What's Guiding the New Generation of Successful Gaming TV/Movie Adaptations
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- Last Updated: Friday, 25 April 2025 21:33
- Written by Lupe R Haas
To say that adaptations of games into movies and TV shows is a mixed bag is a powerful understatement. Led by one of the least successful major films of all time from Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, many early efforts were low-quality, low-effort, and a betrayal of what made the games good. This is less often the case today, however, with many games seeing fantastic translations to the screen.
It might have taken us around 25 years since video game movies and shows arrived, but an increasing number of adaptations have become critical and commercial hits. This raises the question: why is this happening today? Just as importantly, why did older films more often suffer worse fates?
Bigger Libraries Mean More Chances of Success
When a medium is popular but only offers a small number of viable options for translations into another medium, then adapting can be tricky. By this metric, any medium that boasts enormous libraries to choose from offers far more choices and chances of a translation's success.
Music is one of the most illustrative examples here, as releases are converted onto different platforms. From the older CDs of the past, modern listeners can engage with apps like Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, and even radio apps directly from a service's web page.
The breadth here is more direct than other translations, coming from forms of access rather than converting the medium into another, but the concept remains the same. Users can now select from a huge library containing a broad range of options, providing even more flexibility.
Online casino games like roulette are another prime example here, which face and overcome an even greater set of challenges. These roulette games leverage the flexibility of modern software to offer far more options than are possible in the traditional offline space. Without relying on purely mechanical tables, the integration of software means the basic idea of roulette can be taken further than in brick-and-mortar establishments.
Starting with classics like European and American roulette, modern online-only titles like Auto Roulette and Lightning Roulette use software to extend gameplay features to broaden libraries even further. This way, classic fans are catered to, while those more interested in newer offerings have plenty to explore.
The biggest websites offering casino roulette games then extend choice out into different hardware devices like smartphones, PCs, and tablets. This provides greater access to existing libraries, again providing more opportunities for high-quality adaptations to reach the right audiences.
All of these above examples apply just as well to the video gaming space. Access is easier across multiple devices, the number of titles is constantly growing, and newer technology is delivering new ideas to cater to new audiences. Whether it's more mature takes on video game stories like in The Last of Us or biographical takes as in Tetris, wider libraries with more access provide far more opportunities for success.
The Departure of the Old Guard
A big thanks for the success of modern game-to-screen adaptations also comes from the arrival of industry insiders who have grown up with gaming. In previous generations, those who led the creation of video game adaptations knew little about the medium, and it showed. Many of these translations were nothing like the games, but instead just tried to lean on the popularity of a name.
Today, those who would exploit video games without understanding what makes them special are becoming less common in television and film. While it's still a profit-driven industry that makes decisions for sometimes questionable reasons, the writers and people behind the cameras are more likely to treat an original property with respect. This, again, results in better-quality results.
To return to the most infamous example, the first major video game movie was a bizarre, fever-dream-like take on the original story. Compare that to a faithful adaptation like how The Last of Us series was treated, and the difference is night and day. Even in the instances when TLOU drifted from the original material, the spirit was still captured in such a way as to make the episodes fit the series perfectly.
A More Mature Medium
The final major contributing factor to screen adaptation success from video games comes from how much better the medium has become at managing mature themes. While simpler games are still popular and have made successful adaptations, many gamers crave more adult stories. Adult themes like loss and revenge were once underrepresented in the gaming landscape, but not today.
Today, games can often treat these concepts with as much weight as many forms of traditional media. They might not yet reach the heights of the best films and novels, but they're well on their way to breaking into challenging portrayals of serious topics. In turn, this provides TV and movies more opportunities to leverage adult-centric content. This content proves gaming is serious, which can make more people more likely to watch video game adaptations in the future.
With the smash success of series like Fallout and The Last of Us, it's inevitable that the future will only see more high-quality gaming-to-screen adaptations. We can appreciate this as gamers, but we also need to understand the risk of extension and media fatigue, as many have experienced with an abundance of superhero media. As long as the industry takes a measured approach, the variety of gaming media could help avoid this issue, but the threat remains. Still, we look forward to seeing what comes next, and we know this is a sentiment millions of gamers share.
