24/7 Player

Random House has posted information and an excerpt from the first chapter of the Infernal City, a novel based on the Elder Scrolls. The same Elder Scrolls that is the popular game from Bethesda. This is the first of two books that will be based in the Elder Scrolls world.

The book is written by New York Times bestselling author, Greg Keyes. The novel will be available on November 24, 2009 but you can pre-order at various book retail stores now.

A preview excerpt is up here and gives you a slight indication as to how the book will be.

Posted on October 31st, 2009 at 5:48pm by GamingAngel
Filed Under: Lit Angels, New York Times, Publications, bethesda, book, elder-scrolls, infernal-city, random-house

Are you in the mood for some reading that’s a bit heavier than the video game news post you’re currently digesting? We suggest you check out this Random House page to read an excerpt from the first chapter of the Elder Scrolls-based novel, The Infernal City. The few pages of text introduce us to what will likely be the book’s plucky protagonists, Annaïg and Mere-Glim.

It’s a pretty intriguing kick-off for the novel’s plot — however, the excerpt doesn’t exactly sound like our usual experience in the Elder Scrolls world. See, in our version, the heroes would systematically rob everyone on the planet blind, and then, once bored with that, would just start killin’. It may not win any Pulitzers, but at least it’s authentic.

Random House teases first few pages of Elder Scrolls novel originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Posted on October 31st, 2009 at 4:00pm by Griffin McElroy
Filed Under: Novel, bethesda, book, elder-scrolls, excerpt, random-house, reading, the-infernal-city

Scott “Lum the Mad” Jennings, well-known blogosphere participant and game designer, has recently been working on a game that is now sadly canceled. This is bad both for the natural sadness of a game having been canceled and the voyeuristic MMO fan impulse to ask, “Well, what was it going to be?” We don’t know. The only reference made was to the cryptic in-joke name of John Deere Online. In his own words: “As a condition of my severance I can’t discuss a great deal, and anything I say here will most likely be picked up by the MMO news sites (wave, wave!).”

Well, he’s right about that last part. But neither waiting for him to change his mind nor camping outside his front door has yielded any new information, so perhaps we can take a look at more pieces of information and speculate? After all, we know of at least two of his co-workers. From them and from the little which Scott Jennings himself has said, we can derive the following bits of information: that they were working for 2K Games, developing an MMO based on an existing franchise, that the game would have been strategy-based, and that it might possibly have had something to do with tractors.

Considering that Jon Jones mentions on his LinkedIn page that he “created a series of low polygon highly optimized building models with a small set of textures that can be reused across that nation’s entire series of buildings appropriate to that age,” it’s difficult to argue with the conclusion that the team was working on a Civilization MMO. But 2K Games also could mean Elder Scrolls projects… which might be pertinent, as both Jon Jones and Matthew Weigel have been working on Dungeon Runners. It’s all idle speculation, sadly, and for all we know the game really would have been a massively multiplayer tractor simulator. (In which case it might even be for the best – lawnmowers would probably have been totally overpowered against seeders in PvP.)

Filed under: MMO industry, Opinion, Academic, MMORTS, Rumors

Unraveling the mystery of John Deere Online originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Posted on October 30th, 2009 at 10:00am by Eliot Lefebvre
Filed Under: 2k-games, canceled-games, civilization, dungeon-runners, elder-scrolls, john-deere, jon-jones, lum-the-mad, matthew-weigel, mmo-industry, pvp, rumors, scott-jennings, tractors