Literature Based Games

[McMurphy]

The various mediums of entertainment and the arts have crossed paths via adaptions for quite some time, so seeing, for instance, a book transferred into a film or a popular film into a video game is common place and readily available to the average consumer. In fact, it is almost expected. There are even gaming companies such as Acclaim who deal almost exclusively with transferring movies such as Spider-Man into video games.

Why is not more literature, specifically fantasy novels, transferred into video games, such as role playing games? The material is not only available in abundance, but it is so tightly related in subject matter that parallels in plot formation is unavoidable, and the market already wields an audience familiar with the notations.

Sure, there are some slant examples already on the market, but few in number. The Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett were made into descent (but dated) Playstation and PC games, but how much of a victory is that? While Discworld is great, it is still a parody of the genre and cannot count as a true game adaption of the more serious fantasy literature genre. Comic book games, such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance, have been made, but some---hell, many---critics consider the graphic novel inherently inferior to text-only literature. Some people may bring up the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter game adaptions, but they must be ultimately disqualified as an example since the games in question are more reflections of the film success than that of the literature.

It isn't like the gaming medium couldn't stand for some fresh, fleshed-out source material. SquareEnix, the makers of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, had a good run at furthering the storytelling quality of games, but the company have stagnated in their own progress. Too often as of late SquareEnix has pumped out carbon copies of a workable fantasy formula in effort towards a quick buck.

If games are to be considered a true source of noteworthy storytelling, would not working with authors of the novel form of fantasy literature be one way of accomplishing that goal? Perhaps then the production gates would be opened for more (excuse the pun) novel ideas for original material.

Thoughts? Is it reasonable to hire published writers as authors to game scripts? What fantasy or science fiction novels/series would be good sources?

[Quokka]

Going back awhile now but I think Betrayal at Krondor (1993) is one of the best examples of a literary world being transfered successfully to a computer game. Part of it I think is that it does something that I'd like to see a lot more of in games and movies. Rather than make a game of Magician (or another book) and try to retell the story, it used the game to tell a new story that links in with Fiest's world and characters.

For me this gives you the best of both worlds, you get the interest of people who are fans of the novels but I think it's alot more forgiving because they're not going to directly compare one to the other. Your not setting up a situation where one image/story is in conflict with the one the audience has going in, at least not anywhere near as much.

Plus you would have a much larger percentage of the audience going back and reading the intial story than you have when it's a direct translation.

If the Malazan books were made into movies/series/games etc I'd be very sceptical that it would work well but if they said they were going to do something based around the formation of the bridgeburners or some other 'side story' I'd be a lot more interested.

Of course it helped that Betrayal at Krondor was also a very good RPG in its own right.

One reason why it doesnt happen more (IMO) is that the books wouldn't bring in as big a ready made audience as movies do. But really there is so much scope to do this better, as you said its not like the gaming medium can't use some better game writers and it wouldn't always mean huge changes to game designs that companies want to produce anyway.

A FPS that is based around King's Cell, (maybe following a diferent main character trying to survive) could be done as a decent game without all that much development.

[McMurphy]

I think another good example would be the Dune series, but, again, the temptation might be too great for producers and designers of the games to reflect the film adaptions instead of the book originals.

Oh! A perfect one just occurred to me. How about the Ender's Game novel series? It seems ripe with possible ideas for games that follow other gifted children of the academy. Some years back, Card's official website hosted forum-based rpgs of the series.

[Quokka]

Dune 2: Battle for Arrakis was another good example of a company using the literature world but without retelling the story. Dune 2 was a very,very good RTS game for its time (one of the first) and the fact that it was based on the Dune books, with sandworms etc was just the icing on the cake.

They would have made the same game anyway but by placing it in the Dune universe it gave the game alot more depth and storyline with very little effort. There wasn't alot of details about the factions in the game itself but having read the book, I certainly enjoyed being the Atriedes and beating the evil Harkonen (or vice versa) because of all the storyline, emotions etc that I brought to the game.

Ender's Game is certainly tailor made for a conversion. Belagarion/ Sparrhawk series for a squad based rpg or adventure game?

In Robin Hobb's series The Live Ship Traders the Elderlings are never fully explained, an adventure/mystery game would have alot of scope without contradicting anything in the main storyline.

The Death Gate Cycle (Weis & Hickman) has so much in common with Knights of the Old Republic it's not funny.

Maybe try do something creative with controlling a centipede and adapt Clement's Mission of Gravity?


(Wo hoo! my 600th post)

[Lucien21]

There was a Death Gate game years ago.

Death Gate Review by Quandary

and one based on Shannara

Shannara Review by Quandary

A couple of games based on Frederick Poul's Gateway novel.

Adventure games have always had close ties to the printed word. Recently there have been a couple of Agatha Christie games, there are about 16 Nancy Drew games, the 3 Discworld games (which are not dated), and about 4 games basedon Jules Verne novels.

I should also point out that there were Lord of the Rings games based on the books long before the movie was a twinkle in P Jackson's eye. I remembr playing the Hobbit adventure game on the Spectrum in the 80's and one of my mates had all the LoTR rpgs on the Amstrad CPC.

J.R.R. Tolkien Games

[Lucien21]

Actually Mobygames has a list of Literature based games.

Literature-inspired games

[McMurphy]

Ah, so it isn't so much that games are not being made from novels, it is, according to the above link, a large, large majority of them are being made for only the PC crowd. I wonder why that is.

[WriterDoug]

You can now add Bioshock for the Playstation 3, which for two or three days, actually toppled the Ocarina of Time as the highest rate videogame of all times!

[Lenny]

Still not confirmed as coming out on PS3. As far as everyone involved is concerned, it's exclusive to the Xbox 360 and PC, nothing else.

[Ice fyre]

Is Bio shock based on a set of books?

I remember the Dune games I played both for many years. They released an adaptaion for the PS2 actually. Did see it in a shop for a few quid, hmm pay day is soon.

[Lenny]

Nope, but it draws influences from dystopian literature and the like.

BioShock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia