Tag Archives: Call
Call of Duty site teases Ghosts
Call of Duty: Ghosts. The main site redirects users to callofduty.com/______, and invites users to fill out a growing mosaic by sharing the page on Twitter or Facebook.
There are six underscores in that address, and we’d reckon they’re for the six letters in Ghosts. The mosaic’s underlying image also appears to be a nice shade of ghastly grey. If the page is what we think it is, it would be the first official reveal of the next Call of Duty from Activision.
Multiple reports indicate we’ll see a full reveal for the game on May 1, but until then you can check out what we know and what we want from Call of Duty: Ghosts.
VFX Artists Call for Unionization at Global Meeting
Visual effects professionals from around the world took part in a multi-city meeting on Thursday (March 14) to address issues that are facing the troubled industry. Veterans such as Scott Ross (co-founder and ex-CEO of Digital Domain), Animation Guild’s Steve Kaplan, Mike Chambers, Dave Rand, Scott Squires and Gene Warren, Jr., were among the many vfx veterans who voiced their concerns and shared suggestions on how to keep jobs in the country and make conditions improve for artists who toil away in the entertainment industry trenches. An estimated 250 attendees participated in the Los Angeles town hall meeting, which was also streamed live and involved participation from about 75 vfx artists in the Bay area, 25 in Vancouver, five in Austin, and ten in Wellington, New Zealand.
Ross, who has championed the plight of the vfx artists for many years now, outlined a plan that requires the formation of a vfx union for artists and a trade association for visual effects studios.
“It’s going to get worse until we do something,” Ross noted. “Fear has stopped us because we have six clients. We are fearful of losing our jobs, but we’re losing our jobs.”
Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839 organizer Steve Kaplan added, “All boats rise when you establish floors and minimums. Establishing a union here will have a ripple effect across the world.”
He pointed out that IATSE could do nothing without sufficient support for VFX workers, and that – in order to avoid defeat – IATSE would not call for a union election in a facility unless at least 60 percent of the VFX artists signed cards.
However, the mobility of vfx artists complicates matters as labor laws and working conditions are different in various regions of the world.
“Life of Pi could not have be made without visual effects,” Ross said. “Claudio [Miranda] won his award because of visual effects. We are the movie and you are the stars,” he added. “It’s about time the motion picture industry understood that and compensated you properly.”
You can watch a video of the meeting on the VFX Soldier website:
Pictured: Industry veteran Scott Ross makes an impassioned plea to vfx artists to unionize during the March 14 global “town hall” meeting.
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Encana apologizes for executive’s cursing on conference call
(Please note this story contains language that may offend some readers)
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – Encana Corp, Canada’s largest natural gas producer, apologized on Thursday because one of its executives cursed after an analyst asked about whether new Canadian investment rules would prohibit its takeover by foreign state-owned entities.
When asked the question by Canaccord Genuity analyst Phil Skolnick, interim CEO Clayton Woitas said: “The answer would be no.” Then, in a whispered comment that was clearly audible on a replay of the call, someone can be heard saying, “fucking asshole.”
“Something like that should never have been said and we’re sorry about it,” Jay Averill, a spokesman for the company, said.
Averill said about 20 Encana executives had been gathered in a room with microphones to discuss the company’s fourth-quarter profit report with analysts and the media. The spokesman said he was unable to say which one of them uttered the expletive or whether it was directed at Skolnick.
Skolnick, a Canaccord Genuity managing director and head of Canadian energy equity research for the investment bank, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Woitas took over as interim chief executive just over a month ago after then-CEO Randy Eresman suddenly retired.
Eresman, who led the Calgary, Alberta-based company for seven years, faced criticism from investors because of poor share price performance and a U.S. Department of Justice probe into whether the company illegally colluded with Chesapeake Energy Corp to lower the price of Michigan exploration lands.
Encana’s shares dropped 6.6 percent on Thursday as investors were disappointed by the company’s oil production forecast. They closed on the Toronto Stock Exchange at C$ 18.20, a 10-month low. Skolnick has a “hold” rating on the stock with a target price of $ 21.50 a share.
The new foreign investment rules specifically cover Canadian oil sands producers rather than all energy producers.
It is not the first time that open microphones have proved problematic for corporate executives. In 2007, the CEO of U.S. student lender SLM Corp, Albert Lord, was caught saying at the end of a testy conference call: “There’s no questions – let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Lord subsequently apologized, saying he recognized his “comments were offensive.”
And in taped comments in 2001, then-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling mockingly thanked an analyst for a question on a conference call, ending with the clearly audible word: “Asshole.”
The abusive comment was subsequently seen by short sellers as a sign of how much pressure Skilling was under at the time as Enron’s accounts, which were later discovered to be fraudulent, began to unravel.
“If I could go back and redo things, I would not have used the term that I used,” Skilling, who is currently serving a prison sentence for his role in the Enron scandal, later told a Congressional hearing.
(Reporting by Scott Haggett; Editing by Martin Howell and Leslie Gevirtz)
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Looking Ahead to Respawn’s Debut Game (Hopefully) Taking a Step Beyond Call of Duty
This spring will mark three years since Respawn Entertainment was established by Jason West and Vince Zampella, the founders of Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward. While you wouldn’t expect development to have begun immediately at a brand-new studio, enough time has now passed that it seems reasonable to assume Respawn is fairly deep in development on — well, whatever it is they’re making. Over the past few years, we’ve gotten almost zero indication of what the studio is at work on. Besides some teaser images, early indications that the game would be on the scale of a “huge, summer blockbuster,” and EA’s statements that it will be a sci-fi-oriented shooter, there has been nothing of substance to go on. Knowing it’s a sci-fi shooter limits the scope of possibilities to a degree, but let’s be honest — neither of those details is specific enough to tell us much beyond the fact that it won’t be a historically accurate World War II RPG.
There are a limited number of conclusions we can safely jump to. Given this is an EA-published game and multiplayer is what made Call of Duty into the phenomenon it has become, it’s OK to assume Respawn’s mystery project will not be a single-player-only affair. Presuming it will be a first-person shooter, considering West and Zampella’s past with Call of Duty, and Medal of Honor before it, might be a stretch, though. For all we know, they, along with the many former Infinity Ward employees that followed them to Respawn, are interested in getting away from what they’re used to and, as a result, would prefer to make a third-person game. Gears of War might not be as big as Call of Duty or Halo, but it’s done very well for itself with that perspective.
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FIFA beats Call of Duty to £1 billion UK retail record
FIFA has become the first game franchise to generate more than £1 billion at UK retail, according to sales monitor GFK Chart-Track.
2012’s FIFA 13 is the highest grossing game in the series to date, ahead of FIFA 12, the company told CVG. While 40 FIFA titles helped generate the brand’s £1 billion sales, the two most recent accounted for a fifth of the total.
The second largest grossing UK brand by revenue is Call of Duty, which has brought in about £800 million through the release of 19 games.
In third place is the Mario series, which is made up of 60 games including brand tie-ins such as Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Chart-Track’s sales figures date back to 1996, before the release of a number of FIFA and Mario titles.
Earlier this month Chart-Track released a list of the UK’s 100 best-selling games of 2012. It was headed by Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, while FIFA 13 and FIFA 12 came in at No.2 and No.8 respectively.
