AN ODD JOURNEY

I had a bit of a weird journey for someone aspiring to be a full-time author. It came through a route that many would think is the antithesis of writing and reading, video games – not by playing them but by making them..For most of my childhood, I had a dream of making games to share with all the world. Unlike most childhood dreams, mine stuck around.

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Most major universities had yet to take notice of the growing demand for degree programs to equip young adults for careers in the booming video game industry. As a result, I had to piece together courses that might equip me to follow my dream of founding a game studio. The ultimate goal was to make some of my most cherished game ideas a reality.

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During this six-year education, I took courses in drawing, business management, and marketing. I also took a grand total of two courses in video game design at a local community college as transferable electives when they launched their own game design program. At some point, I also took a single course on creative writing when I needed another elective to fill my schedule.

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I thought the creative writing course would be potentially useful in helping me to write more comprehensive game design documents and deeper plots. When I took the course, I never would have imagined that it would plant a seed for something else. I would be lying if I said that one course was responsible for me moving from designing games to being an author, but it did have a part.

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One of my good friends at the time and college roommate was determined to make a go of it as an author and was very dedicated to his craft. He was the creative sort of individual who not only had great ideas of his own but was a wonderful sounding board for your own. Many a game idea were bounced off of his fertile brain cells, but his greatest impact may have been when he read a single short story that I had written and said that it was good. Him doing this and his compliment planted a distant desire to, when all was said and done, share some of my stories in fully written form.

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With the coming of graduation, I leaped wholeheartedly into founding my own game studio, Dolphin Entertainment, LLC, and into the task of getting a bootstrap studio up off the ground. I did everything from writing a business plan, marketing research, finding a lawyer to help make it a real company. When my head stopped spinning long enough, I also put out multiple job posting for eager volunteers willing to work for free until our games made money, designed games from scratch, interviewed people, and more. During that effort I had the privilege of meeting and working with some very talented (and some not so much) individuals.

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Eventually my determination gave way to exhaustion as I attempted to fulfill the role of studio president, lead designer, website designer, project manager, and everything else except programmer, sound engineer, and artist. Add to this getting married, having a child, moving more than once, a variety of other factors, and it started to become overwhelming.

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It was during the making of the studio’s make-or-break game that would have been a sure-fire success that I nearly did just that. Break, that is. After a forced break from game development, I began work on writing lore for a game that had its distant origins in a desire to one day make games for the StarFox franchise.  Of these, StarFox is one of my favorite games of all time.

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It began as my imaginings about my versions of the characters and what potential adventures they could go on. From there it developed into something else entirely original and became my most cherished game idea. As I began writing the lore, the idea was that it would be revealed within the games in the series through various means.

Once the lore was completed to my satisfaction, the plan began to change into writing a novel that would serve as a prequel or lead-in for the game. As my atrocious writing continued, two things began to happen. The first was that my writing began to improve greatly, especially after finding a Christian writers forum where I found a lot of positive criticism and feedback. The second was that I was enjoying writing the lore and novel more than I had enjoyed designing games in years. It was some time after that that I, with a heavy heart, dismissed my team.

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With the help and support of my loving wife, I threw my effort into writing a children's book with the idea of one day being able to share it as a published book with my daughter. My focus then launched into turning some of the stories I had intended to make as games into novels instead.  I have published short story compilation to my name, completed the children's book manuscript and submitted it to literary agents, and will soon be preparing to pitch "Drifters: Origins" to publishers,

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This is only the start so, enjoy and read on!

-T. D. Dracken