10 Unbelievable Inspirations Behind Your Favourite Video Games

10. Half-Life - The Mist

Second only to H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King has had a resounding impact on gaming, influencing everything from Earthbound and Silent Hill to Super Mario Sunshine.

In 1998, the author’s work inspired one of the most innovative first-person shooters ever made, Half-Life – a relatively realistic shooter which prioritised storytelling over mindless carnage, distancing it from previous entries in the genre, such as Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem.

In particular, Half-Like took numerous cues from The Mist – a short-story in which a small town is invaded by creatures from another dimension. In the game, players assumes the role of Doctor Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist inadvertently responsible for causing a resonance cascade, opening a bridge between dimensions and allowing extra-terrestrial invaders to launch an offensive on the Black Mesa Institute.

As such, the working title for the game during development was Quiver, a reference to a military base in King’s story.

Half-Life was also heavily inspired by the writings of James Tiptree Jr., also known as Alice Bradley Sheldon, author of Up The Walls of the World.