Now Playing
Loading ...



 Listen Live!

Electronic Arts Acquires Coveted Star Wars Game License

 Business, Games, Krypton Radio, Science Fiction, Special Reports, Star Wars  No Responses »
May 062013
 
EA

A Krypton Radio Special Report

by Staff Writer Michael Brown

May 6, 2013: Electronic Arts has announced a deal with Disney to publish future Star Wars games. The two companies have drawn up “a new multi-year exclusive licensing agreement to develop and publish globally new games based on Star Wars characters and storylines.”

According to EA’s announcement, they “will develop and publish new Star Wars titles for a core gaming audience, spanning all interactive platforms and the most popular game genres, while Disney will retain certain rights to develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet, and online game categories.”

EA Labels president Frank Gibeau has stated that three studios are already working on Star Wars games: Battlefield developer DICE, Dead Space developer Visceral, and Mass Effect developer and publisher of the classic Knights of the Old Republic series BioWare.

“Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe,” Gibeau said. “Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. DICE and Visceral will produce new games, joining the BioWare team which continues to develop for the Star Wars franchise. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay.”

In a blog post on EA’s website, Gibeau also confirmed that the new projects will be powered by the Frostbite 3 development engine, which, Gibeau said, will “guarantee incredible graphic fidelity, environments and characters.

“This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come,” said Disney co-president John Pleasants. “Collaborating with one of the world’s premier game developers will allow us to bring an amazing portfolio of new Star Wars titles to our fans around the world,” he said.

This is not EA’s first trip into the galaxy far, far away. They previously published BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG.

Earlier this year, Disney was blasted for laying off its LucasArts staff, causing fans and critics to speculate as to the future of Lucas Licensing as a whole. After inquiring, Krypton Radio received this statement from Lucas Licensing spokesperson Lynne Miller: “After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games  As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization.  We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles,” she said.

 As an aside, Lynne Miller also provided this statement regarding the future of LucasBooks:”The fact that LucasArts is shifting to a licensing model does not have an affect on our publishing program for books.  Please let your listeners know how much we appreciate their enthusiasm for the expanded universe and assure them that there are many new Star Wars books to come.”

-30-

Kickstart This – Doctor Demento: ‘Under The Smogberry Trees’

 Kickstarter, Music  No Responses »
Apr 302013
 
Dr+Demento

The True Story of Doctor Demento

Wind up your projectors! “UNDER THE SMOGBERRY TREES” is the first ever feature length documentary about legendary deejay Dr. Demento!

Before we called it filk, before there was Krypton Radio, before even the Internet itself, there was Doctor Demento. His radio show began on KPPC-FM in Pasadena, California, and has launched the careers of many familiar artists (including most notably Weird Al Yankovic).  With just days to go, they need to pick up about thirty thousand dollars to reach their production goal of $100K, and with your help they may just make it. It’ll be a squeaker, as they need a big surge to hit their mark.

“UNDER THE SMOGBERRY TREES” will be an engaging filmed history of “The Dr. Demento Show” from its humble beginnings to its current profound impact of funny music on popular culture, and including current interviews with Dementites (the famous and the nearly famous) connected to and/or inspired by the show over its forty-plus years.

It also serves as the definitive profile of Dr. Demento’s alter ego, the globally respected musicologist and historian Barret Hansen.  Through stories told in his own words, it will follow Mr. Hansen from his 1940′s Minneapolis childhood, to Reed College in Portland, through his Master’s degree in Folk Music Studies from UCLA, and on to donning the heavy top hat of Dr. Demento in 1970 and carrying it into the Comedy Music and Radio Halls of Fame.

The film is being produced with the full participation of Barry Hansen.  He is allowing us to get you a very rare glimpse at both the professional and private man, and see how it is indeed difficult to know where the tuxedo tails begin and where they end.  Barry will tell us stories of his early motivations and inspirations, the history of his musical impact (including his rock band producing days in the 60′s), as well as taking us all into his massive music library (over 250,000 records and counting!) and to his home studio, where he produces The Dr. Demento Show to this day!

If you can, please chip in and support this documentary.  Krypton Radio wouldn’t be here if not for Doctor Demento having blazed the trail first.

- 30 -

Links

Kickstart This: CODE MONKEY SAVE WORLD

 Comics, Kickstarter, Music  No Responses »
Apr 152013
 
codemonkeycomix

codemonkeycover Comics writer Greg Pak (“Planet Hulk,” “Batman/Superman,” “Magneto Testament”), internet superstar musician Jonathan Coulton, and artist Takeshi Miyazawa (“Runaways”) have joined forces to create a graphic novel that stars the much-loved monsters and super-villains from classic Coulton songs like “Code Monkey,” “Skullcrusher Mountain,” “The Future Soon,” and “Re: Your Brains.”

This is not a photoshopped fake, nor is it an April Fool’s joke (unless you count the deadline for filing your taxes as an April Fool’s joke – we do).  No, this is the real deal.

“Code Monkey Save World” follows Code Monkey, the put-upon coding monkey from the Jonathan Coulton song as he teams up with the lovelorn mad scientist from Coulton’s song Skullcrusher Mountain.  The duo fights robots, office worker zombies, and maybe even each other as they struggle to impress the amazing women for whom they fruitlessly long.

Pak told Newsarama.com of the project’s origins, “I’ve always loved songwriters like Bill Withers, Willie Nelson, and Warren Zevon who create these strange, lonely, funny, compelling characters. And I’d put Jonathan right up there with them. He’s a fantastic storyteller, and at a certain point, after listening to his songs again and again for years and years, the comic book writer in me realized he’s told a huge number of stories in his songs about super-villains and monsters.  So on the fateful day of November 21, 2012, I tweeted this:

Greg Pak @gregpak

Occurs to me that you could field a pretty awesome supervillain team with characters from @jonathancoulton songs.
2:05 PM – 21 Nov 12

The project was born last November after Pak joked on Twitter about writing a supervillain team-up comic based on Coulton’s characters. Coulton tweeted back “DO IT.” And so they did.

The characters are all based on characters from Coulton’s songs, which if you think about it is a gold mine of interesting and colorful characters, mostly villians.  It’s the perfect well from which to draw for a comic book like this – and with the appealing character of Code Monkey in the central role, it’s the comic novel that demanded to be made!

The plan is to produce a 60 page graphic novel that will be released digitally in four parts through Monkeybrain Comics and comiXology and then in a collected trade paperback form.

Most of the Kickstarter campaigns we write about on Krypton Radio are underdog projects we think are deserving of a little extra help.  Sometimes through our support, the projects go big when they might not have otherwise.

This project is different.  This time we just want this ourselves!

Go, Code Monkey – Save World!

- 30 -

Links

 

DC Comics Steps Up For Equality

 Business, Comics, Community, Marvel / DC  No Responses »
Apr 122013
 
Batman
Editorial By Vagabond 'Tony' Carter

Controversial characters are nothing new to the comic book world, we’ve seen gay characters, mentally and physically handicapped characters and D.C. has added it’s first openly Transgender and bisexual character, in the form of Barbara Gordon (Batgirl)’s roommate, Alysia Yeoh.

What I like best in this is Barbara’s reaction to the ‘coming out’ of her roommate  it’s incredibly human and realistic. There’s no preachyness, no Jerry Springer shock, no sappy “the more you know” after-school acceptance speech . She just accepts her for who she is and embraces her for having the strength and trust  to share something so personal.

This comes on the coat tails of D.C.s recent hire of Orson Scott Card, known well for his often inflammatory anti-gay statements. Perhaps D.C. decided to green-light this to offset the ire that has caused.

Batgirl writer Gail Simone had this to say about the character she created and what it means for some well entrenched barriers in the comicbook world “[A]lmost all the tent-poles we build our industry upon were created over a half century ago… at a time where the characters were almost without exception white, cis-gendered, straight, on and on,” she said. “It’s fine — it’s great that people love those characters. But if we only build around them, then we look like an episode of ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ for all eternity.”

 

 

o-DC-COMICS-TRANSGENDER-BATGIRL-571

 o-DC-COMICS-TRANSGENDER-BATGIRL-570

Kickstart This: Neal Hallford’s ‘Thief of Dreams’

 Kickstarter  No Responses »
Apr 102013
 
TodProfilePic
Author & game designer Neal Hallford

Author & game designer Neal Hallford

You may not have heard of veteran game designer and writer Neal Hallford, but chances are good if you’re a gamer you know his work.  His creative work helped make the best-selling computer role-playing games Betrayal at Krondor and Dungeon Siege into the RPG legends they are.

Now he’s launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund The Thief of Dreams, his first fantasy novel. The campaign begins today, Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at noon Pacific Time, and will run until May 11, 2013.  He wants to  fund the creation and publication of the novel, which will feature cover art by Shawn Sharp.  If you pledge, you can get perks that include copies of the book in electronic, paperback, hardcover, and deluxe edition formats.

Hallford describes The Thief of Dreams as “a novel set in a world where magic is forbidden, where sorcerers are spies, and where a force beyond imagination threatens to transform the long simmering cold war between the nine kingdoms into a cataclysmic, world-shattering conflict.”

Sounds like fun to us! His story for Betrayal at Krondor was novelized into a New York Times best-selling book by popular fantasy author Raymond E. Feist, and Dungeon Siege was adapted into the movie In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, so we think Hallford probably has the right stuff to get a really worthwhile book into the hands of fans of the fantasy genre.

A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Hallford now lives in San Diego, California where he’s also an independent film producer at Swords & Circuitry Studios which he operates with his wife Jana.

Links

Kickstart This: Ed Dunphy’s ‘Mongrel S.O.B.’

 Comics, Horror, Kickstarter  No Responses »
Apr 082013
 
mongrelbookcovers

A werewolf stalks the mean streets of Chicago, seeking vengeance in this full-color horror graphic novel.

All right, yes, yes, we know.  We push a lot of Kickstarts at you, and money’s tight these days.  And of course we’re distracting you from our own crowd-sourced funding effort that we plan to try in a few weeks ourselves, and believe me, you’ll know all about that one when we’re ready.

But really, seriously, if you like either horror or comics books (especially both), you’ll want this.  This Kickstarter doesn’t need to prove itself – with five days to go, it’s already just a few hundred dollars away from its third stretch goal, having blown by its original goal of $3,500 like a fur covered hurricane.

From the Kickstarter pitch description:

Mongrel: SOB is a suspense-filled horror graphic novel written by Ed Dunphy with art by Andrew Mitchell Kudelka. One part The Howling and one part CSI: Chicago, this gritty murder mystery pits a monstrous werewolf against a veteran Chicago detective. As the story hurtles through the urban nightmare of 1990s Chicago, the cast revolves around the action like moths drawn to a trashcan bonfire. It’s a werewolf story with bite.

We have already produced the 1st two chapters of Mongrel SOB. We are using Kickstarter to fund the production of chapter 3- the terrifying conclusion of Mongrel: SOB. We will then publish the collection as a Trade Paperback Edition.

Limited editions of Issues 1 & 2 were released at the 2012 San Diego Comic Con, Chicago’s C2E2 convention, and at DanCon – the Chicago southlands premier comic event. They’ve received rave reviews from fans and critics and now everyone wants to know how the story ends.

If the writing in the book is half as good as the writing in the pitch, this one’s a Kickstarter you’ll want a piece of.  Just saying.

- 30 -

Links

 

Kickstart This: Steampunk Band Victor Sierra

 Kickstarter, Music, Steampunk  No Responses »
Apr 022013
 
French steampunk band Victor Sierra

Victor Sierra is a steampunk band that takes the genre and pushes it way above and beyond the basic definition.  Their rich, lush, multilayered approach to to the steampunk ideal creates an impressive solid wall of sound.  You hear something new each time you listen to one of their songs.  Not willing to rest on the quality of the  instrumentals themselves, they have terrific vocalists and deep lyrics that fully engage you.  You don’t listen to Victor Sierra so much as live it.

This is what makes it so surprising that they need your help with their IndieGoGo fundraising campaign, but they do.  At this writing they have fifteen days to reach their modest goal of $6,000 U.S. dollars to record their next album this year in 2013.

Want to hear the next Victor Sierra album?  Helping them do it could cost you less than that pizza you had the other day for lunch.  Dig deep.  They deserve you help.

You can hear Victor Sierra music on Krypton Radio as part of our regular daily play.

- 30 -

Links

Wonder Women! PBS Documentary Airs April 15

 Comics, Hero Community, Kickstarter, Marvel / DC  No Responses »
Mar 192013
 
What language would Wonder Woman have spoken?

This coming April 15, PBS will air Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines, a documentary about Wonder Woman and the real life women she’s inspired.

Wonder Women!  traces the fascinating evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman. From the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s to the blockbusters of today,  this film looks at how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation.  The director takes you behind the scenes with Lynda Carter, Lindsay Wagner, comic writers and artists, and real-life superheroines such as Gloria Steinem, Kathleen Hanna andothers, who offer an enlightening and entertaining counterpoint to the male-dominatedsuperhero genre.

The documentary is directed by Kristy Guavara-Flanagan, and produced by Kelcey Edwards. It was the subject of a successful Kickstarter campaign that ended about this time last year, made its debut at the SXSW Film Festival last year, and has won countless awards.

Now that the film is done, it’s being taken on tour around the country through May. If you have the opportunity to see it in a theater setting, by all means, do so.  If you can’t, watch for it on PBS.

Links

Upcoming Screenings

Asterisks denotes that the filmmaker will be in attendance for Q&A after screening

 Older Entries