Character Development and Storytelling for Games (Game Development Series)

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

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.