Why developers could do with reading a good book
Back when I was studying Victorian literature there was a seminar based on Mills & Boon and the art of writing to a market. Like most students of literature I was quick to dismiss the genre because a) I wasn’t the sort of reader who cared for heaving breasts and stallions being ridden by jodhpur wearing banking executives and b) I thought that sort of literature was “literature”; churned out for people who didn’t care what they read.
Ah, youth.
Luckily that same seminar set me right on how complex a craft the writing of Mills & Boon literature is. Sure it channelled great writers such as Emily Bronte but it did so knowingly and with a very clear understanding of a target market. The execution is also carried out by writers who can, y’know, write. Properly. They are clever, talented authors who know how to structure a novel and deliver total entertainment to their readership.
And by strange coincidence, I just saw this article.
Mills & Boon is targetted, commercial writing.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Anyone browsing through Waterstones these days (or watching ITV2) can’t have escaped what seems to be a glut of book covers featuring pale men, blood red roses and even paler women. It’s a style designed to signal that if you enjoyed Twilight by Stephanie Myers then you’ll love anything else in the “range”. Vampire fiction is hot property.
Like Mills & Boon though, it’s not the only range on the block. YA (young adult) fiction has many ranges appealing to many different readers (with a great deal of crossover appeal too).
And like Mills & Boon, these books are targetted, commercial and created by very talented writers.
Which got me thinking about how this approach works when it comes to creating games. Which it doesn’t.
Unfortunately.
Otherwise we’d be seeing some interesting games right now that tapped into this demand.
Development schedules, a desire for “originality”, costs, procedures – the list of why not to react to the market can be endless.
But what if games could react? What if a team of developers decided that instead of chasing the latest technology they would release games based on a simpler model which could be turned around within six months and be more focussed on engaging existing or potential gamers in the worlds they want to be engaged in.
Imagine a game based on the Max Payne engine. It has the right sort of feel and functionality to be host for a Vampire game. Why can’t that be repurposed to allow for different characters and a different storyline every six months? I know the reasons why it isn’t. But what are the reasons why it can’t be?
A new development model allowing for game creators to dovetail their skills with those of the productive YA author could be exciting. It could develop a market for YA games that isn’t based on what a hardcore, live with games every day of my life developer sees as quality but rather based on the interests and aspirations of a generation who might want different things from their gaming time.
And yes, Head First has plenty of ideas what those things might be 
I don’t think the game industry needs any convincing of the need to react to the market. Every time a popular game storms there are a glut of copies (GTA, God of War, Gran Turismo, etc etc), and sequels dominate everything (Fifa 2010 isn’t based on the year, it’s a release number…).
The rebirth of originality sparked by XBLA/indie dev is welcome, even if it means 20 versions of Geometry Wars.
I know, but you said it in your examples – it’s reacting to what is popular within itself. So when a racing game becomes popular you get more racing games. That’s not how you expand a market, it’s how you saturate a market. Games could be learning from how other industries capitalise on trends and they could learn from what those trends are.
My first career was in computer games publishing; after a good few years I moved across to book publishing.
I did well in book publishing because many of the skills I’d learned from the gaming world were new and exciting in the publishing world: my attitude to work was a lot different, too; I was much more proactive and willing to take risks than many of the people I worked with in my early book-publishing days.
Which is why it seems strange to me to hear you saying that the games business should look to book publishing now. I’m not disagreeing with you: I think you make a few good points here. It’s just interesting, isn’t it, how two such disparate industries circle round after one another. Twenty years ago gaming was showing book publishing how to discover new markets, and reach them in innovative ways: now, according to your premise, it’s forgotten how to do that and could relearn the skill by following the book-publishers’ example.
I completely agree with you Jane. And I think the way video game marketing works still has a lot to offer other industries (especially book publishing). My point is that books are great at producing episodic content for young adults and games, on the whole, are not.