{"id":64644,"date":"2024-03-06T18:56:59","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T08:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/?p=64644"},"modified":"2024-03-06T18:56:59","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T08:56:59","slug":"the-games-industry-needs-to-get-better-at-understanding-source-material-in-adaptations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/2024\/03\/the-games-industry-needs-to-get-better-at-understanding-source-material-in-adaptations.html","title":{"rendered":"The games industry needs to get better at understanding source material in adaptations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDune: Awakening, the survival MMO from Conan: Exiles developer Funcom, will \u201csidestep\u201d religion as a main theme in its \u201calternate history\u201d world set just before the events of the books.\u201d This headline on Eurogamer<\/a>, coming one day after I slammed King Arthur: Knights Tale<\/a> for being developed by a team that may well have never read the book<\/em>, has given me my theme for this week\u2019s thought bubble: Perhaps game developers should take the source material more seriously.<\/p>\n

\"Join<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s not the first time t<\/span>hat I\u2019ve<\/span> raised the topic: I routinely lambast the Call of Duty games<\/a> for taking real-world events and conflict and totally re-writing<\/span> them to suit the military-industrial complex narrative (even the mainstream press is waking up to that series\u2019 role as propaganda<\/a>). But I see it as a growing issue in this industry, and it bothers me more and more.<\/p>\n

Art, typically, exists for a reason. An author writes a book for a reason, to convey a message that is important<\/span> to them. Frank Herbert certainly had a powerful, complex and important<\/span> message to share. That\u2019s why his book was for such a long time considered to be impossible to turn<\/span> into a film. It wasn\u2019t because a director couldn\u2019t set a space movie in a desert world with big worms. They\u2019ve always been able to do<\/span> that. It was because the themes were just so<\/span> dense that it took decades for Denis Villeneuve and his team to figure it out. Incidentally, Dune and Dune 2, the films, do<\/em> have the religion stuff in them, Funcom.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so, as Villeneuve himself demonstrates, if you\u2019re going<\/span> to adapt an artist\u2019s work into another medium like film, it\u2019s important<\/span> to, firstly, understand what the author was trying to do, and then make sure that your work reflects that. This is actually really<\/span> important.<\/span> Another good<\/span> example of this is Peter Jackson\u2019s The Lord of the Rings and the obsessive care that Jackson took to encapsulate every word of that epic tome into his film. Contrast that with Amazon\u2019s very expensive The Lord of the Rings TV series, and it<\/span> was almost unwatchable swill that failed to understand the book on every level. The difference wasn\u2019t in budget.<\/span> It wasn\u2019t even in the talent of people<\/span> working on the respective projects. It was entirely to do with the fact that one of the two was an effort to understand the work of Tolkien,<\/span> and the other was an effort to impose American values onto it.<\/p>\n

None of this is to say that you can\u2019t do things like<\/span> modernise a classic text, or even challenge it. Baz Luhrmann\u2019s Romeo + Juliet is almost universally<\/span> celebrated for taking Shakespeare and putting it in a modern setting. Why was it so successful? Because it maintained respect for the original text and a commitment to maintaining its qualities. An even more extreme example is Ten Things I Hate About You, which is such a brilliant and yet total retelling of Shakespeare\u2019s Taming<\/span> Of The Shrew that many people that watched it didn\u2019t even<\/span> realise they were being educated and exposed to culture.<\/p>\n

And that’s also not to say that you can\u2019t adapt a text in a way that challenges it, either. Stanley Kubrick\u2019s A Clockwork Orange, for example, effectively flips<\/span> the ending around completely. Anthony Burgess\u2019 novel has the protagonist go<\/span> through an epiphany and renounces<\/span> his rapey, violent ways, while<\/span> Kubrick\u2019s film has the protagonist \u201ccured\u201d of his psychological torture and ends with the promise that he\u2019s going<\/span> to go<\/span> right back to what he was doing before. But in challenging Burgess\u2019 work, Kubrick understood the criticism that Burgess<\/span> was making of society in a far more clear and sharp<\/span> fashion than Burgess himself. Few would argue that Kubrick had not memorised and thought on<\/span> every word of the novel.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the most famous example of all: Starship Troopers. Robert Heinleinn\u2019s<\/span> original novel is, at best,<\/span> debatable, as to<\/span> the extent that it supports rather than critiques fascism. That really comes down to how generous you\u2019re going to be<\/span> in your reading of it. No one rational debates<\/span> whether Paul Verhoeven\u2019s film stands, though. It is blatantly a satire of fascism and, through that, a satire of the<\/span> book itself. But to reach that satire and be able to deliver<\/span> it so effectively, Verhoeven also must have carefully studied the book and fully understood it.<\/p>\n

The point I\u2019m making with all of this is that across literature and film, there\u2019s an understanding that an adaptation needs to understand the source material. Meanwhile, in video games, far (far)<\/span> too often we\u2019ve instead got developers that treat their adaptations as a kind of fan<\/span> service. An opportunity to lift some money out of consumers by throwing names and visual design elements into a game, but with<\/span> few real associations with what the source material is about.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned in my review, the stories of King Arthur are<\/span> fundamentally uplifting stories of big adventure and nobleness. The tales were, effectively, the Avengers of their time, with<\/span> a team of equals-but-different<\/span> heroes going<\/span> on a wide range of different adventures before all coming back together for the big final fight. Grimdark<\/span> misery fantasy is totally incompatible with the point of those<\/span> original stories. I doubt the developer went<\/span> further than a Wikipedia search for names when producing that one.<\/p>\n

Some developers and publishers try to get things right in general, sure. Ubisoft, for all its faults as a company, does research<\/span> the history it\u2019s locating its Assassin’s Creed<\/a> games within. The Metro and Witcher<\/a> games both try and adapt the novels correctly, though in both those cases we\u2019re talking about pulp fiction and that\u2019s relatively straightforward material to work with. Few would argue that Alien: Isolation missed the points being made by Alien.<\/span><\/p>\n

But then you\u2019ve got that Avatar game that shoved James Cameron\u2019s work uncomfortably into the Ubisoft formula. There\u2019s the dismal Blair Witch game by Bloober Team that totally mistook the complexion<\/span> of that film’s horror, and there\u2019s<\/span> all the Rocky games that seem to think Rocky was about the boxing.<\/span> Meanwhile, the Friday the 13th game had the killer stalking all the players before <\/em>their avatars had had sex, done drugs, or otherwise transgressed. The one<\/em> thematic message of that entire film series and the developers simply ignored<\/span> it. And there are now games that use the fiction from Starship Troopers, Terminator and Stargate<\/a>, all by Slitherine, that all work well as fan service and aren’t offensive, but also<\/span> aren\u2019t trying to push the themes of those respective properties in any meaningful fashion.<\/p>\n

And yes, Funcom, if you\u2019re removing religion from Dune, you\u2019re in this crowd and completely missing the point of Dune.<\/p>\n

Video games are an art form. We know that. It\u2019s settled. However, for video games to mature as an art form, then game developers<\/span> really need to stop looking at things in terms of IP<\/em> and content<\/em>. If they\u2019re going<\/span> to adapt some source material, then perhaps<\/span> they should study it first and then build a game that directly addresses the point of the source material. Right now, the expectations that game developers will do that is<\/span> far lower than in other art films. With games, as long as you make it \u201cfun\u201d, then you\u2019ll<\/span> get a free pass. We’ve all done it. I’ve given poor adaptations a pass just because I’ve enjoyed played<\/span> them and appreciated the inherent fan service quality to<\/span> them. But ultimately all that means is that we\u2019re incentivising developers to forgo the work they should be putting into delivering on the true potential of these games.<\/p>\n

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\u201cDune: Awakening, the survival MMO from Conan: Exiles developer Funcom, will \u201csidestep\u201d religion as a main theme in its \u201calternate history\u201d world set just before the events of the books.\u201d This headline on Eurogamer, coming one day after I slammed King Arthur: Knights Tale for being developed by a team that may well have never read the book, has given me my theme for this week\u2019s thought bubble: Perhaps game developers should take the source material more seriously. It’s not the first time that I\u2019ve raised the topic: I routinely lambast the Call of Duty games for taking real-world events<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":64645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259,257,102],"tags":[13125,15600,14475,14278,12760],"coauthors":[12758],"class_list":["post-64644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-major-feature","category-opinion","tag-dune","tag-dune-awakening","tag-feature","tag-major-feature","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64644"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64648,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64644\/revisions\/64648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64644"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=64644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}