‘Minecraft: The Island’ Blurs the Line Between Fiction and Gaming<br />When Mojang asked if he would be interested in writing a Minecraft novel, Mr. Brooks was so enthusiastic<br />that he wrote a full draft before his contract was even completed.<br />“My biggest fear was that somebody tries to play out my book and finds out it won’t work.”<br />In the process, he may have also created a strange new entertainment category, one<br />that hovers somewhere between fan fiction, role-playing games and literature — a novel set in a game, that can itself be played within the game.<br />Mr. Brooks — a cheerful, enthusiastic paranoiac who is obsessed with survival strategies, zombies, apocalyptic scenarios<br />and plagues — wrote the story as a first-person, Robinson Crusoe-esque narrative, featuring an initially hapless character who is stranded on a strange island and has to build shelter, find food and fight off zombies and giant spiders, all features that exist in the game.<br />Del Rey is promoting the novel within the game’s platform, with a digital replica of the island Mr. Brooks created, which players can explore.
