Literary influences in gaming are nothing new; a lot of game developers read something and allow it to heavily influence the game that they are currently making, without it being a licensed product.
For this list I’m limiting myself to games where the designers have explicitly said, “We were influenced by these books.” What I’m not limiting myself to are video games. That’s right, children, there are also games with physical components in this list! Can you overcome these obstacles and name them all?
1. The Black Company, by Glen Cook
2. Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
3. The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum and The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien
4. The Eyes of the Overworld, by Jack Vance
5. The Kzinti Series, by Larry Niven, et al.
6. The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
7. Alamut, by Vladimir Bartol
EDIT: Okay, these were obviously way, way, way too hard, so I’m going to post the answers here.
1. Myth: The Fallen Lords, by Bungie
2. Bioshock Infinite, by Irrational Games
3. These two books directly inspired Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, by Origin Systems
4. Gary Gygax listed this book as a direct inspiration for the revised wargaming rules that eventually became Dungeons & Dragons.
5. The Kzinti series directly inspired the Wing Commander series of games.
6. These books inspired the boardgame (and later card game) Illuminati, by Steve Jackson Games.
7. This book was listed as a direct inspiration for Assassin’s Creed.
Hopefully I’ll do better next week.
The Kzinti Series – Wing commander /r/kzinti/kilrathi/
Correct!
I had no idea that Myth was inspired by a book. I’ll have to give that a read now. I hope the book has plenty of surly dwarves who accidentally blow up their allies.
“Whoopsies!”
I read the entire Black Company series and they are excellent books. Just be aware that there are no good guys in the world of the Black Company – there are bad guys and worse guys.
No bomb-throwing dwarves, though. Sorry.