Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 enlists Hollywood talent to bring its story to life

This Tuesday Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will be released. Although the series is famous for its multiplayer, developer Treyarch and publisher Activision have put a huge emphasis on the campaign, hiring well-known actors to fill roles, and bringing Hollywood scribe David Goyer on board to write the plot.

The Santa Monica-based Treyarch is once again taking advantage of its Hollywood backyard to bring the new campaign in Call of Duty: Black Ops II to life. The game developer, backed by Activision’s huge coffers, enlisted The Dark Knight Rises scribe David S. Goyer to write the game’s story and dialogue.

Actor James C. Burns (Criminal Minds, Make It or Break It), who returns as Sergeant Frank Woods, said having Goyer on board shows how far the art form of interactive entertainment has come in a relatively short period of time.

“The writing of a narrative for a game is important, and it’s also an avenue for writers like Goyer to really tell a story in a different way, in a much broader way, than in film,” said Burns. “In a game like this you have multiple opportunities to change the story. You can follow storylines to different places. It’s more like doing a mini-series with a lot of characters, but it’s all done in one big swoop. For a writer it’s an opportunity to really stretch the legs and do a very multiple tasked story.”

Activision also brought actor Sam Worthington (Wrath of the Titans, Man on A Ledge) back as Alex Mason and enlisted a huge cast of notable talent to breathe life into the game’s many virtual characters, including Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead, Slither). In a first for the franchise, Goyer, who came on late in the development of the first Black Ops, decided to focus the story on the villain, Raul Menendez.

“The most important thing is to create someone that the player can empathize with,” said Kamar de los Reyes (Read Between the Lines, Salt), who plays Menendez. “You can play a one-dimensional villain, that’s easy. But you want to create someone that the player will at one moment might love and empathize with, and another moment he will hate and not understand or relate to at all. That’s where it becomes really difficult, and fun, fun as the actor.”

In another move towards a Hollywood scale production, Black Ops II features full performance capture. The actors donned the increasingly familiar skintight motion-capture suits and read their dialogue while acting on set at the House of Moves in Los Angeles.

“This is the first game where actors like myself, James Burns and Rich McDonald are actually actors playing the roles,” said de los Reyes. “We are the guys in the video game. In the past, you always had stuntmen playing the roles and doing the motion capture and then having someone come in the voice like Keifer Sutherland or Gary Oldman to do the voice. It’s a lot of fun for the actors. I personally thought it was a hell of a lot more fun doing it all, and I think that’s what sets this game apart from all the others.”

Tony Todd (Chuck, Candy Man), who plays Admiral Tommy Briggs, believes Black Ops II is going to be the most narrative game that gamers have ever encountered.

“Between the ‘80s flashbacks, the future setting, the holograms, and the current situation on the Battleship Barack Obama; it’s just going to be mind-bending,” said Todd in a previous interview for Digital Trends, who had over 50 pages of script to perform in the game.

Getting actors to come back for more Call of Duty isn’t that much of a chore for Treyarch. Everyone involved had nothing but accolades for director Dave Anthony, who helmed the game’s epic story once again.

“I loved working on Black Ops I,” said Burns. “Treyarch is a dream job and Woods is a fun character to play. Come on, I play army for a living for God sakes. And the story progression is phenomenal. I’m a big fan of the game itself, and Black Ops II is such a great, inventive idea of how to take it to the next level. I’m very proud to be part of it.”

With the sequel being set in 2025, the returning characters are a lot older in this game – although the story does jump back in time to the ‘80s for some missions. Burns said Woods has evolved from a “badass weapon” into an “elder oracle” in the new game.

“Woods is the guy that has all this information and his function in the game is to illuminate the player as to the nature of the events, why things happened, and what’s happening,” said Burns. “He’s evolved into this still highly wired, pretty powerful – even though he’s in a wheelchair – character. He has his mental acuity is there. He’s smart. He’s incisive. He’s a smartass. He’s just that old guy in a chair that knows sh*t before you even think that you need to know it. He’s already got you pegged before you walk in the room. He’s evolved from this warrior with a knife to a warrior with an intellect. He’s this rugged badass in a wheelchair.”

The characters in the game are now old enough to have sons that become involved in the plot. Rich McDonald (Heart of Dixie, God Bless America) plays Commander David Mason, son of Alex Mason. He commands an elite team of Navy SEALs, which ends up going after Menendez. The actor loves the futuristic setting, which introduces new weapons, drones and vehicles to the story and gameplay.

“That’s a very intelligent choice to make as far as a time period to pick; not going too far into the future, but just far enough to where they can bring in certain aspects that are being explored right now in the technology fields,” said McDonald. “It’s all too realistic in that time frame. You also have elements from the present that are still going to be applicable in that timeframe, as well.”

Thanks to Goyer, the game’s script challenged actors to cope with major plot twists, as well as serious choices.

“My character is Javier Salazar, who is a military man whose spirit is torn between a way of life that he’s been taught and trained to do, and then something that moves him in a very internal level,” said actor Celestin Cornielle (The Finder, The Mentalist). “He’s forced to choose between two roads. One leads to light, one leads to darkness. To him, it truly leads to an awakening, a new consciousness, and a revelation that we all must be aware of. That’s all I can tell you without killing you.”

The campaign mode in Black Ops II is about much more than killing, although there’s plenty of that. With the success of the Call of Duty game franchises, developers have been able to work with larger budgets. And the growing fan base of gamers includes many Hollywood “names” both in front of, and behind, the camera. Goyer’s involvement has helped assemble a great cast of actors, who in turn deliver performances that Treyarch hopes will connect with gamers.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Drag and drog app platform Tiggzi adds database functionality

WIth an emphasis on a productivity-rich UI and its new database functionality, Tiggzi competes for app developers platform love.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the app economy has uprooted how we think about the technology market. In a landscape formerly dominated by hardware titans and products that targeted the IT crowd and not the everyday consumer, the app has become not only a legitimate startup idea but the foundation of the hottest, fastest-growing industry — mobile. 

Which is why it stands to reason that there’s plenty of interest not only in developing apps but in developing tools for developing apps (say that three times fast). Apps are supposed to be inherently simple and enjoyable on the user-end — and now that’s being applied to the developer side of things as well. 

One startup attempting to infuse some ease and accessibility into this process is Tiggzi. Founded last year, the company falls under the umbrella of software engineering company Exadel, and it’s a cloud-based mobile app platform that relies on the simplest of the simplest actions for app creation: Drag and drop. 

“We started Tiggzi as a prototyping tool so that developers could create their UI,” says head of community and developer relations Max Katz. “We just realized, ‘Well we can’t go much further than just building the UI with that.’ So it grew from there.” 

With Tiggzi, you’re launched into a digital workshop where, to put this in the simplest terms possible, you drag and drop the elements you want over to the device image. You can use these functions to create iOS, Android, HTML 5, and Windows Phone apps. 

Of course, while the action itself is familiar and easy, don’t confuse Tiggzi with something you can pick up sans developer skills. “At the end of the day this is a development tool, and you’ll need to have Web development skills,” Katz says, adding that HTML, Javascript, and CSS proficiency are generally what you’ll find necessary to use Tiggzi. But these skills, combined with the action-orientation and immediacy of Tiggzi turn it into a great productivity tool for developers. 

The fact that Tiggzi is entirely cloud-based and runs in the browser with no download or install necessary is also part of its allure. 

New to Tiggzi is its database. The platform previously announced it would be adding some a backend and storage for developers’ Tiggzi-made apps. It also comes with plugins so that developers can auto plug pre-made functionalities into their apps — as an example, Katz showed me how a developer could pull and put in the AT&T sms messaging feature via the available plugin. 

“We started as just the builder, but the backend services make us a platform,” says Katz. “A lot of companies have the backend, but they don’t have the builder, but we have both. We can offer the entire stack.” 

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com