Turning film adaptions into other media is a tale as old as time. It gives us another way to engage with the stories we love, letting us approach from a different angle, explore additional details, and further embrace what affected us the most. Video games are just one of these forms, and they’re one with a mixed history of great releases and underwhelming tie-ins.
The Volume on Offer
While video game adaptions of films do still occur, they're far from as common as they used to be before the PlayStation 1 and Nintendo 64 era. This is because, in earlier days, the cost of developing major gaming releases was just a fraction of what it is today. These earlier titles required less investment, and the barrier for quality was much lower, so turning out some low-quality releases to capitalize on popularity made sense.
The market today is one where AAA video game quality is taken much more seriously and scrutinized on a much wider scale. Combined, these aspects mean a direct adaption of a film to a video game is far more challenging. A failure today will hurt brand recognition on an appreciable scale, which studios will naturally want to avoid.
"NES action" (CC BY 2.0) by Charles Williams
Inspiration Versus Imitation
When great pieces of interactive entertainment come from films, they tend to be far looser than direct imitations of a story. This is encapsulated by the betting industry, as illustrated today in a modern NJ online casino. A service like this offers a huge selection of different titles on computers and mobiles, including games inspired by movies like Ghostbusters and Ted. While some of these might not appear well suited to casino games, the trick is by taking inspiration, rather than attempting direct adaptions, and this is just as true with video games and science fiction films.
As much as they rely on visual storytelling, films and video games as mediums are too different for direct 1-1 translations to ever really work. A two-hour film being stretched into a 20-hour game ruins the pacing, and events on screen often don't translate to enjoyable gameplay. It might be great to watch Godzilla stomp around and beat up other monsters, but translating this into an enjoyable game is a real challenge. Despite many attempts, nobody has really got the King of the Monsters right in gaming.
Instead, the very best video games based on science fiction movies tend to be those that are inspired by the themes and the settings. Alien: Isolation is a fantastic example of this approach in action, where the universe of Alien is embraced in a way that perfectly captures the terror of the first film. It's not in any way a direct interpretation of the original Alien, but it does understand what made the film great, and it does understand what makes games great.
"Alien Isolation" (Public Domain) by Noncom_
In a somewhat contradictory conclusion, the best way to make science fiction movies into games is not to make them into games directly at all. The best approach is to understand the strengths and limits of each form of media, and to work within these bounds to create something that leverages each side's unique strengths. At least, these have historically been the strongest examples in gaming, and that doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon.
