BioWare - The Greatest Shame of All

A little different but this article involves Drew Karpyshyn discussing game novelisaton.

"Honestly, I think many games wouldn't make compelling novels," Karpyshyn says. According to him, there are many aspects inherent to games - most notably their interactive nature - that make it difficult to translate them to other, more linear forms of storytelling. Yet that didn't stop him from writing books based on the PC and Xbox 360 RPG Mass Effect, also developed by BioWare. For Karpyshyn, that game was a special circumstance. "The reason the Mass Effect novels worked so well was the depth of the universe we created for the games," he says. "At BioWare, we spent a full year developing the Mass Effect galaxy before we even began work on the story of the game. By laying the groundwork for such a rich, widespread setting, we opened up the possibility to tell all sorts of stories beyond the plot of the game."

Much like Star Wars, the Mass Effect mythology encompassed a vast array of alien species, planets and technologies, punctuated by dozens of interesting characters and events. Creating a universe like this clearly lends itself well to different types of storytelling, literature included. There were many characters and events the game only touched on briefly that beg for further exploration. However, as Karpyshyn explains, most games don't feature that kind of fully fleshed-out game world, making the transition difficult. Instead, many authors are forced to slavishly follow the events of a particular game, often with unsatisfactory results.