The best GameLit books give the reader the pleasure of escaping into game worlds.
What are the best GameLit books?
There’s a growing sub-genre of Science Fiction and Fantasy that focuses on stories involving game worlds. Often the scenario is that human players have to enter a virtual game for some reason and do well in that environment. But it could be that players are passing through a portal into an actual game world. Or, that the characters aren’t exactly human at all, but are characters within a game. All of these are examples of GameLit.
Perhaps the best known book in the genre is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. If you are looking for books like Ready Player One, then chances are you are looking for GameLit. There are lots of great qualities to Ready Player One, including the humour, the references to 80s culture and the convincing portrayal of a dystopia. But what many readers found particularly attractive about the book is that a large part of it takes place within a virtual world, where the characters appear as avatars and are following an adventurous path in search of treasure. It is this aspect of the book that falls into the genre of GameLit.
What is GameLit? And how does it differ from LitRPG?
Broadly speaking, GameLit and LitRPG are the same. They are books where we see characters navigating a game. Their world itself might be the game, or they might be characters who have challenges to meet within a game, one that they enter in avatar form. If a virtual game or a world with RPG (role-playing) rules forms a big part of the story then a book is definitely GameLit. As for whether it is also LitRPG, that depends on how much the game mechanics are explored.
It turns out there is a great pleasure in reading in detail about a character mastering a game, it’s a pleasure that is probably related to the popularity of videos of people playing online games and listening to their commentary. In other words, the characters might be interesting and the plot compelling, but what really has LitRPG fans turning the pages is to see, for example, if their hero can level up and unlock the skill he or she needs to wield the Mace of Face Rearrangement or whatever mighty item has been earlier dropped into the story.
In other words, LitRPG is a narrower subset of GameLit, one in which there is explicit attention paid to how the game works and the progress of the characters within it.
Probably, if you like GameLit, you’ll like LitRPG. But for readers who would rather skip the analysis of whether an extra point should be assigned to Dexterity or Charisma, then GameLit is for you (and conversely, if you enjoy seeing a character strategize, make sure to check out LitRPG).
To help readers find the very best GameLit has to offer, we did a poll amongst the team at Level Up and these are the winners: our top 5 GameLit books of all time (with our own Level Up books disqualified from the list). Obviously, everyone has their own tastes and there are plenty more contenders out there, but these are a very good introduction to the genre and we’re confident you won’t regret reading them.
The 5 Best GameLit Books
Our choice for the best GameLit book is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
1. Ernest Cline, Ready Player One
With the success of the 2011 book and the popularity of the 2018 film directed by Steven Spielberg, Ready Player One is the stand-out example of the best of the GameLit genre. It’s the story of a young man from an impoverished district, Wade Watts. While having to live by his wits in the real world, Wade is a star in the virtual environment of OASIS. This gives him an opportunity to achieve fame and fortune as billionaire founder James Halliday has created a competition. Whoever can solve all of his clues and find his hidden Easter egg will inherit his wealth and control of the game.
It’s an appealing aspect of many GameLit books, that the main characters can have two identities, one in the real world and the other an avatar. People have the opportunity to reinvent themselves: not just in terms of looks and gender, but species too. You can be a fae, a demon, whatever you desire. Another big positive of the book and the film too is the entertaining cast of exotic allies Wade has at his side as he moves up the scoreboard and closes in on the prize.
Tad Willliams’ Otherland series are very enjoyable GameLit books
2. Tad Williams, Otherland 1: City of Golden Shadow
The first of a four-part GameLit series, City of Golden Shadow (published in 1996) introduces us to a world where the internet has evolved into ‘the Net’, a huge conglomeration of all sorts of virtual worlds. Imagine if you could teleport from Super Mario into Fortnight and on to World of Warcraft, etc. That ideas sounds like fun, but this new virtual space has dangerous, dark environments, with creatures that can cause players actual harm through a type of hypnosis. Otherland contains the golden city, which has the answers to why children are being harmed in the real world and Renie, our programmer-heroine, is determined to reach them. On the same quest for an understanding of what is really happening inside the Net is Orlando Gardiner. Online, Orlando is a mighty warrior of immense strength and utterly lethal. In the real world, however, he is the opposite. Enfeebled by a terminal illness, he lies in a hospital bed, playing an MMORPG. Together with many others (it’s a large book, told from lots of different points of view), they uncover the sinister secrets of Otherland.
Conor Kostick’s Epic is a classic work of GameLit.
3. Conor Kostick, Epic
Conor is one of our team, the commissioning editor for Level Up, so we are biased, but Epic, released in Ireland in 2004 and the US in 2007 was not only a huge international and critical success, it is a classic example of GameLit.
Across the whole planet of New Earth, everyone plays the game of ‘Epic’ (a fantasy MMORPG) because their income and political influence depends on the wealth their characters obtain from the game or their ability to settle judicial issues by duels. Erik lives on a small olive farm and careless of the fate of his avatar, creates a female Swashbuckler, Cindella, for the game and puts all his start up points into Charisma. Normally, Charisma is a dump stat, as players opt for the practical attributes that will allow them to safely grind out small victories against low-level monsters. But Erik is playing to kill a dragon and expects his character to die in his investigations. Instead, the beauty of Cindella opens up new game quests and as Erik and his friends advance along them, they start to worry the mighty Central Allocations that they are creating a movement with the potential to revolutionise the planet.
A video-gamer’s daydream come true is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
4. Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
Another of the best GameLit reads and a very early (1985) example is Ender’s Game. From his earliest years, Ender Wiggin is an amazing video-game player. So good, in fact, that the military recruit him to play in their wargames. Set in the future, warfare is a matter of space battles and the games the military want Ender to play at Battle School are all about being able to visualise strategy and tactics in massive space volumes and with gravitational complications. Ender is a genius at this, but he’s also a child who although creating a lot of rivalry and resentment, rallies some close friends from among his fellow ‘Launchies’.
In the most complex game of all, the Mind game, Ender achieves more than any trainee before him and the senior commanders want him for the Salamander Army. Despite very difficult scenarios put in his path, Ender continues to score victories. His trust in the small group of new soldiers assigned to him means that like the many-headed-hydra, his team can’t be stopped by focusing just on Ender. Eventually, despite his youth, Ender is commanding entire fleets in a vast video-game campaign against alien opposition.
Marie Lu’s Warcross is a recent example of GameLit
5. Marie Lu, Warcross
A more recent (2017) GameLit example is Warcross by Marie Lu. Emika Chen is a hacker and a bounty hunter, but due to her criminal past, struggles to get regular work and to meet her debts. She comes to international attention when she can’t resist the temptation to exploit a glitch in the world’s biggest online game, the phenomena that is Warcross: a cross between a capture-the-flag battle game and a platform game. Hired by the enigmatic owner of Warcross, Hideo Tanaka, Emika enters the tournament not with the goal of helping her team to victory, but to hunt for another hacker, one with a planet-threatening agenda. Although elements of the story are somewhat predictable, it is one of the best GameLit books, especially when Emika Chen goes into the seedy, dark underworld of the game, which feels like William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash.
GameLit FAQ
What is GameLit?
GameLit is a genre of writing where the story involves the characters being immersed in a game world or the world itself has game-rules
Is there a difference between GameLit and LitRPG?
Not in essence, but LitRPG has explicit descriptions of the mechanics of the game and, especially, of the progress of the characters within it.
Which is more popular, LitRPG or GameLit?
While certain GameLit books like Ready Player One have been extremely popular, there are far more LitRPG titles and active online communities than for GameLit.
Is Ready Player One GameLit?
Yes, and it is one of the best examples.
Does Level Up publish GameLit books?
Yes we do. Please have a look at our submission guidelines here.