In the excerpt from Robert Brookey's book, Hollywood Gamer, the convergence of film/cinema and video games is discussed in-depth. More specifically, as we are seeing more and more video games being created off of movies, or "spun-off" of movies, it is a topic worth noting. Although there have been a few disasters in the past such as the ET spin-off disaster and the Super Mario Brothers video game to film attempt, the film industries are still very much interested in the production of film-based video games. "Of the top ten highest-grossing films of 2006, eight had video game releases... the previous year, seven of the top ten grossing films had video game releases, and the same was true of 2007 (pp. 4-5). It was also noted that this all happens during a generation where films have become more game-like and vice versa resulting in a film industry trend where video game spin-offs have become more of a rule than an exception (p.5). So why have the two industries become so closely related?
In allowing a film to be turned into a video game, the film company, or the licensor, puts little at stake as they have everything to gain but literally, very little to lose. It is the licensee who bears the financial risk while guaranteeing the licensor a royalty guarantee. However, in terms of the close relationship between the two industries, they have much to offer each other. First and foremost, a video game spin-off will already have a built-in market due to the movie's release as well as the millions of dollars spent on advertising for that movie (p. 17). As such, video game adaptations of films require very little true advertisement, instead just an announcement of the game's coming along with some other minimal information. Furthermore, the game does not need to be original: being a spin-off, it is expected to follow the storyline of its film counterpart, or at the very least, the characters must maintain a likeness in appearance and voice to those of the film. Moreover, as the content and image-editing processes of films and video games have grown increasingly similar over the years, it has now become extraordinarily simple for such material to be transferred from a film into a video-game with minimal editing and work.
My question is, do you think that this convergence of the film industry and video game industry is leading to an unimaginative and unoriginal video game industry? Are the consumers once again being robbed of creative content with potentially compelling narrative due to the financial motivations of these industries?
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