After months of writing documentation, discussing story lines, fleshing out quest, going over game mechanics and programming, you are ready to search for artists who will help bring your epic game into the real world through concept art and design. For a writer, and frankly the entire team, this is the time that most people look forward to (until the first Beta testing begins).

To be blunt, this is also the time that you want to pull out your hair and scream all sorts of foul words in various languages to the heavens…

As the title implies, taking a great story and turning it into a game that works is probably going to be the first point where your team starts to butt heads.

Up until this part of development, everyone that is on board with the project has been throwing around ideas, elements that they want included and generally getting to know one another. But as you begin to take those ideas and implement them into the actually game design document, at least half the team won’t like the direction that the game is going, while the other half, probably won’t care…

To a writer, nothing is more important than the story. Whether it is movies, TV or games, the story can be the make or break for me, no matter how high the production values are. So, when it comes to the development of Conquest of Heroes (CoH), I am always determined that each player lives through an epic adventure that will go beyond just a game.

Conquest of Heroes’ story was primarily inspired by two things…

Every company, big or small, has a beginning. Very often the origin involves one person who has an intimate interest and a dream. For Burning Man Studios (BMS), that man is 26-year-old English-born Steven Hammans.

Like millions of gamers worldwide, Steven’s dreams weren’t that uncommon or spectacular, but started because of a passion for…