Games Aren’t Just Games Anymore
First it was actors venturing into the music industry, then we had musicians breaking into the ranks of the actors guild and now, perhaps demonstrating the pervasiveness of game culture in the younger generations today, we have the oozing of video games into other sectors of entertainment.
Where one game makes the break others soon follow, resulting in a proliferation of game-oriented books and movies. In the film industry we’ve had adaptations of Super Mario Brothers, Mortal Kombat, and Street Fighter. More recently the high-profile Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within, as well as the Resident Evil and Tomb Raider series, have reasserted gaming’s place in Hollywood. Watch for a whole slew of new additions that are in discussion as we speak: Doom (due for release Oct. 21st, 2005), Halo, and a John Woo-produced adaptation of Metroid.
Similarly, books based on the characters and scenarios from Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Halo (are we sensing some strong franchises here?) and MechWarrior. The latest effort to hit the shelves is a Splinter Cell spin-off that gives you a glimpse of what it’s like to be Sam Fisher.
I can’t vouch for the quality of any of these writings (frankly the mere thought of them makes me edge in the opposite direction), and the vast majority of movies are slop, but the fact is that they do exist and can serve to act as an expansion of game industry promotional materials, broadening the reach of franchising campaigns.
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3 opinions for Games Aren’t Just Games Anymore
Matt
Sep 22, 2005 at 9:36 am
The Mechwarrior books are slightly different in the fact that they were around before the games were, I believe. Then people took the Battletech universe and made them into games and the books have continued on and the games of course have matched the story line. You’ll find that there are a lot more things involved with the Battletech universe besides the books and the games. They also have table top RPGs, a collectible card game, hell they even have http://www.mechjock.com/ gaming pods which recreate the cockpit of a mech and they’re usually in gaming places. They’re also on sale for $2000 a piece and they have their own @home network which you can connect to and play with other people who own their own pods. So the whole Mechwarrior thing is kind of in a beautiful league of its own. I’ve also read the Halo books, and they’re what you think they would be. Books based off a game. While they do add some backstory and some plot filler, they’re still based off a game. So I don’t imagine that any of the books based off the game fair much better. Comment has gotten entirely too long so I’ll stop here.
Erin
Sep 22, 2005 at 8:21 pm
Hi Matt, thanks for stopping by, I’m glad that you weren’t scared off by all the estrogen!
I didn’t realize that the books came out before the games, which makes MechWarrior perhaps the most interesting of the examples. Book to game to book to everything under the sun.
Thanks for the tip!
the play girlz gaming blog » Game Studies
Sep 23, 2005 at 6:14 am
[...] We’ve already come a long way from the 2D games of yesteryears, which offered plenty of entertainment, but limitations in terms of in-depth plotlines or characterization. Recent years have brought us rich, 3D environments, complex plotlines, characters with background stories, and introductory cinematics, to name but a few examples. As Erin pointed out, games aren’t just games anymore. They are - and have been for some time - a garnering of different entertainment mediums. [...]
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