Making games into movies. Yes/No?

for me, you want to have a bad movie.... make it out of a videogame...

Why not, they can be fun to watch in all their cheesy glory :)

In fact, I can't wait for the Warcraft film to hit cinemas

@sam-jay: Depends on the source material.

They usually have great potential but fall short because they usually aren't made to appeal to the gamers.

They just take the plot from the game design and throw in some Hollywood facets which I hate.

I didn't like Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Tekken, Silent Hill, Prince of Persia, Hitman, Mortal Kombat or Max Payne.

However I've heard rumors of WoW, Assassin's Creed, The Last of Us, Splinter Cell, a Mortal Kombat reboot, and a Halo maybe?

So I choose to stay optimistic about what is coming. Maybe they will get something right.

Come on Mass Effect movie already.

What about making a movie into a videogame? :)

Sure why not. I've seen most of them, some I've enjoyed, some I've haven't but I always think they should keep making them. I think that much like movies based on comics they'll come into their own eventually. There's been a lot of excellent movies based on comics for the past decade or so now.

lol Anyone remember the DOOM movie?

that movie was awful

This. There are questionable special effects movies coming out on a regular basis. You might just aswell base one on a videogame once in a while. As bad as they are, I have to admit I enjoy some of them. Silent Hill and the Resident Evil movies come to mind. :-P

If writers and producers can pick a license that can properly translate to a screen then yes. Which is why I have a lot of hope for this Warcraft film Duncan Jones is directing.

There was an interesting article at the end of this month's GI listing some numbers about video game movies. Apparently the RE franchise has made $667 million above its production budget (which explains why they keep making them) and PoP actually made aroud 336 million worldwide (corresponding to roughly 136mill above its production budget - had no idea it cost 200mill to make PoP). Those numbers are way better than I would have guessed for any game to movie adaptation.

I think it's like with most adaptations - you don't really have to do them well. As long as you're tied to a successful franchise and you make a reasonable attempt, you should turn some kind of profit. Same rationale with movie to game translations. Even the bad ones tend to sell pretty well...take the Avatar game as an example. That was commercial a success for Ubisoft.

They're all just quick cash grabs. I never saw one worth remembering.

They're all just quick cash grabs. I never saw one worth remembering.

Should it just take place in the Mass Effect universe or should it actually feature the original characters...?

Better as a spin off with some familiar faces, maybe intersecting stories. The world and lore is safe ground for original devs and filmmakers. Different people have too many different branching path ideas, and theres no guarantee it'll sit well with audiences like J.J. Abrams first go at Star Trek.

the way shows are being produced for TV nowadays, Mass Effect would be far better served with a 1 hour, 10 episode per season tv series.

Just seems like the writing for TV series is consistently better than this type of fare would receive with the Hollywood treatment. Add to that, there's much more time to develop story and characters in a 10 hour season than a 2 hour movie.

The main problem with games to movies, books, or show is that games focus on problem solving while the other focus on conflict. It worse nowadays since most only see internal conflicts as important to those media stories.

Well so far, only 3 movies-games have worked. Mortal Kombat, Silent Hill and Need for Speed. Uncharted is up next by Sony I hear, along with The Last of Us. Quite a few games are cartoons on film and tv these days. Uncharted is just a new version of Pitfall if anyone remembers that. Another game of that era is Star Raiders, which you can say was unofficially done as The Last Starfighter, which you can check out on Blu ray. Ace Combat is one that can be done. Firefox was first a book, then film then a game.

No, and it goes the other way too.

There are a few good game movies and reverse, its all about the script and realising that what works on movies isent always working in games and again opposite.

Is that a vote for or against?

-Byshop

I think it has great potential either way. How about a show? HBO or Showtime because I think any other channel would be too limiting.

Back at TC: Final Fantasy Advent Children was my greatest letdown. It was pitiful. It might have gotten good ratings but it fell way short IMO.

True. We never considered TV as a better format for long form exposition. Series format handled The Clone Wars pretty well

i want a game of The Hobbit though, playing as Bilbo,Gandalf,Thorin,Legolas will be really great

Video games aren't on the same level of quality as movies.

@tendoboy1984: making a movie into video game is probably more successful... and we have a lot of examples.

With the amount of disappointment I received from the Max Payne movie, I have loss all faith in movie adaptations of video games.

I repeat, ALL FAITH.

Sam-jay said :

" for me, you want to have a bad movie.... make it out of a videogame..."

This.

( @Korvus : I do hope you see this message, I had to impersonate the quote button ! )

@elkoldo: Well, somebody had to... =P

There are many movies we can site that have done terrible like Doom and far cry. I think that only a few can really be counted as good and even then so many look unproffesional. There are amateur movie makers on youtube that do well with adaptations of video games but none to be a feature length film. One of my rules in gaming is dont play games made from movies and dont watch movies adapted from video games. No one can get it right, no one can capture that magic you felt when you first started up your new adventure game.

@peachesop:

But wouldn't you like to see a well produced, directed, acted, scripted movie of God of War, Uncharted, Heavy Rain or even CoD ghosts extinction?

Eh? you can't really say take a script from a video game equals a bad movie. Its all about budget and the script work.

So of course you can make a good movie out of a good game.

Just don't let this guy make the movie

It'll work if the stars align. A lot of games would do well as a TV series. If someone made a Mass Effect series and did the game justice so its like Firefly quality, I think it would do extremely well.

@burock76: if one exists please let me know but as far as I have seen there are no good movies based off of video games. Besides the lovely amateur stuff like freddy W I would not want to watch anything based off of a video game

Animation - probably yes

Live - no

Silent hill was a good movie, probably the best movie i have seen that was originally a game, they should continue to make them but i wish they put more effort into them because most of them are way below standard.

i give them a go, but 90% of the time they suck

To my knowledge, to this day in 2014, there still has yet to be a hugely successful movie based on a game.

@peachesop:

Maybe there is none yet, but as long as moviemakers treat us gamers like mindless people who watch anything you throw at them, then there wont be a good game-to-movie production. But I still have hope. Because by now they should have understood that if a game-to-movie will be made then it should have a good story, acting, scriptwriting etc etc

And I think some of them are not so terrible such as resident evil series, at least it has a story.. well kind of :)

If they told separate stories in the same universe, great. However, the movies try to adapt or retell the story and it's usually a complete failure. For example, I could forgive the original Resident Evil (in a way) because it had original characters, despite not at all fitting with the canon. It wasn't really until they attempted to bring in Jill and various other characters from the game that it completely fell apart.

Video games often have excellent lore, but the story telling only really works due to the interactivity. So when that's taken away you're left with something lackluster.

But I think there's potential. Tell a Mass Effect story that isn't about Shepard. Tell an Assassin's Creed story that doesn't follow Desmond or any of the Assassins we've already seen.

I don't want to see actors playing Joel and Ellie.