After years of trying, have filmmakers unlocked the secret to adapting video games into successfully TV shows? The plaudits from gamers and non-gamers alike for hit series The Last of Us and Fallout seem to suggest so.
Video game consultant Tom van der Linden says the missing link is “qualia,” a philosophical concept that refers to the subjective experience of phenomena.
“For me, at least, The Last of Us was not a game about shooting zombies, it was not about moving ladders around to solve environmental puzzles,” he explains.
“It was about spending time with the characters, about going on a journey with them and coming to care deeply about them.”
In a YouTube video, van der Linden goes deeper into analysis of Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout, which he holds up as the best example yet of how to successfully adapt a video game.
There’s a general consensus that a good screen adaptation of a video game has to be faithful to the source material, and that copy-and-pasting the narrative, the set pieces and the iconography alone is not enough.
Films like Doom and Uncharted included recognizable game elements but missed the deeper experience of playing the game. To van der Linden these adaptations felt more like adaptations of the game’s brand rather than the game itself, similar to non-gaming adaptations like Barbie or LEGO.
What’s missing is the one thing that actually defines videogames, and arguably the only aspect that cannot be directly carried over to cinema or television. And that’s the gameplay.
It’s the players engagement with the virtual world, and how do you faithfully adapt player interactivity to a passive medium?
This is where the true act of transformation or translation has to happen and where the real challenge of adapting video games lies.
Because unlike with literature, for example, which has been the source of cinematic adaptations for virtually as long as movies have been around, there haven’t been any clear principles or proven methods yet for translating gameplay for translating interactivity.
Until Fallout, which is held up as a classic of the genre and maybe a template for future game to screen adaptations.
“Adapting the qualia of video games is about how a game makes you feel, how it puts you into a certain mode of engagement.”
Qualia is a somewhat nebulous term that even dictionaries struggle to define, and that could be a problem for creators trying to capture it. Broadly it means “subjective, conscious experience,” which in van der Linden’s view can’t be achieved by superficially bolting elements of a game into a TV or film format.
The producers of any successful video games adaptation “should have actually played the game they’re adapting, or at least know what it’s like to play video games in general,” he says.
“Secondly, and this is the challenging part, it means that you have to figure out how to translate to a passive medium, the essence of an interactive one. And to me, this is where Fallout has been particularly revelatory.”
Part of the reason why recent video game adaptations have been more successful is not so much because filmmakers got that much better at adapting them, but rather because video games themselves have been becoming increasingly cinematic and narrative driven.
HBO’s The Last of Us raised the bar “significantly” when it came to utilizing new motion capture technologies that allowed for much more realistic performances and dramatic storytelling, he says.
“In turn that resulted in a narrative driven experience that was hailed as being on the same level as any serious movie or TV show. So when the adaptation eventually came around, it’s fair to say that the game was already meeting it halfway.”
He adds, “The game aspires to high drama, and the show reflects that.”
In contrast to a limited TV series, much of the narrative impact for players of a game like The Last of Us comes from everything that happens in between the big story moments “in those stretches of empty space” that the TV show wasn’t quite able to capture.
“However, I also believe the series was able to improve on the story in some other areas that the game struggled with,” he concedes.
Fallout is an open world role-playing game, meaning that instead of having one linear narrative that players have to follow, there are also secondary storylines, quests and errands to complete, dungeons to clear out, items to collect, skills to level up, weapons to craft, armor to create, and the list goes on.
“Even if you have done all of that, in the game you can do it all over again in a different way. Players don’t just participate in a story, they create one for themselves. It always gives them some choice that lets them direct the course of the narrative, which obviously makes games like these harder to adapt. There simply isn’t one definitive storyline here.”
So how did Fallout’s creators pull it off?
Among other things, they took that open-ended player-centric perspective and spread it out over multiple characters. Fallout’s three main protagonists are each layered with the different stages a game player moves through, as well as with different play styles they can assume.
The narrative structure of the episodic format also works well in this case, van der Linden says, “though, there are plenty of games for which I think a movie would be a better fit. Again, it’s about looking at qualia, considering the true essence of your engagement with the material,” he advises.
“The show easily could have been just a lackluster tourist guide through Fallout iconography,” he says. “Instead, in the multitude of different scenarios, dialogues and character moments that each relate to some aspect of what it is like of playing the game, Fallout is able to capture the qualia of the game.”
For example, the frustration with low-level weapons, the satisfaction of becoming an apex predator, and the awkwardness of failing a speech check are all captured in the show. These moments resonate with gamers because they reflect the experiential reality of playing the game.
Beyond gameplay, Fallout captures the broader themes and philosophical substance of the game. “The show explores the absurdity of a world dominated by capitalism, even in a post-apocalyptic setting,” he says. “This reflects the game’s satirical take on societal issues and the human condition.”
Van der Linden even argues that successful video game adaptations can enrich and preserve the medium’s artistic value.
“They allow non-gamers to appreciate the stories and experiences that gamers hold dear, bridging the gap between different forms of artistic expression. This broader acceptance helps integrate video games into the larger cultural and artistic conversation.”
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