Video game-to-TV producers must respect the IP and learn the vocabulary, say execs

The Last of Us (Source: WBD)

The quality of video game-to-TV projects is improving because the industry is involving the original creators, and producers who understand the source material, to a greater extent and ‘moving beyond adaptation to co-creation’, execs have suggested.

The comments came at the inaugural Screen/Play event, a series of panels focused on how the video game and screen industries can work together, taking place as part of this year’s London Games Festival.

They also follow the critical success of HBO’s The Last Of Us last year, which included original games creator Neil Druckmann on the show’s creative team, and this week’s launch of Fallout on Amazon Prime Video, made in close collaboration with franchise creator Todd Howard, and whose EP Jonathan Nolan recently told TBI he was a long-time fan of the games.

Fallout (Source: Amazon)

“If you think about something like The Last Of Us, for example… what the people who [made that] did brilliantly is they identified the core, emotional elements of the IP, and thought about how you transfer that from an interactive media into a linear media,” said Tom McLoughlin, MD at Territory Studio, a VFX firm that has worked across both the screen and gaming industries.

“It satisfied an existing audience, and it also widened the audience for that story and brought new people into that world. That’s a brilliant example of what we should be doing with transmedia as opposed to just licensing an IP.”

There has also been a “big generational shift” in recent years, as people who grew up playing certain games or consuming certain IP are now in Hollywood and in a position to do right by a TV or film adaptation, said Eugene Evans, SVP of digital licensing & strategy at Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) IP holder Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro.

“As writers and creators, they want to be able to express what they love. And then drawing upon those things that triggered them emotionally as children, you get things as wonderful as [Netflix series] Stranger Things, which is a real celebration of D&D in their childhood.”

Previously, the execs suggested, there had been unsuccessful TV and film adaptations because producers simply did not understand the brands, leading to the long-running stigma that games made poor transitions to the screen.

Kristian Segerstrale, CEO of games studio Super Evil Megacorp, which is working on a game based around Netflix’s sci-fi epic Rebel Moon, alongside the streaming giant, suggested the industries were moving “beyond adaptation to more like a co-creation collaboration framework.”

Stranger Things (Source: Netflix)

Segerstrale said that this more collaborative approach “perhaps gives this authenticity” and highlighted how his firm and Netflix had been able to “discuss how to co-create elements of the world” so that “stories can be told from multiple angles.”

He explained: “That co-creation process really to me is core what I would certainly like to see transmedia evolve toward and why I think you’ll see better products.

“Because at the end of the day, a film or a TV series that is natively produced for that medium is always going to be better than one that is attempting to just recreate whatever the writers wrote for the game.”

Evans also suggested that it was vital “if you are in the linear world, to play games, and to learn the different vocabulary,” before embarking on a screen adaptation.

“There is a vocabulary to video gaming, and the pacing, and the storytelling, and the way it works… that is perhaps very different than a linear orchestrated, amazing piece of storytelling that might happen on the TV or the big screen.”