World of Warcraft
Felicia Day does Dragon Age
So for the last little while Felicia Day (aka Queen of the Geeks) has been tweeting about a “mystery project” she’s been working on. Day is most famous in geek circles for writing, producing and acting in a web series called The Guild, as well as being Penny from Dr Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog. Not to mention acting in two other Joss Whedon shows, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse.
Last night the mystery project was revealedto be a new web series called Dragon Age: Redemption. That’s right, EA/Bioware have asked her to do to Dragon Age what she’s unofficially done to World of War craft. Make it cool and bring it to a different kind of audience. Details are a little thin on the ground but USA Today had the scoop and also did a nice little Gamer Profile on Day.
She has also blogged a little about the project, but no doubt the best place to get more info as it happens is to follow @FeliciaDay on twitter. She tweets a lot.
So info dump aside, what do I think? I think this is super cool. I’m not a huge Guild fan, but think that it’s pretty impressive that it’s been going for 4 whole seasons, and was bank rolled for the first season by fan donations. Day also then managed to keep total creative control when she signed a distribution deal with Microsoft. Also Felicia Day is a real gamer, she plays games, loves games and understands why the rest of us do. A quick quote from the USA Today article:
A life-long game player, Day is fully aware they have a poor track record when it comes to adaptation. “I am an organic gamer and I love games, and I particularly love this franchise,” she says. “I put every single effort into making this something that gamers will be proud of. Even though we were constrained a lot as a Web series, none of the people who were involved took that as a constraint. They took that as a challenge.”
So yeah, I look forward to seeing this when it comes out. I doubt it will be at the same time as Dragon Age 2, but hopefully not too long after.
Linky linky linky linky LINKS
Sorry for last week’s lack of links and apologies in advance for the lack of links next week!
- Mark Charan Newton thinks sci-fi books are dying. I tend to agree.
- Why fandom owes even more to H.P. Lovecraft than we realised.
- A man has ‘beaten’ WoW. Sort of (via Boing Boing)
- Dollhouse battles were about sex. So says Whedon – Fox will never tell.
- Real life vampire killing kits!
- Using Microsoft’s Surface to play D&D – more footage.
It’s Thursday. Want some links?
- I personally don’t especially care about covers – I choose books based on reviews and previous work and I think most SFF covers are rubbish. But some people care a great deal. Here’s a post at A Dribble of Ink about the changes between editions of Mark Charan Newton’s Nights of Villjamur. The comments are pretty interesting if you like that sort of thing, with all sorts weighing in, including Newton’s editor.
- Filming of the Games of Thrones pilot has wrapped. Now we wait to see what the chances of a actual series are.
- Sex advice from D&D players. Actually serious advice, not a parody.
- The AV club’s best 15 video games of the noughties.
- Next time you’re at a loss for PC or NPC, try looking up this print of Characters for an Epic Tale. (via Boing Boing)
- The BBC discusses committing war crimes in video games. (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
- The Times covers ‘adult gamers’. Shock, horror!
- And, finally, Kotaku celebrates World of Warcraft’s 5th birthday by finding out from people why they’ve never played it. The intro where the writer discusses how it just doesn’t live up to tabletop gaming experiences is the most interesting one to me.
More linkage
A Kotaku article on game pricing in Australia (but with obvious NZ relevance).
A pretty fascinating Slate.com piece on the history of the Klingon language.
A World of Warcraft themed toilet/gaming room.
I am passing these on without comment…