Good evening all. I thought it would be an interesting idea to post video game dairy entries and I want your opinions. First of all what do I mean by a dairy entry? I mean just that, you would post a diary entry of what happened to you when playing a game. However, I would keep these in a diary and 1st person format from the view point of the character in the game; much like a novel. I would try to keep this as interesting and in a book format as much as possible so it doesn't get boring and I won't post things like "and then I killed a big monster and I got some gold from it and then I bought a new sword". Instead, i would word it in a story format like "I looked over the hedge, this creature was far larger then the bartender had said. Still, I thought, this beast should have some treasure on it, after the encounter with the bandits I don't have that much money left." I thought this would be a good idea to

1) Add something different to the forums.

2) Make something that everyone could contribute to.

3) Keep the gaming thread alive.

So, I would like your opinions to see if it would be worth my time, to post diary entries about a game character and your experiences while playing. Just a note that free roaming 'sandbox' games will work much better for this than say a Final Fantasy game due to the linear storyline. Free roaming games are games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, Stalker, Baldur's Gate and so on. Others are free to post if they want a diary entry of their own, however if this goes ahead only 1 thread per person for the diary entries to keep them clean and on topic.

So, is it worth my time to post a diary, and is this a good idea?

Note the poll will end on the 18th of March which the results on that day will decide what I do.

UPDATE: Read 3rd post.

So we post diary entries and you edit them into novel format? What if there is a mix of different genre's? I'm planning on playing a lot of Oblivion when I have free time, so I won't be able to write up what I've done.

Sounds like a nice idea.

What I was actually planning on doing was writing everything myself (eg. my game experiences). Or having other people post their own. However, your idea (which you thought was my idea lol :heh:) is a brilliant one. So as an update, if you want me to novelize (?) your game diaries, I could do that as well. But as I said before, it all depends on the poll.

I think this will be interesting. I'm not sure how you're going to tie it all together. Time will tell.

I'm no regular here in the Gaming section, but this is kinda neato. Aye

So, you're going to play a game and then write a story about it. Sounds boring. I mean, I know how exciting it can be when you do something really cool in a game, but, I find that much of that excitement is lost when you try to relay that same thing to somebody else. Just my two cents.

Yeah I know what you mean. That knife kill in COD6 really didn't sound as good when I tried to tell my friends today lol :\ But we'll just see what happens.

Hmm... I'd say this would look quite interesting... but sounds more RP-ish than story format :O

Oooh, this does sound interesting. Now, I can make the video game characters I hate do stuff that would make them sound like a loser cooler.

And, about it sounding RP-ish, that got me thinking, "we should have an RP on this site."

EDIT: Well, it seems we do have an RP. >.<

It will be slightly RP-ish. For example rewriting game dialog and the NPC's to make them sound more human; yet keeping the ideas and meanings the same. But that plan is to write and novelize what I actually do.

Just over a week to go, just to give an idea (however don't get your hopes up) of how things are looking so far. The votes average out to "Yeah, its an ok idea and I'd read them now and again. "

Also to give an idea of how much content I will post and how frequent updates are, I'll go by the final result. So if the votes average a "Yes, I'd be very interested in reading them. "; I'll probably update it once a week or about that.
However if they average a "Yeah, its an ok idea and I'd read them now and again. " the updates might be once a fortnight and be shorter.

So far I'm planning to set a maximum length of about 1 average book chapter. Note that is the maximum, so not all posts will be that long. This is a rough estimate but expect around the 1200 word mark. Just stating this so that people know if it'll be something to have a quick skim through or some actual book reading material. I'm planning on going for the more full reading material approach.

Mmm, sorry, but I have to agree with Whiplash. :\ To read people's gaming experiences, like yours for example, seems like a mild & weak idea to me. :unsure: If the diary entry is not fresh and too generic/predictable, then I would easily grow over it. Also, I don't really like to write down my own gaming experiences, most of the games I play are RPGs and to write stories on them is kinda redundant to me, since RPGs are supposed to tell stories. It's just not my personal preference. -_-

...I still say we should test this out for a week or so, then do another poll...

Ok, looks like the votes average out to "Yeah, its an ok idea and I'd read them now and again." So expect the first post for this to be tomorrow. Everything detailing it will be there.