Gaming in city Hollywood. Reviews, Walkthroughs, News

Actual play has garnered an undeniably enthusiastic audience in the last few years. Shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20 attract millions of online viewers, and live events sell tens of thousands of tickets. Still, Hollywood has been slow to cash in on the rapidly developing medium — until now.

Disney’s new animated/live-action hybrid short Once Upon a Studio is kind of like the final battle in Avengers: Endgame: packed with every single relevant character you could possibly think of. The short, meant to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Walt Disney Animation Studios, features 543 characters from throughout the company’s history — including some that fans thought we might never see again, like Aladdin’s Genie, voiced by the late Robin Williams.

Days before Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are hoping to tie up its $68.7 billion merger, the Call of Duty publisher and Overwatch 2 developer brought all its employees together for an all-hands meeting… hosted by former late-night host James Corden, according to a report from Windows Central. Yes, the former The Late Late Show host known for terrorizing Los Angeles drivers with musical stunts appeared alongside Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick to bring employees up to speed on the state of the company.

It’s an enduring internet joke, and understandably so: Repost that infamously tweeted photo of multiple stars lining up to herald the creation of the Dark Universe, the extended cinematic universe planned to kick off with the release of 2017’s Tom Cruise-led The Mummy and discussed in the press since 2014.

The team over at Naughty Dog hasn’t revealed anything substantial in a good while. However, while the studio hasn’t unveiled anything recently, the multiplayer project was revealed in 2018. Naughty Dog has been working on a standalone multiplayer gameplay experience that is set within The Last of Us universe. Details had been slim, but the project has been in development ever since, and as far as we know officially, the development team is continuing to push through the game for an eventual release. However, one insider has come out to reveal the game was killed off.

Blumhouse's founder and CEO, Jason Blum, has revealed that the Five Nights at Freddy's movie has already made back its $25 million budget, despite not even being out for another few weeks.

is planning to raise the price of its ad-free service a few months after the SAG-AFTRA strike ends in Hollywood, according to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal.

I confess: I'm a Star Trek nerd — and commodities enthusiast, too. Thus, asteroid mining should be my personal heaven. On Sunday, I watched with the excitement of a five-year old how a NASA space probe brought back the largest-ever stash of asteroid rubble to Earth. But was this feat a step closer to commercial space mining? Not even close.

Capcom's ultra-stylish demon blaster Devil May Cry is back again, but in anime form. As part of Netflix's Drop 01 animation event, the streaming behemoth dropped a teaser for its upcoming DMC anime series—the one announced back in 2018—courtesy of Adi Shankar, a name you'll recognise from his work as showrunner and executive producer on another animated Netflix series based on a videogame: Castlevania. DMC is being produced by Studio Mir, of Legend of Korra fame.

Hollywood writers are largely celebrating the Writers Guild of America’s new minimum basic agreement as the strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the coalition of major studios, comes to an end after 148 days. The new contract still needs membership approval — members will vote between Oct. 2 and Oct. 9 — but it has been approved by union leadership. The contract guarantees regulations on artificial intelligence use, minimum staff numbers for writers rooms, and residual compensation for writers that work on streaming shows and movies.

The Writer's Guild of America has reached a tentative agreement with studios and streamers to end their record breaking strike. And to celebrate, publisher Black Mask has launched a Kickstarter for an anthology titled General Strike: Calexit and Other Tales of Fighting the Good Fight full of stories rooted in "the struggle for economic equality."

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has inadvertently shared his opinion on the issues modern AAA games are dealing with - revealing he thinks publishers are "milking" their successful IPs and "struggling" to find new ones. 

It’s been a very unique time in Hollywood lately, as the last several months have been highlighted not only by certain movies doing incredibly at the box office but also by the dual strikes that have been filling the streets of Los Angeles, protesting the work conditions of those within the entertainment industry. It started back in May when the Writers Guild went on strike and demanded both better pay and knowledge that AI wouldn’t be used to replace them, amongst other things. Then, SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild, also joined the fight because the vast amount of their workers weren’t being paid fairly either.

It’s not hard for most people to crawl on all fours, Zeke Alton, known for voice acting and motion capture in games like Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart, Saints Row, and World of Warcraft, told Polygon. But what is hard — an Olympic-level feat, according to Alton — is doing that for four hours straight. The video game industry is behind when it comes to safety for performers in ways that are standard elsewhere in Hollywood.

A whole lot of interesting (and occasionally awkward) secrets were revealed by the big Microsoft document leak that occurred last week. One of the most notable bits was a brutally frank analysis by Xbox boss Phil Spencer on the current state of major videogame publishers like Activision and Electronic Arts, who Spencer said are struggling to find relevance in an industry that just doesn't need them like it used to.

Striking Hollywood screenwriters reached a tentative new labor agreement with studios including Walt Disney Co. and Netflix Inc., settling one of two walkouts that have shut down film and TV production.

Hollywood has been at a standstill for months. First, the Writers Guild of America went on strike thanks to the treatment by studios and streamers regarding pay, the use of AI, the size of writers’ rooms, and more. Then, the Screen Actors Guild went on strike for similar reasons, and thus, almost every project in Hollywood ground to a halt. After all, nothing could get made without writers in the rooms to make scripts and without actors to portray characters. That meant high-profile shows like The Last Of Us Season 2 couldn’t be created or worked on behind the scenes.

Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has addressed his time working on Star Wars – and the filmmaker says he has no hard feelings about the experience.

If you know anything about Ed Boon, it’s not just that he’s a great creator and visionary when it comes to fighting games and their potential. You’ll know by listening to him that he’s a fanboy. He loves putting in things within his titles that will make his “younger self” happy and has always pushed for bigger and better things to happen with the games he oversees. With Mortal Kombat 1, he got a lot of wishes granted, including finally getting Jeanne-Claude Van Damme in the title to play a version of Johnny Cage. But he recently revealed that he wanted more than that.

It’s fair to say that, with the release of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the comeback story will be practically complete.

With season 2 confirmed to be in production, it’s only a matter of time before fans find out. Showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have revealed that the upcoming second season will adapt the story of The Last of Us 2 video game, meaning that Abby is fated to be a much-hated character. Who can we expect to see play Abby in TLOU season 2?

This fighting game series is getting more cinematic with each entry, so it makes sense the Mortal Kombat 1 cast list is stellar. It includes Hollywood talent like John Cena and Megan Fox. Additionally, there are talented voice actors like Steve Blum and Jennifer Hale on this project. Here’s the full Mortal Kombat 1 cast list.

It’s been a long road for fans of Black Dynamite since the uproarious Blaxploitation comedy burst onto screens in 2009. And it’s been an even longer road for star and co-writer Michael Jai White, who has spent much of the intervening decade and a half pulling together the movie’s long-awaited spiritual sequel, Outlaw Johnny Black.

Footage is being shared from Universal Studios’ newly opened The Last of Us experience.

The star of Bloodsport assumes the role of Johnny Cage in MK1.

HBO’s live-action adaptation of The Last of Us was a massive hit. Typically, video games haven’t translated well in either the film or television entertainment medium. But there are some exceptions, and The Last of Us is among that group. Fans couldn’t get enough of the faithful adaptation, and it certainly turned the attention back to the video game franchise for those who might be new to the IP. Regardless, everything came to a halt for this production, thanks to the ongoing strikes in Hollywood.

No matter the company or the “field” they are in, there are always certain “constants” that they try to achieve. The biggest one is that they desire every year to be good, profitable, memorable, and a “banner year” for the company in some form. This can be especially true in the gaming space, as companies need to perform well every year to prove they can go up against their competitors and maintain their slice of their market. For 2023, there’s little doubt that Nintendo has had a year for the record books, and not just on the gaming side of things.

If the summer felt busy… welcome to the fall.

Picture it: You’re the Peloton PR person who set up your product’s appearance on the premiere of the most highly anticipated show of the year, the revival of Sex and the City. You type up some anticipatory emails, grab a cosmo, and turn on your TV. But there’s a big problem: After the sweat session that you personally arranged, John James Preston (aka Big) gets off the bike and has a fatal heart attack.

Blizzard has revealed Season 2 of Diablo IV, and it comes with a surprising guest star.

Overwatch 2 was released on PS5 and PS4 back in October of 2022, and the shift to free-to-play drew massive crowds initially, but deeper issues were quickly discovered. The player base has been declining ever since, which is fairly normal for service games, but what's new for Blizzard is the great equaliser: Steam.

A Friday AI-related federal ruling might potentially impact the ongoing writers' and actors' strikes going on in Hollywood.

The battle between artificial intelligence (AI) and people in creative fields has been ongoing for some time. In the US, actors and writers working in Hollywood have been on strike to limit the usage of AI as they may lose their jobs. Even authors have joined the cause by submitting an open letter to corporations involved in developing these AI tools requesting them to pay fair compensation for using their work as “food” for AI. And now, reports have emerged that a major news publisher New York Times may take legal action against OpenAI, the developer of the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT.

The Last of Us was a massive hit when Naughty Dog first delivered it into the marketplace. Since then, the game has seen a remastered edition along with a remake. But what made a new resurgence for this franchise lately was the hit HBO live-action adaptation. It might have been a relatively easy game to adapt as well since Naughty Dog was known for delivering detailed and cinematic video game experiences. However, while the show’s first season was a hit, there might already be an end on the showrunner’s horizon.

Warrior Nun is coming back from the dead in a big way. After weeks of passionate fans campaigning for the canceled fantasy series to be saved, showrunner Simon Barry confirmed it'd return in July – and now, executive producer Dean English has revealed that it's coming back as a movie trilogy.

What is there to say about Fortnite that hasn’t been said before by us or by other writers and content creators? It’s the game that shouldn’t have been a big hit and yet came to define a gaming generation. Even now, years after the game came out, everyone is excited about what it will do next and who might show up in the game. Its “skin game” is legendary for all the right reasons. Regardless of where the franchise is media-wise, Epic Games will find a way to collaborate in some fashion. Fast forward to now, and WWE is apparently on the brink of a big collab with the title.

Millions of players have been enjoying Splatoon 3 since it dropped in 2022, and one of the biggest “outlets” for them to funnel their joy through has been the Splatfests. To be fair, unlike past titles, the Splatfests haven’t always been consistent in their release within the new game. Sometimes they took a back seat to the new “Big Run” events or other things going down. However, Nintendo and the people at Squid Research Labs have felt the need to have back-to-back months with Splatfests again. The good news for you is that Splatoon 3 is hosting the next Splatfest later today.

Ever since the huge successes of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Uncharted, and The Last Of Us, films and TV shows adapted from video games have been all the rage in Hollywood. But when Neill Blomkamp received a call from Sony asking if he wanted to direct a movie based around its super-serious, hyper-realistic racing game series Gran Turismo, he was initially confused.

It is time to let out the kid inside you. After long anticipation, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the second installment of the animated Spider-Verse franchise, recently made its theatrical debut to high acclaim by both the audience and the critic. The movie tells the story of Miles Morales, the Spider-Man from an alternate universe, who has multiple superpowers that he uses to take down criminals. And if you are a fan of the superhero genre or just Spider-Man, this movie has some great moments for you that you do not want to miss. The best part is that the film has made its digital debut. So, want to watch it? Know where to watch the Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse OTT release online.

If you somehow haven’t heard, many significant events are going on in Hollywood right now, and many of them are bad in the overall. We’re talking about the Writer’s and Actor’s Guild strike that has been happening for weeks/months, depending on the side you’re discussing. This is “bad” because, without writers or actors, pretty much all TV shows, movie productions, and more are being shut down, postponed, and more. The actors can’t even promote films that are coming up. So you might hear this and go, “What does Sonic The Hedgehog 3 have to do this?”

Japan's Sony on Wednesday said first-quarter profit tumbled due to weaker performances from its movies and financial businesses.

will begin filming without actors during the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.

Actor has blamed the rise of Marvel superhero movies for the decline in comedy movies in Hollywood.

More than 50 visual effect workers at Marvel Studios are looking to unionize. The group filed its desire on Monday, asking the National Labor Relations Board to schedule a formal election for as early as Aug. 21, according to Vulture.

The original actors who portrayed Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us are reuniting for Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights event.

The original actors who portrayed Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us video games are reprising the roles for this year's Halloween Horror Nights attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood and Orlando.

The success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie and Nintendo‘s theme parks has led parent company Comcast to an earnings bump in its film and theme park divisions.

Artificial intelligence is a hot topic and seems to be getting ever hotter with each passing day due to the rapid developments happening in the field. While an AI startup has developed software that could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions of diesel locomotives, police in the UK have also taken AI aid to catch drivers who use mobile phones while driving. This, and more in today's AI roundup.

The Witcher season 3 has reached an end after two parts and eight episodes, but that doesn’t mean our heroes’ journey across The Continent is over. After violent coups, dangerous plots, secret portals, and plenty of fights, Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri are all separated, and who knows when they might get back together again.

When we talk about videogames taking cues from Hollywood, it's normally a reference to bombastic cinematics or a stacked cameo cast, not really behind the scenes staff. That's the case for Baldur's Gate 3 though, which used intimacy coordinators—professional advocates for actors appearing in explicit scenes—to help manage production of its romances between characters.

Filed under:

Big-time film director James Cameron, the man who created what is arguably the most famous rise-of-the-machines scenario in Hollywood history, isn't worried about artificial intelligence taking over the film industry and putting thousands of people out of work. He is, however, a wee little bit concerned that it might wipe out human life as we know it.

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has addressed the ongoing WGA and SAG strikes in an earnings interview.

AI is at the center of the ongoing strikes in Hollywood, as writers and actors are concerned over how studios will take advantage of the rapidly-advancing technology moving forward. Those concerns are also bleeding into the world of video games, specifically in the voice actor community.

For the first time since 1960, both the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Screenwriters and actors alike are withholding their labor from Hollywood studios, picketing for fair contracts. This means that not only are productions halted, but promotional events like interviews and red carpets are also off the table.