The line between gaming culture and traditional storytelling is being blurred, one quest notification at a time, as readers get addicted to novels that combine sci-fi and fantasy narratives with features from video games. These “gamified novels” are “going mainstream,” said The Economist, and are “selling in their millions.”
Standing for “literary role-playing game,” LitRPG is a genre of fiction that combines a traditional story with the mechanics from role-playing games and video games. Although a Russian publisher insists that it coined the term in 2013, versions of the genre had been popular in Asia since the turn of the century.
The books “borrow the tropes of video and tabletop games,” and the characters “face challenges and grow stronger” as they “go on quests to obtain rewards,” said The Economist. For instance, in Matt Dinniman’s books, which have sold more than 6 million copies, the hero “gets tougher as he punches goblins” and “defeats a monster” that’s a mix of a “cosmic octopus” and “your average suburban, anti-vax, let-me-talk-to-your-manager mom.” The reader is regularly “updated on his character stats, health bar, XP (experience points) and special skills.”
Many of the readers “grew up gaming or playing tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons,” said USA Today. Brandon Dwane, a 28-year-old from Massachusetts, “never considered himself a reader,” but that changed when he began consuming LitRPG. Now he’s a “junkie” for the “dopamine” hits the novels give him. |
