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Postcard
From GDC 2003: At the "FilmGame: Adapting Lord of the Rings" conference session, Electronic Arts' Neil Young, executive producer of The Two Towers and the forthcoming The Return of the King, spoke about adapting films into games. He covered the adaptation process in great depth, but repeatedly drove home his central point: that adaptations, rather than being the embarrassing derivative tie-ins that they often turn out to be, have the potential to be the pinnacle of a given entertainment property. The key: a design team who is willing to change their entire way of going about the adaptation process. According to Young, this is not the time to be developing new intellectual property - rather, this is a period when products must differentiate themselves within the market, meaning that it's a great time for adaptations. Films such as The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings have changed the stakes of the game entirely, upping audience expectations all across the board - which means that to create a truly successful adaptation, it is essential to partner with filmmakers themselves in bringing any such game to life.
Adaptation: a composition that has been recast into a new form. So said the slide that Young projected for the audience, and so went his mantra. While EA's The Two Towers was visually very impressive, he pointed out that it featured only a narrow interpretation of the movie, and said that The Return of the King will represent a far more encompassing adaptation. To make a game as rich as the movie from which it comes, he said that the game must correlate exceptionally closely to the film itself, using all the same assets as the film production. The end goal is not simply to create a spin-off, but to generate what he termed "additive comprehension" - a mental state in which a movie and a game both add to the experience of the other. A successful adaptation, he said, is not a piece of derivative merchandising; it is a work of art in itself, and something that should be able to drive a gaming audience to go and see a movie, just as movie-goers are currently driven to buy games. Next Page: How to Make it Happen
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Introduction
Features
Game
adaptations are currently akin to ball-point pens and coffee mugs, in
relation to the films themselves. They're seen as marketing spin-offs,
with little or no value of their own, and are often an embarrassment to
the developers who make them. But, says Young, what if great films could
lead to great games? What if game developers had access to all that goes
into a big budget film - such as the cast, the set, the props, and the
music? What if game developers were able to understand the intent
of an author or filmmaker, and to work within that same driving vision?
And what if adaptations did become something that developers were
proud to make?