Inq. of the Week: Who Watched the Watchmen?
We wanted to know the order of operations when a book becomes a movie. The answer was pretty clear with 65% of you saying: read the book, then see the movie. This is a philosophy I certainly support, but it doesn’t always happen, even in cases where I’m told just how much better the book is than the movie.
However, in the case of the Watchmen, I read the book, oh, at least 20 times before seeing the movie. It helps that they came out over 20 years apart (though as Chatty pointed out after reading my review, I was 3 when the original came out, so my experience is even different than the diehards who had read it when it first came out).
My sense when it was being advertised, and especially after seeing it, is that the movie is something of a tough sell. It’s long, it’s R rated, and it’s fairly high concept as far as movies with this kind of advertising budget go. Early box office receipts are panning that out, and I’m not confident in its word of mouth to those who aren’t fans of the original.
Regardless of how the movie does overall, I’m interested how our audience feels about the movie, and also I want to know:
Loading ...Review: Bucephalus Games Initial Lineup
They may have a funny name, but they’re not messing around: Bucephalus Games stormed onto the scene last year, quickly putting out a number of board game titles and having an impressive precense at both Origins and Gen Con. A quick look at their web page shows that some pretty big names are part of this new company too.
The company was kind enough to send me four of their games for review- for a new company to even have four games at launch is impressive, but they already have no less than 10 MORE games planned, showing strong ambition for a new company.
It took me a while to play through all of them, given the holiday season, finals, and of course, D&D campaigns. But here are my thoughts on: Living Labyrinth, Suicide Bomber, Toboggans of Doom, and Rorschach.
Critical Bits for the week ending 2009-01-10
- New DDI Updates: “Prepare for the Resolution” http://is.gd/eMtl “Fist of Mourning” http://is.gd/eMtt
- “Don’t let the XP grind you down” http://is.gd/eMtD #
- Retweeting @thewanderingmen: Planescape: Torment fans might find this interesting: http://tinyurl.com/77cawc #
- WotC updates: Sylvan Cathedral http://is.gd/eRBL Whose Mug is That? http://is.gd/eRCj Digital Insider http://is.gd/eRCl # [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Hits Gift Guide 2008
This year’s gift guide goes out to all of you last minute shoppers who need to pick up some games and gifts for all the nerds in your life. Many of our suggestions are products we’ve reviewed, so I will link to the review where appropriate. [Read the rest of this article]
And also also, the un-end of the D&D Miniatures Game
Well, you remember that this happened.
Today, WotC announced that the D&D Miniatures game would not die after all. Instead, they’ve decided to hand it off to a handful of committed volunteers to develop stats for future minis releases and keep the skirmish/tournament scene going, with official license from WotC.
The group granted the license is known as “The Guild” and is made up of some serious DDM fans, so it looks to be in good hands. The forum thread about The Guild already contains an impressive amount of work towards branding themselves. The coolest part?
Tony Gullotti (Dagaron) of Indiana is point person on the design and production of a custom DDM Guild miniature. The miniature will be available by Gen Con. Polling the community resulted in a win for the Guild Master concept — a tribute to E. Gary Gygax.
I’m hoping I can get my hands on a EGG mini at next GenCon- that’d be awesome.
The Guild is also answering questions over at EN World, as well as some clarification by The Rouse. Overall, a very cool move on WotC’s part (and in fact, totally different than how Hasbro handles its board game library- they hold onto the license as long as they can, even if they don’t plan on publishing it).
Inq. of the Week: Bad Movie Ideas
As we are oft to do, we wanted to find out what kinds of games you play. 94% of you play Tabletop Roleplaying Games (only 4 people who voted do not), 71% of you play console games, and 67% play boardgames. Amazingly, 0% are not gamers at all… they have all fled from our gamerdom.
TheMainEvent ran this gem of a story by me:
Ridley Scott, who has been attached as a producer on “Monopoly” and has been mentioned as a possible director, is now officially attached to helm the project, with an eye toward giving it a futuristic sheen along the lines of his iconic “Blade Runner.”
Which naturally lead the two of us (both aspiring screen writers) to begin pitching ideas back and forth: [Read the rest of this article]
ZeroClix
Citing the tough economic times, Topps announced today it will be shutting down Wizkids. For those who came in late, Wizkids was the studio that made the first clicky-base game MageKnight, and then was able to spin off the concept into their most successful game, HeroClix. They had a string of other clicky-base games, the construct-a-ship game Pirates of Spanish Main, various collectible card games, a board game or two, and a few other miscellaneous products. Topps purchased Wizkids in 2003 (when founder and game genius Jordan Weisman left).
As recently as last year, Wizkids was still a very strong company, running one of the largest booths at Origins, but I don’t recall them having a presence at all in either of this year’s summer shows (though I could be mistaken.)
The ICV2 article notes that they are trying to keep the viable brands going (specifically noting Heroclix, and I’d guess Pirates would be another relatively safe franchise) but I wouldn’t hold my breath for any of their other products.
As always, best of luck to those who recently lost their jobs finding other work, especially the game designers who may have trouble finding work elsewhere, as I fear Wizkids may be only one of the first game companies to fall in this economy. Topps deciding to close Wizkids is a bad sign in and of itself, as it shows that large corporate backers are having problems, which does not bode well for the smaller independant companies.
Inq. of the Week: Games You Play 2008
Our rather appropriate presidential poll has now closed, and it looks like we’re all doomed! I myself was almost swayed by the logical tagline, “Why settle for the lesser of two evils?” I held out, but most of you just couldn’t resist the Elder Sign ticket coming in with the small win at 31%. Not really a majority, but his greatness Cthulhu doesn’t need a sweeping majority to eat your souls. Second place goes to the incredible combination of Superman and Batman as his VP with 24%, followed by a surprise third place with Conan and Red Sonja for the Libertarians at 17% most likely due to their proposition for lower taxes on loot (something we can all get behind).
It’s finally November, right? I doubt many people ever have that sentiment, as this is the time of year (at least here in Maryland) when the sun goes down at 5pm and the sky seems to always be overcast with clouds. Depression hits a lot of people hard this time of year, but we all have to finds ways to get passed those feelings and try to enjoy life the best we can. One of the things that I find myself doing is playing more games. I enjoy being outside for most of the fall season, but once November hits I start staying inside more and now that we have a batcave-like basement the experience is just so much sweeter. There is some form of mad irony when my wife and I receed into our dark, underground basement to play Fallout 3, a game about a person who is born in an underground vault but ends up emerging into the outside to a surface world of adventure.
What this brings me to is an Inquisition I did a year ago about the types of games that you guys, our readers, play and how it provides an excellent metric on what our audience is interested in, and therefore what we should write the most about. It also helps us see what areas of our target audience that we’re missing, and perhaps what kinds of posts we can write to attract more readers in that area. Without further ado, I ask you about the Games You Play (you can select multiple answers):
Loading ...(Image Source: Singapore Marriot Staff club – by LiveStudios)
And also, the end of the D&D Miniatures game
As Graham points out, Scott Rouse (brand manager for D&D) made a post on Wizards yesterday that explains the changes. To me, the most important part of the whole thing is:
November’s release of Demonweb will be the last new set that includes skirmish statistics… official sanctioning of D&D Miniatures skirmish events will cease right after D&D Experience in February.
I started with Harbinger all those years ago, and really had a blast playing the skirmish game. As a long time fan of skirmish-level minis games (Mordheim and Bloodbowl being among my favorites), DDM had the advantage of being relatively quick-playing, using familiar D&D characters and creatures, and most of all, I didn’t have to paint the damn things. [Read the rest of this article]
