"Honestly, I think many games wouldn't make compelling novels," Karpyshyn says. According to him, there are many aspects inherent to games - most notably their interactive nature - that make it difficult to translate them to other, more linear forms of storytelling. Yet that didn't stop him from writing books based on the PC and Xbox 360 RPG Mass Effect, also developed by BioWare. For Karpyshyn, that game was a special circumstance. "The reason the Mass Effect novels worked so well was the depth of the universe we created for the games," he says. "At BioWare, we spent a full year developing the Mass Effect galaxy before we even began work on the story of the game. By laying the groundwork for such a rich, widespread setting, we opened up the possibility to tell all sorts of stories beyond the plot of the game."
Much like Star Wars, the Mass Effect mythology encompassed a vast array of alien species, planets and technologies, punctuated by dozens of interesting characters and events. Creating a universe like this clearly lends itself well to different types of storytelling, literature included. There were many characters and events the game only touched on briefly that beg for further exploration. However, as Karpyshyn explains, most games don't feature that kind of fully fleshed-out game world, making the transition difficult. Instead, many authors are forced to slavishly follow the events of a particular game, often with unsatisfactory results.
If a successful author of game-based novels feels that way, it's no wonder that the sub-genre has trouble garnering much respect, and why I order them online, eliminating any embarrassing book store encounters. Even among the gaming community, these books often elicit a negative reaction. "Game-based novels are difficult. If you stick too close to the original material, it's tedious," Jonathan Gronli, the resident game novel reviewer at GamerTell, told me. "If you have it too different, you risk losing the feel of the game."
In addition to this, another damaging aspect of game novels tends to be the actual quality of writing. It seems that even those gamers who do read these books do so only because they are so heavily invested in the fictional universe created by the games, rather than an appreciation for well crafted fiction. "Game novels are a curiosity more than anything else," freelance game journalist Troy Goodfellow explained. "The Baldur's Gate novels, for example, are epically laughable. None approach literature, and I can think of few that I would recommend to somebody who wasn't already deeply invested in the game."
Interestingly, the third installment of those "laughable" books was the second novel Karpyshyn ever wrote. However, as he explains on his site, "the problem with the whole Baldur's Gate trilogy was that the novels were based directly on the story of the BioWare computer games." It also didn't help that the first two books were written by a different author. But this hits on a key point: Game novels that are successful and connect with fans in a meaningful manner tend to be based in the same universe as their source material, but cover different narrative territory.
