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.
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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*.
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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.
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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).
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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.