This has been percolating for about a week now, but it’s official – Epic Mickey creator Junction Point Studios has been shut down by parent company Disney, putting Warren Spector and about 140 others out of work. Coming as it does so quickly on the also-anticipated-but-also-sad THQ fire sale, one can’t help but feel that attrition seems awfully high for early 2013. Hopefully it’s not a harbinger of things to come.
As those who tap the forums already know, I had LASIK a couple of weeks ago. It’s kind of an amazing procedure. Totally painless, though you do feel… something, something unpleasant, but “pain” is the wrong word. It’s more like you’re aware of being sharply uncomfortable for a few seconds. Admittedly the smell of your own burning eye flesh is disconcerting, but it doesn’t hurt.
For the next eight hours after surgery, though, your eyeballs feel like they’re being rolled in a slurry of sand and lemon juice. A great, noble, self-sacrificing friend of mine took me to the surgery, then took me home, then narrated a game of Civilization V to me (I’d been told not to open my eyes) while I fidgeted and growled and pawed at my liberally running eyes as they lay protected beneath the silly plastic shields they’d made me wear.
Shack and others are reporting on what may or may not be revered designer Warren Spector’s next effort, codenamed Epic Mickey. Since Spector’s Junction Point studio was acquired by Disney, everyone sort of assumed he’d be making a mouse-themed game (assumed, but hoped it wasn’t true), and now it’s semi-official. According to Shack, the game will be Wii-only, and tells the story of obsolete Disney characters seeking to destroy Mickey Mouse. I’m not sure about …