LitRPG

[stevenpiziks]

I started writing fantasy 35 years ago. (Oi!) Back then, and right up until about ten years ago, it was death by rejection if you tried to set your novel in a video game. The awfulness of the movie TRON only reinforced this. You were also told to never, ever write a book set in a world created for a fantasy role-playing game on the grounds that the world will be too simplistic by nature, and editors gleefully rejected such books.

Now?

It's suddenly the cool kid on the block. People are rushing to imitate Dungeon Crawler Carl, and the market is becoming flooded with these books.

I think a part of it is that video games have become in recent years a lot more immersive. The games hire actual writers and build actual worlds and tell actual stories. We've come a long way since Atari's "Adventure" game had you move a little square around the TV screen.

I haven't tried writing it and don't intend to--I think the genre and setting are a crutch for writers who can't build worlds or plot effectively--but I don't begrudge Matt Dinniman and his character Carl their success at it. Anytime an author succeeds in this market, go them! What bothers me are the self-published imitators who flood the market with drek until you can't find anything worth reading.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

There have been fantasy stories and novels set in gameworlds, or riffs on gameworlds, nearly as far back as there have been gameworlds. It's just gotten more common over time. Christopher Stasheff had one back when I was in high school, decades ago. Plus some game publishers always had novels alongside their games.

Re: Thoughts

[stevenpiziks]

The Dragonlance books are probably the most famous examples of what you're talking about, yeah, but these books were still relatively rare, and the DL books were marketed as straight-up fantasy. I think the book READY PLAYER ONE probably kick-started the current LitRPG ... fad? We'll see how long it lasts.