by Jess Howe

Created on: October 20, 2010

How Video Games can Influence Novels

As a writer of novels and stories myself, I can definitely say that I'm often inspired by gameplay. I personally like to both explore what creative minds out there have come up with, looking at the worlds that they've made and the concepts that they have come up with, as well as testing out character ideas of my own. For instance, in college I used to play Mylanders, a text-based Online RPG on weekends, and I created a number of characters there for which some I now have published stories.

I mentioned Mylanders above, which was and still is very freestyle. You can create a character, just about anything you want, and send it into an "inn," where you get to see how your character will interact with other characters other people have created. Mylanders was the first game I played where I got inspired to try out different kinds of characters, to see how they could be fleshed out more. It was there I made a centaur filly who was a klutz, a cloud spirit who really didn't have much goal in life because it was a baby, and a variant on someone I'd been fiddling with as a character I'd created years ago. I did one or two questing adventures with people there, during which I got even more new ideas for things to write. Now I have many of those characters as actual ones for stories I've published or am in the process of still writing. 

Spore on the other hand is, while irritating to me because of crashes, fascinating as well. When I've played that, it's often because I get to see what combinations of body parts I can put together and make as a successful creature. That's been tremendously useful for my science fiction writing, inspiring me to think outside my own boxes and try new combinations of body parts and creatures on my own. Within the game, I also love making cities, figuring out what my culture is going to be like and how that will influence what buildings I create - I had one culture who jumped and flew more than it walked, so it made sense to me that they should have buildings that have windows mostly on the top floors, and heli-pad-type areas for each house where the entrance was rather than a door on the ground. That race is one that has inspired a couple of story ideas still in the works.

I play World of Warcraft these days, and for me that one is one of the most successful with regards to working on my worldbuilding and characterization. World of Warcraft has taught me that I need to make my worlds more detailed

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