Game story creators can write great books?

Some of them. Its good to see the gaming world's talent get recognised in other, more popular and established media oulets. Especially book publishing. The few people who refuse to acknowledge gaming as a major media outlet and write it off as a kids toy - they are the ones who are out of touch with reality. Muahhaha....

The above is not an example of a novelist that was hired to write an adaptation of a game to coincide a game release, but of a game story writer being asked to write a novel for an enormous long-standing media franchise. This doesn't happen...usually.

If good enough, you are recognised as not just videogame makers, but just great writers. Drew Karpyshyn wrote a couple of paper backs while working for Bioware, the kings of game story telling. One paperback was an adaptation of the Baldurs Gate 2 expansion, nothing like writing a hardcover for the Starwars franchise though. Writing paper back adaptations of games is far different from taking the torch from other great writers in a huge adult novel franchise (Starwars Expanded Universe, a.k.a. "EU").

I ordered the book without recognising the author. I was thinking - Ahh, they got a new guy to write a book about the Old Republic era. I didn't realize until I read his acknowledgments that he was the lead writer for one of my favorite games (if not my favorite). There I was thinking the people at Lucas books and Lucas himself failed to acknowledge KotOR as a great piece of fiction by any standard.

The book is now #11 on the NY times bestseller list under hardcover fiction. An awesome book and one I could not put down until it was finished.