The Design Process...
A couple of days ago I read a short review of my book in Edge magazine and I must admit that I was a little miffed that they'd missed the whole point behind the book.
There's an element to the writing in Edge at times which conveys a kind of "we know all this stuff so everyone else should" and this was very blatant in the review. Yes, there are chapters in the book that cover a lot of ground that gamers and developers may know already, but judging by the feedback I've received, there are a lot of readers who are grateful for the approach I've taken.
The biggest slant of the book was that it was written for writers who want to know about writing for games and I put that writing into the context of development.
There was, however, one bit of the review that got me thinking a great deal, for which I'm thankful. The review said that the best parts of the book was when I concentrated on the process itself - the dialogue chapter and the appendices are examples of this.
With that in mind I thought that if I could create a book in which I took the reader through my own creative process of writing and designing games and creating a game design as part of that process, perhaps that would be much more valuable for those within the industry. In a way it would be like my Developing Thoughts pieces, but with much more meat upon the bones.
This would be a project that could take a long time to do, (and I may release it a chapter at a time) but hopefully I can make it something that would give some insight to those interested.
There's an element to the writing in Edge at times which conveys a kind of "we know all this stuff so everyone else should" and this was very blatant in the review. Yes, there are chapters in the book that cover a lot of ground that gamers and developers may know already, but judging by the feedback I've received, there are a lot of readers who are grateful for the approach I've taken.
The biggest slant of the book was that it was written for writers who want to know about writing for games and I put that writing into the context of development.
There was, however, one bit of the review that got me thinking a great deal, for which I'm thankful. The review said that the best parts of the book was when I concentrated on the process itself - the dialogue chapter and the appendices are examples of this.
With that in mind I thought that if I could create a book in which I took the reader through my own creative process of writing and designing games and creating a game design as part of that process, perhaps that would be much more valuable for those within the industry. In a way it would be like my Developing Thoughts pieces, but with much more meat upon the bones.
This would be a project that could take a long time to do, (and I may release it a chapter at a time) but hopefully I can make it something that would give some insight to those interested.
Labels: Creative Process
posted by Steve | 11:41 AM
4 Comments:
I know what you mean about Edge. I was surprised (staggered, actually) that they didn't see anything original in Ghost Master - but then shortly afterwards the entire writing staff was fired, so I contented myself with schadenfreude. :)
Best wishes!
Thanks.
I remember when Revolution projects would get great write-ups during the preview stage and then get poor reviews out of line with all other reviews as if they were determined to be different on purpose.
"I thought that if I could create a book in which I took the reader through my own creative process of writing and designing games and creating a game design as part of that process"
Hello Steve. Just saw this post and wanted to say that I would find it useful. I was close to buying your "Writing for Games" book until I found it was geared toward writers in other mediums. When it was announced I had assumed it was along the lines of what you propose here.
The publisher, A&C Black, are not a specialist publisher of game related books like Charles River Media and so they wanted a book that was aimed more generally. Having said that, if you don't know how a writer fits into the development process at different stages, then it's likely to be of some help.
To illustrate the book from the publisher's standpoint, they got me to write an article for the magazine Writers' Forum, which will be in the March issue. Writers' Forum is a very broad based magazine and this is likely to be the first game related content it will contain.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home