GamesMaster: The Oral History

[pjmlfc05]

I would love to see a book similar to Gamesmaater: The Oral History. This was a book where it detailed every series and people from each series provided insights into the episodes. Would love to see something similar for Knightmare.

[Mashibinbin]

I never knew this GM book existed but it's now on my want list, thankyou.

[Canadanne]

I've always longed for a detailed Knightmare companion book, too!

[pjmlfc05]

Yeah it was a fascinating insight into each series. The Gamesmaster book was off the back of a kickstarter, which I backed. Got it signed by Dominik Diamond which is cool.

I would long for a Knightmare book! Would love to read some inside stories from the producers and I am sure there are also some great stories that have not been told by other members of the cast as well as the contestants.

[Mashibinbin]

Looking at this it really would be an ideal companion to Knightmare were one ever to be made. One day...

[Drassil]

I wish it hadn't been given that title. Printed words and photos are not oral history: they're the opposite. I can't express how much this bothers me. Perhaps it was intended to convey the wealth of from-the-horse's-mouth accounts, but that still does not make written, visual and oral mean the same thing. The name of the publisher, Read-Only Memory, adds huge irony. Couldn't they have called it The Inside Story or In Their Own Words?

For anyone curious about the book, the publisher's website shows some of the pages.

I'm not sure how well a similar kind of book would work for Knightmare. So much time has passed that the risk of forgotten and misremembered information is significant. In fact it's been in evidence for years: in more than one interview/Q&A, Hugo Myatt has said that he first used "Ooh nasty" to fill a long pause when a dungeoneer was falling, whereas in fact he first used it after a quest had ended in a bomb room. The author(s) would have to cross-check information from their interviews.

A well-produced making-of book (large pages, high quality paper, lots of photos) can be an expensive exercise. As pjmlfc05 said, the GamesMaster book was crowdfunded: 2,242 backers pledged £105,948. No Knightmare-related crowdfunder has had anything close to that kind of support. David Rowe's Art of Knightmare had 83 backers pledging £4,117.

I would also point out that the GamesMaster fan community's need for such a book was greater than Knightmare's, because they don't have an official website with behind-the-scenes photos, interviews and other information.

There may well be some significant behind-the-scenes material out there which has eluded us at Knightmare.com. (Series 2 winner Jason Karl has spoken about his personal Knightmare archive, for example.) Whether the author(s) of a making-of book would be able to freely and fully access that material is uncertain.

I'd crowdfund and pre-order a professional making-of-Knightmare book in a trice. I just don't think it's a realistic prospect.

[Mystara]

We were in discussion with the author about producing a KM one, but they decided (together with their publisher) not to proceed for various reasons.

We (KM.com) are in a better position to produce this but it's a lot of work.

A lot of work that....as Drassil implies...might be better presented in a different format. However, I am conscious that people buy these things for reasons other than actually reading the information inside. I just then wonder if we'd essentially just be producing it for the sake of making money, which adds all kinds of other complexities in.

[DuxBellorum]

I was a huge fan of GamesMaster, especially the earlier series and have quite a few episodes on VHS.

A comprehensive, tangible history would indeed be a fantastic thing to have.

Several excellent points have been made however, as to why this would seem unlikely.

Cost is one thing and time is another.

As much as we all adore Knightmare, sometimes a show has simply just "had it's time" despite how good or even groundbreaking and influential it was.

Sadly, Knightmare hasn't become a 'Mr. Men', 'Thunderbirds', 'Sooty' or 'Thomas The Tank Engine' which keep being repeated and even today have new episodes in regular production.

Even GamesMaster has been revived and rebooted a time or two.

While Knightmare has been repeated on a couple of channels over the years, and has plenty of clips on the ITV Children's Classics youtube channel, it has received next to no mainstream support.

There was a great amount of buzz surrounding the showing of two episodes as part of CITV'S 'Old Skool Weekend', the 'Geek Week' episode and of course the convention, but this was all a decade ago and very little has happened since.

Series 4 appearing on BritBox Was also wonderful, but that too seems to have been rather quickly forgotten about.

I say all that to say while Knightmare does indeed have many old fans, who I'm sure would want to buy the book and perhaps even support it's production without it being readily available (Officially at least) it might be more expensive than it's worth if Knightmare isn't creating/getting any new fans or isn't anything more than a faint, if pleasant memory.

Though I don't wish to appear negative, so it would be an amazing project, and with next year being the 30th anniversary of the final "Time Out" who knows what could happen.