If the leader has a poor attitude, it is difficult to produce a good job by blindly making quick money and changing movies

The relationship between games and movies, no matter who adapts whom, the key to success lies in the attitude of the person leading the adaptation. If everyone wants to make a fortune and leave, or die after getting addicted, then whether it is a movie adaptation or a game adaptation, it will become a "landmine".

When "Assassin's Creed" was not satisfactory at the box office, the movie to be adapted by "Yin Yang Master" was announced to be finalized. Everyone knows that whether it is "changing a tour to a movie" or "changing a movie to a tour", the success rate is very low. In fact, the relationship between games and movies, no matter who adapts whom, the key to success lies in the attitude of the person leading the adaptation. If everyone wants to make a fortune and leave, or die after getting addicted, then whether it is a movie adaptation or a game adaptation, it will become a "landmine".

1. It is difficult to produce excellent films in "game modification

" Japanese game developer Hideo Kojima is a historic figure in the process of "filmmaking" games. His legendary work "Hidden Dragon Bourne" was launched on the PS console platform in 1998. It shocked the game world with its complex plot stories, profound character portrayals and excellent lens language.

Nowadays, players have long been accustomed to 3A game masterpieces packaged in movie style. But in retrospect, it can be regarded as a successful "blockbuster" of game adaptations, but it has never been released yet. The sixth film adapted from the "Resident Evil" series finally reached the "final chapter" in 2017. However, the cost of the series is not too high and has not reached the "blockbuster" level. "Assassin's Creed", which was created in accordance with the blockbuster format and invited Michael Fassbinder and Marion Cotillard to lead the film, suffered a double box-office failure from word-of-mouth. "Max Payne" uses a lot of Woosen-style slow motion in the game, which refreshes players, but the movie of the same name is just a mid-stream action movie that is popular...

Adapting the game into a movie is essentially the pursuit of IP value. Maximize. The "Warcraft" movie was launched at a time when active players in "World of Warcraft" were on the decline. Veterans-especially China players-who had already "AFK"(abbreviation for "Away from keyboard", often used to indicate that a player was no longer playing a game)-flocked to theaters to experience the past battles against Azeroth (a place name for "World of Warcraft"), and completing it was likely to be their last purchase on Warcraft IP.

Angry Birds is a more typical example. Developer Rovio keeps making a fuss about the "War between Birds and Pigs" and creates a unicorn with an annual income of over 100 million US dollars. However, Rovio, who attempted to follow the IP derivatives route to continue making a fortune, found that Angry Birds were just a bonus they received when mobile games entered the era of smartphones. After the popularity, the company's revenue capabilities declined year after year. Interestingly, Rovio's response was not to develop new IP, but to bring Angry Bird to the big screen. This animated film for all ages was well received and helped Rovio turn a profit in 2016. However, Rovio's main game business is still taking advantage of its old roots, and it is difficult to guarantee that the success of the big movie will not be a return to life.

2. Creating IP across media strengthens influence.

Sometimes, the object who pursues maximizing IP value is not necessarily the original IP owner. Before participating in the production of "Assassin's Creed", Ubisoft also had an action game "Prince of Persia" that was also adapted into a movie. But Ubisoft is purely selling licenses, and how to make movies make money is left to film distributors and developers to worry about. The example of "Resident Evil" is even more exaggerated. The couple of Paul Anderson and Mira Jovovic worked together to interpret the bio-movie as a cool movie about female heroes slaughtering zombies. As a result, game developer Capcom couldn't help but produce two "Resident Evil" animated films, trying to restore the cold and creepy "classic bio-chemistry" atmosphere.

In this era when cross-media marketing methods are extremely mature, it has become commonplace in the industry that different media cross each other and form the same IP. The publisher of "Prince of Persia" is Disney, and this huge entertainment empire is itself a super IP. It transfers its own cartoon characters from the screen to reality and creates a theme park that will fascinate children around the world. This is itself a big move to operate IP cross-border. But what's even more amazing is that Disney can also turn theme park rides into movies to create box office favorites like "Pirates of the Caribbean". Among the six major movie distributors in Hollywood today, Disney has dominated the box office for years thanks to "Marvel Superheroes" and "Star Wars". These two IPs are also outstanding in cross-media operations, and are good at using movies, TV series, animation, comics, novels, games, board games and other media to comprehensively shape their influence.

3. Adapters only want to "make a fortune and leave", naturally it is difficult to produce high-quality

games and movies. No matter who adapts who, the key to success lies in the attitude of the leader of the adaptation. If everyone wants to make a fortune and leave, or die after getting addicted, then whether it is a movie adaptation or a game adaptation, it will become a "landmine".

Therefore, if we always feel that there is a myth that "games adapted from movies are not good", we find that this proposition is equally true in reverse-"games adapted from movies are not good." "Super Mario","Haunted House","Doom" and "Vampire Ryan" are all famous game adaptations, but "ET Alien","Avatar","Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" are also well-known low-scoring games. It's just that the frequency of movie adaptations into games is higher, the number of high-quality products is relatively larger, and the public opinion volume of melon-eating fans is stronger than that of hard-core players, which leads to everyone's sadness about the ignorance of game adaptations of movies, and often doesn't realize it., insincere movie adaptations also abound.

The next movie adapted that hard-core game fans are looking forward to is probably "Tomb Raider". Although the movie version of "Tomb Raider" is not a qualified adaptation, Angelina Jolie's role as Laura Crawford is still deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Domestic mobile game fans may also look forward to "Yin Yang Shi".

This reminds the author of "Journey to the West". Whether it is Liu Xiaolingtong's Monkey King's work, Zhou Xingchi's Wulitou + post-modernity, or Niaoshanming's imagination, these artists who have created attentively are inspired by this China mythical IP to create Sun Wukong with different charms. The creators of game-adapted films should think more seriously about the way to create, and they will eventually be able to present qualified works in front of players.

Editor: Nancy