Skyrim Nominated for 5 Game Developer Choice Awards

The finalists for the 12th annual Game Developers Choice Awards were announced today — with Skyrim receiving nominations in five categories: Game of the Year, Best Game Design, Best Technology, Best Audio, and Best Visual Arts. Bethesda Game Studios previously was nominated for Best Game for Oblivion in 2006 and won Game of the Year Award for Fallout 3 (shown above) in 2009.

This year’s winners will be announced during the Game Developers Conference on Wednesday, March 7th.

In other award news, Skyrim has recently received the following accolades:

Kotaku — Winner of the First Annual Kotaku Community Game of the Year Award!
Joystiq — #1 Game of 2011
1Up – Favorite Game of 2011 (Editor’s Choice)
Team Xbox — Game of the Year
Giant Bomb — #1 Game of the Year
GameTrailers — Best Soundtrack
USA Today Game Hunters — #1 Game of the Year
Yahoo! — Best Role-Playing Game
Gaming Union – Best Developer
Electric Playground — Best Role-Playing Game
Split Screen — Game of the Year

Amazing Violin Cover

Hope everyone is having a great holiday. Wanted to share this violin (and drum) cover of Jeremy Soule’s music from Skyrim — performed by Jason Yang.

Holiday Roundup (Updated)

Here’s one last roundup before the holidays.

Check out holiday-inspired Skyrim mods at GameSpy
As proven by a new feature at UGO, throwing in-game items down the side of a mountain never gets old.
To help celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, modder Handski has created a Link-inspired Skyrim mod. See it at Kotaku
Todd Howard talks with Morgan and Adam from X-Play. Watch the interview at G4TV.com.
IGN has named Skyrim their Game of the Year and RPG of the Year on PC and Xbox 360. Elsewhere, the game has received top honors from USA Today, 1Up, Destructoid (Readers’ Choice), The New York Daily News, Game Revolution, Gamespot, Wired, Planet Xbox 360, UGO, RipTen, Ars Technica, 411 Mania, and GamingBolt.

On behalf of everyone at Bethesda, we wish you happy holiday season!

“Are You Dragonborn?” Contest Winner Announced

Congratulations to Adam Carini (shown above) on winning UGO/IGN’s Are You Dragonborn” contest! As the grand prize winner, Adam will receive a trip to QuakeCon, a limited edition Skyrim map signed by the team at Bethesda Game Studios, a limited edition Skyrim Xbox 360, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Collector’s Edition. He also gets a free pass to wield a tinfoil battle axe for the rest of his life.

There were plenty of other great entries. In the slideshow below, check out the runners up below…

New Fan Art

As we get ready to head out for the holidays, we wanted to share some of the latest fan art sent into the blog. Above is an amazing Dovahkiin statue created by mrben. For more outstanding contributions, check out the Flickr slideshow below.

If you’ve got art to share, send it to bethblog@bethsoft.com.

Skyrim CE Game Guide Reprint

Exciting news from Prima. Due to unprecedented demand, they have — for the first time ever — printed a Second Edition of a Collector’s Edition Game Guide.

The Skyrim CE guide has all of the original CE guide’s features: hardback cover, two bookmark ribbons, and free access to the Interactive World Map. Oh, and they even corrected a few spelling errors.

The Second Edition of the CE guide is available today for $39.99 (US) and $46.99 (CAN). Look for it wherever strat guides and games are sold.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Prima Official Game Guide Collector’s Edition is available at select retailers in North America. Below is a list of retailers distributing this guide (availability may vary)…

Amazon
Amazon Canada
Barnes & Noble
Books A Million
Best Buy
Chapters Canada
EB Canada
Fred Meyer
Fry’s Electronics
Game Stop
Hastings

Collect them all!

Here’s a cool idea from UGO. They’ve put together a Character Card creator that you can share with your friends that are playing the game. All you have to do is upload a screenshot of your character.

For more details, head here.

Skyrim in the news (Updated)

We’re back with another round of Skyrim news from around the web.

The picture above features members of Bethesda meeting with X-Play after learning Skyrim won their 2011 Game of the Year Award. Congrats to Todd Howard and his team on this award! In addition to X-Play, Skyrim has recently received GOTY honors from Machinima (watch the video), Jeux Video (who awarded RAGE Best Shooter), Gaming Bolt, Planet Xbox 360, The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy, MMGN, Kotaku AU and Official Xbox Magazine.

In other news, check out these stories…

Xbox 360 Achievements has a mega Bethesda swag pack featuring Elder Scrolls, RAGE, and Fallout swag.
French site Jeux Video has ranked Skyrim the #1 RPG of all-time – with Fallout 3 (#40), Daggerfall (#23), Oblivion (#11), Morrowind (#4) and Arkane’s Arx Fatalis #6.
G4TV shares a hilarious Thundercats-inspired mod
Todd Howard briefly discusses DLC plans with Joystiq
Popular GTA IV modder Hayssam Keilany gives a first look at his killer mod project for Skyrim
IGN and Destructoid announce their year-end award nominees
TIME and Slant include Skyrim in their Top 10 games of the year
You can vote for Todd Howard as Industry Gamers’ person of the year. Vote here
At The Escapist, listen to Miracle of Sound’s Sovngarde Song
Arnold is back in a new Skyrim mod shown at GameSpy

Annnd my personal favorite story of the week: how one fan made a Skyrim mask out of bacon.

It doesn’t get any better than that!

Win a customized Astro A40 Wireless System

Nothing’s worse than when you get a new game and the real world interrupts: loud roommates, crying babies, pots & pans. Sometimes you just want to scream out, “I have no idea what Paarthurnax just said… you’ve ruined everything!”

The good folks at Astro Gaming know how you feel, and they want to help out. Two lucky winners will win an Astro A40 Wireless System – complete with customizable RAGE & Skyrim speakertags.

Need these headphones to block out that special someone during game time? Read the contest rules after the break…

Continue reading full article ›

Skyrim takes top honors at the VGAs!

What a night! At last night’s Spike VGA Awards, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was honored with Game of the Year and RPG of the Year. Additionally, Bethesda Game Studios was named Studio of the Year.

Congrats to to the BGS team and everyone else involved with the project. And a big thanks to all our fans for your continued support!