Review of Character Development and Storytelling for Games (Game Development Series) (Paperback)

I've known Lee Sheldon for several years. He is one of the most pleasant and knowledgeable people I've met in the game industry, so I was very much looking forward to this book. Suffice it to say that I wasn't disappointed.

Writing for games has a lot in common with writing for other media (e.g., character and theme) and a lot that is unique to itself. Lee does an excellent job of covering both aspects - so much so that I would recommend this book to writers with absolutely no interest in interactive media. (I've read my share of writing books over the years, and this one stands at the top of the heap.)

Of particular interest to me were chapters 3-6 on character and chapter 14 on modular storytelling, the most elegant way I've seen of organizing a linear experience into a non-linear structure. The book also does an excellent job of discussing storytelling in massively multiplayer games and provides extensive background material, much of which is intended to set up and justify Lee's modular storytelling model - rather more background than necessary, actually, since you should be sold on the need for something like modular storytelling long before he gets around to explaining it.

The book's does have a few faults. For example, a couple of the later chapters feel out of place, and the text is dusted with a handful of puzzling and sometimes repeated typos (Eowen? Kalishnakov?) But these are of little consequence and should not detract from your enjoyment.

Highly recommended.

Product Description
This is a book of ideas and of choices. Knowing which choices to make is not teachable. It's part of that creative instinct we call talent whose secret voice guides us every time we sit down at the keyboard. All stories are not identical. They are shaped by all those unique facets of the human beings who write them. All any writer can do when he wants to share his knowledge with others is be as open and giving as possible; and hope others can learn from that. You hold in your hands most of what I know about writing for games and much of what I believe and practice no matter what kind of writing I'm doing. It is meant to inform, to instruct, and maybe even inspire. It is as much about game design as it is writing for games. The two are virtually inseparable. The book itself has been designed as a quest. We are all of us on a journey toward a destination for which there is no single road. --Lee Sheldon, Author

About the Author
Lee Sheldon began his career in Hollywood writing and/or producing many popular television shows including "Star Trek: The Next Generation", "Charlie's Angels", and "Edge of Night" in the 1970s and 1980s. While continuing his Hollywood projects, Lee branched into writing and designing games in 1994. His work includes solo games such as the award-winning The Riddle of Master Lu, Dark Side of the Moon, and Wild Wild West:The Steel Assassin. Since 2000, he has written and designed massively multiplayer worlds for companies including Cyan (URU) and Disney (Virtual Kingdom). He has just recently completed a secret code-named project for Microsoft. Upcoming projects include a genre-breaking single player game for Atari and a new massively multiplayer world.Lee, from Palm Harbor, Florida, is recognized as one of the leading experts in the games industry on storytelling and character development in games. Since 1993, he has given a full day tutorial on these and related issues at the Game Developers Conference, and has appeared on panels and given presentations elsewhere. He is a charter member of the exclusive invitation-only Game Design Workshop that includes most of the major game designers in the industry. He is the author of "Impossible Bliss" (0595194818), a mystery novel.

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