Bonding exercise

How games become books - and vice versa - in the quest for character

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The release of IO Interactive's 007: First Light is only months away, and represents the latest attempt to translate James Bond from movies and books to the world of videogames. But the effort to bring the suavest of spies to PC and console actually began in the mid '80s, first with James Bond 007: A View To A Kill in 1985 and then James Bond 007: Goldfinger in 1986. At the helm of both of these text adventures was writer Raymond Benson. The author of several official Bond novels, he was one of the first writers to bring the secret agent to the interactive world.

For Benson, to write Bond is to wrangle cause and effect — to pull His Majesty's finest through an uncurling narrative and pit his wits against a constant stream of challenges.

"In a way, it's all kind of intertwined," he says. "Creating a thriller plot is almost like designing a game. There's all these obstacles and puzzles and all these things that Bond has to solve, get past and uncover."