Electronic Arts to publish Curt Schilling game, re-ups Rock Band with MTV

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Wonder if they’ll throw in a bloody sock with every purchase.
Electronic Arts said it is distributing a game made by Curt Schilling, the former Boston Red Sox pitcher and likely future Hall of Famer who once pitched a pivotal postseason game with an ankle injury so severe that blood seeped through his thick white sock.

The game, code-named Project Mercury, is based on fantasy novels by bestselling author R.A. Salvatore, who penned the Demon Wars Saga and the Forgotten Realms series. Todd McFarlane, comic book artist and creator of the ‘Spawn’ series of comics, is overseeing the game’s art direction.

Schilling, who founded the game company 38 Studios, is a devotee of online games such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft and started the Maynard, Mass., game studio in 2006. Its first project, a multi-player online game dubbed Project Copernicus that reportedly is costing $50 million to make, is still under development. EA’s publishing deal covers only Project Mercury.

EA also renewed its deal with Viacom’s MTV Networks to publish Rock Band 3 this holiday. MTV posted the announcement on its Facebook page, which counts more than 357,000 fans. EA’s deal to publish Rock Band titles was due to expire at the end of the month.

The two deals, though notable, are part of a business that EA is hoping to downplay as the game company strives to focus on putting out its own games, which is potentially more profitable than distributing other companies’ games.

-- Alex Pham