Free Candy For Everyone

Ok, so why do people persist in making movies out of video games? I just read that New Line just grabbed up the rights to make a Gears of War movie and I can only wonder why? What video game movie success story leads Hollywood to continue to snatch up our IP? Could it have been Wing Commander? No, no - that couldn’t be it since it has an IMDB user rating of 3.5/10. Maybe it was BloodRayne! No, 2.5/10, that can’t be it!

Well, it must be something from the oeuvre of Uwe Boll since he keeps getting tapped to make video game movies… Well, maybe that’s not it.

Whoa! Wikipedia to the rescue! Here is a big ole’ list of video game adaptations. I know! It must be the Pokemon movies! Those are probably a big success with the kiddies, so let’s make this M-rated game into a movie too! Kiddies love the M!

Ok, all sarcasm aside (I’ll do my best), why do they keep making video game movies? Take a look at the wikipedia page and see all the game movies currently in production! It’s out of control. Games and movies are two very different media. Just because something is a success in one area doesn’t mean it’ll be a success in the other.

I know that smart people who make the greenlight decisions for very expensive movies must be aware of this already. I guess they’re banking on the fact that people like IP with which they are already familiar. You save on marketing costs - you already have brand awareness, so there you go, something for free!

But the trouble is that you have two options for a movie, the way I see it. First, you can make a film that follows the game. It is as exact a translation of the story and the experience as you can make when removing interactivity. This only works for games that have a strong story. But I’m not a fan of this. If I played the game and won my way through the story then I was the hero and I saved the world. But now some burly Hollywood actor man is going to be playing the part I once controlled and take that victory away from me. I’m not too excited to see my game experience played out with me in a strictly observatory role.

The other option is to just keep the world of the game, but tell a new story. For games with a deep and rich backstory, this is feasible (Warcraft movie, anyone?), but for games that are pretty thin, kill-stuff-til-it’s-dead gameplay (Doom had a story?) then making a movie in the world of the game isn’t all that interesting.

Ok, I confess, I haven’t actually played Gears of War yet. I know, how can I make any comments on it if I haven’t played it? Well, I’m just ranting about game movies in general. A friend is supposed to be loaning me a copy to play any day now (if he’ll just remember to bring it to work already!) and maybe I can follow up my uninformed comments with something more … informed. Regardless of which category this movie would fall into, there are few (if any?) examples of video game movies that were actually good. I shall wait and wait and perhaps be surprised? We shall see.

The first talk I attended today was Cliff Bleszinski discussing Gears of War. This is a game that I’ve watched some people play and that there’s been a lot of discussion over by people in the industry. It apparently won Game of the Year at the Game Developer Choice awards last night. It’s a polished game that focuses on doing a few things, and doing them well. Oh, and it’s a third person shooter.

This guy Cliff B has gotten a lot of attention paid to him in the industry, but I’d known really very little about him. Until my current job, I paid little attention to first or 3rd person shooters. But it’s a bit more relevant now, so I’ve been trying to be a bit more interested.

His first game was actually something I did play, a long time ago, a PC platform game called Jazz Jackrabbit. That very well might be the last game of Epic’s that I played. Well, I need to pick up a copy of Gears of War, because it’s supposed to be rockin’ awesome.

On to the talk. Gears has sold approximately 3 million copies - and since it’s an Xbox 360 exclusive title, that makes that more impressive - and it has an average review score of 94%. I cannot even imagine that. Must be awesome.
Read the rest of this entry »