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A new Dungeons & Dragons video game is now in development, after the monumental success of Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 in 2023, which recently received its final update, the greatly anticipated Patch 8. Larian Studios has officially moved on from Baldur's Gate 3 and the D&d IP, but it now looks like Wizards of the Coast, owner of the massive IP and several other tabletop games, like Magic: The Gathering, has found a new studio to pursue more video game endeavors.

As reported by Variety, a new Dungeons & Dragons single-player game is in the works, developed by Giant Skull, a new studio founded by former Respawn Entertainment and Sony Santa Monica developer Stig Asmussen. The game is currently in development for PC and consoles as part of a new exclusive publishing agreement Wizards of the Coast has signed with Giant Skull. The development of the project “marks a definitive moment in both companies’ gaming ambitions,...

Warcraft, the 2016 film adaptation of Blizzard Entertainment’s popular video game franchise, has found renewed interest as it climbs the Netflix charts in the United States. This resurgence comes amidst swirling rumors about a potential sequel, Warcraft 2, possibly heading to the streaming giant.

The original Warcraft film, directed by Duncan Jones, stands as the third highest-grossing video game movie adaptation of all time. Despite mixed critical reception, with a 28% score on Rotten Tomatoes, the film garnered a dedicated fanbase and achieved significant commercial success, grossing over $439 million globally.

Recent fan-made trailers have fueled speculation about a Warcraft sequel. Two trailers, “Warcraft 2: The Lich King” and “Warcraft 2: The Final Chapter,” created by Foxstar Media in September 2023 and June 2024 respectively, have sparked excitement among fans. These high-quality productions blend footage from the original movie with cinematic elements from the World of Warcraft game, presenting a tantalizing vision of what a sequel could look like.

Henry Cavill’s passion for gaming is well-documented, and his favorite Blizzard game, World of Warcraft, almost cost him the Superman role. Cavill famously recounted how he missed Zack Snyder’s call offering him the part because he was engrossed in a WoW dungeon.

This makes him an ideal candidate for any future WoW adaptations, especially considering Blizzard’s openness to exploring new media formats if the right people are involved.

Could We Get Another Warcraft Movie?

A still from the 2016 Warcraft movie.

John Hight, the Warcraft franchise director, said in an interview with IGN that while they are open to more Warcraft movies, they believe it is best left to professionals in the film industry. Hight stated,

We make games and I think that games will always be our core, and so Warcraft will be centered around that

The 2016 Warcraft film, directed by Duncan Jones, received mixed...

Blizzard has confirmed that they have decided to delay the release of World of Warcraft‘s Shadowlands expansion.

“I wanted to let you know that we’re delaying the release of Shadowlands to later this year—and while we’re still in the process of determining the right new date to launch, we felt it was important to let you know about this change in plans as soon as we could,” says John Hight, Executive Producer of World of Warcraft, via a recent blog post. “This was an incredibly difficult decision for the team, as we’re as eager to get the expansion into your hands as you are to play it—but ultimately, we feel it’s the right decision for the game—and for our players.”

This announcement is somewhat surprising as Shadowlands was previously scheduled to be released later this month (October 27). Now, it’s not entirely...

Comic-Con International has released the full schedule for Sunday July 24th for San Diego Comic-Con 2011. This is the final day of the convention. Sunday is known as Kids day and is usually the slowest of all the days, there are a few surprises though. In all my years of going to Comic-Con I've never been to a panel in Hal H. Usually nothing is happening in Hall H on Sunday, this year there are a few TV programs going on in Hall H such a as Glee, Supernatural, Doctor Who, The Cleveland Show, Sons of Anarchy, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and this year Buffy the Musical will be in the great Hall as well. I've never been to the Buffy Musical event, and I think I finally want to go this year. A couple of other things worth noting are a one on one panel with Nathan Fillion, and Max Brooks talks about zombies.

The last thing I was expecting to see in Culver City was the Playstation brand's significant presence at this year's IndieCade. Now, it might've been blasphemous to the indie orthodox that Sony exec John Hight was on a panel about funding game development or that the awards ceremony happened in the huge lobby of the Sony Pictures corporate offices. But going to one of the festival's gallery locations revealed that Sony's enlisted the wit and ingenuity of indie dev studios to infuse its social hub with more flavor than it's ever had before.

A virtual space where players could craft avatars and socialize each other, Playstation Home launched some months after the PS3 debuted and landed with a resounding thud. Though it sported better graphics than "Second Life"--on which it was clearly modeled--Home didn't have enough by way of population or inherent quirkiness to compel people to stop by...

In an interview with MTV, God of War 3 director Stig Asmussen stated that the franchise is finished with Greek mythology, much to the chagrin of the studio heads. Asmussen’s stance on the future of God of War is pretty surprising. John Hight, director of Product Development at Sony Santa Monica, never imagined the series straying from the world of Greek mythology. Here’s Asmussen’s full statement on the future of GoW:

Greek mythology is finished. That’s what we’ve been saying all along, we’re closing the book on the trilogy and Kratos has obliterated Greek mythology so it just becomes a myth. I don’t know what’s next, to be honest with you, I have no clue, but I wanted to make sure that we had some tools in there that we could kind of resurrect the story and take it some other places.

If...

Without ruining the end of "God of War 3," it's pretty obvious that Kratos runs roughshod over the pantheon of Greek mythology. Hardly anyone makes it out alive. Which makes the whole concept of a sequel kinda tricky. I asked Stig Asmussen, the game director of "God of War 3," about how you could possibly continue the franchise, given that there's hardly anyone left. His answer may surprise you (but not if you read the headline to this post).

"Greek mythology is finished. That's what we've been saying all along, we're closing the book on the trilogy and Kratos has obliterated Greek mythology so it just becomes a myth. I don't know what's next, to be honest with you, I have no clue, but I wanted to make sure that we had some tools in there that we could kind of resurrect the story and take it some other places."

That's pretty interesting,...

With "God of War 3" in the can, the developers at Sony's Santa Monica Studio can finally rest easy...for about a week. There's no extended rest for those talented folks, though, as they've already got two projects in the hopper, with pre-production kicking off right as their biggest game ever wraps up.

Check out our interview with John Hight, the director of product development at the studio, in which he discusses starting work on two new projects, one "short-term," and one "long-term." Kratos never sleeps, why should they?...

Do you get fries with that? John Hight, director of product development for Sony’s Santa Monica Studio, let slip in an interview with Giant Bomb that the highly anticipated God of War 3 cost $44 million dollars to produce.

Hight noted that the greatest expenditures involved growing studio’s graphics and art teams. He also revealed that the final size of the God of War 3 team, 132 people, was fully double the size of the God of War 2 team.

Although Sony has clearly made a significant financial investment in God Of War 3, the title doesn’t even rank on a list of the ten most expensive games ever made. Take a look:

Grand Theft Auto 4: $100 million Gran Turismo 5: $80 million Shenmue: $70 million Too Human: $60+ million Metal Gear Solid 4: $60 million Halo 3: $55 million Apb: $50 million La Noire: $50 million Final Fantasy Xii: $48 million Killzone 2: $45 million

Predicting sales figures is always a tricky business,...

How much would you pay to to make "God of War 3"? Well, there's a reason indie developers need help covering production costs. A Sony representative seemed very proud when he revealed that the total cost of creating "God of War 3" should come out to about $44 million when all is said and done.

"We are stamping discs now, so we’re effectively done. Just got a couple of countries that we’re finishing up on this week and we spent $44 million to make God of War III," Sony Santa Monica director of product development John Hight told Giant Bomb. Don't make any brash assumptions though. "Believe it or not, that's right within budget," he said.

Video game budget revelations barely make me flinch anymore, and with "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" eclipsing that magic $1 billion revenue mark, don't be surprised to see more lavish expenditures of this kind brought to light.

In a recent interview with MTV Multiplayer, John Hight, studio director of Sony Santa Monica, gave us a few hints about what kind of game length we should expect from God of War 3.

Here’s the snippet from the interview:

John Hight: We’ve done a lot of play testing on it. We know, for a really hardcore player, it’ll take them longer than it took them to play either of the previous “God of War” games.

MTV Multiplayer: Longer than seven hours?

Jh: Oh yeah.

MTV: Considerably longer than seven hours?

Jh: I think so.

MTV: Is ten…um…longer? [This is me trying to be sneaky]

Jh: Ten is longer, but ten might not be considerably longer! [laughs] It’s more than 10 hours.

Everyone is excited for the release of one of Sony’s best exclusive titles, knowing we’ll be getting even more of it for our money is obviously great news. But then,...

In a recent interview, Sony rep John Hight discussed the future of the God of War franchise, stating that the series will not be ending with the release of God of War III.

Although Sony’s current focus is the upcoming release of the long awaited return of Kratos, Hight points out that the game engine is constantly evolving. He continues to note that “we’re going to be really careful about what we do next”.

The second game was a nice evolution from the first graphically, and players can expect more advancement from the upcoming God of War III. Hight points out that the newest entry will employ dynamic environments where “Kratos can now navigate, battle on, engage other creatures on, find treasures, you name it.” This is being done through what Hight states is “soft body collision” – a process two years in the making.

God of War III...

At a recent event in New York City, I had some time to speak with John Hight, the studio director of Sony Santa Monica. Yes, those are the "God of War" folks. The interview had a wide range of topics, but because people generally freak out about this sort of thing, the topic of game length came up. The length of "God of War 3," to be specific. Here's the transcript of my conversation with John:

John Hight: We've done a lot of play testing on it. We know, for a really hardcore player, it'll take them longer than it took them to play either of the previous "God of War" games.

MTV Multiplayer: Longer than seven hours?

Jh: Oh yeah.

MTV: Considerably longer than seven hours?

Jh: I think so.

MTV: Is ten…um…longer? [This is me trying to be sneaky]

Jh: Ten is longer, but ten might not be considerably longer! [laughs] It's more than 10 hours.

Sony now says that "God of War 3" is effectively "complete" if you don't count the changes they'll be making during play-testing. The more useful news coming out of this revelation, however, is that the game is on track to meet is its March 2010 release date. And that has its developers feeling extra cheery.

"We just made beta with the game right before Thanksgiving, so we're doing a lot of play-testing, tuning the game to make sure that it's fun, got the right level of complexity and of course optimized so that it runs super-smooth," Sony director of product development John Hight stated on the PlayStation.com blog. "The entire game is complete -- we're not adding anything to it."

That's mostly true, though he added that they reserve the right to swap monsters around during tuning as needed throughout the beta phase. Still, the fact that his team has reached...