Play in words: Why novel authors become video game writers-and reverse Gaming

II have worked in games for a little more than 15 years, and the main thing I would say at that time is that it is a rather annoying mission to explain at the parties. People often say something like: “Oh, I'm not really playing”, which is certainly a strange thing to tell a game designer after the introduction. I don't really eat croissants, but that's not the first thing I do when I meet a patisser.

One of the joys to publish my first novel last year was the opportunity to avoid all of this and say: “Oh, I'm a writer.” I wrote a novel; I work on another; Job done, the conversation can continue. Nobody says: “Oh, I'm not really reading books”, although it is at least that likely.

It has become clear to me that I am not alone when changing between the two media. Why is that? Well, for many people it is money. Writing novels is a notoriously difficult way to make a living, and novels have always torn careers out of everything. In a report in 2022 commissioned by the Author's' licensing and collecting company (ALCS), professional authors received a median of 7,000 GBP per year after their letter. Mallory Marlowe is a romance clerk – her love of your debut and other conspiracies made the bestseller list of the United States last year – and her day job for video games is part of what makes this possible. “Fortunately, I have a consistent salary check,” she says, “what is advantageous because the payment structures are not exactly sustainable when publishing.”

At the same time, playwriters also have a hard time – GDC's report by GDC 2025 The report of the games of the games that had been released last year that every fifth narrative designer and writer had been released. Of course, some game authors are looking for opportunities elsewhere.

Sometimes authors even find the shapes that fed into each other with a direct relationship between the two. Harry Josephine Giles' game Raik, written in Scots and English, feels like a forerunner of her book Deep Wheel Orcadia, a verses novel that was written in the Orkney dialect, which won the Arthur C Clarke Award 2022. And Jon Ingold, co -founder of Narrative Game Studio Inkle (80 days, identified!), Published two novels in the world of Studios Game Heaven's Vault, with a third coming in May. Inkle published the books itself; For Ingold it was a way to write it to spend more time in the world of the game, even though he says: “The action in the novel was more difficult to construct. In a book, the protagonist needs motivated motivation, or a player is simply examined because the world exists”.

When I ask all the writers of the novel, I know what the biggest difference between the shapes is for them, I am surprised at how different the answers are. For some it is a question of the process – novels can serve as a publication from the compromises of the cooperation, while games offer a break from sitting in a room. Joe Dunhorne (sub-marine, the adulterer) wrote novels, poetry and finally a memoir (children of radium), and a few years ago he did a large number of work on a big budget video game that was canceled without ever being announced publicly. Although the game did not work, he said: “After the loneliness and madness of the novel I was relieved to go to an office every day. I loved working with games, especially with games.

Sharna Jackson wrote children's novels such as high -rise buildings and the Nine Night Mystery. She also worked on Diegute Fabrik's post-apocalypse Mystery Game Saltsea Chronicles and an audio experience for Yoto. For them, the main difference is that in most games they “many, many words that may never be read or heard – everything depends on the paths that their players lead through experience”. Some of her best works can end up in the “rare results and Easter eggs” that only a few players will meet. Mallory Marlowe now talks about how novels, “a strange amount of independence”, to the authors who are used to working in games, while novel authors take a while until they can get used to creating game stories that work for players with very different investments in writing. “Some people just want to push buttons and cause trouble,” she says. “Others will deal with everything at the level of stories”.

Sooner or later, almost everyone I speak to brings the radically different cultural status of games and books – their equivalent of my complaint about people at parties. Jim Munroe (we are raccoons, unmanned) has been writing games and books for more than 25 years and he talks about how books are culturally valued in a way that games are not. “Despite the low status of games in games, the creators are games,” he says. Naomi Alderman, author of Disodedience and the Future, reflects some of these experiences. There was a week in which both their novel The Power and their game run zombies! (Co-Created with six start) won awards. The award for your book made the papers, even the front page of the Times of India, while the zombies run! Award hardly made the specialist games a press.

But although everyone talks about the different positions that have games in the wider world, not everyone reacts to it with my somewhat uncomfortable irritation. Munroe says that this means that games tend to draw creators with a more independent series. Marlowe enjoys the way people are fascinated and confused by the idea of ​​playing, and enjoys the follow-up talks. And for Harry Josephine Giles, the position that takes games is part of what makes them happy. She points out that games are still young, compared to the novel, its conventions less. Early English novel authors such as Aphra Behn and Laurence stars were able to mess up more, print one side completely black and press on the still forming edges of a novel. Nowadays only the most experimental novels have this freedom that “combined” from their place in culture. Games – new and with a lower cultural status – remain formable. In addition, as Dunthorne says: “Writing is often quite far into the list of priorities in the game design – and that's okay. Games are not novels.”

Obviously, the aspiring generation of young writers grew up as native video players, so they are ready and able to switch between the two cultural forms without finding it strange, and without seeing as necessarily “better” than the others. And sure, if you work in games, there are still people at parties who will say: “Oh, I'm not really playing them.” But sometimes that could mean that they do something stranger and more surprising while nobody looks.