The Care and Feeding of Nerds: Asmadi

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This Week in Geekdom

Posted by Kel

Hi everyone, and I don't know if it's technically a convention, but best wishes for a happy event (con) to those of you at SxSW this weekend. I've never been, but that seems like a really unique experience. Maybe the GIR and I will add it to the List of Events to Try Out (along with Emerald City Comic Con and SPIEL). Anyhow, on the subject of cons, we're finished decompressing from last week's PAX East 2015 and are ramping up preparations for Gen Con, which is only 135 days away as of this writing. Gah! There'll be plenty more written about the latter in the coming weeks but, for now, let's get down to This Week in Geekdom.

Books

Image Source: the Washington Post

On Friday the world got a bit darker with the passing of Sir Terry Pratchett.

Bill Watterson gave this extremely rare interview to the Washington Post and talked about why you should definitely get your eyes on his new book.

The upcoming Star Wars novel Star Wars: Lords of the Sith will add a new layer of diversity to the characters that inhabit that galaxy far, far away.

Comics

Authorities in the Cayman Islands announced late this past week that they were suspending their search for DC/Marvel artist Norman Lee, who is now listed as having been lost at sea.

Movies/TV

It's one of the the most prolific sound effects in the history of film: the Wilhelm Scream.

People of Springfield, Illinois be warned: Cobra Commander has been given control of your city!

Netflix regularly invites its developers to mess around with its code, which sometimes yields amazing results. Other times, like at this year's first 'hack day', they end up with amusing, if wholly impractical, things like being able to port the streaming service into an original NES.

HBO is clamoring to have Game of Thrones stretch into 10 seasons rather than the originally planned, ties-back-to-the-number-of-books number of 7.

Kevin Smith has confirmed that he's working on a sequel to the 1995 cult film Mallrats.

Science/Technology

IBM is allegedly working on a Bitcoin-eqsue technology that would create viable all-digital currency.

It's been over a year since China's Chang'E-3 mission successfully landed on the moon, but its lunar rover, Yutu, is still working hard and sending back novel data about our favorite satellite.

We've chatted a bit about some of the ambitious and sometimes fantastical projects that NASA is working on. On their present to-do list is this: building the world's most efficient passenger plane.

Image Credit: NASA

Our Sun is so omnipresent that it's kind of astounding to think that we didn't even know the particulars of how it worked until the 2000s.

Ever wondered what would happen if you stuck your head in a particle accelerator?

Today is the 30th birthday of the .com domain name.

General Awesomeness

Artist Stuart Witts is big on minimalist posters and, in his latest round of work, he brings us these interpretations of vintage computers.

Antarctica just had its first sunset of 2015. Here's a shot of the otherworldly frozen terrain.

Crowdfundables for Your Consideration

There are 10 days remaining to lend your support to the legal visual novel Regeria Hope. The Kickstarter for all this courtroom goodness ends on March 25th.

Adorable Pandaring, the fast and, yes, very cute game by Asmadi Games is fully funded, so there's little stopping you from using the Kickstarter to get your own copy of panda panda pandas!

Speaking of fully funded, Dwarven Forge's latest campaign, this time featuring urban versions of their trademark terrain tiles, is over 1000% funded, meaning you can benefit from their many, many stretch goals if you support the Kickstarter now.

As always, hope you all have an excellent week ahead!

This Week in Geekdom

Posted by Kel

Oooh boy. Convention exhaustion is such a bizarrely good feeling. Your feet are aching, but so is your face after so many hours of consecutive smiling. We also collectively have something of a soft spot for PAX, as it's partially the reason you're reading this now. This post might be a bit on the short side, as we're in the process of gathering up as much convention goodness as we can while the doors are still open. We'll have a formal, comprehensive PAX East 2015 round-up ready to go in the next few days but, for now, we'll just get down to the Week in Geekdom.

Movies/TV

Intrepid YouTuber ThomasHuntFilms compiled all of the Star Trek films into a single video featuring just the clips of the various Federation starships.

General Awesomeness

Last fall, Machinima brought us a Super Power Beat Down pitting Darth Vader against Batman. We now have an alternate ending to this epic matchup:

Games

It's one of the most anticipated games of the year. Here is the often odd and twisting evolution of Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm.

On Wednesday, Valve announced that their Source 2 game engine will be available to developers for free.

Science/Technology

It's one of, if not the singularly most famous equation in existence. But what if you had to explain E=MC2 without the math? This very well written article not only does exactly that, but indicates that a qualitative exploration yields very interesting facets of Einstein's work.

Speaking of Mr. Einstein, physicists from Heidelberg University, with the help of the ESA's Planck satellite mission, are putting some of the famous theorist's conclusions regarding dark energy to the test.

NASA is also out exploring the cosmos with its own unmanned missions, including the Dawn probe which is now in orbit around the dwarf planet of Ceres.

It was a big week for NASA. On Tuesday, the agency celebrated its 100th birthday!

Why is gravity so completely different from all the other known forces in the universe?

The January edition of the journal Nature Physics details the detection of the Higgs boson in a superconductor entirely separate from the Large Hadron Collider.

While scientists are keen on any and all new evidence of the Higgs, others are marveling at the fact that Homer Simpson correctly predicted the mass of the elusive particle over a decade ago.

It's a concept that often gets treated like a joke: that using smartphones actually makes us dumber. This study from the University of Waterloo in Ontario (published in the most recent edition of Computers in Human Behavior) may be the first proof that this phenomenon is indeed real.

We've talked a bit about capacitive fabrics and the many applications for this high tech cloth. Well, U.S. Naval Academy researchers are bringing this concept one step closer to reality.

Image Credit: PsyOrg.com

New York state is getting aggressive about how solar power will be produced and distributed. Their efforts thus far not only appear successful, but may just provide other states with a blueprint of how to integrate new power sources into their existing utility grid.

It's a tower, it's tentacles, it's...a wind farm?

The city of Stockholm is also keen to invest in alternative energy sources, though their ideas may prove to be a bit more offbeat than what New York has deployed. If city planners have their way, Stockholm may be home to an enormous vertical wind farm powered by colossal turbulence-capturing tentacles.

Mercedes would like you to know that Google is not the only company out there trying to get self-driving cars on the road. Here is their insanely futuristic-looking autonomous prototype.

Drones: they deliver packages, take pictures, and serve in our armed forces. We can now add 'discoverers of lost civilizations' to that resume.

Smart watches may be getting all the buzz right now, but Monohm would like to introduce you to their alternative. Meet the Runcible, a smart pocket watch.

Crowdfundables for Your Consideration

We mentioned it last week, but there's still plenty of time to get your own copy of extreme cuteness in the form of Adorable Pandaring by Asmadi Games. It's fast, engaging play with all the pandas you can handle (including red pandas!) The Kickstarter will be up and running until April 9th.

There's only three days left to lend your support to the very first Singaporean game to appear on the Care and Feeding of Nerds. Hitman Holiday, the hidden roles game of 'sunshine and death' is on the cusp of being fully funded. You have until March 12th to back the Kickstarter and snag your own copy.

There's a bit more time to explore the campaign to bring more chapters of Regeria Hope to life, but only a bit. The gavel will fall on the Kickstarter for this visual novel on March 25th.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

Round Up: Gen Con 2014

Posted by Kel

And we’re back! By all accounts Gen Con was a solid all-around experience. Demos were played, tournament spoils were won, friends were made, dungeons were conquered, and costumes were on display at just about every turn. There were a few bumps, which we’ll get to in a bit, but by and large it was a wonderful con. In keeping with all the other convention round-ups featured on the blog, I’ll tackle the goings-on at Gen Con by publisher, then give overarching feedback on the con as a whole. So, without further ado…

Fantasy Flight Games (FFG)

Powerhouse publisher Fantasy Flight adopted what I’ll term the PAX East methodology and released a series of major announcements in the days immediately preceding Gen Con. Arguably the most sensational of these press snippets was news that FFG would have a playable demo of XCOM: the Board Game in Indy. Unsurprisingly, the wait times to get in on such a demo stretched over multiple hours, but I was finally able to snag a seat on Sunday. So, does it live up to the hype?

Abso-friggin-lutely.

Never in my life has a board game elicited such an intense, visceral reaction just from what are ostensibly its standard mechanics. While the iconography used on the board and the various components are directly ported from XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the actual gameplay and resulting player engagement feels like it was wrought from X-COM: UFO Defense. Players assume one of four available roles to govern a specific aspect of either base management or XCOM relations with external factions. The order and degree to which these roles influence play is guided and dictated by the free downloadable companion app which provides both structure and anxiety. Only the base commander has access to the app and must relay the information it provides to his or her fellow players. This most commonly takes the form of a countdown. It’ll be, “Chief Scientist, you have 15 seconds to act…10…5…0. Squad Leader, you have 60 seconds to assign soldiers to missions and base defense.”

It will get your heart pounding while simultaneously breaking it in a way that’s all too familiar to players of the source games. XCOM: the Board Game accommodates 1-4 players and is scheduled to be available in the fourth quarter of this year.

- The other merited-hours-of-wait-time-for-the-demo title was Star Wars: Imperial Assault. Think the best parts of Star Wars: Epic Duels made both broader and deeper. 2-5 players find themselves in the midst of a series of skirmishes directly tied to the events immediately following the Battle of Yavin. Each player takes on a specific role either as part of the Rebel Alliance or the Imperial forces threatening to annihilate them. The game can also be played Epic Duels style with two players going head-to-head. The game itself is entirely self-contained, with both the campaign and duel modes included in the base set, and is slated to arrive in your local game store in early 2015.

- The addictive spacefaring adventure Star Wars: X-Wing Minis is getting even more robust with the addition of a new faction: bounty hunters. Five new ships (in addition to the capital-class Slave I) make up the Scum and Villainy set of expansions. The Most Wanted expansion includes three new ships (one is a basic Y-Wing with a custom paint job) while the remaining entrants in the Scum and Villainy lineup are one-off, self-contained sets. All of the ships will be available for purchase in the fourth quarter of this year. As a related aside on capital-class ships, I got a chance to play with a full contingent of them during one of my X-Wing tournaments and can confidently say that they add a whole new dimension to the base game.

- While we're on the subject of capital-class ships, get ready for many more of those as they are the focal point for Star Wars: Armada. It's effectively the next evolutionary step for X-Wing, adding a number of enhancements to a now-familiar set of base mechanics. While the two games are not inherently compatible, it's fairly easy for an X-Wing player to pick up the jist of Armada. Additionally, you can add individual capital-class ships to your X-Wing game using the latter's Epic Rules. This two-player tactical title is scheduled for a release date in early 2015.

- The beta for the third and final installment of FFG’s gargantuan Star Wars RPG system, Force and Destiny, will be open in the very near future. Click here to check out the rulebook for the beta and sign up to submit your feedback. The other two thirds of the system (Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion) will be getting new fully scoped campaign sets.

- Eldrich Horror, Netrunner, Warhammer 40K: Conquest, and Cosmic Encounter will be getting expansion sets between the last quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015.

- FFG's Warhammer RPG system now has a full FAQ and a compilation of all errata from the first edition of the GM's manual.

- FFG is beginning its foray into digital gaming with BattleLore: Command. The tactical combat game is designed primarily for mobile use (on both Android and iOS), but can be played on a PC as well. It will be available for download in the fourth quarter of this year.

Paizo

The maker of Pathfinder seemed keen to participate in what was definitely the overarching trend of the con: melding digital and tabletop gaming. Just hours before doors opened, Paizo announced that it would be partnering with Obsidian Entertainment (the guys behind Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity) and that the latter party would be producing several all-electronic versions of Paizo’s titles. First on the docket will be a mobile-based version of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. While there was an early prototype of the game on hand at the extremely crowded Paizo booth, no release date has been assigned to the project.

In what was certainly no surprise to those familiar with Pathfinder, Paizo took home a sizable number of Ennie Awards during the con including Best Interior Art, Best Cover Art, Best Cartography, Best Free Product, Best Minis, Best Monster/Adversary, Best RPG, and Best Supplement.

Wizards of the Coast (WotC)

For Wizards, the con was pretty much all 5^th Edition all the time. That’s not to say that the proverbial staples of Neverwinter and Magic: the Gathering were absent, far from it, just that 5^th Edition predictably took center stage. Fans of Neverwinter were rewarded with the news of a new expansion, Tyranny of Dragons.

In addition to what seemed like dozens of panels expounding upon the new, highly streamlined (to use their words) rule set, WotC displayed examples from their new line of minis and touched upon the Player’s Handbook for 5^th Edition, which just came out today. The guys over at i09 have already put together this helpful breakdown of the Handbook.

Additionally, as part of the celebrations surrounding the 40^th birthday of Dungeons & Dragons, WotC released details concerning the D&D anniversary tribute audiobook. Said book, The Legend of Drizzt, is a compilation of 12 stories about, you guessed it, the life and times of everyone’s favorite drow. Longtime Forgotten Realms author R.A. Salvatore provides the text while a cadre of celebrities lend their voices to the project. The book is available for free download here on Audible until September 20^th.

Mayfair Games

As the leading sponsor of the con, Mayfair was just about everywhere you turned. Its logo was draped over doorways, its sheep loomed large over the demo hall, and its van was a fixture amongst the food trucks parked just outside. While it certainly commanded attention simply by virtue of those things, Mayfair went the extra mile and hosted what was arguably the most talked about event of the convention by taking the once entirely fictional euro-parody Cones of Dunshire from the NBC show Parks and Recreation (which is set in Indiana) and making it real. The event allegedly sold out in mere seconds and garnered over $20,000 USD, which Mayfair then donated to Gleaner’s Food Bank, the official charity partner of Gen Con.

Asmadi Games

Asmadi had a considerable presence at Gen Con derived more than a little bit from their very own room located directly across from the dealer hall. Said room was the site of many a demo, but also an equal number of absurd and hilarious events including We Didn't Playtest This Resistance Movement At All and the Ridiculympics. The Playtest mashup actually came in several different flavors and met with rave reviews. We also got to see the newest incarnation of Consequential, which has been a long time in the making and looks better than ever!

Flying Frog Productions

Flying Frog made sure to put one of the most highly anticipated Kickstarters of 2013 front and center in their booth. Shadows of Brimstone seemed to live up to every ounce of the hype surrounding it, successfully combining the feel of Eldrich Horror with a distinctly western air.

Indie Pubishers

We talked earlier about the meshing of digital and physical components to create new gaming experiences, but World of Yo-Ho by Volumique sought to take that combination in the most literal way possible. In this fantasy turn-based pirate-themed game your phone is both a source of information and your pawn. The fast-paced play can be modified into either a one-shot experience or an ongoing campaign. Keep an eye out for their Kickstarter, which is set to open in October.

Gen Con 2014 saw the fruition of several Kickstarter projects we've featured on the blog over the past few years. Thrash-Car made its official debut just a few weeks after going through the final stages of production and Call of Catthulhu was one of the more talked about titles out of the indie publishers.

One of the runaway hits of Gen Con was a nondescript little table off to the side of the Mayfair portion of the demo hall. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes was an ingenious use of the geeky love of solving puzzles, teamwork, and an Oculus Rift. One or more team members sat across from their compatriot wearing a set of Oculus goggles. The be-goggled individual then had a number of minutes (usually 5-6) to describe the components of a bomb depicted by the Rift. Those teammates outside the Rift were left to frantically page through a binder of decryptions and walk their colleague through the process of defusing the bomb.

We also did two separate True Dungeon runs (surviving one and literally crashing and burning in the other). While the monsters were no more or less impressive than in previous years, the props and effects used in some of the puzzles were jaw-dropping. One puzzle involved motion projection onto a table filled with kinetic sand while the intricacies of a steampunk 'fueling tower' had us shaking our heads as we guessed how long it must have taken to build.

While the overall experience was wonderful, the huge draw of Gen Con was palpable. The official attendance number was listed at 56,614, which is an increase of 15.4% year-over-year. There was talk that the convention could expand into the adjoining Lucas Oil Stadium to accommodate future conventions, but what will need to take precedence is the provision of more housing. Though it was often extremely crowded, it appeared as though local businesses were prepared for the nerdy onslaught. So there were lines aplenty, but little danger of not finding something great at the other end.

Finally, all the costumes turned out as well as I could have hoped they would. The last few days leading up to the con were far more stressful than they should have been after the artist I'd commissioned my trident from overreached on the scope of our project and almost didn't finish it. After a flurry of very late night emails and a lot of crossed fingers, the trident arrived with only hours to spare. While it turned out beautifully, I can't say that I'd use that artist again.

The costumes themselves were very well received. There was some minor difficulty getting the GIR's wings to behave and stiletto heels are always a challenge to walk in, but the experience was very positive. All three outfits even made it onto io9! For more pictures, check out our social media pages. Until next time Indy!

This Week In Geekdom

Posted by Kel

Happy weekend everyone. Despite having an hour less of weekend to work with, the past few days have, thankfully, been extra productive on the costume front. It's always exciting to reach that point at which the costume stops looking like heaps of raw material and begins to take the shape that, until that point, existed largely in your mind. Speaking of positive developments, the GIR and I were finally able to procure reasonably priced housing for Gen Con which, as you may remember, was a bit tricky to do this year. Copious thanks go out to Asmadi Games, who made this arrangement possible. Also, as a related aside, registration for vendors was apparently just as horrific and chaotic as it was for normal badge-holders, despite having an extra month to work out issues with the routing site. Go figure.

But ok, enough of that and more of This Week in Geekdom!

Comics

Archie Comics is getting a new chief creative officer and this is just one of many changes in store for the classic publisher.

Justice League, coming to a supermarket near you(?) DC Comics has teamed up with General Mills to offer four limited edition collectable comics inside specially marked boxes of breakfast cereal. Each of the comics is half of a two-part story, the conclusion of which can be read on the companion website.

The rise and fall of Marvel's Ultimate comics line.

Arrow returns to the small screen with all new episodes Wednesday nights. Check out the extended trailer below. Green Arrow and Deathstroke! Squee!

Science/Technology

Space-bound objects pass by our planet on a regular basis, but this past Wednesday we had a closer-than-expected brush with an asteroid. Just how close? See for yourself.

For those of you paleontology buffs who bristle at the inclusion of a T. Rex in the Jurassic Park films, you can now mentally superimpose this recently discovered super predator as a chronologically appropriate substitute.

We all know that our solar system is colossal, but this interactive display gives you a very clear idea of how far removed we are from our celestial neighbors.

Having One Ring to Rule Them All may not be entirely far-fetched after all.

When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) first became operational, detractors screamed that the experiments conducted within would produce black holes that would unmake existence as we knew it. After a few years of activity, the researchers that staff the LHC have concluded that no, they have produced no black holes.

Working in 4 or more dimensions is common practice for quantum physics, but what about working in zero dimensions? Turns out that, not only is this possible, but the potential applications of zero dimensions are astounding.

What happens when an galaxy cluster assaults a galaxy proper? These incredibly beautiful images.

Thank you Hubble telescope

NASA is setting its sights on a mission to Europa. Here are the very preliminary details of this future venture to Jupiter's super fluid moon.

We are much closer to having real-life power lifting suits thanks to the engineers at Italy's Perceptual Robotics Laboratory. Check out video of their mechanical "body extender" in action here.

Hyundai is on the cusp of rolling out the first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell car.

Games

As if we needed another reason to work ourselves up over the development of the Oculus Rift. Now developer Ubiquitron has an active beta of classic, NES-style Legend of Zelda for the forthcoming virtual reality platform. Bonus: video of the beta!

Speaking of NES, it's no secret that Nintendo has been falling further and further behind its major console-producing competitors over the course of the past few years. One of the many reasons behind this downward trend is Nintendo's refusal to create ports to allow its games to migrate to mobile platforms. Nintendo veteran Kensuke Tanabe offered this explanation as to why you won't be seeing Mario or Zelda on your tablet or smartphone anytime soon.

Can playing Tetris actually be good for you? This study found that playing the classic spatial awareness game significantly reduced players' cravings for food and alcohol. Next step, the Tetris diet?

Do you love Sim City, but find the current experience...lacking. That's certainly understandable for a whole host of reasons. If city-building is your goal, take a look at Shining Rock's Banished. This indie-produced simulator was developed by a single programmer and allows players to create medieval era hamlets and carefully balance the resources and conditions that influence this minute bastion of humanity.

Movies

Filming for the still-untitled Batman vs. Superman movie is just about to begin, but already fans of the comic foundation of the film are up in arms. While some of this is to be expected, given our reputation for nigh-instantaneous outrage, much of the controversy stems from director Zack Snyder and his intent to 'explode' existing canon.

General Awesomeness

Legos; is there anything they can't fix? Now we have another reason to love our favorite feat of Danish engineering. Ian Moore, a member of Lego's corporate team, built this diorama of an MRI, then donated the scene to Royal Berkshire Hospital in the United Kingdom to be used as teaching tool to alleviate anxiety in children about to undergo an MRI.

I leave you guys with this recreation of the opening sequence of the movie Skyfall as rendered in Grand Theft Auto V. As always, best wishes for an awesome week ahead!

Upcoming Awesomeness in 2014!

Posted by Kel

A very happy 2014 to everyone! Here's hoping that your holidays were awesome and that the year has gotten off to a great start. 2013 was chock-full of nerdy goodness and 2014 looks as though it's set to deliver more of the same. Love it. In the spirit of good-things-to-come, we're going to kick off the new year on the Care and Feeding of Nerds in the same way we ushered in last year: with a rundown of all the geeky brilliance that's scheduled to come our way in the next 12 months.

Original image by Silver Gryphon Games

This year's offerings are categorized below by media type and have only been listed if they have a definitive release date during 2014. Those titles with potential debuts or vague "sometime in the second half of the year" timetables (like the 5th and final season of Warehouse 13) can be featured later on when they have at least a specific month for release.

Helix (Syfy) - A team of infectious disease specialists travel to the Arctic to investigate a potential outbreak of a novel virus but their inquiry may have consequences for the entire human species. The show is guaranteed to run at least 13 episodes and will premiere on January 10th.

Archer (FX) - Season 5 of the misadventures of Sterling Archer and the rest of the ISIS crew will hit the airwaves on January 13th.

The Walking Dead: Season 4, Part 2 (AMC) - The mid-season finale saw once tight-knit group of survivors cast to the winds and left to very uncertain fates. The zombies will shamble again beginning February 9th.

The Venture Brothers - We waited 2 years for Season 5, but thankfully only have to wait a fraction of that to be able to watch the episodes at our leisure. The season will be available on both DVD and Blu-Ray on March 4th.

Movies

Despite the fact that the lion's share of cinematic chatter flitting about at present pertains to films that we won't see until 2015 at the very earliest, the movie lineup of 2014 is nothing to sniff at. In keeping with the trend of the past several years, sequels and reboots (and even sequel-reboots) make up the majority of 2014's movie fodder, but there are a handful of novel titles in the mix. The year in geeky films is as follows:

January	I, Frankenstein - Dr. Frankenstein's infamous creation has likely never seen this much action as he finds himself caught in the midst of a centuries old war.
February	The LEGO Movie - Will Farrell, Channing Tatum, and Elizabeth Banks lend their voices to this animated tribute to the greatest of all building blocks. Robocop - The first of 2014's reboots; Detroit's newest enforcer of justice. Vampire Academy - The world is riddled with various vampire species, some friendly to humans and others less so. A specialized school trains dhampir to maintain the blood-sucking, immortal balance. Winter's Tale - A burglar falls in love with an heiress just as she dies in his arms. When he later learns the secrets of reincarnation, he sets off to alter the past and save her. The Wind Rises - The newest offering from Hayao Miyazaki tells the tale of a man who designed fighter planes during World War Two. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt voice the English-language version of the film. Welcome to Yesterday - A group of teens stumble across plans to build a time machine. Teenaged hijinks ensue.
March	300: Rise of an Empire - The death of Leonidas' soldiers at the hands of Xerxes' horde rallies all of Greece to the defensive. Mr. Peabody & Sherman - The adventures of world's smartest dog and his loyal boy. Muppets Most Wanted - Tom Hiddleston and Salma Hayek comprise part of the ensemble cast of this latest installation in the Muppets menagerie. Divergent - Beatrice Prior has a very unique mind; that makes her dangerous and a viable threat in the futuristic dystopia she inhabits.
April	Captain America: Winter Soldier - Everyone's favorite shield-wielder returns to grapple with his place in modern society and in S.H.I.E.L.D.s self-styled mandate to protect humanity. Transcendence - Johnny Depp plays a terminally ill scientist who doffs his mortal coil and uploads his consciousness into a computer.
May	The Amazing Spider Man 2 - Peter Parker faces all new threats, not least of which is his discomfort with being a superhero. Godzilla - The Kaiju response to last year's Pacific Rim? Perhaps. X-Men: Days of Futures Past - Wolverine is sent through the past in a desperate attempt to prevent calamity for both mutants and humans. Maleficent - Angelina Jolie stars in this film about the greatest of all Disney villains
June	Edge of Tomorrow - Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt repeatedly relive the last day of an epic battle to save humanity from invading aliens. How to Train Your Dragon 2 - Five years have passed in the dragon-addled land of Berk and two dear friends find themselves on opposing sides of a conflict that threatens the nascent interspecies peace. Transformers: Age of Extinction - Michael Bay loves him some giant form-changing robots in this fourth installment (yes, fourth) of the franchise.
July	Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Watch the trailer. Enough said. Jupiter Ascending - Mila Kunis plays Jupiter, a remarkable human in a universe where humans are the lowest of the sentient species.
August	Guardians of the Galaxy - A jet pilot is stranded in space and must bring together a diverse team of highly specialized aliens to combat new cosmic threats. Also, Rocket Raccoon! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Michael Bay continues to manhandle our childhoods. Ugh. The Giver - Long considered 'unfilmbable', this classic young adult book about adolescence in an ostensibly perfect community is slated to get the Hollywood treatment. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For - Six years after our first visit, we return to the eponymous urban den of ill repute.
September	The Maze Runner - In a post-apocalyptic world, a boy has his memories erased and must try to piece together his past in order to bolster his chances to escape a colossal maze.
October	Dracula Untold - A merging of vampire mythos and historical account of Vlad Dracul.
November	Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 - The 75th Hunger Games ended in chaos and Panem is plunged into bedlam. Katniss struggles with the role she is given in the new Rebellion.
December	The Hobbit: There and Back Again - Dragon, Orcs, Laketown, attempted Dwarven reclamation of sacred homelands and Sauron's shadow continues to darken Middle Earth.

Board Games/RPGs

Most board game publications gain formal traction during the second and third quarters of a given year, but there's still much to look forward to! Every single one of the independently designed games featured in last year's SPIEL post successfully funded their respective Kickstarters and are set to become physical, playable games as soon as March!

Asmadi - 2014 is slated to be a very busy year for the publisher. Consequential, Innovation: No Place Like Home, Equinox, and Impulse should all be hitting store shelves in the very near future. You can still order the "final draft" version of Impulse here.

PC/Video Games

Transistor - The star of last year's PAX East is presently in a fully playable alpha and is on track to make its exclusive PS4 release date in March (it will release to PC later in 2014).

Dark Souls 2 - The sequel to the original ARPG will be available on PC, XBox 360, and PS3 in mid-March.

Titanfall - The creators of Call of Duty attempt to bolster their signature format by adding giant robots to the mix (because giant robots make everything better). This title is an Xbox 360 exclusive.

Infamous: Second Son - Set seven years after the events of Infamous 2, this open world ARPG is coming exclusively to the PS4 on March 21.

And this is just the beginning! On to an excellent year ahead!