Authoring Games

Some of the best games of our time are heavily inspired by literature. Thrilling action-RPG BioShock is creator Ken Levine's homage to Ayn Rand's objectivist guide Atlas Shrugged, while post-apocalyptic shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. owes much of its backstory and premise to the 1971 science-fiction novel Roadside Picnic. It works the other way as well: Microsoft's smash hit Halo managed to permeate the classroom as a means of teaching university students about Homer.

But every so often, the relationship between games and literature hits a high note when a well-regarded author puts their keen storytelling mind to the task of game design. Here are six best-selling authors who have embraced a new medium by going digital.

Tom Clancy

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Few authors have devoted more time and energy to furthering the art of video games than Tom Clancy. Best known for building a literary (and cinematic) empire on the back of CIA operative Jack Ryan in political thrillers like The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, Clancy would make an equally indelible mark on gaming when he co-founded game development studio Red Storm Entertainment in 1996. Thanks to an acquisition and subsequent support by publisher Ubisoft, some of the biggest game franchises around bear Clancy's name, including Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and the upcoming strategy game Endwar. Though these days his game design input is tenuous at best, Clancy recently went above and beyond by selling Ubisoft the intellectual property rights to his name -- royalty free, no less.

Orson Scott Card

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Spawning several sequels and prequels, Card's sci-fi masterpiece Ender's Game chronicles a future in which Earth's most gifted children must master a virtual Battle Room to save mankind from a ruthless alien race. Hmmm...gamers saving the world? Talk about preaching to the choir! So when Majesco Entertainment unveiled Advent Rising, a sprawling third-person action game written by the writer himself, we were buzzing. After playing it, though, we were cringing, and when Majesco folded a year later, we solemnly laid to rest what was initially planned as an epic trilogy. Undaunted, Card hasn't given up dabbling in games, currently consulting on a digitally-distributed effort based on the very Battle Room sequences from Ender's Game that made him a geek god in the first place.

Douglas Adams

We know -- don't panic. But that's precisely what gamers did when faced with the nigh-insurmountable task of solving the famed British humorist's first game, a text adventure based on The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy called, oddly enough, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Adams' wry sense of humor and absurdist outlook led to an even harder game, 1987's Bureaucracy, in which players were forced to wade through a seemingly endless amount of red tape triggered by a simple change of address (in an inspired twist, the game simulated the player's blood pressure, which when put under enough frustrating strain would result in an aneurysm and end the game abruptly). He'd stop making games for a good decade, only to come back with the overlooked Starship Titanic, a clever graphical adventure featuring the most advanced conversation system of its day, dubbed Spookitalk. Were the great author not struck down by an untimely heart attack in 2001, we'd bet our towels he would have soon crafted another mind-bending doozie.

Lorenzo Carcaterra

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When Atari needed a writer for their updated version of the survival-horror classic Alone in the Dark, they didn't stray far from the poorly-lit paths of New York's Central Park. Though Alone in the Dark is Lorenzo Carcaterra's first game project, he's intimately familiar with the game's expansive environment, having been born and raised a few blocks down the road in Hell's Kitchen. That's also been the setting for most of his books, most notably the 1995 novel-turned-hit-film, Sleepers. We don't suppose he's getting much shut-eye these days, however, as the oft-delayed horror game is finally set to scare shelves this June.

Stephen King

It's hard to say which of Stephen King's horror masterpieces is his greatest, but this much is certain -- none of them have been turned into video games. Stunning, we know, yet clearly King has been content turning his pages into celluloid instead of pixels. Perhaps his reluctance to investigate the world of interactive entertainment has something to do with F13, the author's first and last foray into PC gaming. Little more than a glorified collection of King-themed screen savers, F13 squandered the King license by failing to include any of his most adored creations (no Cujo, no Carrie, no Christine) in favor of a few random mouse-clicking timewasters. It also contained the digital novella Everything's Eventual, which was a nice read but, like the rest of the package, came in woefully undercooked. Despite F13's failures, though, we hold out hope that one day King will see the light and re-apply his prolific pen to our favorite pastime.

Clive Barker

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Capable of dreaming up the disturbing world of horror film franchise Hellraiser, monster maven Clive Barker has a seriously twisted mind. It's also a pretty sharp one, responsible for crafting a number of best-selling short-story collections and novels. Unsatisfied with conquering literature and cinema, Barker first set his sights on the game industry in the 2001 first-person shooter, Clive Barker's Undying. Barker was closely involved in the game's production, acting as a script consultant and providing the voice of the protagonist's brother, Ambrose. Though it sold poorly, Undying was a critical hit and set the stage for his most recent release, Clive Barker's Jericho. While Jericho was not warmly received by consumers or critics, Barker has evolved into a great defender of the games industry, most poignantly through his lively debate with film critic Roger Ebert over the status of video games as art.