A brief overview of book-to-video game adaptations (and what their future could entail)
This blog is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s special exhibit Level Up: Writers & Gamers, on display now!
written by Brian Rivera
First, the idea for a book is conceptualized in the writer’s head. Formless. Then, it is given shape through written and / or typed-out lines. Published. But since the introduction of new media forms—film, TV shows, and what this post will focus on, video games—a new level has been introduced that books can achieve: adaptations. There is certainly a lot of critique that can come from this—readers at times being disappointed if the adaptations stray too far from the source material, or if some details are cut out to fit the new medium—but in the end, adaptations can come to take on a life of their own. And video games are a great showcase of this. Here are a few examples:
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is an early instance of this adaptation form. Written by American writer Harlan Ellison and published in 1967, it’s a short story detailing a post-apocalyptic world that has fallen to the supercomputer AM, Allied Mastercomputer, who has a strong prejudice of the human race. It follows a group of humans that it left alive to inflict perpetual torture upon and execute that hatred.
Ellison himself helped co-design the single-player adaptation by the same name released in 1997. He even voices AM in-game. Considering how much of a critique it is on society’s implementation of technology, it’s perfect irony for it to have undergone this transformation. Through this adaptation, people could now make the decisions of the narrative they’d read about and apply their own approach to the story, with the game’s point-and-click style gameplay granting them many different paths to progress in the story. The graphics capture precisely the horror that is AM and the world that it has created, reflecting what many of the short story’s readers may have visualized when they first read it. It can still be played across different platforms, including on mobile.
The Witcher
More recently, The Witcher is a title that might immediately be recognized as a game rather than as a fantasy book series, at least in countries where the book series wasn’t immediately received. More specifically, the most successful installment in the game series is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This adaptation introduced new demographics to the story of Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter with superhuman abilities. It’s an RPG open-world game that allows players to explore the fantasy world of The Witcher at their own pace as Geralt. Even more recently, the franchise has received a Netflix adaptation, which currently has run for three seasons. Written by Andrzej Sapkowski, the first book installment of the series was first published in the 90s and in Polish.
In an interview with the movie site Hey U Guys, Henry Cavill—who stars as Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher series—shares his thoughts on what the show is doing to get the game-to-movie adaptation right. Cavill emphasizes the importance that the books had on the creation of the game, and how this adaptation is “more so a book IP than a game IP:”
We’ve reached a point in the development of this adaptation medium where there are actually books that are dedicated to these digital worlds (Ready Player One comes to mind). The gamer and the reader can, at times, be one in the same. They both explore worlds through their respective mediums, worlds based in science-fiction, fantasy, or even a setting not unlike our own. And they both navigate these worlds through the lenses of characters that have been crafted for them, or in some cases crafted by the gamers and readers themselves. With the gaming industry advancing more with every game that releases, it’s interesting to imagine where they go next.
What books would you like to play as a video game? Let us know in the comments!