Gonna be at San Diego Comic-Con next week? If so, I hope you can come to a live recording of Channel Surfing, the IGN TV podcast! I’ll be recording the podcast on Saturday, July 14th from 1:00pm-2:00pm at the new Warner Bros. “Extra at Comic-Con” stage in San Diego’s Bayfront Park, right by the San Diego Convention Center.
I’ll be joined by some very special guests, starting off with two guys who double as both the creator and star of their respective Adult Swim series, Childrens Hospital’s Rob Corddry and NTSF:SD:SUV’s Paul Scheer. I’ll then be chatting with a trio who are very familiar to Supernatural fans: Misha Collins, Jim Beaver and Mark Sheppard. We’ll talk about what’s to come on their shows in the coming season and what their experience is like at the always jam-packed Con-Con.
Supernatural's Jim Beaver ("Bobby") and Misha Collins ("Castiel") will be among the guests at the Comic-Con live recording of IGN's Channel Surfing
The Channel Surfing live recording will be one of many events planned for the Warner Bros./Extra stage, including a live Kevin Smith podcast, musical performances from The Bacon Brothers and contestants from The Voice, screenings of films like Beetlejuice, and a Chuck table read (Chuck may be gone, but it’s not forgotten!).
Director Peter Jackson has revealed via his Facebook page a sweet new poster for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey just in time for next week's San Diego Comic-Con. Check it out:
People say the darndest things and IGN is always listening. Here's a new selection of wisdom and weirdness from gaming folk over the past seven days. If this doesn't completely satisfy, you an navigate back to previous weeks' entries. As always, add your opinions on any of these issues in the Comments section. The best one will be featured in next week's column.
Akin to Porn
“Mainstream AAA videogames operate on principles akin to porn: highly repetitive activities premised on visceral pleasure and spectacle.”
"Sony and Microsoft cannot let the retailers dictate game prices going forwards if they want to break free from the current over-priced model. Their next consoles, PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720, need to be digital only, or they will fail."
Kwalee CEO and Codemasters co-founder, David Darling.
“One of the fun questions we get all the time is – are you only killing British people? And the actual answer to that is - yes, because before the end of the game there are no American people, so it’s a ridiculous question. Everyone is British, even the patriots.”
Assassin's Creed III's creative director Alex Hutchinson.
“Y'know, at some point dinosaurs are the hottest thing and everyone is making games with dinosaurs, but there are trends. It used to be WWII, and recently it's been the modern era and people are now moving towards near future. But it's a bit cheap to just say, 'Okay, we're going to switch and go back in time or into the future and that will be innovation'. It will definitely drive the franchise forward for whatever game, but it's not true innovation, it's more a thematic change that has a perceived value to the gamers out there.”
DICE general manager Karl Magnus Troedsson lets off a few shots in the ongoing FPS wars.
"Other companies might launch a next-generation console with more power, but we don’t necessarily think that the difference between the Wii U and such console will be as drastic as what you felt it was between the Wii and the other consoles because there will be fewer and fewer differentiators in graphics.”
