Greatest-selling science fiction and fantasy writer Alan Dean Foster is shifting into gaming in a multi-license take care of studio Pomme, beginning with a sport based mostly on his basic Midworld novel.
Foster instructed me this in an unique interview for GamesBeat.
A New York Occasions best-selling writer, Foster has written a number of ebook sequence, over 20 standalone novels, and novelizations of film scripts together with Star Wars, Alien, Terminator, Transformers and Star Trek. He has written for video games earlier than, however now he’s doing a giant license of a lot of his work within the HumanX Commonwealth sequence.
Pomme goes to begin with Midworld, the primary novel in that sequence the place people encounter an alien race on a jungle-like planet. Some say this world impressed James Cameron’s Avatar movies, however we received’t go there simply but. Suffice to day it’s a creatively imagined world that Foster instructed me in an interview lends itself to a gaming universe.
Pomme founder Darryl Nonetheless mentioned in an interview with GamesBeat that Foster will work intently with the sport group in an advisory function. Pomme, a consulting agency with many video games underneath its belt, will assemble a group to make the primary sport and arrange the plans for a number of video games.
Underneath the settlement, Pomme might make a minimum of 14 of Foster’s works into video games, together with beforehand printed novels and eight unpublished works, launched in a sequence referred to as “Alan Dean Foster Presents….”
As talked about, the primary might be an adaptation of Midworld – the ebook that launched Humanx Commonwealth, which might be printed by Pomme’s publishing arm Sundown Sugar Studios on PC through Steam in 2026.
Foster mentioned, “I look forward with great pleasure to working with the wonderful folks at Pomme as they prepare to develop and release a series of games based on my stories, the first of which is planned to be Midworld.”
Pomme was based by trade veteran Darryl Nonetheless, previously an government at Atari, EA, Nvidia and Kiss. He has greater than 40 years of expertise in video games within the trade. He’s joined by Canadian trade exec Jillian Temper, who has labored with Canada Sport Expo, Ottawa Sport Jam, Flexible & the Ink Machine and on over 30 video games. She is going to head up advertising and marketing and HR for the corporate.
Different Pomme executives embody James Deputy who has undertaking managed many video games for Kiss over the 12 years whereas Nonetheless was CEO for that firm; and Mateo Młodowski, developer of the massively profitable Pixel Puzzles franchise and improvement director at Sundown Sugar Studios, Pomme’s publishing arm.
“I have been working with Alan and the Pomme team for around a year now fleshing out this project and it is an absolute pleasure to be able to push the green button as we enter 2025 on what is one of the most exciting developments I have ever worked on,” Nonetheless mentioned.
And Temper mentioned, “Alan Dean Foster is an absolute genius and the fact he wants to be personally involved in developing these games makes me very proud.”
Pomme is collaborating with key members of the Cuphead artwork group, together with revered animator Tina Nawrocki, to steer the artwork on Midworld. Pomme’s studio head Mateo Młodowski mentioned, “As soon as we started talking to them, it became obvious they were perfect to create Börn and the other characters in the universe. The creativity they bring to the art and animation is stunning.”
In the meantime, Pomme has established an advisory board of leisure giants to assist steer the Alan Dean Foster tasks. It consists of Alan Wilson, cofounder of Tripwire Interactive, writer of Killing Ground and Pink Orchestra, and Jon Radoff, CEO of Beamable, who has labored on Sport of Thrones, Star Trek and Strolling Useless video games.
Origins of the deal
Foster, 78, has had 80 of hello sown novels printed, with seven quick story collections and over 40 novelizations of movie scripts. (I learn Foster’s novelizations of Star Wars, together with Splinter of the Thoughts’s Eye, again once I was younger).
Nonetheless based Pomme in the UK in April 2020 as a consultancy to serve the worldwide sport companies. Key contributors embody James Deputy, Jillian Temper, and Matteo Mlodowski. Pomme (the French phrase for Apple) is known as after Nonetheless’s love for Pomeranian canines.
Nonetheless mentioned that he was speaking with a pal who was making a documentary about Foster’s life. The pal related them to look into the thought of publishing video games based mostly on Foster’s unpublished works. Foster advised the HumanX Commonwealth universe, and the group determined to make a triple-A sport targeted on Midworld, the primary within the sequence, Nonetheless mentioned.
“Midworld ideally suits our art team, which comes from Cuphead and 2D action adventure properties. We also have an Unreal Engine 3D shooter team in place that can do great things with the trilogy,” Nonetheless mentioned. “We have licensed 14 different titles from Alan and are looking at the right teams to make each game. Some of these will be episodic with Alan narrating them.”
Nonetheless added, “We want to do the right games on the right properties and do him proud. He has a retro fan base and we can introduce it to a new fan base of gamers, and we have an ideal set of people to do that.”
Sundown Sugar Studios is the publishing arm with a writer account on Steam. Through Temper, Nonetheless is on the lookout for funding from the Canada Media Fund. One other obtainable group relies in Turkiye. It’s a small group, however with huge ambitions, Nonetheless mentioned.
“This is because of the enthusiasm of people who are crazy about doing this,” Foster mentioned. “And there are certain books like Midworld, which they’re going to start with, that are more easily adaptable into games. And fortunately, there’s enough material. I’m happy to be a part of that.”
Writing for video games?
Foster mentioned he wrote a story for The Moaning Phrases, a Lovecraft-like collectible card sport with puzzles that debuted in 2014. He ssaid it taught him the complexity of writing for video games and the way it’s important to again and make things better within the narrative based mostly on when the participant counters them within the sport.
“It got very complicated, but it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. My history with games goes way back. I did the novelization of an original computer game that was called Shadowkeep for Trillium,” he mentioned. “That was a thousand years ago. I also did a version of LucasArts’ The Dig game. So I’ve been around the gaming industry without being directly involved with it for a long time.”
Foster mentioned he believes that video games seize actions like motion so nicely, and he has to put in writing such motion scenes again and again in his varied works. Early on, nonetheless, sport know-how couldn’t actually sustain with the creativeness. Now that drawback has gone away as gaming tech has moved ahead shortly.
HumanX Commonwealth video games
“Some projects didn’t live up to the promise, but they were interesting experiments. With games, you have more options and I love the possibilities,” he mentioned. “With Midworld, we even have a narrative with totally different ranges.
The Commonwealth sequence has quite a few characters like Philip Lynx, who seems in 15 of the books within the sequence. There are dozens of books they usually’re all a part of the identical sci-fi universe, with some fantasy parts. The HumanX Commonwealth is form of just like the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek, the place sooner or later the people of Earth have allied with different alien races just like the insectoid Thranx from Hivehom.
“Thank goodness for computers and fans, or I’d never be able to keep this all straight,” Foster mentioned.
He mentioned he’s glad to see so many transmedia successes, the place video games have been was motion pictures like The Tremendous Mario Bros. Film and TV reveals like The Final of Us.
“Technology advances along with storytelling,” he mentioned. “You started out scratching pictures on cave walls. They didn’t move, and they weren’t very exciting. And now we just move along, and each time the technology advances, somebody finds a way to adapt it for entertainment. And that’s what’s happened with games. And once it gets sufficiently sophisticated, then you can take the game and expand it into film or TV. It would be interesting to contemplate, for example, if Tolkien were alive today, 22 years old, would he have started by writing books or would he have started it as a game?”
Foster added, “Everything changes so fast. I love it. I love things. And the newest thing that comes along, I’m there. I want to be a part of it.”
Relating to some latest movies, Foster mentioned he was a giant fan of Movement, which has no dialogue. As for the tech entrepreneurs who’re all the time attempting to show science fiction into actuality, Foster has some opinions.
“They get so wrapped up in stuff, I think, and they’re so distant from the people that they actually are supposed to be serving that they kind of forget what that’s like,” Foster mentioned. “I haven’t met many of them and I’d be happy to sit down and chat. I don’t know. You wonder if you can have influence on people. In my books, I try to do it gently. I don’t believe in socializing or shouting.”
