the once-great games development company which kick-started the careers of, amongst many others, Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer.

Iain Banks only has months to live

In an official statement, Scottish author Iain Banks has confirmed that he has only months to live after it was discovered he'd had cancer for several years without being diagnosed.

I am officially Very Poorly.

After a couple of surgical procedures, I am gradually recovering from jaundice caused by a blocked bile duct, but that – it turns out – is the least of my problems.

I first thought something might be wrong when I developed a sore back in late January, but put this down to the fact I’d started writing at the beginning of the month and so was crouched over a keyboard all day.  When it hadn’t gone away by mid February, I went to my GP, who spotted that I had jaundice.  Blood tests, an ultrasound scan and then a CT scan revealed the full extent of the grisly truth by the start of March.

I have cancer.  It started in my gall bladder, has infected both lobes of my liver and probably also my pancreas and some lymph nodes, plus one tumour is massed around a group of major blood vessels in the same volume, effectively ruling out any chance of surgery to remove the tumours either in the short or long term. The bottom line, now, I’m afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I’m expected to live for ‘several months’ and it’s extremely unlikely I’ll live beyond a year.  So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last.

Banks, 59, rose to prominence with the publication of his first, controversial novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. In 1987 he began publishing science fiction under the cunningly impenetrable moniker 'Iain M. Banks' (M stands for Menzies), and has, for most of his career, alternated SF and non-SF work (although several of his non-SF works have strong genre elements). In SF he is best-known for his nine Culture novels, a sequence of stand-alone novels set in an AI-run, utopian interstellar society often forced to resort to shady activities to keep it safe. Banks has twice won the BSFA Award and has been nominated for the Locus and Hugo Awards. His novel The Crow Road has been adapted as a BBC mini-series, whilst Complicity has been made into a film.

Banks has approached the news with his traditional gallows humour and put the best spin possible on it, but by any standards this is devastating news. Definitely one of the British lit scene's most interesting authors (in any genre).

GAME OF THRONES renewed for a fourth season

Surprising no-one, HBO has renewed Game of Thrones for a fourth season. The news came after it was revealed that the Season 3 debut had scored 4.4 million viewers, an all-time series high. The high ratings were not expected, as the show was airing directly opposite the Season 3 finale of The Walking Dead (which also garnered an all-time series high of 12 million viewers; The Walking Dead airs on AMC, which is more widely available in the USA than HBO).

Dany gets to hang around Slaver's Bay for a while longer.

Further information was not officially announced. However, based on comments by showrunners and other personnel, we know that Season 4 will again comprise 10 episodes and will largely be based on the latter parts of A Storm of Swords. It is unclear how much material will also be drawn from A Feast for Crows and A Dance of Dragons (the fourth and fifth novels take place concurrently, both overlapping with the end of the third novel). The climax of Season 3 appears to be an event that actually happens two-thirds of the way through Swords, and there are sections of the fourth novel which chronologically take place during the latter part of the third. Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are certain to return, having signed a two-year contract before beginning work on the third season, and it is anticipated that George R.R. Martin will again be scripting one episode.

One tidbit that is known about the fourth season is that it will feature a battle that will dwarf the Battle of the Blackwater at the end of the second, and the producers are anticipating interesting discussions with HBO on how they film it. My personal view is that they should definitely call back Neil Marshall, who gave them a lot of bang for their buck with Blackwater.

Whilst we don't know what characters from the books will be brought into the show, fans are confidently expecting the casting of (at the very least) Prince Oberyn Martell and Lord Mace Tyrell. New locations to appear in Season 4 will likely include the city of Meereen.

Other recent info that has come out about the show indicates it is now HBO's most profitable series, also selling more DVDs and Blu-Rays than any of their other series. Sales of Thrones merchandise also make up more than 75% of all merchandising sales for HBO. With figures such as this (and the fact that Thrones allegedly makes more than 50% of its budget back immediately through foreign rights sales alone), HBO's decision is unsurprising. Indeed, some industry-watchers were even predicting a two-season renewal notice, allowing the producers to more efficiently segue from one season into the next, but HBO elected not to do this, at least not this year.

Thrones was also a ratings success for Sky Atlantic in the UK, hitting 600,000 viewers, a substantial increase over Season 2 (400,000) but not up to the highs of the first season (700,000).

New George R.R. Martin website

After many, many years of service, George R.R. Martin's curiously pink official website is no more. It has been replaced by something a bit more modern looking:

Ah, the nostalgia of logging into the old site every few months throughout the early 2000s, waiting for an update of A Feast for Crows. Great - or frustrating - times.

TORMENT update: Rothfuss and Avellone in

The Kickstarter for Torment: Tides of Numenera is roughly halfway done, with 14 days to go before the end of the appeal. However, the game is already funded: having asked for $900,000, inXile Studios have actually received $2.9 million. The game is now deep into what Kickstarter calls, 'stretch goals', that is additional incentives for people to keep funding in the form of added content to the game.

First up, if the game hits $3.25 million then the writing team will be expanded to include bestselling fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear). Rothfuss will be adding about 10,000 words of content to the game in the form of dialogue and characters. He won't be doing any more because of his commitments to finishing off The Doors of Stone, the third and concluding volume of The Kingkiller Chronicle.

Much more enticing (to this blogger, anyway) is that at $3.5 million, inXile will add Chris Avellone to the writing time. Avellone was the primary writer and designer of the original Planescape: Torment (to which Numenera is the spiritual successor), as well as Fallout 2, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer and the forthcoming Project: Eternity. He also worked on Icewind Dale and its sequel; Fallout: New Vegas (including leading the design of several of its DLC episodes); and Alpha Protocol. He has also done some writing for inXile's previous Kickstarter game project, Wasteland 2. He is often cited as the finest writer of Western CRPGs. Exactly why Avellone still hasn't written a novel, I don't know, as I suspect it would be awesome. Avellone will be creating a new NPC character for the game and writing their dialogue, but will also be serving as an editor and a fresh pair of eyes on the work of the rest of the team as well.

With still two weeks to go, I suspect this Kickstarter will breeze past both targets and probably end up somewhere on the other side of $4 million when all is said and done. It's shaping up to be a very interesting game.

GRRM on pitching new projects to HBO

George R.R. Martin was stopped on the red carpet at the premier event for Game of Thrones's third season in Los Angeles and asked about his new development deal with HBO. Martin confirmed that he will not be running these projects directly but will be giving out initial ideas for HBO to develop with other producers.

Apparently to be discussed are an SF series (possibly an adaptation of his short story collection Tuf Voyaging, which he has hinted several times recently might be in development), a couple of historical dramas and the potential Game of Thrones prequel series, based on his Dunk and Egg short stories. If any of these come to fruition at HBO remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, there was also a lengthy discussion of the series featuring Martin, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and a large number of castmembers. Some interesting tidbits were dropped during the interview, with Martin indicating that his initial discussions with Benioff and Weiss happened whilst there were still only three books out (dating it to before A Feast for Crows' publication in October 2005). They then pitched the show to both HBO and Showtime in March 2006, a lot earlier than previously believed (HBO optioned the books in January 2007).

GAME OF THRONES 'No Mercy' trailer

HBO have released another big trailer for the third season of Game of Thrones. Interesting that they decided to pack these trailers into a short period of time rather than release them over a longer period and get the build-up going earlier.

This trailer is a bit longer and gives us more of a look at new characters like Daario.

New GAME OF THRONES trailers for Season 3

This one is about war:

And this one is about 'the beast':

Season 3 begins airing on 31 March in the USA and the day afterwards in the UK.

More details on THE WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE

Bantam Books have released more info about The World of Ice and Fire, the companion guide to A Song of Ice and Fire. The book is due for publication on 29 October 2013 and will be 288 pages in length. They have also published several sample pages from the book.

The blurb:

With all new history and material from the maester himself, The World of Ice and Fire is a must have for both long-time fans, new readers, and viewers of the HBO series, Game of Thrones. This lavish, fully illustrated, full-colour book will be the comprehensive guide to the mega-bestselling world that George R.R. Martin has established in his Ice and Fire books.

This will be the comprehensive guide to all things Game of Thrones and beyond. From the pre-history to the coming of the First Men, through the reign of the Targaryen kings and Robert's Rebellion, this guide-co-written by George R.R. Martin and the immensely knowledgeable founders and keepers of the www.westeros.org site-will tell series readers old and new all they might want to know about the history and culture of Westeros and the lands beyond the Narrow Sea. And there is a 30-page excerpt of all-new history invented by George solely for this volume.

ALL-NEW MATERIAL CONTRIBUTED BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: Much of the content of this book is all-new historical material, created by George exclusively for this volume—including a 30-page excerpt written by George.

FULLY ILLUSTRATED: The full-colour guide will be filled with gorgeous original artwork and maps commissioned exclusively for this edition.

THE HBO SERIES CONTINUES ON MARCH 31, 2013: HBO reported that 3.9 million viewers saw the inaugural broadcast of season 2, with 6.3 million tuning in among all of the network’s broadcasts for the night—a 53 percent gain from its freshman season average and a 27 percent rise from its previous series high. And with the DVD of season two releasing the month before, they only expect demand to rise.

SURGE IN NUMBERS: Since the show’s premiere, novel sales have increased exponentially, proving that people who get a taste of this world are keen to devour all there is about it.

SUCCESS OF THE NOVELS: To date, there are over 21.5 million copies of A Song of Ice and Fire series in print, and over 4.5 million in eBook sales.

APP-ORTUNITIES*: This will serve as the perfect companion volume to the Ice and Fire app, released in November 2012.

A WINNING TEAM: George’s co-authors on this book, Elio Garcia and Linda Antonssen, are the founders of the www.westeros.org site, and probably know more about this world than anyone save George. In fact, they are the folks George calls when he forgets certain series details.

HOLIDAY GIVING: Perfectly timed for the holiday season, this volume is the ideal gift for the George R.R. Martin fan in your life.

TIMING: The MM edition of A Dance with Dragons will also be published in Fall 2013, which means extra publicity for George R. R. Martin.

Meanwhile, in a recent interview with Amazon, Martin confirms that he is continuing to work on The Winds of Winter, and is making progress ahead of HBO catching up with him (although noting that the gap is less than it was before).

* The Wertzone does not condone such use of bad puns.

Publication date confirmed for THE REPUBLIC OF THIEVES

Gollancz has confirmed a publication date for The Republic of Thieves, the long, long-awaited third book in The Gentleman Bastard sequence. It will be published on 8 October 2013 in the USA and 10 October in the UK.

Tyrion Lannister approves this news.

Gollancz's Deputy Publishing Director, Simon Spanton, commented:

"Some of you will know about the real difficulties that gathered around this novel for Scott. I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank Scott for sticking with it. I know that he was always painfully aware of the delays and what those meant both for his publishers and his fans. So I’d also like to thank Scott’s readers for their patience and for the immense support and the profound goodwill towards Scott that they have shown during this time. It’s been a long wait but I have every faith that their patience will now be rewarded with The Republic of Thieves."

HUZZAH!

UPDATE

Scott Lynch has posted his own take on the news at Fantasy Faction. He confirms that work is already underway on Book 4 of the series, The Thorn of Emberlain, and he hopes to return to a sane production rate and not have to get Brandon Sanderson to finish the series. Lynch has also formally surrendered his 'Crown of Lateness' (which, arguably, he never had in the first place, cough cough Melanie Rawn/David Gerrold/Patrick Tilley/Diane Duane/Harlan Ellison cough).

Pratchett announces new DISCWORLD book

Terry Pratchett has announced that the next Discworld book, likely to be out at the end of this year, will be entitled Raising Steam. He made the announcement via a Skype webchat.

Pratchett announced the book by holding up a card saying "RAISING", at which point the Skype connection cut out. Pratchett had previously announced that the next Moist von Lipwig novel would be called Raising Taxes, so fans immediately assumed it was going to be that. However, it was then clarified that the book would actually be called Raising Steam. It has no release date as yet, and no further details have been announced.

Speculation: given Pratchett's way of announcing the book, which was clearly teasing fans curious about the long-MIA Raising Taxes, I'd guess this was indeed the new Moist von Lipwig book. Pratchett had previously said that he was having difficulty making the tax-based book interesting. This is understandable, given that Making Money - Moist takes over the Ankh-Morpork Mint - was fairly close to being a retread of Going Postal - Moist takes over the Ankh-Morpork Postal Service - as it was. I would guess (and to stress this is guesswork) that Pratchett has taken Moist out of the tax office and put him in charge of the Undertaking, Ankh-Morpork's under-construction subway system. This also allows Pratchett to do the 'Undertaking book' he's been hinting at for a few novels in a row now.

Of course, this might be in error and Raising Steam could be about surface trains or even an outright steampunk satire, and not involve Moist at all. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

RIFTWAR companion volume to be published in 2013

The last-ever novel in Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Cycle, Magician's End, will be out in May. This is the 30th novel in the series and marks an end to the saga that began back in 1982 with the publication of Magician.

Appropriately, it has been revealed that there will now also be a companion volume to the series. Entitled Midkemia: The Chronicles of Pug, this book will be a 192-page 'coffee table' book containing illustrations and extensive maps about the world of Midkemia. The project grew out of a mooted 'Midkemia Atlas' that Feist planned several years ago. The book will also feature 'narration' from the characters of Pug and Magnus.

“In the first year of the reign of King Lyam conDoin, I, Pug of Crydee, magician to the royal court and cousin to the King by adoption, do take quill in hand and set forth this writ, that all may benefit from the knowledge I have gained…” -Pug of Stardock

So begins the narrative account of Feist’s best-selling character, Pug of Stardock, for Midkemia: The Chronicles of Pug. Part travel log/journal and part atlas, this visual compendium brings the world of Midkemia to vivid, illustrative life, and gives readers a completely new look at the creative genius of Raymond E. Feist.

Designed and illustrated by the same creative team that brought us the Harry Potter books (Film Wizardry and Page to Screen), Midkemia: The Chronicles of Pug is divided into five sections and transports readers -- via maps, blueprints, floor plans, and journal text -- to the outer reaches of the Midkemia world and into its cities. Starting at the Far Coast, Pug, the hero of The Chaoswar Trilogy, recounts his childhood, before he embarks on a journey that takes him to the Grey Towers, Sorcerer’s Isle, and Krondor. Pug also encounters several favorite characters and people along the way -- including Jimmy and Locky, the Sauur, and Erik and Roo in Ravernburg. Beautiful hand-drawn maps illustrate the changes in Midkemia’s geography as war ravages the land and physically alters the landscape; dedicated readers and fans can literally trace the changes made by each battle. Unlike anything else in the Feist oeuvre, this book is a totally immersive look into the world of Midkemia as never experienced before.

Notably, Feist is co-writing this book with Stephen Abrams. Stephen Abrams created Midkemia in the mid-1970s as a roleplaying setting. Feist, a player in Abrams's games, started writing the Riftwar Cycle to 'fill in' the history of the roleplaying setting at Abrams's suggestion, with Magician set some 500 years before the 'present day' of the setting. The original plan was for Feist to write the account of the five great Riftwars that shaped the history of the planet. Impressively, some thirty-five years after that discussion, that's pretty much the task that Feist has now completed.

The book is currently scheduled for publication on 5 November 2013 from Harper Design. A working cover is shown above. You can look inside the book and see how it's going to look here.

Thanks to Jussi from Risingshadow for discovering the above information.

Torment: Tides of Numenera now on Kickstarter

InXile Entertainment have launched their Kickstarter campaign for their roleplaying game, Torment: Tides of Numenera.

This game is a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, the 1999 PC game which is widely regarded as the best (and certainly the best-written) computer RPG ever made. Eschewing traditional fantasy conventions (no elves, no dwarves, precious few action sequences), the game delved deeply into themes of identity, responsibility, consequence and if people can every truly change themselves. It sold modestly but has attracted critical acclaim like no other RPG in history.

Since inXile do not have the rights to the Planescape setting, they are instead setting this game in a different universe altogether. The setting is Numenera, a pen-and-paper setting conceived by Monte Cook, one of the chief designers on the 3rd Edition of the Dungeons and Dragons game. The setting is Earth, approximately one billion years in the future. Our world has been rendered almost unrecognisable over that time, having gone through technology-driven utopian periods and multiple catastrophes. The planet is littered with the remnants of ultra-advanced technology that no-one understands any more (the 'numenera' of the title), not to mention alien and genetically-engineered lifeforms. There are echoes of Jack Vance's Dying Earth and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun in the descriptions of the setting. This isn't Generic Medieval Landscape #35.

The plot of the game involves a being who is capable of skipping between different bodies, which are lifeless husks before and after he uses them. Somehow, one of the husks comes to life after he has vacated it. This creature - you - then has to search for identity and the answers to several mysteries (like, presumably, the identity of the body-jumper) along the way.

The game will be an isometric role-playing game, created using the Unity Engine. It will feature combat, but as with Planescape: Torment it will almost all be avoidable, with your character able to use dialogue or skills to resolve confrontations rather than violence.

InXile are asking for $900,000. They are certainly going to hit this, given that the total right now (just a couple of hours after launch and with a month to go) is $150,000. Amounts raised beyond that will allow for more elements to be added to the game. InXile have also guaranteed that they will pass on 5% of any excess to fund additional Kickstarter projects.

Torment: Tides of Numenera will be released in late 2014. InXile will ship Wasteland 2 at the end of this year. As they mention in the pitch video, with Wasteland 2 now in full development on the 3D and content side of things, their concept artists and writers are now free to fully commit to Torment (otherwise they'd presumably be left with nothing to do for six months or would have to be let go), explaining the timing of the appeal.

Extended GAME OF THRONES Season 3 Trailer

HBO have released an extended version of last week's Game of Thrones trailer. This version contains a few more shots and some additional dialogue, as well as glimpses of more characters (established and new). Look out for Paul Kaye as Thoros of Myr intoning the R'hllor speech and our first glimpse of the 'bear and maiden fair':

The MALAZAN computer game that never was

On the Westeros forums, Luke Scull, author of The Grim Company and a full-time video game designer, reports that he once wrote out a proposal for a game adaptation of The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

I also wrote a proposal for a Malazan videogame. Our producer went to Steven Erikson's house to discuss it with him. I think Ian Camerson Esslemont liked it but Erikson wasn't so keen - my design for the game strongly resembled my current project, The Shadow Sun, while Erikson wanted something more akin to a first-person shooter. As you can imagine, it didn't work out, though I did receive a nice signed and personalised Subterranean Press edition of Gardens of the Moon.

Scull states that the head of his company spoke to both Ian Esslemont and Steven Erikson about the game, which would have been an RPG. However, whilst Esslemeont was keen Erikson was not, and apparently preferred a first-person shooter type of approach.

Later on, Scull talks about how he envisages a Malazan game looking:

Of all the current major fantasy series, I'd say Malazan was easily the best fit for an RPG in the style of Baldur's Gate. The whole series is, after all, a high-level homebrew D&D game played out in novel form across multiple continents with hundreds of characters. It would be an easy thing to strip away the standard RPG races and classes and replace them with Malazan-specific variants, then start the protagonist as a lowly squad member in some far-flung corner of the Malazan Empire during the events of the series. Once you introduce warrens into the mix you can even justify having the protagonist flitting in and out of events depicted in the novels. Even the magic system, while unusual and perhaps tricky to adapt at first, would lend itself to some new and potentially interesting system design outside of the standard Vancian/mana-based approach.

For me, Malazan is not so much character or even plot-driven as it is world-driven. I read it because of the setting and Erikson's febrile imagination; stuff that translates perfectly well to game form and would give a Malazan title a massive advantage over the tepid worldbuilding efforts of even companies like Bioware. The complex storytelling of the novels could easily be ignored or strategically touched upon to enhance the protagonist's own story.

With series that are very character-driven, I agree that it is very difficult to separate the game enough from the source material/central narrative to make it worthwhile licensing as a setting. It's the old Dragonlance versus Forgotten Realms dichotomy; outside of the story of the Heroes of the Lance, the former has very little to offer while the latter is, by virtue of being a complete clusterf**k, a wonderful place to set a game in.

(I know Erikson has criticised the Forgotten Realms in the past. I always found that somewhat ironic in the circumstances.)

Interesting stuff, and a shame it never got made.

Look out for a review of The Grim Company shortly.

New SPACE HULK game will be influenced by XCOM

A new Space Hulk game is on its way from Full Control Studios. It will be arriving on PC at the end of 2013, with an iOS port to follow.

Space Hulk is a sub-set of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The game features Space Marines storming an ancient derelict spacecraft (the hulk of the title) which has been taken over by genestealers, a hardy breed of space-going Tyranid (one of the principal enemies in the WH40K setting and, we have to legally add, in no way was the inspiration for the Zerg in StarCraft, ahem). Because the genestealers are so hardcore, even the normal Space Marines (eight-feet-tall, genetically-engineered superhumans) are no match for them, so the even more massively-armoured Terminator Marines have been deployed instead.

The game started off as a board game, released to critical acclaim in 1989. Every time Games Workshop has re-released it (the last time in 2009), it's sold out in days. Electronic Arts have also released two successful computer games based on the franchise, Space Hulk (1993) and Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels (1996).

The new game is taking inspiration from XCOM, my favourite game of last year. In particular, they using similar line of sight and overwatch systems (overwatch actually being present in the original board game), but they are also using action points. The game will resolutely be turn-based, but with action cinematics showing the outcome of your orders.

So far the game is looking impressive. If they nail the potential, this could be a superb strategy game.

GAME OF THRONES Season 3 Episode Titles Revealed

Eight of the ten episode titles for Season 3 of Game of Thrones have been announced. These are as follows (with airdate and writer/director information):

Paul Kaye as Thoros of Myr

301: Valar Dohaeris
Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Directed by Daniel Minahan
Airdate: 31 March

302: Dark Wings, Dark Words
Written by Vanessa Taylor
Directed by Daniel Minahan
Airdate: 7 April

303: Walk of Punishment
Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Directed by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Airdate: 14 April

304: And Now His Watch is Ended
Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Directed by Alex Graves
Airdate: 21 April

305: Kissed by Fire
Written by Bryan Cogman
Directed by Alex Graves
Airdate: 28 April

306: tbc
Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Directed by Alik Sakharov
Airdate: 5 May

307: The Bear and the Maiden Fair
Written by George R.R. Martin
Directed by Michelle MacLaren
Airdate: 12 May

308: tbc
Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Directed by Michelle MacLaren
Airdate: 19 May

309: The Rains of Castamere
Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Directed by David Nutter
Airdate: 26 May

310: Mhysa
Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Directed by David Nutter
Airdate: 2 June

For those wondering, 'Mhysa' is a Ghiscari word from the book, which translates as 'Mother'.

STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE #2 gets a title

Brandon Sanderson has announced that his second Stormlight Archive novel, the sequel to The Way of Kings, will be entitled Words of Radiance. He'd previously suggested The Book of Endless Pages and Highprince as War as possible titles, but settled on this title for the reasons given at the link.

Assuming Sanderson completes the novel on schedule, it should be released this November.

How the Next Generation Could Kill Gaming (as we know it)

Back in the 1980s, when I started gaming, it took a few people perhaps a few weeks to make a good game. Even the mighty Elite - the first proper 3D game and arguably the first proper open-world game - took two guys a few months to put together. A few years later, during the 16-bit era of the Commodore Amiga, SNES and Megadrive (Genesis for you American types), this had increased to teams of a dozen or so taking a few months to a year, tops, to put together a game. The gaming industry was in the good health, with the biggest mega-hits making tens of millions of dollars but even a game selling just a few thousand copies could still turn a profit.

How times have changed. Today, it takes teams of several dozen people anything from two to six years to make a game, with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars. Dozens of game development studios have closed over the course of the last generation of gaming (which began in 2005 with the release of the X-Box 360), in many cases despite selling millions of copies of games. It's no longer enough to be successful. Now you have to produce a fast-selling megahit from day one, otherwise your company might go bust.

It's been a disturbing period. Several of my favourite games of all time are Hostile Waters, Anachronox, Planescape: Torment, Freespace 2 and the Homeworld trilogy, all moderately-budgeted games that sold reasonably well on release but nothing to write home about. Those games simply would not exist in today's publisher-driven marketplace. The entire midlist of gaming - those games that are well above the indie level in terms of both cost and sales but below the mega-hits - has simply evaporated.

A good example of this is Rockstar's May 2012 release Max Payne 3. This game cost an estimated $105 million, not including marketing. The game was required to sell 3 million copies at full price in its first few weeks on sale to break even, which it rather spectacularly failed to do: the game 'only' shifted 440,000 copies in its first month. It is questionable if the game has broken even yet, and if it has it's only a moderate success, especially by Rockstar's standards. Their previous game Red Dead Redemption (released in 2010 had sold 8 million copies since release and, before that, Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) has sold more than 25 million.

Rockstar obviously aren't going bust over this disappointment. Their latest game, Grand Theft Auto V, launches in September and will likely be the biggest-selling game of the year (this year's Call of Duty title notwithstanding). However, with a much vaster gaming environment that GTA4 and with three major protagonists to voice and write rather than one, GTA5's budget is likely considerably larger than even the $100 million of its predecessor.

Last week, Sony announced the existence of the PlayStation 4 console, due for release later this year (probably November). In April Microsoft are expected to announce the release - either this Christmas or early next year - of their successor to the X-Box 360. Both of the new consoles are going to be more powerful and more impressive than their forebears. The PS4 has 16 times the memory and a vastly more powerful graphics card and CPU than its forebear. Crucially, it's also based around off-the-shelf PC hardware rather than dedicated technology, keeping costs down and making games development and porting between the platforms much easier. Nevertheless, the arrival of the new consoles is hugely problematic for studios. Games will now require more advanced graphics and even more resources to make them look as good as possible. Some gaming companies are already warning that budgets for the next generation of gaming could balloon out of control and leave very few companies and franchises standing. The massive popularity of Facebook games and mobile games is also begging the question: do gamers really want even moar graphics? Sony desperately need the PS4 to be a huge hit to help arrest their company's decade-long decline, but it's far from certain it will be.

Some companies are already taking avoiding action. Obsidian Entertainment are developing their new epic fantasy RPG, Project Eternity, for PC and Mac alone (but don't be surprised to see mobile/tablet versions later on), forsaking the console race altogether. Project Eternity is a game using hand-drawn 2D artwork for its background and 3D character models. This keeps costs and development time down immensely. The game was greenlit (via the Kickstarter service) only in October, but is expected to ship in early 2014, after less than 18 months of development. The Dragon Age games, on the other hand, are full 3D titles, which each item in the game taking anything from hours to weeks to create and texture. The original Dragon Age title took about five years to make, with its sequel re-using many of its assets. Dragon Age III, due in 2014, will have taken about three years to develop. All three games had budgets comfortably in the tens of millions, whilst Project Eternity's budget is only about $5 million ($4.1 million or so of that from Kickstarter). As the above screenshot shows, Project Eternity is still a good-looking game by any measure. Obsidian have simply been a lot more careful about where to put its money and to minimise its risks.


If a lot more companies take steps like these, the next generation could be a fruitful time for innovation in gaming. However, the blunt forces approach taken so far by Sony, and likely by Microsoft as well, is not encouraging. If sales of the new consoles and their games are down whilst budgets continue to escalate past the point of sustainability, we could see the entire notion of a video game console disappear altogether. Of course, that may not entirely be a bad thing if it results in more rewarding and original games appearing on other platforms. As always, time will tell.

Happy 20th Birthday to BABYLON 5

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the American SF TV show Babylon 5. Its pilot episode, The Gathering, aired on 22 February 1993, with the first season proper following eleven months later. Never a mass break-out hit, Babylon 5 remained on-air for five seasons and 110 episodes (plus 4 TV movies and a straight-to-DVD movie), not to mention generating a spin-off called Crusade that lasted half a season before being cancelled and a pilot for a second spin-off that never went to series. Not too bad for a show that, even today, most people have never even heard of.

Some of the regular cast of Babylon 5 in its first season: Jerry Doyle as Security Chief Michael Garibaldi, Peter Jurasik as Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari (with the hair), Claudia Christian as Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova, Mira Furlan as Minbari Ambassador Delenn, Andrea Thompson as Talia Winters, Andreas Katsulas as Narn Ambassador G'Kar and Richard Biggs as Dr. Stephen Franklin, with Michael O'Hare as Commander Jeffrey Sinclair (seated).

Babylon 5 is noted for its structure. The series is arranged like a series of books, with each season having its own name (Signs and Portents, The Coming of Shadows, Point of No Return, No Surrender, No Retreat and The Wheel of Fire), title sequence and musical score. Each season acts as a movement in the traditional five-act structure of a story: introduction, rising action, climax, resolution, aftermath. This gives the entire series a sense of tremendous narrative momentum. Creator/showrunner/head writer Joe Michael Straczynski also layered a number of mysteries into the backstory of the series, giving fans something to discuss and theorise about online (B5 was easily the first show to make significant use of the Internet in building its fan community). However, he also explained and resolved these mysteries long before the end of the show, avoiding the problem of overloading the series resolution with too many elements to support (and in doing so avoided the pitfalls which made the endings to later serialised shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica so problematic).

The show is also notable for its case of extremely well-drawn characters, all of whom have significant backstories, and how they evolve over the course of the series. Babylon 5 was very much the TV equivalent of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones in that regard (and, interestingly, Straczynski namechecks George R.R. Martin as an inspiration in an article for Foundation magazine in early 1995, though this was for his earlier work as A Game of Thrones didn't come out until Babylon 5's third season was already over), though Straczynski was moderately less ruthless with his characters. The casting was excellent, and in particular gave long-standing Hollywood supporting actors like Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas some meaty, solid roles to get their teeth into. The show was also praised for its still-impressive (if rather low-res by today's standards) CGI graphics, which allowed the show to have the most visually impressive space battles since the Star Wars trilogy on a tiny budget.

In terms of overall quality, Babylon 5 was conceptually bold and, at its best, was complex and satisfying, with multiple character arcs interweaving around one another and the main storylines of the series in a manner that was occasionally awesome. This was all accomplished at the same time that Straczynski also pursued a number of important thematic elements, as well as bringing in elements of realism to the setting (which was considerably more dystopian than Star Trek's). Babylon 5 was the first space-based SF show to comprehensively explore such issues as religious fundamentalism, substance abuse, alcoholism and political censorship. Other elements were not so lucky, with an examination of gender identification (via a male character - played by a woman in makeup - who would have become female in the second season and then pursued a relationship with the lead character of the show) torpedoed by the technology not being up to the job. A planned lesbian relationship between two lead characters was also ditched when one of the actresses involved left the show.

Unfortunately, whilst Babylon 5 at its best was easily the finest show on TV at the time, at its worst it stunk like weeks-old cheese. Unusually, the fans and writers were in agreement over the weakest shows of the series, and in several cases Straczynski even warned fans that that week's episode might be a bit sub-par ahead of time. This unusual honesty was refreshing, though notably it lessened as the series went along (with the near-unwatchable first half of the fifth season being defended to the hilt by the production team). The show certainly took a while to build its reputation, with the first season being 'variable' in quality and only becoming reliably good in its second year. Even then, good episodes could be let down by the odd jarring line or recycled plot element (the 'assassin/bomber loose on the station' storyline got a bit old after a while), whilst the show's production values were always only a bit above 'acceptable' (though what B5 achieved on a tiny budget was always impressive). Also, the show had a major problem with doing funny comedy episodes, with the show always falling flat on its face when it attempted it (the fact that the two funniest episodes were written by Peter David, not Straczynski, is rather telling).

Babylon 5 was flawed then, but somehow it's strengths shine all the more brightly because of its flaws. It hasn't aged brilliantly, but it's still a show that's worth watching now for its great performances (especially from Andreas Katsulas, Peter Jurasik and Mira Furlan), still-impressively-constructed central story arc and its formidable worldbuilding, not to mention some of the best spacecraft designs and space battles ever seen in the genre.

A Narn heavy cruiser parked alongside Babylon 5 in the episode Walkabout.

Conception and Genesis

Babylon 5 was conceived as a 'novel for television', a pre-planned story with a beginning, middle and end. That story was the creation of Joe Michael Straczynski, an experienced Hollywood scriptwriter who'd worked on series such as He-Man, The Real Ghostbusters, The Twilight Zone, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future and Murder, She Wrote before becoming executive producer and co-showrunner on B5.

Straczynski conceived of the show in 1987. A huge fan of authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert and TV shows like Star Trek, Blake's 7, Doctor Who and The Prisoner, he'd previously been working on two separate SF projects. The first was a small-scale, personal show set on a space station and focusing on characters. The second was a big, epic story told on a huge canvas. One day - whilst in the shower according to Straczynski - he hit on the idea of combining the two into a single show, with the potentially ruinously expensive big story told through the (much more affordable) lens of the space station setting. Originally he planned two five-year shows, Babylon 5 and its immediate sequel, Babylon Prime, but whilst working on the show's first season realised this was over-ambitious and conflated the two into a single, five-year storyline.

Straczynski's pre-planning and recruitment of respected producer Douglas Netter allowed Babylon 5 to be presented to studio execs with detailed costings, which suggested the show could be made for not much more than half of the budget of the then-on-air Star Trek: The Next Generation. Key to this plan was for the show's special effects to be completely computer-generated, eschewing the then-standard expensive and time-consuming use of motion-controlled cameras and models. Early CGI pioneer Ron Thornton (himself a veteran of British series such as Blake's 7, for which he built spaceship models in the final season) used a Commodore Amiga computer equipped with a Video Toaster plug-in card to produce an impressive image of the Babylon 5 space station orbiting a planet which wowed execs. However, most were still wary of the show, believing that there was only room for one space opera franchise on TV and that was Star Trek. Paramount themselves turned down the project in 1989 (the source of Straczynski's later grumbles when the superficially-similar Deep Space Nine was announced two years later).

In 1991, Warner Brothers agreed to develop Babylon 5 as a TV pilot. Straczynski was surprised: during the pitching session, he shattered one of his teeth and got through the rest of the session slightly spaced out on painkillers and ice. But Warner Brothers liked the idea and got behind the show with enthusiasm. SFF magazines, keen to see a non-Star Trek show on the air, also gave the project plenty of early coverage. Even computer magazines leap aboard, thrilled at seeing affordable home computers (the Amiga was huge around 1989-94, especially in Europe) being used to generate special effects for a Hollywood production. All of this enthusiasm was nearly wasted when Warner Brothers wobbled upon hearing that Deep Space Nine was in development, but they held the course and got the pilot onto the screens.

Their faith was rewarded: Babylon 5's pilot pulled in impressive ratings, got favourable reviews and sold gangbusters when it was released on VHS and LaserDisc for rental and sale a few months later. A first season was commissioned, which started airing in January 1994, with some modest cast changes (and impressive upgrades in CGI hardware). The final episode aired on 25 November 1998.