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
Lee Sheldon has written and designed 20 commercial video games and MMOs. His book Lee Sheldon has written and designed 20 commercial video games and MMOs. He is the author of Character Development and Storytelling for Games and contributed to several books on game design including Writing for Video Game Genres from the IGDA, Game Design: An Interactive Experience and Second Person. He is also cited in many publications and is a regular lecturer on game design and writing in the US and abroad. Before his career in video games Lee was a writer and producer on over 200 popular television shows. While continuing to write and design commercial video games, Lee is a professor at Indiana University where he teaches game design and screenwriting. He is lead designer on the narrative-driven MMO Londontown. While at IU Lee has worked on the serious games Quest Atlantis, Virtual Congress, and most recently wrote and designed the alternate reality games The Skeleton Chase and Skeleton Chase 2: The Psychic funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and Skeleton Chase 3: Warp Speed funded by Coca-Cola. He is currently writing and designing a new children's video game and is writing his third book.
