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What's really interesting is that there are a number of video game franchises with nuanced backstories that have spawned successful and surprisingly well-writte

What's really interesting is that there are a number of video game franchises with nuanced backstories that have spawned successful and surprisingly well-written novels. So it's definitely possible to take a video game and turn it into a book. And there are plenty of books that get turned into excellent movies or TV shows (of course, there are plenty that get turned into bad ones, FWIW). Books like Eric Nylund's Halo: The Fall of Reach, Greg Bear's Forerunner Saga (Halo again), or Brandon Sanderson's Infinity Blade: Awakening are all pretty well-respected and did well in terms of sales. Probably because they manage to avoid falling into the temptation to simply recreate the game experience as a book. They use the game's plot as a starting point to influence the story without dictating it. Of course, by deviating away from "the game" as fans experienced it, you risk alienating them because the final product doesn't match up with what they expect. And because the same fans are probably the reason why the studio is willing to finance the movie in the first place, I can sort of understand why Hollywood repeatedly tries to hew closely to the source game even though that approach has repeatedly screwed them. The peculiar thing is that they face a somewhat similar situation when they turn a book into a movie. And yet, Hollywood is more than willing to take risks and deviate away from the source material when necessary. So what about video games in particular scares the studios away from doing the same?

andrewflnr 9y ago
It may be the similarity of the medium that hamstrings Hollywood. Going from prose to a movie tends to absolutely force a lot of compromises. You no longer really have the option of extensive narration, seeing into characters' thoughts, etc, and the whole thing has to fit into 200 minutes at the outside. A video game already operates under similar constraints as a movie, so it's possible to create a movie that's very similar. You just take a recording of a well-done play-through as your outline. It could be that without the excuse provided by the drastic change in medium, Hollywood types lose the nerve to do what's necessary.
- ehnto 9y ago
  I would argue that the medium of video games is more free to explore a rich story than either books or movies, video games benefit from the ability to explore story and lore asynchronously from the main plot, with unique branching, and at the players leisure, so appealing to a wide audience with every detail isn't necessary. Some games can even continue story telling for hundreds of hours, meandering through dozens of different storylines, arcs, characters, minute details, (Skyrim, Fallout,..). Some games even have their own books inside the games that the character player can read! The medium really is quite a bit more flexible than a movie. Where I think some comments are suggesting that games are not story rich enough to translate into movies and that's certainly true in some cases, I would argue that the types of story telling are simply not always directly compatible with a linear movie story line.
quickthrower2 9y ago
So you can go: Game -> Book -> Movie, and y'all set.
croon 9y ago
Most comments here just seem to generally crap on all video game movies to date (correct) and surmise that it's a losing concept (wrong). Movies afraid to deviate away from source material I don't think applies to the problem. I've probably seen most video game movies (even the cringe-worthy Uwe Boll ones) and I'd say the overwhelming problem is no one on set even bothering to look at the source material, or understanding what they're trying to do. Someone mentioned Edge of Tomorrow, which never was a game. It was based on a very light-sci-fi japanese novel, in turn inspired by a player's forum account of restarting a game over and over in order to incrementally learn enough to finish it. But it doesn't really matter whether Edge of Tomorrow was or was not based on a video game. The fact that it works as a movie and you can think about it in terms of a video game proves that there's no issue with making a video game movie. The problem with Hollywood sometimes or often putting out crap is a Hollywood problem, not a medium or genre problem. Think of a movie you thought had all potential to be good, but turned out bad, and then google the backstory on its production. I'll put $10 on saying that it most likely suffered from "too many chefs"/creation by committee, and focus-grouping it to death, instead of trusting the vision of the creator(s), whether that be screenwriter, director or other. This is obviously subjective, but why is the best Marvel movies Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Deadpool and Logan? For example, James Mangold did both The Wolverine and Logan, what changed between them?
hinkley 9y ago
When adapting a book the set and costume designers, directors of photography, casting and special effects have a lot of flexibility to collaborate on the tone and feel of the movie. In a video game situation most of these people need to look at the game and build a world that looks like it’s ripped from the game, or the fans get cranky. But once the director does this, isn’t he/she tainted by the source material?

andrewflnr 9y ago

It may be the similarity of the medium that hamstrings Hollywood. Going from prose to a movie tends to absolutely force a lot of compromises. You no longer really have the option of extensive narration, seeing into characters' thoughts, etc, and the whole thing has to fit into 200 minutes at the outside. A video game already operates under similar constraints as a movie, so it's possible to create a movie that's very similar. You just take a recording of a well-done play-through as your outline. It could be that without the excuse provided by the drastic change in medium, Hollywood types lose the nerve to do what's necessary.

ehnto 9y ago
I would argue that the medium of video games is more free to explore a rich story than either books or movies, video games benefit from the ability to explore story and lore asynchronously from the main plot, with unique branching, and at the players leisure, so appealing to a wide audience with every detail isn't necessary. Some games can even continue story telling for hundreds of hours, meandering through dozens of different storylines, arcs, characters, minute details, (Skyrim, Fallout,..). Some games even have their own books inside the games that the character player can read! The medium really is quite a bit more flexible than a movie. Where I think some comments are suggesting that games are not story rich enough to translate into movies and that's certainly true in some cases, I would argue that the types of story telling are simply not always directly compatible with a linear movie story line.

quickthrower2 9y ago

So you can go: Game -> Book -> Movie, and y'all set.

croon 9y ago

Most comments here just seem to generally crap on all video game movies to date (correct) and surmise that it's a losing concept (wrong). Movies afraid to deviate away from source material I don't think applies to the problem. I've probably seen most video game movies (even the cringe-worthy Uwe Boll ones) and I'd say the overwhelming problem is no one on set even bothering to look at the source material, or understanding what they're trying to do. Someone mentioned Edge of Tomorrow, which never was a game. It was based on a very light-sci-fi japanese novel, in turn inspired by a player's forum account of restarting a game over and over in order to incrementally learn enough to finish it. But it doesn't really matter whether Edge of Tomorrow was or was not based on a video game. The fact that it works as a movie and you can think about it in terms of a video game proves that there's no issue with making a video game movie. The problem with Hollywood sometimes or often putting out crap is a Hollywood problem, not a medium or genre problem. Think of a movie you thought had all potential to be good, but turned out bad, and then google the backstory on its production. I'll put $10 on saying that it most likely suffered from "too many chefs"/creation by committee, and focus-grouping it to death, instead of trusting the vision of the creator(s), whether that be screenwriter, director or other. This is obviously subjective, but why is the best Marvel movies Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Deadpool and Logan? For example, James Mangold did both The Wolverine and Logan, what changed between them?

hinkley 9y ago

When adapting a book the set and costume designers, directors of photography, casting and special effects have a lot of flexibility to collaborate on the tone and feel of the movie. In a video game situation most of these people need to look at the game and build a world that looks like it’s ripped from the game, or the fans get cranky. But once the director does this, isn’t he/she tainted by the source material?