Author Archives: Steve Murray
Activision Buys MLG for $46 Million
The biggest name in North American eSports is now the property of the biggest game publisher in North America. Just prior to Christmas, MLG’s Board of Directors approved the sale of “substantially all” of its assets to Activision Blizzard for $46 million.
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Game Trailers Roundup for January 4, 2016
After three weeks off, the Game Trailers Roundup comes back with… not a lot really. Over the last three weeks, I’ve found six new trailers. If you’re looking forward to Kingdom Hearts, Unravel or The Long Dark, I suppose that this would be moderately interesting. Granted, we shouldn’t be surprised. Christmas is more about buying/playing games than hyping them.
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Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song Review
Another year, another Doctor Who Christmas special. Fortunately, this year’s special was more focused on the characters than it was the novelty of it being Christmas somewhere in the universe. This year’s Christmas special saw the return of River Song and her first encounter with the Twelfth Doctor.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: December 18 – 20, 2015
There are a few events happening this weekend to give some of your favourite eSports stars a couple of extra dollars in spending money right before Christmas. The stars of League of Legends are split between China and Germany. The big teams are in Cologne for a stop on the Intel Extreme Masters tour while China plays host to World Cyber Arena. Also at WCA are Hearthstone and Dota 2 which isn’t listed below because I can’t find times for anything beyond the group stage.
My focus will be on StarCraft II this weekend. The semi-annual HomeStory Cup is taking place this weekend. I believe that this one will be the first HSC from Take’s new studio rather than his apartment. Hopefully this won’t change the atmosphere of the event. HomeStory Cup is my favourite tournament series in SC2.
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Movie Trailers Roundup for December 16, 2015
I’ve been looking for a way to have a full five days of 5:00 PM weekly posts for et geekera. We do game trailers on Monday, comic book releases on Tuesday, eSports events on Thursday and links on Friday. If you’ve read the title of this post, I think it’s time for us to do movie trailers on Wednesdays. It may not stay here for long as I’ve been considering switching the eSports Weekend Calendar to Wednesday but let’s see how this goes for now.
For the first movie trailers roundup, we have eight trailers for you to watch. Four of them are for some of next summer’s blockbuster releases, including the new Star Trek movie that seems to borrow from The Search for Spock and the Independence Day sequel that likely won’t include the line “welcome to Earf.” There is also a teaser trailer for a Steven Spielberg children’s movie which is the first time in forever that we’ve been able to say that.
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Kojima Has Left Konami, Starting a New Studio with Sony
In the worst kept secret in gaming, Hideo Kojima’s contract with Konami has come to an end. The legendary developer had been in an ongoing dispute with Konami which saw Konami remove Kojima’s name and that of Kojima Productions from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
Kojima’s apparent unemployment didn’t last long, though. Within about 24 hours of a report by Japanese business publication Nikkei stating the Kojima was no longer employed by Konami, Sony Computer Entertainment announced a partnership with a newly founded version of Kojima Productions to produce a new franchise.
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Game Trailers Roundup for December 14, 2015
You would think that between The Game Awards and PlayStation Experience that we’d be completely out of game trailers for the roundup but I would be wrong. Last week, we had 11 trailers for the roundup. This week’s pickings are a little more slim at only eight trailers for you to watch.
Most of the trailers are for upcoming games like XCOM 2, Lego Marvel’s Avengers or Dying Light: Enhanced Edition. However, Nintendo has a couple of launch trailers from last week’s releases of Devil’s Third and FAST Racing Neo. We might be too close to Christmas for me to have sufficient shopping time but there are still games that you can buy coming out in the home stretch.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: December 11 – 13, 2015
If you’re looking something to watch on Twitch this weekend and are in the Americas, this is a good weekend for you. Dota 2’s The Summit 4 wraps up this weekend with the eight-team playoff. ESL and ESEA conclude their CS:GO pro league. And StarCraft II’s Nation Wars continue this weekend. Canada is in action on Thursday and Friday so I’ll be watching to see if Scarlett, HuK and desRow can bring Canada to the Round of 8.
For those on the West Coast or those up late elsewhere, Riot is holding the 2015 All-Star Event featuring the international regional all-star teams and the 1v1 tournament. Put a pot of coffee on if you want to see the finish of those.
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Overwatch to Release Future Heroes and Maps for Free
Just one month ago, Blizzard was causing concern at BlizzCon when they announced that they hadn’t finalized what the business plan would be for Overwatch with only seven months to go until release. Prior to BlizzCon, the only thing that was officially announced was that the game would be available for purchase at either $40 or $60 for the Origins Edition.
In a community update video, game director Jeff Kaplan talked about what Blizzard’s plan was for future hero additions to Overwatch. In the best piece of news to come out about the game, Kaplan announced that new heroes would be patched into the game for free.
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Comic Book Pull List for December 9, 2015
Another week, another edition of the comic book releases. This week, I want to look at the crossovers between DC Comics and IDW. This week, they have one crossover ending and a new one beginning. Concluding on the IDW side of the ledger is Star Trek / Green Lantern #6 as the heroes of Starfleet and the Lantern Corp team up for one final battle. Over at DC, Batman faces a new foe in the Foot Clan but four heroes in a half-shell are there to help him out in Batman / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1.
I’m sure that there will be a lot of purists of these franchises who might not be happy with these crossovers (except as a TMNT fan, I’m looking forward to reading that one) but it’s all in good fun. It’s not like any of these stories will be canon for anyone involved. It’s a little diversion that matches with all the crossover stuff that we all did with action figures growing up. The only difference is that this is in print and will cost us $4 an issue.
et geekera 