I grew up with various role-playing games. I’ve also been one to appreciate video games on a variety of platforms. So, it’s a natural progression that I would include them when developing The Witcham Chronicles. In fact, there is a wide range of benefits to expanding into the gaming market.
That is as long as you have time and money to put into the process.
In reality, books and games have had quite a symbiotic relationship, especially over the last 30 years or so. And some of them have been exceptionally successful, such as the Witcher series. Well, that was before Henry Cavill left Netflix.
What Are Some Benefits of Creating Games?
As a writer, you have all kinds of mediums to explore. Publishing books is but a single aspect of an overarching career. In this case, I’m talking about the benefits of writing and developing games, especially for those of you who have published a fantasy or sci-fi series.
Of course, you don’t have to dive into creating games for your books. However, there are some incredible bonuses if you have the time, money, and talent to write some good scripts, scenes, and dialogue.
Some of the benefits I can think of off the top of my head include:
Writing Scenes, Dialogue, and Quests
When creating something like role-playing games, there is a lot of writing involved. Scenes, dialogue, and questlines all have a story behind them. Depending on the type of game being created, it can be just as involved as writing a novel.
The only real difference is that you’re directing something on screen instead of in someone’s imagination.
Game writing is a viable career. In fact, the median for game writers is around the $77,000-per-year mark. That is as long as you can get hired by some great developers.
In this case, though, I am doing all of the heavy lifting myself. If it turns out to be a worthwhile venture, I’ll surely hire some help. But in the meantime, I’m having a great time writing all of the elements of the game module I’m creating.
Reaching Another Audience
Readers are not your only audience for a well-written story. By expanding into the gaming market, you can easily reach an incredible number of people who will appreciate your tale.
This is especially true if you turn the book or series into an RPG of some kind. As of June 2024, 22% of gamers played RPGs in the United States. And when you consider how many people play video games, that’s an insane number of folks.
You don’t have to turn the game into an RPG. Virtually any style can fit into a variety of book genres. But from what I’ve seen, RPGs are probably the easiest to manage when it comes to converting novels to games.
Think about the success of The Witcher. First, it was a series of short stories and then turned into a series of books. Then, it was picked up and turned into games. Sometime thereafter, Netflix turned The Witcher into a television series. Who knows what will happen to your books?
Marketing Back and Forth
One aspect you should consider is how the game and the books are cross-marketable. That means you can market both as an extension of the other to make more sales for either medium.
Of course, developing both books and games will chew up a lot of your time. However, the end results might be worth it if you’re able to create something players and readers can sink their teeth into.
The trick is to create either one without spoiling the other.
The games I’m designing can stand alone if someone doesn’t read the books. However, the way the references are placed may convince players to read the books to get more of the story, and vice-versa.
Expanding World-Building Techniques
Building a world from scratch is an amazing feat. Setting up a game using that same world can offer all kinds of ideas for its expansion. You might even get a few ideas that bring your world into a different light.
For instance, my module takes place in a different region from Kingmaker. However, the story moves closer to the beginning of the next book, Fury. In that time, I’ve fleshed out characters, hills, forests, and mountain ranges I didn’t think of in the past.
Now, I’m adding those elements to the World Anvil page to keep track of the ideas as well as the history of those locations.
The bottom line is that creating the games helps me organize and flesh out a lot of ideas that either didn’t make it into the books or never existed prior. The result is how quickly the world is coming to life for future books and games.
Earning Additional Income
Another benefit of creating games from your stories is the prospect of making a few extra bucks. How much you make will depend on a plethora of factors such as genre, marketing, quality, and storytelling.
In other words, don’t bank on becoming the next triple-A gaming company. In reality, roughly two-thirds of indie game developers make less than $10,000 in total. On the flip side, the top 1% of indie developers have raked in more than $7 million!
Among the best-performing are RPGs.
So, don’t go into the idea of creating games that are going to make you rich. Think of them more as marketing tools that may generate a few extra bucks per month while helping you highlight the books.
Expanding a Series or Title Further
Creating games for your titles may help you expand it even further than you initially planned. Instead of a one-off book, you could find yourself amidst a series of games that center around that storyline.
That is as long as that is where you want to take the novel. There’s nothing wrong with not developing a game based on your ideas.
As I work on the module for the Witcham series, I’m constantly coming up with new ideas that expand well beyond the Witcham area. These are game and story ideas for details of the world that would stand apart from the events of The Witcham Chronicles.
For me, setting up this one module has already spawned a dozen ideas for future books and series.
Creating Games Is Not for Everyone, and That’s OK
Now, I’m not saying that you should create games for your books. It’s not going to be for everyone, and not all authors have the capacity to develop games in general. It’s merely a background I already have to a small degree, which holds a great deal of interest for me.
Perhaps when you reach a certain level of success, someone will approach you for the rights to make those games. A good example of this is The Witcher as well as the Harry Potter series.
A lot of developers can make some breathtaking games from the books on which they’re based. And that’s kind of my point, really.
Just because you don’t have an interest doesn’t mean a developer won’t come along and put together an amazing virtual experience. But before that can happen, you’ll need to get someone’s attention.
Usually, game adaptations are reserved for titles that have become insanely popular. And for a self-published author, that is an extremely difficult level of success to acquire. That’s part of why I’ve decided to do it myself.
Scheduling a Block of Time Specifically for Game Development
So, how am I going to finish the Neverwinter module in time for Fury’s release? By dedicating at least a two-hour block of time to its development per week. I would rather schedule it every day, but I have too much going on to sacrifice that much time.
I highly doubt I’ll have the module completed before Fury is published, unfortunately. I am nearly done writing Fury and the module has just started coming together. Still, I’ll keep working on it – mostly because I find creating the module relaxing.
Even spending two hours per week learning how to develop a game in something like Unity or Unreal Engine would be a great use of time in my opinion. For now, though, I’m going to finish the module for Neverwinter.
Once it’s done, I’ll then decide how much further I want to take creating games for the books.
As it stands right now, though, it’s easily one of the things on my to-do list before the end of 2025. At least the part about learning how to build a game to sell on Steam, anyway. Some developers take years to publish a great game, and I’m not going to crank one out in three months.
No matter how you slice it, making games based on my books would be something awesome to add to my resume.
Bridging Games and Books Can Be Fun
No matter what I decide about the aspect of gaming, I’m first and foremost a writer. I’ll continue writing and publishing books until I can no longer draw breath. But I think it would be pretty cool to bridge the mediums in fun and interesting ways.
In my world, it’s just another way to market the books while potentially making a few bucks on the side.
At the end of the day, it’s all about having a body of work I can look back on with a feeling of pride. I’m already immensely proud of what I’ve accomplished, and I am far from being done.
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