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If you want to know the weapon of choice in pop culture this year just follow the arrow. Click though the gallery above (be sure to click the “CAPTIONS ON” option) to see why 2012 is a year with a big bull’s-eye on its back. – Geoff Boucher RECENT AND RELATED The ‘master manipulator’ Nick Fury Mark Ruffalo: Hulk has found his family Avengers’: Cobie Smulders up for sequel duty ‘Avengers’: Marvel’s new approach to Hulk ‘Avengers’ soar ahead of “Harry Potter” Whedon finds human side of thunder god ‘Avengers’ set visit: Joss Whedon’s heroes and humor Whedon says Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye is a “loner” Mark Ruffalo’s childlike inspiration for the Hulk ‘Avengers’ gallery: Marvel’s heroes assemble  

On Tuesday, Alex Pham wrote about the game-changing aspirations of the e-sports scene and companies such as Riot Games.  Today, she listens in on the language of e-sports.  Marcus Graham is the John Madden of e-sports, a genre of competitive online gaming where thousands of players compete, often for cash prizes. The matches, played online with computers, pit individuals, and in some cases teams of players, in contests of wit and skill as they plot to annihilate each other. One such game is League of Legends, developed by Riot Games in Santa Monica, and featured in this article. While not as big as, say, the NFL, e-sports is large enough that people like Graham can make a living from being a professional commentator. He won’t say exactly how much he makes, but it’s enough to pay a mortgage and support his family of three in ...

Earlier today, Los Angeles Times business writer Alex Pham wrote about the game-changing aspirations of the eSports scene and companies such as Riot Games. Here’s more on how the business works.  How do “free” online games make money? Simple — they charge for virtual items. One example is League of Legends, a multiplayer online battle arena game played by more than 4 million people every day. While the game is free to play, people can still buy “Champions,” or warriors they can use in battle. Riot Games, the developer, releases a new Champion about every two or three weeks. Every Champion can be earned by playing the game and earnings points. Or they can unlock the Champions right away by paying. Players can also buy “skins” that change the appearance, animation or sound effects of their Champions, but does not affect the ...

At 6-foot-1 and weighing scarcely 155 pounds, George Georgallidis does not immediately strike people as an athlete. But make no mistake — the 21-year-old is the Tim Tebow of his sport. Except that Georgallidis’ sport does not require him to run, jump or throw. Instead, he uses his slender, expressive hands to play a computer game called League of Legends. Developed by Riot Games Inc. in Santa Monica, League of Legends has become the game of choice for millions of competitive online players including Georgallidis, who last year quit his job as a store clerk in his hometown of London, Canada, to make his living as a professional League of Legends player. Georgallidis’ surprising career path is the culmination of a grand plan for Brandon Beck, 29, and Marc Merrill, 31. The co-founders of Riot hatched their idea for the ...

The dawn of popular video games can be traced back to a small white square ponging back and forth across a basic black screen. A few generations later, games have transformed into full-throttle cinematic experiences with orchestral scores, stunning visual effects, creative narratives and in-depth player interaction. Though some may debate the validity of video games as an art form, the Smithsonian American Art Museum is celebrating the medium with “The Art of Video Games.” The Washington, D.C., exhibition explores the 40-year evolution of the form with images and videos from 80 classic games voted on by the public online last spring. Those that made the list include Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy and Super Mario Galaxy. Sketches, digital photographs and several gaming systems representing classic machines from their respective eras, such as the original wood-grain Atari VCS ...

EverQuest, once the king of all massively multiplayer online games, will open the doors of its virtual fantasy kingdom to all on Friday as a free game. The move by Sony Online Entertainment is part of a broader effort by the company to shift its online titles toward the more popular free model, in which games make money selling virtual goods rather than charging a monthly fee, typically $15. Sony, for example, decided to make parts of its DC Universe Online game available for free last year in order to lure more players. Launched 13 years ago, EverQuest defined the massively multiplayer online, or MMO, genre long before World of Warcraft came around in 2004. But Warcraft gradually eclipsed EverQuest as well as its successor, EverQuest II, and amassed 12 million subscribers at its peak in October 2010. Sony will not ...

In the silence that stretches between the spasms of war, two highly trained U.S. special operations troops found themselves holed up in a gritty apartment in the middle of a sweltering city with little to do but wait for their orders. The men filled the void by writing a scenario about the lives of the troops on the front lines in the war on terror. The resulting script, handwritten in a red spiral-bound notebook, formed the backbone for two video games — the second of which is scheduled to be released in October. Called Medal of Honor Warfighter and developed by Electronic Arts, the upcoming game continues the story contained in that script, written six years ago. “The game takes players on one soldier’s journey in answering the larger question of why he does what he does,” said Greg Goodrich, ...

When four-time World Series pitcher Curt Schilling started his video game company in 2006, some took it as a sign that the American League right-hander was simply indulging in an expensive hobby. “People saw it as a vanity project,” Schilling said during an interview, spitting tobacco juice into a paper cup between words. “I get it. There’s not a long track record of people leaving professional sports to become a software developer.” Last week, the world got to find out just how serious the former Phillies, Diamondbacks and Red Sox hurler was. After spending tens of millions of dollars of his own money, he and his company, 38 Studios, shipped their first game — a lavish fantasy title called Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Although it’s too early to tell how well the $59.99 title is selling, critics have given it ...

It may be the largest entertainment production in history. More than 800 people on four continents have spent six years and nearly $200 million creating it. The story runs 1,600 hours, with hundreds of additional hours still being written. Nearly 1,000 actors have recorded dialogue for 4,000 characters in three languages. The narrative is so huge that writers created a 1,000-page “bible” to keep the details straight, and the director recently asked a colleague not to spoil moments he hadn’t yet seen. It’s not a movie or a TV series. It’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, the most expensive, ambitious and riskiest video game ever produced. Created out of a 60,000-square-foot converted warehouse next to a cooking school on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, the Old Republic is proof that while box-office, network TV ratings and music sales are slumping, ...

The week before Christmas was a big one for J.J. Abrams and his production company, Bad Robot, with the wide release of “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.” which quickly gave Bad Robot the bragging rights to the biggest hit of the holiday season. But the week was also notable for another landmark: Bad Robot is now in the iPhone app business. The app is called Action Movie FX and it gives users the ability to insert special effects into any video they take with Apple’s smartphone. The two effects included with the app are a missile attack and car smash, allowing anyone to get all Michael Bay on unsuspecting family members, sleeping pets or the guy who cut them off on the 405 Freeway. In an e-mail interview, Abrams called Action Movie FX the first of a “slew” of “cool projects” that his ...