Video Game

Video game giants Activision Blizzard Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. have settled their litigation as a larger trial over the Call of Duty video game franchise is scheduled to proceed this month. Santa Monica-based Activision and Redwood Shores, Calif.-based EA announced their settlement at a California Superior Court hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The long-running rivalry between the two companies heated up in 2010 when EA agreed to fund a new studio headed by Jason West and Vincent Zampella, the co-creators of Call of Duty whom Activision had fired that year.

In the smart, involving documentary "Indie Game: the Movie," when video game designer Phil Fish chillingly asserts that he'd kill himself if he didn't finish his long-gestating game "Fez," you get the feeling he isn't bluffing. That's the level of depth and candor filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky mine here as they profile several independent artists struggling to succeed in the highly corporatized - and often hugely lucrative - video game industry. In addition to the French-Canadian Fish, who spent more than four nerve-wracking years developing the much anticipated, aesthetically oriented "Fez," the movie also compellingly follows the long distance, rollercoaster collaboration between designer Edmund McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes as they create "Super Meat Boy," their first major game for Xbox (it went on to sell more than 1 million copies)

Music composer Garry Schyman sits in his Culver City studio, at a desk topped with Gustav Mahler biographies and Krzysztof Penderecki recordings, and ponders the hero's predicament. He pivots to his keyboard and plays a handful of chords conveying utter loss, the draining of hope. If you happen to play the video game Resistance: Retribution after it's released next spring, you'll take on the role of a British soldier working to subvert an alien invasion in post-apocalyptic Europe.

Video game giants Activision Blizzard Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. have settled their litigation as a larger trial over the Call of Duty video game franchise is scheduled to proceed this month. Santa Monica-based Activision and Redwood Shores, Calif.-based EA announced their settlement at a California Superior Court hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The long-running rivalry between the two companies heated up in 2010 when EA agreed to fund a new studio headed by Jason West and Vincent Zampella, the co-creators of Call of Duty whom Activision had fired that year.

I'VE ALWAYS been scared of 17-year-old boys. Particularly when I was 17, but even now. I have learned to avoid their hormone-amped, hostile glances, figuring every one of them is in some kind of dangerous gang. Especially if he's wearing red or blue, or making any kind of complicated shadow puppets when there is no nearby wall or light source. But it turns out I have nothing to worry about.

Atari, a personal computer and video game company that has struggled to persuade retailers to sell its products, has agreed to buy the Federated Group chain of consumer electronics stores for $67.3 million in cash. The acquisition would give Atari, which has been on the mend since being discarded by Warner Communications three years ago, the Federated retail network of about 65 stores in California, Arizona, Texas and Kansas.

At the video game industry's first Electronic Entertainment Expo 16 years ago, Sony Corp.'s PlayStation and Sega's Saturn dazzled attendees and defined the cutting edge of coolness with their CD drives and three-dimensional graphics. This week, as the industry gathers in downtown Los Angeles for its annual E3 extravaganza, some experts are questioning how significant those boxes of electronics really are in a rapidly changing video game business. After dominating the market for decades and making their way into 1 out of every 2 U.S. homes, consoles are beginning to face serious competition as teenagers and adults increasingly play games designed for smartphones, tablets and online social networks.

With 125 million viewers watching more than 1 billion of its videos a month, Machinima may be the most-watched channel that's not on TV. The specialty channel devoted to video-game aficionados — which offers game walk-throughs, gaming news, exclusive trailers and original series — is the channel with the fourth most subscribers on YouTube, itself the world's third most popular website, according to online measurement firm ComScore Inc. ...

"The Dark Knight Rises" doesn't hit movie theaters for nine months, but Batman is at the heart of what may just be Warner Bros.' most important release of the fall. With the launch Tuesday of video game Arkham City, a sequel to 2009 hit Arkham Asylum that lets players control the Caped Crusader, the studio's Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment unit has one of the best-reviewed and most anticipated titles of the year. It's expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

The video game industry hit the pause button on sales in May, posting its lowest monthly revenue from U.S. retail stores such as Best Buy Co. and GameStop Corp. since October 2006. Sales of games, consoles and game accessories such as extra controllers dropped 14% last month to $743.1 million, down from $866.8 million in May 2010, according to a report released Monday from NPD Group, a market research firm. "A light slate of new releases is at the heart of last month's performance," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

Video game sales took a nose dive in April, plunging a stomach-churning 42% compared with a year earlier as companies cranked out fewer releases than in April 2011. Retailers rang up only $292.1 million in game sales last month, down from $503.2 million a year earlier, according to NPD Group, a market research firm. With fewer new games to drive people into stores, sales of game consoles also took a hit, falling 32% to $189.7 million. "Simply stated, there were notably fewer" new game releases, said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

The first official Angry Birds Land will open Saturday at Sarkanniemi Adventure Park in Finland with rides and games themed to the popular smart phone app. PHOTOS: Angry Birds Land at European theme park Located about two hours north of Helsinki, Sarkanniemi has partnered with Finnish-based gamemaker Rovio to bring the virtual world of battling birds and pigs into the fantasy world of a theme park. With more than 500 million downloads, the iPhone and Android cellphone game challenges players to launch birds at towering pig fortresses in hopes of destroying the defensive structures and recovering pilfered eggs.

And now, the thrilling conclusion to video game designer Double Fine's amazing Kickstarter adventure: With one hour of fundraising left to go, Double Fine productions has raised more than $3.25 million from 85,350 backers for the development of a new point-and-click adventure game. Video game funding may never be the same. Double Fine has been smashing through Kickstarter records from the moment the company launched its project on the site, in February. The Double Fine project hit its original goal of $400,000 in eight hours, and generated $1 million in backing in just 24 hours.

In an effort perhaps to sharpen his recently poor putting, Tiger Woods appears to have contacted an unlikely source. Shaq Fu. A new commercial promoting Tiger Woods' PGA Tour 13 features Shaquille O'Neal and Woods mimicking classic kung fu films, including awkward voice dubbing and endless kung fu moves. Based on O'Neal's free-throw shooting history, it's likely the former Lakers center adopts Happy Gilmore's game: tremendous driving power and unreliable putting. So it's unclear if such an approach would actually help.

Here's your fortunate-son Friday roundup of consumer news from around the Web: --Are there better cities for singles? Our friends at Kiplinger's Personal Finance crunched the numbers and found that there are, based on such stats as how many households are single versus married, whether those households are affluent enough to date, and just what a date might cost. The top city in the country to be single turns out to be Ann Arbor, Mich. More than half of the city's population is single, thanks in part to proximity to the University of Michigan.

Bolstered by the continued dominance of the Call of Duty military shooter franchise and a new hit in its Skylander video game and toy line, Activision Blizzard Inc. swung to a profit in its fourth quarter, beating Wall Street's expectations and pumping up its stock price Thursday by 1%. The Santa Monica game publisher also reported that subscribers to its World of Warcraft online game fell to 10.2 million as of Dec. 31, down from 10.3 million customers...

Shoppers are buying an increasing amount of their music and movies via Web downloads. But video game sales remain firmly rooted in old-fashioned stores because many games require enormous software files that can take hours to download. That's now poised to change. One company, OnLive Inc., showcased one such effort at the Game Developer Conference on Tuesday night. The service promises to let players buy or rent the latest games and start playing within seconds on their television or computers.

There's more bad news for THQ Inc. The Agoura Hills video game publisher said revenue for the critical holiday quarter is likely to come in 25% below what it had initially forecast this year. THQ Chief Executive Brian Farrell attributed the shortfall to weak sales of uDraw, a game that lets players draw pictures on a tablet device that's connected wirelessly to consoles. The tablet, which was originally priced between $70 and $80, is now selling for about $50 at retailers such as GameStop.

Not one, but two, projects posted on the crowd-sourced funding website broke the $1 million barrier on Thursday, kicking the previous record of $942,579 to the curb. And even crazier? One of those projects - a new game by game designer Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions - earned $1 million in less than 24 hours. A minute-by-minute post on the Kickstarter blog describing Kickstarter's big day in giddy detail shows the whole Kickstarter staff staring at a large screen hovering above their office, thumbs placed on Champagne corks to pop the bubbly the second the million dollar pledge for Double Fine's game came in, which it did at 6:41 p.m. EST. In the words of the Kickstarter blogger, “YES!