A No-Code App that Turns Fiction Writers into Game Developers

A No-Code App that Turns Fiction Writers into Game Developers

Dorian, an interactive storytelling app, available on Apple and Android play stores, uses no-code design principles, allowing anyone to turn their stories into interactive games, with no prior experience needed in game design. 

Dorian's strategy is that when users navigate the free-to-play app, they can spend in-app currency to unlock alternative story routes, directly putting a cut of the payment in the author’s pocket. With this business model, when a reader makes an in-app purchase to follow a paywalled route on a story, the payment is split 50-50 between Dorian and the author.

“I spent about two years investing in some early stage startups, and I was very inspired and itching to go back into building, which is how the idea for Dorian came together,”, said CEO Julia Palatovska, an investor and previous Head of Business Development & Licensing at G5 games. “I think the biggest inspiration and the idea here is, how can we enable more people to participate in the games industry?”, she continued.

Dorian is targeting a market, where secondary authors are building off of the stories of original authors, whilst allowing both to keep stake in the derivative works they inspire.

“Dorian owns the technology, but the creators keep ownership of the IP,” Palatovska explained. She said that if someone posted an original story on Dorian, and then down the line, the author decided that they want to publish a novel that draws from their Dorian story, that would be allowed.

“The majority of creators on the platform have been writing fiction and fan fiction for years, and they have never monetized anything,” Palatovska said.

If a secondary author want to tell a story based on a game originally published on Dorian, the original author can allocate a percentage of royalties to give to secondary authors, if their derivative stories make money. So long as these derivative creations exist within the Dorian ecosystem, it’s fair game. Alternatively, if a secondary author were to take their derivative works outside of Dorian to monetize them, that’s where they might run into legal issues.

Dorian does not impose a threshold, such as number of reads, before a creator can start monetizing. Any user over the age of 13 can monetize on Dorian through Tipalti, the same payout provider that Twitch and Roblox use.