A Pahrump man uses a keyboard not a console to bring video game worlds to life.
Daniel Schinhofen quit his day job with Nye County to write full time and is now a well-known author in the LitRPG or GameLit genre. These are stories set in universes similar to those found in popular video games.
“Video games, especially role-playing games, which is what the genre is mostly built around, they all have stories,” Schinhofen told State of Nevada. “Normally they are epic stories — defeating the dark lord, saving the princess.”
But his stories deal more with life interacting with new technology. For instance, his first book was about a group of older gamers who decide to test out full-immersion virtual reality games.
When he first published the book, he got a couple of thousand dollars over the first few weeks it was published but more importantly it validated his efforts.
“That’s what got me continuing to write,” he said.
Since that first book, he has written 12 books including a series of five stories that he expects will turn into a series of eight books.
Several of his dozen ebook and audio novels have been named best-sellers on Amazon. His latest novel, “Apocolypse Gates 3: Gearing Up,” is set to publish on Dec. 1.
The book’s protagonist has his brain uploaded to a computer network and he encounters adventures in a kill-or-be-killed post-apocalyptic virtual world.
Schinhofen believes the appeal of video games and his novels is that you can level up. If you kill a certain number of orcs or complete a certain number of tasks, you will increase your sword ability or knowledge stores.
"You're never stuck in a rut unless you want to be," he said and he believes that is a little fairer than the real world.
Schinhofen carries a well-known name in Nye County, where his father, Dan Schinhofen, is a county commissioner.
Daniel Schinhofen, GameLit author