Film Adaptation as Experimental Game Design

Pippin Barr

doi:10.3390/arts9040103

Abstract

Film adaptation is a popular approach to game design, but it prioritizes blockbuster films and conventional “game-like” qualities of those films, such as shooting, racing, or spatial exploration. This leads to adaptations that tend to use the aesthetics and narratives of films, but which miss out on potential design explorations of more complex cinematic qualities. In this article, I propose an experimental game design method that prioritizes an unconventional selection of films alongside strict game design constraints to explore tensions and affinities between cinema and videogames. By applying this design method and documenting the process and results, I am able both to present an experimental set of videogame film adaptations, along with potentially generative design and development themes. In the end, the project serves as an illustration of the nature of adaptation itself: a series of pointed compromises between the source and the new work.

Highlights

Film adaptation has had a significant history within videogame design, from early titles such as and Tron2 to contemporary games like Alien: Isolation3 or LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.4 large-scale videogame adaptations released alongside major films have generally been replaced by mobile-oriented casual games with contemporary films’ aesthetics (e.g., Toy Story Drop!’s5 content update with the release of Toy Story 46 ), films and videogames have certainly walked hand in hand (King 2002; Fassone 2018).A key driving force in this pairing of media is the marketing power and brand-recognition of large-scale film production, so videogame adaptation of blockbuster films has been and continues to be the focus
Large-scale videogame adaptations released alongside major films have generally been replaced by mobile-oriented casual games with contemporary films’ aesthetics (e.g., Toy Story Drop!’s5 content update with the release of Toy Story 46 ), films and videogames have certainly walked hand in hand (King 2002; Fassone 2018)
In this article I seek to explore the question: what potential game-design insights can be gained from adapting unconventional cinematic choices? That is, how might the adaptation of specific examples of cinema help designers to reflect on and discover new design forms more generally? This is a question that should be answered through practice, and so my exploration will focus more or less entirely on discussion of the conceptualization, design, and development of a specific series of videogame adaptations based on diverse films from multiple genres

Summary

Introduction

Film adaptation has had a significant history within videogame design, from early titles such as and Tron to contemporary games like Alien: Isolation or LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.. This is a question that should be answered through practice, and so my exploration will focus more or less entirely on discussion of the conceptualization, design, and development of a specific series of videogame adaptations based on diverse films from multiple genres. I conclude by reviewing the overall trajectory of the paper and making some final remarks

Method

Game Design Constraints

Atari’s

Platform

Documentation

Design

Presentation

Citizen

Analysis

Adaptation in Code

Husband

Balthazar’s