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Culture

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Mar 6th 2003 8:49am





You've Played The Game; Ready For The Book?

from the novelizing-games dept

I've known some writers who ended up taking jobs writing the "novelization" of movies. It certainly helped pay the bills, but they weren't really thrilled about the work. Now, the newest trend is for established science fiction writers to write novels based on video games. They insist it's different from novelizing a movie, since those already have the story specifically laid out. For the game novels, the writers just play the game for a while, and then read the "story bible" the developers used in making the game to help create the story for the novel.

7 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    RPG novels

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Mar 6th, 2003 @ 9:55am

    This isn't completely new. There have been bad novels based on pencil and paper games for decades.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    neilathotep, Mar 6th, 2003 @ 10:46am

    In the early '90s there were Bard's Tale and Wing Commander schlock novels. And Mercedes Lackey had something to do with both series.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Doom novels

    identicon
    Ron Taylor, Mar 6th, 2003 @ 12:13pm

    I know I enjoyed a couple of DOOM books based on the game. I liked tham a lot.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    If you've...

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Mar 6th, 2003 @ 8:01pm

    ...played the game then seen the movie, who gives a flying fsck about the book?

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    Novelisations

    identicon
    Harry Payne, Mar 7th, 2003 @ 3:55am

    Diane Duane - X-Com. Mercedes Lackey - Wing Commander: Freedom Flight. Someone also did at least one "Doom" novel.
    Journalists need to do more research before they start typing.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Mar 7th, 2003 @ 7:09am

    This isn't really any different then any other 'shared universe' type books. Classic examples would include all the Star Trek books over the years, the numerous Battletech and D&D novels, etc.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  

    Re: No Subject Given

    identicon
    Duffman, Mar 7th, 2003 @ 7:34am

    Myst had a series of books that the creators wrote long after the game had become successful. There were three, and the first two explained tonnes of history behind the game and gave it almost a new depth. The third was in the same environment, sometime in the future, it was OK, but not great.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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