If you started to contact gamers around 2000, you should have noticed that with the rise of the game industry and the development of Hollywood and animated films, the game industry and the film industry at that time can be said to be complementary. At that time, no matter which movie, such as "Harry Potter", "007", "Monster Power Company", "Toy Story", "Jurassic Park", etc., every time they were released before and after the release of a game of the same name, there would definitely be a game adaptation of the same name launched on major platforms, which was a more efficient marketing tool for film companies than advertising, and game companies could also get a considerable degree of revenue, which was a win-win situation.
However, after 2010, the number of games adapted from these movies decreased rapidly, and before the PS4 and Xbox One era showed better graphics, they disappeared in large numbers of players. Instead, there are original game IPs that have been groping since 2010, and their sequels or new works have sprung up, and the quality has begun to improve on a large scale, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it has truly entered the golden age of AAA games. So why exactly is this happening? Are today's game makers starting to go back in time to trying to get back to that era of movie-based game adaptations? This time, let's take a good look at these issues.
The movie adaptation of the game used to be an iron rice bowl
In the past, many movies were adapted into games in two main ways, the first of which was naturally to revolve around marketing purposes. Because many game developments did not take too long, and the content of the works adapted by the movies was usually not too deep, mostly linear action or puzzle games, it could be completed in a very short period of time using existing templates, and the amount of money spent on making games was cheaper and better than the magazines and TV commercials that cost a lot of money.
The other is the opposite, the game developer took the money to go to the film company to obtain authorization, to obtain the copyright of the film version of the game adaptation, of course, if someone holds the money to find themselves to use their film IP to develop the game, it is very beneficial for the film company at that time, which is equivalent to publicity and money, why not enjoy it. But for game companies, they usually choose a sequel to a movie or an IP that is already famous for adaptation, and the biggest benefit of this is to avoid high risks. Because even if the adapted game of that year is poor, there will still be movie fans to pay, the work itself does not need too many features or rich content, as long as the important plot and other content that appear in the movie will become a good fan to the work, the worst case is to earn less, there is no reason not to develop in this regard, even if it is said that it is the iron rice bowl of the industry.
This idea of mutual benefit has led to the birth of many film adaptation games, and many of the AAA manufacturers we are familiar with today, such as EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc., have participated in a large number of film adaptation games in the early days, but it is a pity that this game does not exist gameplay, and it is naturally eliminated by the market. If you want a player to say the best game you've ever played in 10 seconds, there would be so many options that you couldn't decide right away, right? But if you change to a movie adaptation of a game, although you will think about it for a long time, you are thinking about which movie has ever adapted a game, right? Even when you want to recall the process of the game and the content of the game, most people's impression is to stay on the platform adventure and puzzle, and occasionally there are gunfight movies that will be adapted into shooter games, but the problem of its developers using templates to speed up the development of the game is very common, and there is no need for too much design and planning, of course, most of them are bad works.
From the iron rice bowl to the million people
But then again, although most of these games are of poor quality and have been launched with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generations along with the sequels of the movie, there are still many fans who will still buy them. This situation may seem a bit confusing at first glance, but at a time when movies were popular and video games were developing rapidly, what reason was there not to buy and play? The best examples at the time were Harry Potter, Spider-Man and The Lord of the Rings, which were popular and had many sequels. But the good times are not long, even fans will have a tired day, with the rise of a large number of original IP and better quality games. Players have long been aesthetically tired of this bad work, and the repetitive puzzle solving, platforming and shooting gameplay have begun to fail to satisfy the increasingly rich taste buds of players, resulting in film adaptations no longer being a guarantee of sales, so the strategy of game companies has to start to change.
With the launch of PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles in 2006, the discrete graphics card of the PC console began to popularize, and game developers who slowly became familiar with the hardware limit began to improve the quality of the game itself, and there were great changes in the graphics and gameplay, but this also led to another problem, that is, "time cost".
In the past, film adaptations of games would fit so well, mainly because the film would be produced about a year or so after the start of shooting, which did not change much after many years, and the most important part was in the script and the performance of the actors. The game is not so, the early gameplay is relatively simple, it does not take too much time, but in the growth of original works and hardware performance, players' tastes are not satisfied with simple gameplay, resulting in developers need to spend more time to develop game works. It is impossible for a studio to postpone a 2-3 years later for a game adaptation, and it is impossible to finish the game early. So after 2010, we can notice that the number of games adapted from the movie has decreased significantly, and the well-known Marvel series of movies only has the initial "Iron Man", "Captain America" and "Thor" directly adapted from the movie to the game, but the overall sales are not too good, and the follow-up is naturally missing, and the rest are Marvel-related hero games that have nothing to do with the movie.
Coupled with the changes in the taste of movie adaptations of games, after 2010, the rise of PvP games coincided with the rise of almost no game companies to choose to spend money on movie rights. Because for many film copyright holders, the adaptation is not a random magic change, or there must be a certain degree of modification, not every company is willing to make an action-adventure movie into a multiplayer battle or escape plot to play, after all, this kind of game adaptation is meant to promote the movie. In the end, the lack of game quality, repetitive gameplay, long development time, and reduced multiplayer content have caused players, film companies, and game developers to lose interest, and movie adaptations of games have become a million people who want to touch without special reasons or cooperation.
Perhaps history will be repeated
But history will always repeat itself, film adaptations of games have not disappeared, and game companies and film companies have returned in a different way. We all know that since the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles at the end of 2020, many game companies have chosen to increase the price of AAA games from $59.99 to $69.99, and the reason for each company is that the development cost of games has increased since several years ago, and they have been holding down prices for many years, so they decided to raise prices once when the new generation arrives, even the console manufacturer Sony's own game.
In fact, this phenomenon has appeared long before this, and large game companies have begun to reduce the number of original IP, and are more inclined to produce sequels, sequels, remakes, ported versions, HD versions and so on of existing well-known works. Because such an approach can not only make new players who join the game recognize their company's past works to attract new blood to join, but also the old fans of the series will continue to pay for their feelings, do not need to worry about the original IP new and old players do not accept the tragic situation, back to the previous kind of miserable and certain degree of guarantee mentality.
So to sum up the situation back to the film adaptation of the game, the game developers thought of another way, that is, not directly using the single episode of a movie to adapt the game, but using the IP of the entire movie to develop the game. On the other hand, it is not to promote a certain upcoming movie, but to promote the entire large IP, to tell a completely original new story content, they do not have much to do with the movie universe, but the world view is the same, which not only strengthens the player's impression of the movie IP, the game company can also get more popularity, and return to the original win-win situation.
For example, in recent years, "Marvel Avengers", "Hogwarts: Legacy" (not released), "Avatar: Pandora's Border" (not released), "Star Wars" series, etc., are obviously trying to use the influence of movie IP in the fan base, whether their success or not, proves that game companies want to find a way to use as a security backing for game development in this era of high development costs. And these IPs are not only accessible to large game manufacturers, after all, not every movie IP has a high popularity, so the cost of licensing is no longer as expensive as in the previous golden age. There are many mobile game development companies that are willing to spend a little money to copy a skinned work, because many of them are directly applied to simplified small games such as "Candy Legend", "Hearthstone" or "Dragon Puzzle", and add a lot of kryptonite content to attract movie fans to consume, the development and time cost of this practice is even lower than that year's film adaptation games, and has seized a lot of market share.
In terms of emphasis, the current game industry has indeed returned to the period of movie adaptations of games, but most of the content has shifted to mobile platforms, and it may be difficult for players who usually do not have access to mobile games to find. In China, more than a small number of companies will represent related content, and the more well-known IP has become a more sought-after project among large game companies. But will such a change obliterate those high-quality original IP? If one day there are many AAA adaptations of movie games that will be commercially successful, will the game company let go after tasting the sweetness? If this situation of bad money expelling good money continues to expand, does it represent the arrival of a cold winter in the industry?
These questions are indeed somewhat thought-provoking, after all, we have witnessed the rise and fall of "battle royale", "MMORPG", "MOBA", and "self-propelled chess", and it is obvious that as long as there is money to be made, game companies will definitely drill where, history is a circle, and the lessons will never be learned.