I'm putting final touches to my four books this week, and Jamie is just finishing up on Avenger. While these new ebook editions are substantially unchanged from their earlier paperback incarnations, we are adding extra material. Heart of Ice has a new alternate ending (thanks to Romain Baudry for pointing out the need for that) which gave me the always-welcome opportunity to write another hommage to Blade Runner, and the other VR books also have a bunch of new sections. Once Upon a Time in Arabia even has an all-new prologue to reflect the change in tone and title.
The biggest bonus comes in the Way of the Tiger books, however. Because the ebooks don't feature dice-rolling (which regular readers will know is one of my pet hates in digital media) Jamie is writing all the moves and outcomes for the fights. So instead of a 3 and a 5, you get:
You crouch as if to wrestle with Gorobei who tenses, ready to throw his extra weight against yours, but then you jab unexpectedly towards his midriff - and hit home. Gorobei gasps, winded, but he's tough. He won't give up that easily.These books are all about the narrative, you see. So despite Jamie's howls of protest, we're keeping him chained to the desk until he's written the flavour text for every single fight.
I could show you some of the colour art, but let's not spoil all the surprises. Let's just say that if Jeremy Clarkson doesn't end up wanting his own Manta car, I'll be very surprised.
Can't think of a better pair of emissaries to remind the big publishers of what they're missing with interactive storytelling.
ReplyDeleteI always enjoyed the prologue to Twist of Fate though - something to do with pinning the Vizier's cape to the wall with an arrow as I made my escape. Hope that still features :)
On a side note, do you see much difference between what you and Jamie do with IF, and what Telltale have done with the Walking Dead game?
Well, the biggest difference is that Telltale had a couple of million dollars and a world-famous franchise...
DeleteI'd love to do something like Walking Dead. I don't mean zombies, or indeed any franchise, and I don't necessarily need a million dollars for it. But what I've been banging on about in games for a decade now is that the structure of the traditional adventure game could be used, not to agitate the reader with puzzles about how to stack crates, but to make moral choices, forge relationships with characters, and interact on the level of trust, emotional investment and story immersion.
I did a little bit of that with Frankenstein. A tiny bit. Would I like to do more? You bet. It doesn't need fancy 3D graphics - I can get just as involved in comics like B.P.R.D. as in megabudget Marvel movies. Unfortunately I think most interactive books (or whatever we want to call them) are going to get sidetracked by the "literary art installation" route for a while. The book publishers are mostly too frightened to take on other entertainment media head-on, and they needn't be.
Really interesting stuff Dave. Could we talk a little further via email? info@fabledlands.net doesn't seem to be working.
DeleteThat's odd. Hmm, well I'd love to talk but I don't want to bandy my email address about. Tweet me @MirabilisDave, I'll follow, and we can DM.
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DeleteHi James - I'm just reading 39 Steps at the moment, so I shall do as Hannay would and cover all tracks :-) Look forward to talking to you one-to-one.
DeleteSorry - VR, not IF. Don't know what I was thinking there. Infinite fantasy?
ReplyDeleteI never had the chance to read Way of the Tiger. So... this is the time!
ReplyDeleteI hope this year will be a good year for gamebooks!!
Ikaros
Must admit I never read it myself, but now that the iPad is going to handle all the stats for me, I guess it's time to set that right.
DeleteHuzzah! Where do I pre-order and... wait a second... it says here "will be available on tablets and smartphones." What about PCs and Macs?
ReplyDeleteNo problem. Just download the free e-reader plug-in for Firefox and you're sorted. You will need to enable Javascript (which is turned off by default) by clicking on the cog at bottom left to access Preferences > Miscellaneous > Enable Javascript. And lo, a world of e-gamebooks is thereby opened unto you.
ReplyDeletePhew, that's a relief! I'll go back to being all "huzzah" now.
DeleteCan you keep Jamie chained up until he finishes Undeadwood as well please Dave? Just some food and water every few hours.
ReplyDeleteHe'd have to start it first, Mike! I suspect that's one we may never get to see. A shame, because from the plot outline I think it would be great: undead Aztec priestesses, immortal Conquistadores, ambiguous Tarantino-like morality... Hell, if Jamie put it up on Kickstarter it'd net a packet. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteJust noticed this reply. I'm really sad to hear about it, I thought "Undeadwood" was a priority, it'd be a great shame if the book didn't become reality, and a wasted occasion to give visibility to the whole relaunch project.
DeleteWhat can I say? It was a priority. I thought it would have made a great gamebook. I wanted to publish it and I was looking forward to reading it as a fan, too. Fabled Lands LLP put a writer on it for two months but nothing got written. I'll post up the story notes here on the blog so that if anybody else feels like taking it up, they can.
DeleteHi Dave... Just a quick question (apologies if it's been answered before): Will we see print versions of these gamebooks? Some, all, none? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteHi Richard. I hope so, but it depends on the economics. We can offer the Fabled Lands books via print on demand because (1) we sell only via Amazon and (2) we make a very small profit per book. But an established publisher like Osprey will have to supply to bookshops too, and that means higher prices because the bookshop expects a discount of ~50%. This is why bookshops are doomed, but as long as they hang on it means the Infinite IF books would have to be sold at about £10 each (given that the uncertain market would necessitate using POD) and I don't think most people will pay that much. So I would like to have a print edition too, and in fact I have already typeset them, but the numbers may just not add up. I'll do what I can, though, you can be sure if that.
DeleteThanks for the reply, Dave. Those numbers are quite scary! Seems POD is the way to go whenever possible. What about Way of the Tiger? Are there plans to publish physical copies of those?
DeleteIt's probably fair to say that I am the one and only champion for print editions, Richard. That probably means that if they happen, all the typography, design and print set-up will have to be done by me. And the editing, in the case of the WOTT books, which need a lot of work. So I will keep pushing for it, but it will have to wait until I have the time. I have slightly more enthusiasm for doing all that work on the VR titles, naturally.
DeleteThanks for the reply Dave. I'd love to see WotT in print format, sat alongside Fabled Lands and Lone Wolf on my bookshelf - hope you can persuade others regarding it! If you need any help convincing Jamie then I'm happy to throw assorted dice at him! ;-)
DeleteRichard, I'd love for you to throw some dice at Jamie anyway. (But be warned: I gave him some real-life shuriken recently.)
DeleteI find that despite the ongoing revolution in digital publishing, print media still has a huge advantage over virtual media when it comes to gift-giving; physical media is technology-independant and remains an inherently more substantial, rewarding and "special" purchase than virtual media. Would I give a relative a PDF of a premium gamebook series such as Blood Sword, Way Of The Tiger as a birthday present? Probably not. Would I give them a set of books? Definitely. Likewise, in computer gaming I am more inclined to give a boxed game rather than a software download. I think this is a contributing factor to the new golden age that boardgames are enjoying.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, and that's exactly why I would like there to be a print edition of these books. It's tricky to convince the accountants, though. Print versions might only sell two or three thousand copies each; with POD that doesn't even cover typography and cover art costs. So the accountants tend to think it isn't worth it. I suspect the knock-on effect is important - somebody gets the print version, maybe as a gift, and they tell other people about it, who then buy the ebook. But I'm finding it hard enough to convince publishers of the value of bundling deals, so I can't make any promises on this score.
DeleteThe advent of digital-only publishing has caused me to ask myself the question: why do I place such importance on books as physical objects? The answer is not immediately obvious. I am not a luddite; I regard the essential part of a book to be its content, not its medium of delivery; and I recognise that an e-book allows for all manner of artistically valid technological enhancements and flexibilities/interactivities that are simply not possible in print. So, I should logically be cheerleading the e-book revolution. Why am I therefore not very interested? I’d like to think it’s something deeper than physical books being literally tangible, but that is probably somewhere near the heart of it. If, at this moment in time, I had no books and print did not exist as a format, then I would of course be buying e-books. However, I do carry the baggage of a very large collection of printed books, to the extent that I passed the point many years ago (long before e-books ever existed) of having amassed far more books than I will ever read, unless I live to at least 500; and I have still continued buying them. So, they take up space, sitting on bookshelves, mostly unread. Any of them could potentially be pulled out and read or re-read at any time, and obviously the same could be said of an e-book sitting on a virtual bookshelf on some e-reading device, probably with greater convenience, whilst on the move, etc., and yet… it’s *not* the same. If I imagine buying, say, 1000 more printed books in the next few years, then I’ll be perfectly happy with the increasingly cramped living conditions that their physical presence will entail. In comparison, buying 1000 e-books that exist invisibly in a gadget or somewhere on a cloud has lots of advantages and almost no appeal.
DeleteMy own feelings are pretty much the same as yours, Graham. Obviously we don't only buy books for the content or I wouldn't find myself tripping over the piles of them that don't fit on my increasingly sagging bookshelves. A publisher who ignores print is on dangerous ground - they like the thought of the big profit margins of ebooks, but ebook prices are plummeting and people cherish something they can hold. I'll do a post about this soon.
DeleteIs anything going to be rewritten for the rushed second half of "Inferno!"?
ReplyDeleteI'm just going to betray my ignorance if I try to talk about this, as I have yet to play Way of Tiger. (I will correct that now that I can play the books on my iPad without having to roll dice and make notes.) We do have plans to continue the series, which I know ended with Avenger's death in a giant cobweb, but I'll leave it to Jamie to say more.
DeleteWell, you've actually answered my question without realizing it!
DeleteHappy to help - however I did :-)
DeleteThe fact that the guys want to continue the series is good news, because a big part of the problem with "Inferno!" is how the second act abruptly wraps things up, leaving so many plot threads dangling, *and* leaves the player character in a 99% certain death situation. As you can imagine, it's not a nice closure at all.
DeleteIf they are continuing the series, then, though, the problems with "Inferno!" may just be rectified in subsequent books.
Forgot to add: I'm looking forward to these gamebooks. Currently, most of the interactive gamebooks are either "choose your own adventure" style stuff that are too tame for my liking (I want violence!) or those horribly unbalanced Tin Man Gamebooks.
We got violence, that's for sure. The proposed sequel to Inferno is by David Walters (co-designer of the WOTT RPG) and is a really involving storyline that gets Avenger out of that web in a way that I found convincing. It's certainly not, "And with one bound he/she was free..."
DeleteOriginally I think Mark and Jamie just got tired of the series and decided to do a Reichenbach. And possibly Mark had had enough of pseudo-Japanese characters running around in his overtly Tolkienesque world. But the voice of fandom is like the voice of Black Bolt - and if it speaks, Avenger will return.
Dave, not to be a broken record, but any news on the new digital editions of Fabled Lands?
ReplyDeleteI wish I could say, Alberto. I keep seeing artwork from Spirit for the first app, and it looks nice, but I have no idea when that will be released - and of course it only covers The War-Torn Kingdom, which Megara have already done. Originally we stipulated there would be a new FL app every six months but I can't see that happening now - so, if I'm being totally honest, the answer is "sometime this year" but I'm crossing my fingers as I say it!
DeleteThe art by Spirit looks far more faithful and engaging than the anime stuff Megara did, imho. Sad to hear that because Megara released their app on IOS, Spirit won't be able to do the same? Is this the case for the foreseeable future?
DeleteHave a missed out on a website? I have been trying to suss out Spirit's website for a while but can't seem to find it!
DeleteMr Echols, there will be an iOS version from Spirit. The delay is not because of Megara's version, but simply that Spirit haven't finished the first app yet. We did expect it last summer, and in fact the contract has now lapsed and will need to be renegotiated and renewed, but that's all I can tell you. Fabled Lands LLP's business manager, Tim Gummer, is handling all that.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't aware that the Spirit artwork had been released online. Some will like it, others will prefer Megara's. Personally I like both.
Alberto, the only website I kniw of for Spirit is www.spirit-entgroup.com but there's only a holding page. Nothing to see there.
I'm just basing my opinion on the WIP Venefax art you showed a while back. Great to hear Spirit will be releasing an IOS app too!
DeleteI'd forgotten about that. Well, they have got some truly amazing art. Yesterday I saw an amazing aerial view of Caran Baru that is like hang-gliding over the walls.
DeleteI am really looking forward to Spirit game. :) As for artwork, would love to have some link to pics though ultimately, no arts can be compared to Russ's arts for Fabled Lands.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more, Joe, and in fact the best FL app artwork is all based on Russ's original drawings. I think Megara paid him a royalty to use them and I assume Spirit will too. And richly deserved, as he is undeniably the visualizing genius behind the FL books.
DeleteWill the FL app be on Android as well? Not a big fan of the Apple corporation, personally. To put it mildly!
ReplyDeleteAndroid, iOS, you name it. Typed on my iPad ;-)
Deletehow did i miss this. definitely supporting you dave =)
ReplyDeleteTAKE ALL MY MONEY
Thank you, Gustave, but all I need right now is £3.99 per ebook or £7.99 for the paperbacks. If and when we do a Kickstarter for something, though, that blank cheque could come in handy :-)
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