Welcome Nathan! And good luck with the writing project! The indie video game sounds so cool. Have you heard of the LitRPG genre? It could combine both of your worlds and its very big right now...
Welcome Nathan! And good luck with the writing project! The indie video game sounds so cool. Have you heard of the LitRPG genre? It could combine both of your worlds and its very big right now...
I haven't heard the term before. I listen to a number of actual play podcasts of call of Cthulhu that I think have "literary merit" (Into the Darkness specifically), but wikipedia makes it seem like litRPGs are a different thing entirely?
If I wanted to learn more, are there any specific works or authors or creators to look into?
ItтАЩs kind of like making your book into a role playing game. I interviewed Shirtaloon who is one of the more prolific writers in this genre if you want to read that here: https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/shirtaloon
In terms of story-games, I'm actually working on a visual novel engine as a hobby project to teach a friend to program. I'm also friends with some people who have had successful kickstarters for their visual novels. It's neat stuff, I learned about visual novels about a year ago.
Since games with stories are harder to make than stories alone (assuming equal effort and skill put into the writing in both cases), there's less competition in the gaming world, and it's easier to stand out there. So we see, for instance, that indie games on steam are about 500x-1000x more likely to pay their creators a good living than indie books on amazon (I made some spreadsheets, I think it's maybe 1/10 or 1/20 vs something depressing like 1/10000 for books). I suspect it's almost entirely a difference of scarcity
Welcome Nathan! And good luck with the writing project! The indie video game sounds so cool. Have you heard of the LitRPG genre? It could combine both of your worlds and its very big right now...
I haven't heard the term before. I listen to a number of actual play podcasts of call of Cthulhu that I think have "literary merit" (Into the Darkness specifically), but wikipedia makes it seem like litRPGs are a different thing entirely?
If I wanted to learn more, are there any specific works or authors or creators to look into?
ItтАЩs kind of like making your book into a role playing game. I interviewed Shirtaloon who is one of the more prolific writers in this genre if you want to read that here: https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/shirtaloon
I also interviewed Zogarth, another prolific LitRPG author here: https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/zogarth
Hope that helps!
I'll check those out, thanks.
In terms of story-games, I'm actually working on a visual novel engine as a hobby project to teach a friend to program. I'm also friends with some people who have had successful kickstarters for their visual novels. It's neat stuff, I learned about visual novels about a year ago.
Since games with stories are harder to make than stories alone (assuming equal effort and skill put into the writing in both cases), there's less competition in the gaming world, and it's easier to stand out there. So we see, for instance, that indie games on steam are about 500x-1000x more likely to pay their creators a good living than indie books on amazon (I made some spreadsheets, I think it's maybe 1/10 or 1/20 vs something depressing like 1/10000 for books). I suspect it's almost entirely a difference of scarcity
I'll look closer at 'litRPGs'!
Whoa fascinating! I suspect youтАЩre right about scarcity (Amazon definitely isnтАЩt that!)