Award winning author asks: 'Why aren't more books turned into games?'

[Abtacha]

Originally Posted by TFeldt

... The basic fact is this; non-interactive fiction does not translate well into interactive fiction (or vice versa). It really isn't any harder than that...

That's how I see it as well, thanks for saying all that so much better than I could have.

There's also the problem of expectations. If you take a bestselling book, and anything else wouldn't make sense from a marketing perspective, you'll have many people that know and love the world, characters and plot. Transferring those from a book to a game will probably leave the fans of the original rather underwhelmed, that's already the case for many books-turned-into-movies and in that case they are both non interactive mediums.

[Kubizo]

The length of my post is getting out of hand (again, something about this forum that just makes me want to type). Let me end with this; there is a market for book licenses, but the games would have to license the concept or the world that the book takes place in. Trying to translate a book directly into gameplay is doomed to failure before the project has even begun, for the reasons stated above.

Great post, again, very educational :-)
In other words, the question is not "why don't they do it with books". It is more: "Why on earth do they do it with movies?" :-)
Have a great day!

[TFeldt]

There's also the problem of expectations. If you take a bestselling book, and anything else wouldn't make sense from a marketing perspective, you'll have many people that know and love the world, characters and plot. Transferring those from a book to a game will probably leave the fans of the original rather underwhelmed..

This hits it right on the head. If you try to work inside of creative constraints you will upset your target audience at every turn. Look at the Dresden files tv-show. I didn't think it was that bad, even liked the fact that they gave Bob a body (and I love the actor playing him), but it pissed many fans off royally. Why take the chance when you can create something new, without any licensing fees and zero risk of doing something "you're not supposed to do" which alienates your target audience?

In other words, the question is not "why don't they do it with books". It is more: "Why on earth do they do it with movies?" :-)

That's it. Looking back at the history of video games, and the absolute fiascos that licensed games have generally turned out to be; why would you ever want to walk down that road again?

Battlefield 3 is about to be released. It's got 1.3 million pre-orders. It's generated, by conservative measures, $90 millon before it's even been released. It's expected to quadruple that during its lifespan, easily. WoW generates about $700 million with every expansion, and more than a billion dollars in subscriber fees each year. Of course, I'd argue that WoW is derivative to the point of plagiarism but that's beside the point. Bioware simply dropped the dungeons and dragons license since they didn't need it anymore, their own series Dragon Age will have sold close to 10 million copies shortly.

What are book publishers supposed to wave in front of developers in order to catch their attention when they're up against numbers like those from IPs the developers made themselves? The only hope for innovative games based on books lie in the hands of indie developers and small studios, and they can't afford the licensing costs.

[kjk]

There are probably more books spun off from games than vice versa.

The books that do get made into games usually don't get made until a movie is made from the book. And by then, the licensing costs to make the official adaptations all but guarantee the gameplay suffers. (Goldeneye for the N64 being one of the few exceptions I can remember)

[xg4bx]

[QUOTE=TFeldt;1773720]
This can be directly translated to the topic of books. What would you expect out of a a game that licensed, say, the Belgariad by Eddings? Would you expect to play Rand? But then what? Do you just slavishly follow the novels? Any interactivity you get is an illusion that would quickly be dismissed by most players (we're notoriously picky after all). Observe the game Heavy rain, which was extremely interactive yet you had almost no freedom at all.
[QUOTE]


i'd say eddings would probably translate into an rpg fairly well. rand? a little hard to do literally but-

Bioshock:Set in an alternate history 1960, the game places the player in the role of a plane crash survivor named Jack, who must explore the underwater city of Rapture, and survive attacks by the mutated beings and mechanical drones that populate it. The game incorporates elements found in role-playing and survival games, and is described by the developers and Levine as a "spiritual successor" to their previous titles in the System Shock series. The game received overwhelmingly positive reviews, which praised its "morality-based" storyline, immersive environment and its unique setting, inspired by Objectivist philosophy and rhetoric.


ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream was also translated into a game-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NhtCxrmAEw


i understand that there are a lot of books that could never be done literally but theres no reason why something like David Weber's Honor Harrington series couldn't be a game, for example.


The Witcher pc games are popular, i guarantee though that the average player has no idea that they're based on books. Metro 2033 came out last year, again i'm sure most gamers don't realize its based off a book. if not going whole hog into the gaming industry, publishers could at least try dipping their feet into cross promotion even if its an insert "hey if you like The Witcher, try the stories it was based off of".

in europe the next Elder Scrolls game is coming packaged with an Elder Scrolls novel.

the vast majority of younger people still look at reading as stupid and our literacy rates certainly aren't improving. gotta try something *shrug*.

[JeremyR]

Money, mostly. Games are not cheap to make these days, which is driving many companies out of business, since they have to spend tens of millions on a game, which can bomb. 1-2 mistakes and boom, a company can go under.

I mean, it's not like in the Atari 2600 days when one guy could make a game in 6 months. (And even then, ET bombing really hurt Atari)

Furthermore, say the game is a hit - basically the video game company has helped the brand strength of IP owner, not their own company.

An example of this is the first RTS - it was Dune II. But the company that made it couldn't really capitalize on its success, they had to start with a new series to do so, (Command and Conquer) but they were beaten to the punch by a clone called Warcraft...which that company was able to spin off into a variety of other products

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by TFeldt

This can be directly translated to the topic of books. What would you expect out of a a game that licensed, say, the Belgariad by Eddings? Would you expect to play Rand? But then what? Do you just slavishly follow the novels? Any interactivity you get is an illusion that would quickly be dismissed by most players (we're notoriously picky after all). Observe the game Heavy rain, which was extremely interactive yet you had almost no freedom at all.

Partly, I agree with this. If you make a game out of an existing book, you must either play the main character in the book and the story is set. This is easy to do. You don't need to do a lot of script writing.

However, there's another option. Take the environment of the book, in the time frame of the book, but take some new character as your main. And weave a story around the "book" story. That's what was done with Betrayal at Krondor and also with the MMO LOTRN. But this is again expensive, because you must write the entire script. The only thing you don't need to write yourself is the backstory (because that's the book).

[TFeldt]

First off, a quick apology. I'm not sure if my "What would you expect.." paragraph sounded hostile, like I was questioning -your- intentions. That wasn't my intent, I was asking myself more than anyone else. Also, I've got my fantasies mixed up, I naturally meant Belgarion not Rand from wheel of time.

While you listed several successful book to game conversions they mostly just play to my point. "I have no mouth" wasn't exactly a wild success, and the Witcher follows the formula I outlined about using the world or the concept, not the story itself.

Originally Posted by xg4bx

the vast majority of younger people still look at reading as stupid and our literacy rates certainly aren't improving. gotta try something *shrug*.

I absolutely understand that reasoning, and I salute anyone for putting it forth. But it's simply wrong. There's games, RPGs mainly, with more reading than you'll ever get from a single book. But you won't get people who don't like to read to play one of those games anyway, they'll just play the latest halo or battlefield games.

However, there's another option. Take the environment of the book, in the time frame of the book, but take some new character as your main. And weave a story around the "book" story. That's what was done with Betrayal at Krondor and also with the MMO LOTRN. But this is again expensive, because you must write the entire script. The only thing you don't need to write yourself is the backstory (because that's the book).

That's an immensely important point. Let me preface this with the fact that good fiction cannot be measured in a monetary value. But it is anyway. An author and his/her editor works on a book for a year? What exactly does that represent fiscally when it takes 80+ people 4 years to make a game? Books just aren't that valuable to the development process. The story is, yes, critical, but you can't directly translate non-interactive fiction to interactive mediums without massive, costly, lengthy conversion processes. At which point most developers realize they might as well do it themselves.

EDIT: Added the paragraph below.

Actually feel rather bad when re-reading the thread again. It almost sounds like I'm trying to say that converting a great story to a game is an idiotic idea. Please don't think that. I was only trying to explain -why- more books aren't converted into games at the behest of the original post. I spend a lot more time reading than playing games each year, I would love to have my favorite series turned into great games. I can imagine the fantastic sequences converted into a interactive experiences, but it just won't happen on any scale worth mentioning.

[Richey79]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

Of course, there was also a Call of Cthulu game that came out on PC and Xbox, and that was a pretty cool game (although there were some minor faults). It was nifty to see some of the Lovecraft stuff make it into a game.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was great, and clearly made by people who loved the stories. It was particularly effective at evoking the atmosphere of the stories in the first section where you didn't have a weapon and had to run away from any dangerous situation.

There are lots of problems with suggesting that games can offer similar experiences to books (or even an experience that replaces the book). Bugs completely kill immersion for the gamer. How do you deal with the problem of gamers of different ability being able to access the whole story? What about the dilemma of how much freedom to allow the gamer versus how scripted to make the game. If you make it too much of a 'sandbox', the gamer might completely by-pass the experiences you wanted them to have. If you make it too 'on rails', they won't feel like they have been controlling their own destiny.

Video gaming is an industry that accepts terrible voice acting and script-writing, both of which are major problems if you're looking to compete with books.

For me, Bioshock is one of the only games that has been fairly successful at providing an experience that compared with reading a book. Fallout 3 was pretty successful, too, and I can agree that The Witcher compares favourably to most fantasy lit.

[carpetmojo]

'cos it would be another addition to an over-bloated, hype-ridden, self-regarding, ruinously expensive, usually mindless, derivative industry.

On the other hand, yo-yo's and marbles..... now you're talkin'.

[Hellmark]

Bad stories are accepted in games, because for the longest time, they've largely been ignored by people.

Look at games like DOOM and Quake. Monster hits, but very few can tell you anything more than "You have to kill monsters". The gameplay mechanics allowed for the story to be completely shrouded. Developers have had a hard time finding the best methods to allow for interactivity, while still presenting a story. Finding the balance of game and presentation is hard, because things can too quickly fall completely to one side or the other.

[Jhon3Luck]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

Bad stories are accepted in games, because for the longest time, they've largely been ignored by people.

Look at games like DOOM and Quake. Monster hits, but very few can tell you anything more than "You have to kill monsters". The gameplay mechanics allowed for the story to be completely shrouded. Developers have had a hard time finding the best methods to allow for interactivity, while still presenting a story. Finding the balance of game and presentation is hard, because things can too quickly fall completely to one side or the other.

I agree nothing cool about converting book to a game, the best interactivity method is to fighting.


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Books Quotations

[TFeldt]

Originally Posted by Richey79

Video gaming is an industry that accepts terrible voice acting and script-writing, both of which are major problems if you're looking to compete with books.

We're truly of absolutely polar opposite opinions, but that's the interesting thing about forums. First off, saying that the video gaming industry accepts terrible anything is being extremely general. That's like saying the movie industry accepts terrible acting and scripts because Uwe Boll makes movies. Or the book industry accepts terrible writing because Joe Smith released yet another teen angst emo vampire book. It's not that the industries accept inferior products, but they happen.

Secondly, in what way is the games industry competing against anything? Financially it's won. It's done. It's the largest entertainment industry in the world. Or are you talking about quality-wise? But isn't quality defined by demand, the masses have already voted with the wallets and the games industry won. Or maybe you're talking about a private elite's definition of quality, not what the plebs like? But then who gets to decide what's good and what isn't? Not you or I, surely.

The reason I bring this up is because of our difference in opinion. My belief is that the games industry has simply outgrown the other industries, they see very little need to create simulacrums of products created for other mediums. They're far too busy creating simulacrums of their own products since those are the top dogs. To think that the video game industry is in any way competing with other mediums is bizarre (to me), they're already the victor by a massive margin.

You and I might not like that mindless shooters top the charts, but I don't like that the Twilight books do either.

[carpetmojo]

"Video gaming is an industry that accepts terrible voice acting and script-writing, both of which are major problems if you're looking to compete with books."

But that's the point, they don't really want to compete with books, but create a sub-culture that incidentally destroys the reading habit, love of reading, whatever you want to call it .
Some come through OK , some combine the two, but a large number never "get" books, because they are "harder work", and require more imaginative powers within yourself. With a book, the experience isn't laid out on a plate so you merely have to react or solve minor problems, as with games.
The bad acting etc.. is what it's meant to be, it's not a lower standard, it is the required standard, and that's the experience !

[Fayth]

The Witcher pc games are popular, i guarantee though that the average player has no idea that they're based on books. Metro 2033 came out last year, again i'm sure most gamers don't realize its based off a book. if not going whole hog into the gaming industry, publishers could at least try dipping their feet into cross promotion even if its an insert "hey if you like The Witcher, try the stories it was based off of".

In the manual for The Witcher they have an ad for the books at the back, and in "The Last Wish", ebook at least, there is an ad for the game on the last page.