Game On: When stories from games transcend the medium

By Aditya Deshbandhu The last few years have been great for gaming content as narratives from several games have found new homes in a variety of media forms. There have been animated films (Assassins Creed Embers, Street Fighter, Dead Space), and series (Castlevania, DoTA, League of Legends), live-action films (Uncharted, Warcraft) and more recently entire […]

By Aditya Deshbandhu

The last few years have been great for gaming content as narratives from several games have found new homes in a variety of media forms. There have been animated films (Assassins Creed Embers, Street Fighter, Dead Space), and series (Castlevania, DoTA, League of Legends), live-action films (Uncharted, Warcraft) and more recently entire live-action shows (Halo) as gaming studios and production houses try and find ways to entertain non-gaming audiences and invite them into their layered universes.

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I write this week’s column after having watched Sony’s live-action film on the Uncharted franchise and finishing the first season of Halo while recommending anyone I know to watch Arcane on Netflix; and just as I think that’s enough for 2022, Sony surprises us all with its plans to make more viewable content from its exclusive games.

The Last of Usis already being developed by HBO and stars Bella Ramsey (from Game of Thrones) as the titular Ellie, and Peacock has commissioned a comedic live-action series based on the racing franchise Twisted Metal.

To add to this, recent reports from Sony’s 2022 investor briefing indicate that there are more franchises on the brink of being adapted as either series or films. The samurai journey of Jin Sakai as the Ghost of Tsushima is in the works of being made into a live-action feature along with a series on the futuristic machine reality of the Horizon franchise that will make its way to Netflix.

Sony is not done though as it also draws from its veritable franchise list to work with Amazon on a God of War series and a series/film based on the Gran Turismo franchise. All of these developments indicate that Sony is developing its own bouquet of content for viewers across a variety of platforms. While the move makes a lot of sense for Sony as it realigns itself to benefit from the various transformations across the creative industries, it is also important to understand why gaming universes have suddenly become a hot site for adaptations, remakes, and spin-off content.

At first glance, the reasons for leading production houses and OTT platforms to turn towards games are not surprising as gaming universes are rich in terms of lore and background, and also have an array of strong characters in their “coming of age” arcs. Their plots are almost always accompanied by a great deal of visual razzmatazz and if one factors in the significant popularity that leading games enjoy – most gaming content no matter how sub-par is seldom unpopular or commercially unsuccessful.

Thus, these attempts to tap into gaming metaverses is a great way for studios to showcase their technological prowess in content production but also make sound commercial decisions at a time when notions of financial reality have caught up with the supposedly infinite coffers of platforms like Netflix.

Thus, as the next few years find new ways to blur the boundaries between conventional media forms like film, TV, and animation – we should expect more of the narratives from games to leak into conventional media forms. However, will the magic translate too is a question that’s at best unanswered for now. After all for every great attempt like Arcane there are two that fail to hit the mark.

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