Author: John Scalzo

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced their keynote speakers for the 2013 DICE Summit and it’s a coupling of mega proportions.

Fresh off his coronation as the director of Star Wars Episode VII, J.J. Abrams will join Valve’s Gabe Newell to talk about the best way to tell a story in their talk entitled, “Storytelling Across Platforms: Who Benefits Most, the Audience or the Player?”

Gabe Newell will have a big role at this year’s DICE Summit as he’ll be honored as the Hall of Fame inductee at the 2013 DICE Awards as well as leading his own solo talk on February 7, “A View on Next Steps.” Newell will discuss the future of Steam, their Big Picture initiative, and the company’s other plans.

“From TV to film and now award-winning mobile apps, there’s no question that J.J. has his finger on the pulse of the entertainment industry, and we’re thrilled to welcome him and our 2013 Hall of Fame inductee, Gabe Newell , to the DICE stage,” said Martin Rae , president, Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. “J.J. thoughtfully weaves together suspense, action, emotion, and fun into every one of his projects – elements every game developer aspires to capture as well. Each year, the DICE Summit sets the tone for the year ahead in games and adding J.J. and Gabe’s shared insights is a natural fit as we see all forms of entertainment converge.”

The DICE Summit begins on February 5 in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. Abrams and Newell will take the stage for their monumental talk the next night.

No, that’s not a typo. Welcome to the Weekly Warp-Up, your weekly wrap-up of the biggest and the best articles posted at Warp Zoned this week…

It’s hard to witness the demise of one video game company while another lays out a two-year plan for their latest console.

As of this week, THQ is no more. The popular publisher finally ran out of greenback gas as their internal studios and many of their biggest franchises were auctioned off to the highest bidder this week. The results were more than a little surprising. Crytek paid a pittance for the rights to Homefront (the team was already developing Homefront 2) while Sega spent big to obtain Relic Entertainment and Company of Heroes 2. But the two biggest surprises have to be mid-range publisher Deep Silver’s acquisition of Volition (and Saints Row 4) and Metro: Last Light and no one’s interest in Vigil (and Darksiders). THQ closed their office doors for good on Friday.

While this tragedy was unfolding, Nintendo was riding high off a bonanza of new Nintendo Direct announcements. The consolemaker mapped out the Wii U’s future in amazingly frank detail, announcing a new 3D Mario game, Mario Kart Wii U, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, Super Smash Bros. 4‘s E3 debut, Monolith Soft’s next RPG, a radically reconstituted new Zelda game, Yoshi’s Epic Yarn, and Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem. Did they even bother to save any surprises for E3?

Oh, and before all of this happened, Atari filed for bankruptcy. Again.

There’s more news after the break, but I’m already exhausted. (more…)

The clock has officially run out on THQ (and by extension, Vigil Games). With the publisher’s assets auctioned off to the highest bidder, executives distributed a memo to all employees yesterday effectively shutting down the company. A small number of employees will continue to work for THQ to aid the transition of assets to their new owners and employees to their bosses.

While Vigil went unsold during Tuesday’s auction, the developer (and the rights to the Darksiders franchise) may have a new owner soon. Atsushi Inaba, a producer at Platinum Games, has tweeted that he’d love to add Vigil to the Platinum family:

“In THQ’s studio and IP selling off auction, Darksiders is unsold? [We] wanna buy it…on the cheap…”

It’s important to note that this isn’t a formal offer to buy the studio (or even an informal one), but the Darksiders series has a lot of fans that would love to see Vigil continue their work.

[Sources: IGN, Kotaku]