Imagine the late eighties. I was six, my family owned an Atari ST, with a TV as a colour monitor. I played Elite, an open ended space simulator game, until the Atari’s expansion ram turned to smoke. I worked a deal with my dad to purchase the sequels which I thrashed.
Then came cars, girls, university, marriage, kids, houses and careers. Then in 2012 the fourth game appeared on Kickstarter seeking funding. One of the ‘pledge’ rewards was the ‘Writers Pack’ – which included a license to write one piece of official tie-in fiction.
My heart fluttered. The dream: to be an official part of Elite canon. Elite, the game that spawned my love of space, science fiction and gaming.
The cost? Four and a half thousand pounds. So I ran my own crowd funding campaign (http://bit.ly/1EwIAyi) and purchased a writers pack. I was now an official tie-in novelist. . .
CONTRACT
A contract is standard for any tie-in novel. You are sharing Intellectual Property (IP) so you and the franchise need protection. In my case the IP belonged to Frontier Developments (http://www.frontier.co.uk/). I was playing in their sandpit. The characters and locations that I made would belong to Frontier (And even be in the game). The story itself belonged to me however. Once approved by Frontier I had license to sell it however I wanted.
Image courtesy of www.elitedangerous.com
GAME/NOVEL CROSSOVER
Frontier Developments were excited by the crossover or ‘transmedia’ possibilities of having both tie-in fiction and the game. All the locations in my novel, including the legend I introduced, are in the game. We looked at the possibility of in-novel events happening in the game but that proved too difficult. When you have a willing franchise, your imagination really can be the limit.
CANON
When writing tie-in fiction you can write in whatever style suits you (within reason) but the way the story plays out must follow the ‘rules of the universe’, that is the laws and canon already laid down by the franchise. To enable you to do this you have to have a good working knowledge of the existing canon. How does technology work? Where do people live? How do they live? What kind of starships exist and how do they fly? What is combat like? Docking? It’s important to clarify what is and is-not canon – the internet is full of fan-sites that can extend the game timelines but in the end it is just fan-fiction.
Karen Traviss for example did not read any ‘Extended Universe’ novels when she wrote her tie-in novels for Star Wars. She relied purely on the movies. Agree on the canon and learn it inside out. Even with an intimate knowledge of the canon there will always be inconsistencies. I had a great handle on the canon up to the year 3254, but Elite:Dangerous was set in the year 3300. I wrote my novel assuming life would ‘carry on’ as it were from the storyline of 3254. Many things were turned on their heads however, or simply pushed to the side as the game took a new direction. Corporations once dictating the future of humanity were cut up and sold off. An event that appeared to be a life changer fizzed to nothing. As these revelations came to light I had to go back and edit my work to fit in with this new history.
THOSE PESKY DETAILS
That experience highlighted the pain and joy of working on the project. This was all brand new and I was helping shape it to some small degree – the worlds I was creating, the legend that I spawned in my story are all there in the game. But because the game was being designed while I wrote, that ‘history’ I needed to fill the gaps just was not there.
Image courtesy of www.elitedangerous.com
Frontier had a full team working overtime on the game but they assisted with the world development where they could: A timeline and several writer’s guides were produced. These covered topics such as police, transport, political factions, cloak and dagger, ship specifications, etc. These were instrumental in aligning my novel with Elite:Dangerous however some were released after I had submitted my novel to my publisher (Fantastic Books Publishing) which reduced their effectiveness. Unfortunately that was the reality of the tight time frame of publishing the novel by the game’s planned release date (later pushed back to December 2014).
Although the Writers Guides had their uses by far the most useful portal to Frontier was the writers forum where I had direct Q&A access to the Executive Producer of Elite:Dangerous. Answers were normally overnight but again sometimes answers were not available as the answers had not been produced at that stage of development.
Image courtesy of www.elitedangerous.com
GAME MECHANICS VS FICTION
An interesting component of writing computer game tie-in fiction is working out the overlap between ‘game mechanics’ and ‘canon lore’. For example in the game you could not land on planets (yet) due to production timeframes. However in the fiction you could land on the planets, thus all the planet-side details had to correlate with the future plans of Frontier. Another game mechanic was the ‘supercruise’ which allowed fast travel through a solar system, and this wasn’t necessarily canon.
When I submitted my novel to Frontier Developments it contained many un-confirmed details, e.g. what was the maximum hyperjump distance of a Thargoid ship? How many hard points did an Eagle Explorer have? However, Frontier approached this as the novel adding to the tapestry and rich variety of the Elite universe rather than slavishly adhering to a set of rules. As a result there were only 50 details that required a word change here or there and the novel was approved.
My UK based publisher (Fantastic Books Publishing) published my novel ‘Elite: And Here The Wheel’ in May 2014. The game will be released on the 16th December 2014.
Image courtesy of www.elitedangerous.com
FUTURE TIE IN WORK?
Writing this tie-in fiction has been a joy and a curse. I loved every minute of writing the story and being able to write my kind of story, set in the universe I love. This was a treasure not many people get to enjoy. At the same time I had difficulty with filling in the ‘unknown canon’ which deviated from the earlier game storylines. All up it was a great experience and an eye opener.
Would I write further tie-in fiction? Possibly. To summarise my blog post on this topic, (http://andherethewheel.co.nz/2014/07/08/post/) I would write for Frontier Developments again if the opportunity arose. Right now however my current project is writing the script and associated fiction for the upcoming Indie game Shallow Space. It’s a RTS space combat game and I’ll write about this work in a follow up article.
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John Harper’s writing career began in his first year of school when he stood up in school assembly and read out his own rendition of the movie Short Circuit. His first novel ‘Elite:And Here The Wheel’ – an official tie-in novel for Elite:Dangerous – was published in May 2014 by Fantastic Books Publishing. He is currently working as the writer for Shallow Space (www.shallow-space.com).
John is married with two kids, all of whom he adores to bits. He likes running, fitness, the V8 Supercars and cricket. He keeps his followers up to date at www.andherethewheel.co.nz, and can be contacted at [email protected]
