mya
asked
Matt Ruff:
Would you ever be open to having Lovecraft Country developed into a video game - or perhaps going into video game writing yourself? As I was reading your book I could see it working very well as a very engaging video game!
Matt Ruff
There’s an alternate version of my life where I went into game design instead of novel writing. When I was twelve years old I volunteered as a playtester at a wargame company in Manhattan called Simulations Publications, Incorporated. Their specialty was historically accurate boardgames with titles like Terrible Swift Sword: The Three Days of Gettysburg, but they also did fantasy and science-fiction games, and I tended to gravitate to those. The first game I ever worked on, The Creature That Ate Sheboygan, simulated a fight between a Godzilla-like monster and the Wisconsin National Guard.
The company also had an IBM “minicomputer” – which, in the late 1970s, meant a computer the size of a small desk – and a couple of Radio Shack “microcomputers” – computers small enough to fit *on* a desk, and sporting a whopping 128 kilobytes of RAM. They used these for business but you could also play computer games on them, and I did. I’ve been an avid computer gamer ever since, and my most recent novel, 88 Names, which was published in March, is among other things an attempt to put all of the time I’ve spent playing games to good use. (88 Names’ protagonist, John Chu, is a ‘sherpa’ – a paid guide to online role-playing games – who suspects his latest client may actually be the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. The first two-thirds of the novel are set entirely in virtual reality, which raises all sorts of interesting questions about identity, and also lets me create cool set pieces involving fictional versions of my favorite MMORPGs.)
I actually did write a few computer games back in the day. Most were simple text adventures, but I also did a turn-based “Car Wars”-type game that had armed motorcycles shooting at each other on a track. I actually got this to work on one of those 128K microcomputers, and while it was laughably primitive, it was pretty fun at the time, and I’m sorry I didn’t save the code.
The problem of course is that as computers became more powerful, computer game design quickly evolved from something that a solo programmer could do into something more like filmmaking, where even relatively low-budget projects require a team. I might have stuck with it if I didn’t already have the novel-writing bug, but as it was, I could do a lot more creatively on my own writing prose.
Anyway, to answer your actual question: Yes, I’d be open to someone creating a spinoff Lovecraft Country video game, though I’m actually not sure who controls the relevant intellectual property rights at this point. But if somebody offered me the resources to create the game of my dreams, I’d probably want to do something original rather than base it on a story I’ve already told, and it might not be a narrative game at all. I’m a big fan of colony builders (Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included), RTS games (Creeper World 3 is a current obsession), roguelikes (FTL, Dungeons of Dredmor), 4x games (Civilization V, Stellaris), and stylish murder simulators (Superhot, Bulletstorm).
The company also had an IBM “minicomputer” – which, in the late 1970s, meant a computer the size of a small desk – and a couple of Radio Shack “microcomputers” – computers small enough to fit *on* a desk, and sporting a whopping 128 kilobytes of RAM. They used these for business but you could also play computer games on them, and I did. I’ve been an avid computer gamer ever since, and my most recent novel, 88 Names, which was published in March, is among other things an attempt to put all of the time I’ve spent playing games to good use. (88 Names’ protagonist, John Chu, is a ‘sherpa’ – a paid guide to online role-playing games – who suspects his latest client may actually be the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. The first two-thirds of the novel are set entirely in virtual reality, which raises all sorts of interesting questions about identity, and also lets me create cool set pieces involving fictional versions of my favorite MMORPGs.)
I actually did write a few computer games back in the day. Most were simple text adventures, but I also did a turn-based “Car Wars”-type game that had armed motorcycles shooting at each other on a track. I actually got this to work on one of those 128K microcomputers, and while it was laughably primitive, it was pretty fun at the time, and I’m sorry I didn’t save the code.
The problem of course is that as computers became more powerful, computer game design quickly evolved from something that a solo programmer could do into something more like filmmaking, where even relatively low-budget projects require a team. I might have stuck with it if I didn’t already have the novel-writing bug, but as it was, I could do a lot more creatively on my own writing prose.
Anyway, to answer your actual question: Yes, I’d be open to someone creating a spinoff Lovecraft Country video game, though I’m actually not sure who controls the relevant intellectual property rights at this point. But if somebody offered me the resources to create the game of my dreams, I’d probably want to do something original rather than base it on a story I’ve already told, and it might not be a narrative game at all. I’m a big fan of colony builders (Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included), RTS games (Creeper World 3 is a current obsession), roguelikes (FTL, Dungeons of Dredmor), 4x games (Civilization V, Stellaris), and stylish murder simulators (Superhot, Bulletstorm).
More Answered Questions
Jeffrey Keeten
asked
Matt Ruff:
Separating the man/woman from their art has been something that many of us have struggled with in recent years. Our heroes are flawed more than we want them to be. I felt like you were pushing back, with this African-American odyssey, against Lovecraft's own issues with race and misogyny. Do you struggle with separating the flaws of Lovecraft with your fascination with his writing?
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