Posts Tagged ‘Brutal Legend’
By: Jon Christensen on December 16th, 2009 pm31 1:58 pm
Double Fine’s studio executive producer Caroline Esmurdoc, talked with Game Developer Magazine about what could have been the douchiest move last year in 2008. If you remember during that summer, Activision made it known that they would no longer be publishing and releasing several games, but most notably Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend were on the list. It was a move that shocked the industry because both games were actually considered anticipated titles in the gaming community and most thought we would have been playing them come the holidays that year.
Now you would have thought Activision, who is one of the leading publishers in the industry today, would have respected the studios enough to let them know ahead of time, that their services were no longer needed. Well, according to Esmurdoc, who’s studio developed Brutal Legend, said Activision did the complete opposite. According to her, when the publisher sent out a press release to various media outlets about how they were dropping titles from the company, that is when the Double Fine learned about their departure.
“We learned Activision was not going to be publishing Brutal Legend through an official press announcement issued by Activision that listed the games they would be shipping, ours conspicuously absent,” she told the magazine. “Again, the team was abuzz with anxiety — and the official hunt for a new publisher began, distracting Tim [Tim Schafer], myself, and various team leads during an already intense development period.”
If this ends up being true, this is a new low from Activision. While I understand Activision is like any other company that has to do everything they can in order to make money and please their shareholders; I just don’t understand why they couldn’t have the common courtesy and let Double Fine, or any other studio for that matter, that they were no longer on the Activision team. Again, if this is the truth, it paints Activision in even a darker light, even more so than they already are.
Obviously, Brutal Legend would eventually be released, thanks to Electronic Arts picking up the title. But that was a move that lead to a lawsuit filed by Activision. Esmurdoc talked further about the lawsuit, and how the stress of trying to develop a game on schedule, along with being sued, took a toll on the team and ultimately it hurt their final product.
“The lawsuit was filed just as the game went Alpha, with a stipulation that it be heard prior to Gold Master being submitted — relegating Tim and myself and a cadre of team leaders to the unenviable job of information gathering, declaration writing, lawsuit reading, witness interviewing and all around non-game-making during the crunchiest, most critical time of development. The lawsuit took its toll on the team, on the company, on our product and on our optimism. Wrong, any way you slice it.”
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By: Jon Christensen on November 10th, 2009 pm30 1:18 pm
EEDAR, a group that predicts the monthly sales of the videogame industry, have released their numbers of how many games were moved for the month of October. According to them, Sony’s exclusive adventure game Uncharted 2 has moved 600,000 units, making it the top selling videogame for last month. You might think these numbers are low, considering Gamestop alone had over 1.5 million reservations for Modern Warfare 2, but you need to remember — Uncharted is only available for the PS3, which is the least sold console this generation. You should also know the game started to be sold in stores almost two full weeks into October, so that’s just another reason why 600,000 is an impressive number.
Other notable top selling games were Boarderlands, which is expected to have moved 300,000 copies and had very little marketing when compared to Uncharted 2, along with EA’s adventure title Brutal Legend, starring Hollywood actor Jack Black.
EEDAR, a group that predicts the monthly sales of the videogame industry, have released their numbers of how many games were moved for the month of October. According to them, Sony’s exclusive adventure game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has moved 600,000 units, making it the top selling videogame for last month. You might think these numbers are low, considering Gamestop alone had over 1.5 million reservations for Modern Warfare 2, but you need to remember — Uncharted is only available for the PS3, which is the least sold console this generation. You should also know the game started to be sold in stores almost two full weeks into October, so that’s just another reason why 600,000 is an impressive number.
Other notable top selling games were Borderlands, which is expected to have moved 300,000 copies and had very little marketing when compared to Uncharted . EA’s adventure title Brutal Legend, starring Hollywood actor Jack Black, moved about 200,000 units.
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By: Jon Christensen on September 13th, 2009 pm30 6:41 pm
Keeping his promise to promote the videogame industry, Late Night host Jimmy Fallon has invited the founder of Double Fine Productions, Tim Schafer, to publicize Brutal Legend. On October 2nd, Schafer will be interviewed and is expected to talk about the game, which stars Jack Black, and chat about the glory of being a videogame developer. I’m sure the audience will find it extremely informative about how he works a bajillion hours and downs a dozen Red Bulls on any given night.
Although I do have to give it to Jimmy Fallon. While I find the show doesn’t live up to Conan or Letterman’s version of the show, I have to admit having a lead man in the gaming industry is ballsy a move and I might just tune in. Of course, me laughing is completely up in the air.
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By: Jon Christensen on August 18th, 2009 am31 11:22 am
Here’s a quick note. EA has just confirmed that Brutal Legend, which stars funny-man Jack Black, is getting a demo. According to the publisher, players will be able to download the tease starting on September 17, 2009 for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Players who download the demo, will also get early access to some of the unique weapons featured in the game, including: The Seperator (axe), Clementine (guitar) and The Duece (car). I’m hoping this will be the same demo as the one I played at E3. If it is, you’ll be sold on this one.
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By: Jon Christensen on July 30th, 2009 pm31 3:22 pm
Right before E3, Activision filed a suit against Double Fine Productions and tried to delay the release of Brutal Legend, which stars actor Jack Black. According to Activision, the company still owns the rights for Brutal Legend and Electronic Arts, who is now the publisher, legally can’t disturb the game. Double Fine countersued Activision stating that their former publisher breached its contract with them, thus loosing their ownership to the game. Even before today, the whole situation is a legal mess.
The Associated Press is reporting that the L.A. Superior Judge Craig Karlan has delayed his ruling. Although, Karlan has been reported that he is not “inclined” to rule in favor of Activision’s request, which he already told lawyers. He told the attorneys there were several key facts of him ruling against the delay of title, but his biggest reason was because he couldn’t see any “likelihood of success” for Activision, in the end. Although later, he told both companies that neither of them had an upper hand. “This is going to be a close call,” Karlan said.
That being said, Judge Karlan has rescheduled arguments until August 6th because of a full court calender. According to EA, the final version of the game was to be received to the company’s headquarters by August 8th, which was to make sure the October release date would still be on track.
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By: Jon Christensen on June 23rd, 2009 pm30 4:29 pm
EA has released the final box art for Brütal Legend, and I love how it looks like a cheesy 80’s movie poster. It’s also cool that EA recognizes how great Tim Schafer’s is plastering his name above the title. Although, do regular people even no who the heck Schafer is outside the gaming industry? It’s just another bad marketing idea by EA because they probably should have went with something like ‘Jack Black in Brütal Legend.’
Last time I checked, Jack Black, who stars in the game, is a famous actor and even musicians, that alone maybe could have sold a few more copies if his name was on the front cover. Why they choose Scafer instead of Black is a decision I’ll never understand.
If you want to see the PlayStation 3 box, check it out after the jump. (more…)
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By: Jon Christensen on May 29th, 2009 am31 2:59 am
Game director Tim Schafer, is known to include some great dialogue and characters in his video games. Pretty much every game he has worked on has contained these traits, which is something that is very rare in the gaming industry.
After spending more than a decade with LucasArts and helped develop Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and many others, Schafer went on to start up his own studio called Double Fine Productions. The first game that was released under the Double Fine label was the 2005 cult-hit Psychonauts, for the Xbox, PS2 and PC.
The next game that is set to be released from the company, which comes out this year is Brutal Legend. As many of you know, the main star is voiced by actor/musician Jack Black. As with many of Tim Schafer projects, the characters along with the dialogue seems to be top notch.
After the jump, we included a clip which was featured on Gametrailers TV earlier tonight. I must say, the script and comedic acting is shaping up really nice and this could be a game to watch out for. (more…)
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By: Jon Christensen on May 21st, 2009 pm31 11:53 pm
Jack Black is going out of his way to promote Brutal Legend, which he voices the main character. The clip above not only features Black, but also the very funny Steve Agee (The Sarah Silverman Program), who does voice work in the game as well.
The point of the video is to promote the video game having a deeper script than most games, and it’s so good it could be mistaken as a film. At the end of the clip, the very talented game director Tim Schafer appears and Mr. Black throws up. Why? Watch the video and find out.
Just a bit of caution, the video does not show any gameplay whatsoever. So, if you are a fan of Jack Black go ahead and watch it, if not — skip it.
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By: Jon Christensen on May 1st, 2009 am31 1:36 am
EA has released a story trailer for their game starring Jack Black, Brutal Legend for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The first time we saw a clip featuring the game, it was at a time when the title was going to be published by Activision. Back then I really didn’t have any high hopes for the title, which was first shown at the VGAs and it looked awful.
Now, it looks like having the title switch publishers, might have helped in some way. Okay, maybe not because Brutal Legend is still being developed by the same team, which is Double Fine Productions. However, this latest trailer really did impress me. Not so much because of the gameplay, because I’m still unsure about that, but I think the game has a ton of personality and is well acted for a video game. Although, I should have had more faith in that area, it is again being created by Double Fine and much of the same team created the hilarious Grim Fandango, years back.
Hopefully, when the game is released the gameplay will match the obvious charm.
Check out the trailer above.
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By: Jon Christensen on April 21st, 2009 am30 4:44 am
EA has finally announced the release date for Jack Black’s video game Brutal Legend, for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game will be shipped to stores on October 13, 2009 in North America and October 16, 2009 in Europe.
The boss of Double Fine Tim Schafer, which is the studio behind the game, talked about the revealing on his Twitter. “Wooo! Having an official release date is awesome!,” he wrote. “And how cool is it that EA threw down the dough to have the name of an entire month changed to Rocktober?,” he joked.
If you don’t know, Brutal Legend was originally going to be published by Activision. However, because the publisher decided the title didn’t have enough legs to become a profitable franchise, they dropped the game. Since that time, EA picked up the rights and at one point, had some legal trouble in the process.
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By: Jon Christensen on February 13th, 2009 pm28 3:58 pm
During the summer, it was reported that Actitvision was dropping Brutal Legend among other games when it merged with Vivendi. Both companies doubted the long term success of these games, so instead of releasing them, the executives of both companies decided to not to pick up the projects. This in turn lead other publishing companies freely to go after the rights of these titles — or so we though.
In December, EA announced that they had inked a deal with Double Fine, who are the developers of Brutal Legend and would be releasing the game sometime later this year. According to Variety, the bigs wigs over at Activision Blizzard have informed that EA’s agreement isn’t valid. Activision Blizzard believes that they were still in negotiations with the developer and the deal between EA and Double Fine is a legal concern of theirs.
A letter was sent to EA about their legal statement, but both EA and DF believe otherwise. When the merger happened last summer, Double Fine was under the impression that they were free to find another publisher. Their reason was because of legality reasons with the merger.
However, Variety is reporting that Activision doesn’t necessarily want to publish Brutal Legend, but just get some cash from EA. Meaning, if EA decides to release the game, in return they would have to give some of their profits to their rival publisher.
What does EA say about this? Well according to Variey, they responded by saying” We doubt that Activision would try to sue. That would be like a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy.” Yes. They really did say that.
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By: Jon Christensen on February 10th, 2009 pm28 10:59 pm
When Activision dropped Ghostbusters: The Video Game last summer, a lot of people overlooked a few other titles that received the axe from the publisher. Jack Black’s game Brutal Legend, was one of the unfortunate cuts.
Luckily for Double Fine Productions, who are developing the game, EA came to the rescue. So in the end, Brutal Legend and Jack Black’s annoying voice should see the light of day by the end of the year.
At this point in time, we haven’t been to impressed with the title, but obviously we haven’t seen to much either. However, just viewing these screens, the game definitely has its own graphical style. Also, Tim Schafer who worked on the forgotten but awesome game Psychonauts; is the head of Double Fine Productions. So, the game has the talent around it to become great.
After the jump, check out the rest of the screens. (more…)
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By: Jon Christensen on December 15th, 2008 am31 3:13 am
In case you didn’t know, Jack Black was hosting the VGA’s tonight and mentioned the game he’s staring in — Brutal Legend. At one point during the show Black contested Brutal Legend will be the best game EVER! Closer to the end of the event, they finally released the first trailer for the same game.
Now, after viewing the first trailer we have some bad news for Jack Black. We think the game has ALONG way to go before it can be even in the same league as Mario or GTA. Of course we could be wrong, but we’re pretty certain we are not. We also kinda understand why Activision dropped the title a few months back…
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By: Jon Christensen on August 6th, 2008 pm31 2:08 pm
The dumbest move by far this year in the video game world, was when Activision Blizzard decided to drop one of their most anticipated games of the year-Ghostbusters. President of Terminal Reality Mark Randel told videogaming247 that the Ghostbusters game will in fact be available to the public in the future.
“Ghostbusters will be published. That’s all I can say at the moment.”
Ghostbusters isn’t the only game that’s looking for a publisher: 50 cent, Brutal Legend, and World in Conflict all got the axe when Activision merged with Blizzard. Although, out of the four, Ghostbusters seems like the obvious choice that could make some cheese for a publisher. You have to figure, since the game is almost done, there is more then one company trying to buy GB.
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