kevin-kelly
Latest
Joystiq interviews J. Allen Brack
Intrepid reporter and all-around cool guy Kevin Kelly over at Joystiq scored an interview with J. Allen Brack during the festivities at BlizzCon 2009. Just in case you're not aware, J. Allen Brack is the lead producer for our beloved World of Warcraft, having joined the team back in 2005. Kevin's a pretty smart cookie, and managed to get some great insight into the game from Brack. The interview's worth a full read, but there's a lot of insight that's worth spending some time talking about.It's not any surprise that Brack told Kevin that there's no end in sight for WoW, and that he expects the game to survive at least another 10 years. But Brack immediately followed up by saying that Blizzard has changed the way they view the franchise novels recently. Back in the day, it seems, they just let authors go wild. "Go off and create a kind of story in the world," Brack told Kevin. Now, however, it seems like the creative team is spending more time trying to make sure the novels reflect what they plan in the game, as well as vice versa. Brack confirmed that Blizzard still keeps an eye on what other games are doing, and will bring that into the World of Warcraft by giving it their own take. That comment reminded me of the discussion about upcoming Fishing changes in Cataclysm, and how the new fishing system was inspired by Animal Crossing.
Why they shouldn't make the Warcraft movie
Our good friend Kevin Kelly (who writes for Joystiq) has apparently turned traitor -- over at the Spout blog, he's written up four reasons why they shouldn't bother making a Warcraft movie at all. His arguments go from shaky to solid -- he first claims that movies made from videogames just don't work anyway, In response, I'd submit to you Doom, and -- oh wait. Never mind. His second reason is that they just wouldn't make enough money, even if every Warcraft player bought a ticket, but I don't know if I'd worry about that: Transformers made money, and that movie was a high-budget pile of junk.His last two points are probably more solid, though -- he says that unlike Lord of the Rings, which the Warcraft movie is often compared to, most people (even players of the games who skip cutscenes) would walk in having no idea what the story was about, which means the story would have to be dumbed down or just be a confusing mess. And finally, we can't really argue with the last point: since that first piece of concept art, we haven't heard a peep out of Legendary or Blizzard about what's happening, so maybe the flick's not getting made anyway.And by the end of the piece, we've got to agree with Kevin: even if a big-budget worldwide movie release didn't get made, we'd much rather have a high-quality DVD of Blizzard's cinematics anyway (or maybe even a feature-length put together by the same department -- they do awesome work). The odds are against a live-action Warcraft movie already, it seems -- maybe it would be a better idea for Blizzard to just release something themselves.
BlizzCon 2008 UI panel liveblog
12:00 PM: The gang just showed up on stage. Hellos answered with... silence.12:02 PM: Tom Thompson and Derek Sakamoto introducing themselves, lots of applause.Check the rest behind the cut!%Gallery-34226%
Meet the Team: Kevin Kelly
In the world of professional game blogging, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: the bloggers who investigate the stories and readers who make silly comments. These are the first group's stories. Name: Kevin Kelly Job Position: Contributing Editor, Los Angeles Area Monkey For Hire Past Experience/Education: I studied radio, television and film production and writing at The University of Texas in Austin, and although I never planned on moving to Los Angeles, I've now been here for umpteen years. To think, it all started with one simple internship. Life Outside of the 'Stiq: There's life outside the 'Stiq? What the?! In the spare time I'm able to muster up, I also write about movies, television, and other pop culture things for various sites around the web. I also hike a lot in the Los Angeles area, hit the beach (literally, with my fists) and try to be a well rounded dude. And no, I haven't tried surfing out here yet. Why I'm Blogging: I still don't know the answer to this, because it happened by accident. I worked in the movie industry for ten years, and a good deal of those were at The Jim Henson Company. When Disney bought the Muppets, I went into limbo. Somehow I emerged into the realm of blogging, as if from a wormhole. First game experience: Pong. The original version, so very long ago. I still remember bouncing between friend's houses because one had a ColecoVision, an Odyssey, an IntelliVision, and we had the Atari 2600. Ah, the heady days of practically no-bit gaming. A few years later, and I had a subscription to Coin-Op Monthly. It was a good day when you'd come home from school and that was in the mail. Favorite games: Literally anything from Infocom (interactive fiction, ftw!), Full Throttle, King's Quest, The Last Express, Myst, Alternate Reality, The Bard's Tale, Ultima III, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, The Dig, Day of the Tentacle, Elevator Action, Cliffhanger, Dragon's Lair, Halo (1, 2, and 3), Catan, Um Jammer Lammy, LocoRoco, Super Mario Galaxy, and tons and tons of board games. I have a closet full of 'em, almost like that scene in The Royal Tenenbaums. What the hell kind of clown are you?!: The crying on the inside kind, I guess. There's more to come every Tuesday and Thursday.
PlayStation Fancast 000: We're so beta
You asked for it, and we're delivering. Here's the zeroth episode of the PlayStation Fancast. Why is it Episode 0? Well, we're still learning how to produce a podcast effectively. We plan on having a full-blown "professional-sounding" podcast with intro music, stronger audio quality, and flaming monkeys in the future. However, with so much to talk about from Gamers Day, we had to share something with you right now. Episode 0 features PS Fanboy's Andrew Yoon and Joystiq's Kevin Kelly talking about highlights from SGD. Listen to how Sony's upcoming lineup of heavy-hitters has convinced Kevin to purchase both a PS3 and PSP. Complete Show [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. [RSS MP3] Add the PlayStation Fancast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically. Use m.pspfanboy.com to add the show to your PSP system's RSS feeds. PS3-only [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. We'd really appreciate your comments, so tell us how we did. Yeah, the audio was a little messed up, and the encoding is a little wonky -- but we want to get better for you! Stay tuned for more details on the official launch of the PlayStation Fancast, and thanks for reading/listening.
