capane.us|Video Games. Rotting my brains for almost 30 years.

Like King George VI in front of a live mic, I am at a loss of words.  I haven’t put up a blog post since Dovahkiin Gutenberg, frankly because I didn’t know what to say.  The response has been astounding and (almost) entirely positive!  I got posts on Joystiq, Kotaku, Destructoid, Yahoo! News, and even TUAW.  I found countless random threads in forums where people were so happy to have the books in a digital format. Heck, I even got a free year of premium access on one of my favorite gaming sites, Giant Bomb.  So, to all of the thank you’s floating out there, you are very welcome!

I guess at the very least, I can answer a few of the more popular questions:

1. Is Bethesda cool with this? So far, I’m not sure.  I have attempted to contact them to see what they think about it, but so far no response.  I will respect their wishes if they want to shut it all down, but I’m definitely hoping they will see how much fans love this.  Technically, I am redistributing content from their game without their express written consent, which is a definite no-no.  But, logically, I’m not making a cent from it, the content generally only appeals to those who have purchased access to the content, and the content in this format is not available to buy anywhere. With all that said, I strongly believe in a dialog with Bethesda on the subject, because I know that they love to make great games, and to please their fans.  They don’t have to put out TES Construction Sets or GECKs, but they do, and for that they kick ass.  As soon as I hear from Bethesda, I will post and adhere to their wishes.
2. Will you do this for Oblivion and/or Morrowind?  Yes, I’d definitely love to do that, but first I’m going to wait and see what Bethesda’s official stance is on all this.  I’d hate to spend a lot of time on something, only to have the plug pulled before release.
3. Will you release a better version with images, and a better cover?  Yes, again, so long as Bethesda is cool with it.
4. Will you make a PDF? Nope! PDF is actually a terrible format to read, and I’d like to do whatever I can to discourage people from reading on it.  Almost every device out there, whether it be a computer, phone, tablet, even an iPod Touch should have software to read an .epub or a .mobi.  They are the best formats for your brain to soak up gobs of text.  If you need to, check out applications like Adobe Digital Editions, Kindle, or Nook.  Keep in mind, Kindle and Nook are platforms (devices AND applications), not just devices.  With all that said, I don’t mean to be some sort of digital book snob, but a format that does not allow text to be reflowed or reformatted is not a good format to read.  PDF does however, remain a good format to print things with.
5. Why can’t I view it on my Android phone/tablet? Sorry about that.  Turns out I didn’t force the MIME types for .epub and .mobi files on my server.  Most systems are intelligent enough to force the download even though WordPress was saying the content type was plain text.  It’s fixed now.

So there you have it good folks.  I hope to keep you updated, and I hope to keep you interested in my blog.  I’d love to keep the ball rolling and resurrect my gaming blog to its previous glory. Stay tuned!