I'm writing a book right now (~80k words, first draft finished, going through editing right now) and I got the idea of making an RPG maker game based off of it as sort of a promotion, assuming it gets published. What do fellow gamers think of this idea? (assume, for the sake of argument, that neither the game nor the book completely suck)

Are the two markets pretty incompatible? Will gamers like the game and ignore the book? Will book lovers like the book but ignore the game? Will it just seem like advertising? Does it already suck just because it's a game based on something? Should I scrap the whole idea before even touching RPG maker? If the timing matches up, would it be a neat idea to sell them both in a bundle together?

1 decade ago*

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It would really depend on the book. I have a bunch of suggestions, but those would depend on the book too, so I didn't write them down. How you plan on publishing it would also matter.

1 decade ago
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Well, the plot of the book would definitely lend itself to a videogame, and the theme really works with a traditional jRPG. As for publishing, I was planning on doing the traditional, agent - editor - publisher route and hopefully getting a digital copy of it for kindle and storybundle type things.

So, if I got a digital copy of the book, I figured it would be a simple matter to distribute a digital copy of the game through the same channels.

1 decade ago
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Going the traditionally way is supposedly not the easy one, so good luck with that. Getting published with kindle would be a lot easier, from what I've read.
Hope you don't give up on your book, I know I often lose heart when editing drafts.

1 decade ago
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why not? I think it's a great idea. are you gonna use the book story as the game story too, 100% the same? or you'll make like "different point of view" in the game, or "before the story in the book". lot of games/movies are based of books as you know so don't be afraid ;)

1 decade ago
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Thanks for the encouragement! And that's actually a great question, I jumped to the idea of just copying the book verbatim and turning it into an RPG, but making a side story would be interesting... I think making it exactly like the book is a bit better for starters, since that cuts down on production time a lot when I already have a script written :P I could either make a much longer game based exactly on the book, or a separate story that would be much shorter, and I think longer might be better when it comes to RPGs at least.

1 decade ago
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This comment was deleted 1 year ago.

1 decade ago
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Interesting, but the main problem with books "becoming" video games is the space. A book allows you to put so much details, back story, backgrounds etc but a game (especially with rpg maker) will need some cuts. You can't spend 20 minutes of gameplay about one aspect of a character or even a twist because it can be boring at some point, but in a book well written, you have no "time limit". Game is for entertainment, so it needs to be fast and appealling.
It also depends on the genre of the book/game. Horror is reaaaaally nice on paper but it's very hard to get a good ambiance with RPGM imo.
Can you tell us more about your project please ? You have all my interest :p

1 decade ago
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Closed 1 decade ago by dovecoon.