In the chapter, Brookey goes over the film and gaming industries. With how successful film adaptations of books are (especially comic book adaptations), you had to see video game spinoffs of films on the way. Basically every big action movie is going to have a game based on it. It happens so frequently that it's expected and whenever a game for a big movie doesn't come out, it's considered an oddity. An example of this is The Dark Knight. "Despite a plethora of 'Dark Knight' action figures, bobbleheads and T-shirts sweeping in Bat-dollars beyond the film's $400 million record-smashing box office, no 'Dark Knight' game is following suit. Whatever held things up caused about $100 million in sales to be missed, according to estimates."
They are also close in the respect that they use the same home format. Back in the day, the two industries weren't as closely tied. Video games used a type of game cartridge unique to that system, and movies used VHS tapes. Later on, laserdiscs came around, "offering full-motion video, rendering complex, cinematic images." Laserdiscs didn't gain a large fanbase however. Hollywood limited the number of titles released on laserdisc so the gaming industry didn't have enough of a market. Eventually the DVD came out and became the main medium for movies, and eventually games.
Film and video games are high-risk businesses. Both need to have money up front to begin, and won't know if they've lost or gained money until after the release. This is especially true with the 1983 Atari video game burial. "Atari, banking on the success of the film and expecting a run on the ET game, had overproduced cartridges and was stuck with a warehouse full of stock it could not move. To clear the warehouse, the company contracted to have the cartridges buried somewhere in the New Mexico desert."
With these industries working together, do you think game adaptations of books will ever be a hit? Can you think of any that exist?
Everything is possible, but honeslty, I don't see game adaptations of books over film adapatations of books is worth investing. Novel is a linear narration and fits better with film. And the film industry market is larger than the game industry as of now. Thus, it would be smarter to make the the book into a film first, then game, but not the other way around.
ReplyDeleteExcellent point! Film is a time-based linear medium. Novels are a linear medium that is not time-based. Games are not linear, and are not time-based (have a fixed length that doesn't change with each viewer). As many other posters from our class have said, they're neither books nor films, but something new.
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