When good games are manipulated into bad films..

Thinking about fridays lecture on Games and Narrative had me thinking about all the bad movies that have been based on games. While the likes of mortal combat are pretty bad, street fighter for me is the worst ever adaptation. While the acting is probably the worst aspect of the film, it is one of those situations where you can only do so much with what you are given, and turning such hugely popular games into films is always going to be an impossible task. So why do it? Well I think that it is the need to cash in on the poularity of games. As we know Gaming is a massively lucrative industry, and cashing in on games seems to be a logical step, people will still go and see the film. So why are they so bad? This also seems clear, as we know agency in games are what set them apart from other media forms and therefore it is difficult to translate this experience of agency into film, as the videoclips in the lecture aimed to show with the first person perspectives often at times causing viewers to feel nauseous, yet while being true to how gaming often looks and feels, it is the agency that helps such games feel less disorientating. Also fitting a game that usually has hours and hours of gameplay into a film that lasts maybe an hour and a half is always going to be difficult, key parts will be sacraficed in order to create the typical Hollywood form of storytelling, (with a beginning, middle and end, protagonists and antagonists). While this creates a coherent beginning, middle and end, I think it is going to be a long time, or maybe even never before the experience of the game can be translated properly to film.

Jarrod Te Moananui