From Bitchery reader Vuir: “Romance novels have highly-developed creative formulae that celebrate passion and commitment” and according to Colin Rowsell, video game companies should hire romance writers. It starts off with Rowsell’s impressions of Victoria Dahl and moves on to the following recommendation:
So you have high output with frequent, addictive variations on the same theme. You have episodic content. You have buyer lock-in. You have nimble adaptation to changing technology. Sound like the wet-dream fantasies of any industry we know? And to sweeten the deal, most romance readers are women. If videogame publishers want to extend their reach beyond the standard 18- to 34-year-old male demographic, they might want to form development teams with fewer gamers and more romance novelists.
From Hajen: Micro fiction- the romance version. I love the steampunk one.
And from Joanne Rendell, who is unquestionably awesome and the best part of HuffPo since it started huffing: Romancing the Academy profiles Eric Selinger, Sarah Frantz, Pamela Regis, and Eloisa James, and, as usual, Rendell nails it: “the story of scholars and the romance world coming together, through grants and mutual support, is having its own very happy ending.”
Fantastic article on HuffPost—thank you for sharing it. All of the admiration and background info with none of the sneer and slash and not so thinly veiled insults. Read this and then read the USA Today article: quite a difference in tone. I won’t even mention the review in WaPo LOL … some ladies over on AAR postulated that maybe Ms. Corrigan was a bit envious of Nora F’ing Roberts’s success. Who knows?
But this was really exciting to read—you got a sense that these professors are embarked on a fantastic voyage—who knows where it will end?
Longtime lurker, but I have to comment… I am an aspiring romance writer, but I also got hired (on the strength of a romance manuscript and with a little help from nepotism) to work on a (woefully cancelled) story-driven video game for the (now-defunct) Ensemble Studios, creators of Age of Empires and Halo Wars. It was a creative-mind-blowing experience. Games NEED story, and they are still in their ‘silent film’ infancy, waiting for the great dialogue and compelling stories that real writers can provide. It’s a business of hardcore problem-solving and endless creative possibilities. I hope I’ll have more opportunities to write for games in the future, mingled with more romance novels, of course!
The first link about video games is not a surprise. I’ve been thinking the same thing. I actively play video games and in a lot of cases the story is an after thought to the strategy and challenge they want to place into the game. Games that I love have a great story (like Syberia and Syberia II) and if you look at games were girls have a larger demographic say for instance the Sims the games are largely storybased (In the sims you create your own story and since it’s life simulation there can be a lot of LURRRVE if the player chooses to.) While I don’t think the video game industry will pull in more women with romance novelist, I do believe that games that work on story and take on people who know story structure as well as gaming strategy. there needs to be more games that go beyond street gangs and war.
I think it’s funny that all these industries who pander to mostly male audiences such as video games and comic books are suddenly looking to broaden their demo with more women.
I agree that a partnership between romance and videogames could be mutually beneficial. I recently blogged about the potential for science fiction romance videogames, or at least for SF-themed videogames to have more character driven stories with a splash of romance. Lots of good stuff to exploit.
MASS EFFECT is one such game already out. I’d love to see some romance authors get in on the action.
The article on video games is really brilliant. As I’m reading it I’m sitting at school with my husband, who is working on a Master’s Degree in Interactive Entertainment… otherwise known as video game making. We were just talking the other day about the VAST audience that could be tapped if a successful collaboration could be created between the romance and video game industries. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a HUGE J.D. Robb fan, and therefore doesn’t share the average male disdain for romance novels. He thinks it’s probably not going to be the big studios that do make a success of it though, he thinks it will be an independent that will come pretty much out of left field. I tend to agree with him.