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.)
Reader Comments (10)
Posted: Oct 30th 2009 9:06AM MrGutts said
Hey it's my mower I love to run chipmunks over with! :)
Posted: Oct 30th 2009 10:25AM Dread said
Jennings is the bloody Ted McGinley of the MMO world.
Posted: Oct 30th 2009 11:01AM (Unverified) said
Holy crap, I'm in the news!
I gotta smack down #2. Scott is one of the best people I've ever worked with. He's brilliant, organized, inspiring, a born leader, and I'd work with him again in a heartbeat. Pinning any blame on him for the way the last two projects turned out is ignorant and unjustified.
I gotta smack down #2. Scott is one of the best people I've ever worked with. He's brilliant, organized, inspiring, a born leader, and I'd work with him again in a heartbeat. Pinning any blame on him for the way the last two projects turned out is ignorant and unjustified.
Posted: Oct 30th 2009 12:50PM pcgneurotic said
Hey! I like McGinley. Never heard of Jennings though.
Posted: Oct 30th 2009 1:16PM (Unverified) said
Scott's "first" well known role in the gaming world was as the creator and author of THE definitive Elder Scrolls Daggerfall website (Daggerweb I think, although I may be misremembering which site it was). So I'd think to lean toward the Elder Scrolls project :(
Posted: Oct 30th 2009 3:51PM pcgneurotic said
You're kidding? Man, Daggerfall is still my favourite RPG of all time, veeery closely followed by Morrowind. If that was an ES MMOG that got shit-canned, I'd be very upset. Then again, I'd like to think that such an event would be preceeded with a little more fanfare. ES fans are every bit as rabid as the Fallout mob.
Reply
Posted: Oct 30th 2009 5:36PM karnisov said
x-com mmo? there was an article on bluesnews about an x-com remake happening at 2k, http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewstory&threadid=103678
Posted: Oct 31st 2009 9:43AM (Unverified) said
"designed a fully modular and customizable system of player throne rooms they can outfit with items they win or buy in the game"
Throne rooms?!?!?! That's pure Civ II! I'd say the theory that they were working on a Civ MMO, and that it got killed by the Civ Facebook game announced last week, are strong.
Shame...I'd pay a ton for a Civ mmo......Facebook...not so much.
Throne rooms?!?!?! That's pure Civ II! I'd say the theory that they were working on a Civ MMO, and that it got killed by the Civ Facebook game announced last week, are strong.
Shame...I'd pay a ton for a Civ mmo......Facebook...not so much.







