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A novel about video games became a surprise best seller
- wktra 3y agoThis was one of my favorite books of the year. Reminded me very much of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," which is my #1 of all time.
- pinewurst 3y agohttps://archive.ph/YoiQ5 https://archive.ph/YoiQ5
- richardjam73 3y agoGold Rush! by Sierra still does exist but you can't easily buy it. It will work in scummvm or you could use an emulator. Unlike books it is much harder to access and use older computer programs.
- nohankyou 3y ago"Gold Rush! Classic", $2.99 on Steam. Runs in DOSBox just fine.
- 0xcde4c3db 3y agoThat appears to be based on a re-release after the rights reverted to the original developers, rather than the original build published by Sierra.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoYeah, this part was kind of puzzling : > But when she tried to play the adventure game Gold Rush, she discovered that the version she had played obsessively as a kid no longer existed. What do they mean by that ? That she failed to ask around ?? Related : https://www.technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-software-piracy/ https://www.technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-s... (2012)
- WillPostForFood 3y agoI enjoyed the book but it read like something by a well researched outsider, not someone with first hand game dev experience. E.g, references to 3.25" disks.
- voytec 3y agoHaven't read it (yet); 3.25", not 3.5" or 5.25"?
- sys_64738 3y agoDid she mean 3" discs for Amstrads?
- rimeice 3y agoI know what you mean, but this didn’t actually ruin it for me. As a video game player doesn’t work in the industry I actually learnt a few things about games design and process. I suspect anything written by an industry outsider is going to feel like a bit clunky when read by an insider, especially when the author is undoubtedly optimising for accessibility to a wider audience.
- ido 3y agoIt could very well be that the things you learned are in fact wrong (haven't read the book but talked to a few other game devs who did, who all pointed some issues with how it portrays the process of game development)
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- Paul_S 3y ago"When her literary agent, Douglas Stewart, sent out the manuscript in January 2021, he felt in some ways as if he were introducing her for the first time. “Despite the fact that Gabrielle had several big successes before, there are people who had never heard of her before this,” he said. A frenzied bidding war with 10 publishers broke out, and Knopf won, paying a seven-figure advance. Shortly after, an auction for screen rights drew 25 bidders, and Paramount Pictures bought them for $2 million." How does this work? An unknown author suddenly gets bid on for loads of money before anyone bought the book? "Knopf, which initially printed 60,000 copies, has reprinted the book 21 times to keep up with runaway sales. " Company paid more than a million and prints only 60000 copies? How do they intend to make the money back? This makes no sense to me. Also, nowadays I don't believe in grass roots anything, what I believe in is clever marketing on social media.
- pavlov 3y agoAccording to the article, the book has sold almost a million copies since last year. So Knopf has definitely made their money back. The size of the initial print run only tells you that they were still working out the marketing campaign. Doing smaller runs first lets you experiment with parameters like cover and format and media campaign timing. It only makes sense to do a massive initial print run if the demand is both guaranteed and transient, e.g. a book that’s part of the national discourse right now but will be forgotten in six months.
- Paul_S 3y agoThanks. Now it makes sense to me to make a small run first before printing more. Doesn't explain why they immediately paid the author so much money. Are best sellers made by publishers by investing money in marketing it (like what this article is doing)?
- scandox 3y agoThis is how the industry works. People make bets based on their estimation of how a book is going to fly...and nobody really knows for sure. Andew Wiley (a well known literary agent) also makes the observation that the bigger the advance the more assiduously the publisher will work to justify it.
- pcblues 3y agoMoney follows money. Truth holds the faltering hand of injustice. And so on...
- morsch 3y agoTo save you a click: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow,_and_Tomorrow,_and_Tomorrow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow,_and_Tomorrow,_and_...
- skywal_l 3y agoQueue the HBO series in 3, 2, 1...
- croes 3y ago>In 2021, Paramount Pictures and Temple Hill Entertainment purchased the film rights for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow for $2 million. The film will be produced by Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, and Isaac Klausner,with Zevin writing the script.
- GavinMcG 3y agoIt’s “cue” for this usage, I believe. “Queue” refers to a group of people in an ordered line, or the act of creating that ordered line. To cue something is to prompt it - as a cue card prompts an actor, for example.
- rg111 3y agoI have ever seen the cover of her earlier novel "Elsewhere" somewhere. Didn't know about her otherwise. Turns out she has multiple novels the plots of which are quite interesting to me. I am definitely going to try out this novel, Margarettown, and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. And maybe even Elsewhere, too.
- nyc111 3y ago"Zevin, who lives in Los Angeles with Canosa and their dogs, Frank, a pug mix, and Leia, a dachshund mix, is writing the screenplay for “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” a project that presents new narrative challenges." Is this level of detail about her dogs necessary? Is this a journalistic thing?
- layer8 3y agoI guess the dogs are part of the narrative challenges.
- brandnewlow 3y agoIt's a coded way to say they don't have children.
- thundergolfer 3y agoI don’t know the meaning of the detail either, but just because you don’t get why some detail was included does not mean it was unnecessary. It’s possible, even probable, that the detail has meaning to a certain subset of the article’s audience and that the detail aides the story.
- nailer 3y ago> In March 2023, game designer Brenda Romero told The Washington Post that the game Solution represents a substantial, uncredited appropriation of Romero's own game, Train... > “I have no doubt that Train is the best game I’ll probably make,” Romero said. “It is the one thing I will have to show for dedicating my life to games. And somebody decided that was just fair game.” Don't look at the wikipedia page for Train unless you want a huge spoiler. Train has a VERY specific twist. It sounds like that was what was used for the novel, and Brenda Romero is right, especially as other games were credited.
- blowski 3y agoHijacking this to ask for help on my own side-project. I want to write a story to help young adults (i.e. 10-16 years old) understand how programs work, and the difference between traditional programs and machine learning. My idea is to tell it from the perspective of AIs in a computer game of Monopoly. An ML player is introduced, initially clueless, but improves between iterations until it dominates and destroys the game. The game is upgraded with an ML rulebook that returns everything to order. But I've never written a story before, and I don't know much about how ML. I'd love to get suggestions, advice, feedback, etc.
- cableshaft 3y agoIt's an interesting concept, although I would argue that Monopoly is not the best choice of a game for this. Outside of 'do I buy this property', auction bidding, should I mortgage this property, or 'when/where do I buy a house', there's no decisions to be made in the game. And about half the turns (especially mid-late game) are just 'roll the dice, move, land on someone else's property, give them the money I owe'. I understand that Monopoly is super popular, but there's probably a game that would fit your story better. And this is already a computer game version you're talking about. Is there a reason why you want it to be a board game adaptation instead of a video game? Also there's a chance if you focus too much on one popular and existing and in-print game it might not fall under fair use and you could possibly get a cease and desist from Hasbro. One of the reasons why you see more shows around chess and not Monopoly, chess is in the public domain and no one is going to get sued over using it. As for learning about ML, I'd suggest taking an online course or watching some Youtube videos so you understand some details about it. The videos could inspire some ideas for plot points in the story as well. There's tons of videos/books/articles on writing also, but really for that I'd just dive in and get started, post some of it somewhere, get some feedback, and do some editing/rewriting. Maybe even get some recommendations from ChatGPT or NovelAI or something. If you're willing to critique other people's work, there's a really good website to get feedback called Critique Circle that has a quid pro quo model (you critique other people's works, get some credits, then spend them to solicit critiques for your own work). Worth checking out. Reading your story out loud is also a good trick for making sure the story sounds smooth and flows well. Good luck!
- brezelnbitte 3y agoThis book was really disappointing. The characters were all underdeveloped, remaining angsty melodramatic teenagers until the end despite them all being adults. It also tries to deal with some heavy themes but fails due to the immature characters. There is a lot of exposition to keep the plot moving, which is simply bad writing. Show don’t tell!
- Waterluvian 3y agoWhen I was a teenager I sometimes didn’t want a character that grew and matured. I wanted a character that validated my angsty melodrama.
- throwaway675309 3y agoI guess if the target demographic of this book is young angst driven high schoolers then that makes sense.
- quaffapint 3y agoThe book was heavily pushed on tiktok because it hit the platforms target demo perfectly with the angsty young characters set in a video game backdrop that the average tiktok age group could understand. Personally I was hoping it would have been more like the backstory episode of the Mythic Quest TV show and was disappointed. It was an average story at best with characters that never really matured, but that doesn't matter because I'm not the target audience. The target will connect with the characters and come away thinking it was a fantastic story and will gobble up any movie/tv show that comes out of it. Good job, author and marketing.
- CydeWeys 3y agoFwiw I read it for a work book club and liked it, though it did feel pretty similar to Masters of Doom and Soul of a New Machine, both of which I've also read recently. Those two were cited as influences in this book, are non-fiction, and I found them more interesting (maybe because they were non-fiction).
- throwaway675309 3y agoMasters of doom is a highly researched memoir of the gaming company iD software and also gets into some fairly technical details of how the first 3-D game engines worked (ray casting, binary space partitions, etc) It's probably one of my favorite memoirs, I can't imagine this book which seems to have a more focus on interpersonal relational fictional drama being in any way similar.
- CydeWeys 3y agoMasters of Doom has plenty of interpersonal drama in it as well. Hell, John Carmack and John Romero are the two main characters, and most of the other id Software early employees end up getting fired. I suggest you re-read Masters of Doom (or at least read this synopsis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom#Content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom#Content ), also read Tomorrow^3, and you'll see the similarities.
- kgwxd 3y agoWhat is the criteria for “best seller”? Seems like a participation trophy by NYT standards.
- CydeWeys 3y agoWell if you read past the headline you'll see that the book has sold over a million copies worldwide, which is very good in the literary world. This is certainly not a participation trophy.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoThe recent Tetris movie seems somewhat similar ? It was surprisingly pretty good !
- bwb 3y agoWell reviewed, i was just about to start reading it :) 3 authors i interviewed recommended it too… https://shepherd.com/book/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow https://shepherd.com/book/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow