Hollywood

It seems everyone is getting in on the Spore fun these days.

In less than a week, Electronic Arts' hotly anticipated evolution game will launch, most likely to large initial sales and significant excitement.

But since June, fans of the game--which was first announced and has been the talk of the video games industry since 2005--have been able to play with the Spore Creature Creator, a free, downloadable editor, that allows anyone to craft their own creature and upload it to what is known as Sporepedia, a vast, sharable, database of millions of other people's creations.

And on Tuesday, … Read more

It looks like wiser heads--or at least those who could be made to recognize a great PR opportunity--have prevailed at AMC.

If you're one of the many hooked fans of the cable channel's hit show, Mad Men, which chronicles the goings-on at a fictional 1960s New York ad agency, and you're also a Twitter user, you might have found yourself eagerly following tweets from folks like Don Draper, Roger Sterling, or Peggy Olson.

And getting people to follow the show's characters probably seemed like a clever way of using Twitter for marketing.

Except that AMC had … Read more

In 2006, Wired magazine reporter Jeff Howe published a story about a phenomenon he'd been following in which the power of large numbers of people was being harnessed to make things happen that hadn't been possible before outside the auspices of corporations or other big institutions.

He called the phenomenon "crowdsourcing," and the term quickly caught on, joining others, like "tipping point," "wisdom of the crowds," "the long tail" as household phrases for the ways that things were changing all around us, often thanks to the democratizing reach of the … Read more

After several years of waiting, video game fans will soon be able to get their hands on the long-awaited new title from legendary designer Will Wright, Spore.

But if the game's publisher, Electronic Arts, has its way, a much wider audience of fans may someday be exposed to the game. Or at least a version of the game.

That's because, according to a Reuters report Wednesday, EA is hoping that it may one day be able to license the film and/or TV rights to Spore. … Read more

TREASURE ISLAND, SAN FRANCISCO--When the co-host of a new TV show centered around conceiving of, designing, and testing prototypes of robots, gadgets, machines, and other things wears a T-shirt that says "It was on fire when I got here," you know you're in for a treat.

And that's the case with Terry Sandin, one of four hosts of Prototype This, a new Discovery Channel show that will debut its 13-episode first season on October 15, and which is being made here on this island in the shadow of San Francisco.

Sandin and co-hosts Zoz Brooks, Joe … Read more

Update (10:52 a.m.): This story has been corrected to reflect that the suit filed in June against Paramount Pictures was filed by Anthony Puzo, Mario Puzo's son. Mario Puzo died in 1999.

It looks like Electronic Arts and Paramount Pictures have gotten the don's blessing, after all.

EA on Friday announced the first real details of Godfather II, the video game, that it will be making in conjunction with Paramount Pictures.

And that seems to mean that the movie studio has been able to work out a deal with Godfather author Mario Puzo's son, Anthony … Read more

Things aren't going so good over at file-sharing wunderkind, BitTorrent.

According to a report on Valleywag Wednesday, BitTorrent is laying off its entire sales and marketing department, 12 people out of the company's entire staff of 55.

"The immediate cause of the layoffs," according to Valleywag, is "a failure to sell the Torrent Entertainment Network, BitTorrent's attempt at an online media store, to Best Buy for a rumored $15 million."

The story goes on to state that a source told Valleywag that the Torrent Entertainment Network sale fell apart due to the FCC … Read more

As planes packed with video game industry people start heading out of Los Angeles in droves after this week's E3 convention, the question is, What really transpired during the confab?

If one thing was clear, it was that the industry largely played it safe this week. Sure, there were a few big announcements--perhaps led by Microsoft's announcement of its planned revamping of the Xbox Live architecture--but for the most part, this was a pretty uneventful E3, an unsurprising reality given that we're a couple of years into the "next-generation" of consoles already and the … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Well, from this reporter's perspective, Sony wins the production value award for its E3 press conference set-up.

That's not worth very much, of course, not when you're trying to win over the world's video game press. But at least it shows that Sony is taking this seriously.

We're all gathered here at the Shrine Auditorium for the last of the major E3 press conferences. Microsoft started things off Monday morning, followed by Electronic Arts. And then Nintendo had us all over to the Kodak Theater in Hollywood just about 90 minutes ago for its … Read more