None
The Design Innovative Communicate Entertain gaming summit brought about discussion on movie adaptations of video games. Generally, gamers tend to be disappointed with these adaptations, but David Franzoni, a writer of “Gladiator”, feels that the problem is not movies, it is games.
Franzoni used the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty 2 as his example. He felt the game was impressive, but didn’t compel him to fight.
“Where’s the liberation of the concentration camp, guys?” he asked the audience of 300 top-level gaming professionals. “It’s a fabulous game and it’s fantastic to play, but I’m looking for that thing that’s going to motivate me besides just shooting human targets.”
“When I sit down to write, I’m looking for something that gives my character a reason to live,” he continued. “There are so many games that we play that halfway through you go, ‘Why am I doing this?’ They’re great first-person shooters, but there’s nothing at stake.”
Franzoni believes that game makers need to hire more professional writers and turn to other great stories in the media for inspiration.
Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, producer of Doom, feels that “the hardest juggle that you have is trying to balance what the creators of the game and the players feel about it with the demands of the corporate structure of the studio.”
Di Bonaventura wishes he would have paid less attention to what Doom fans wanted when he created the movie. “I would stick with my instincts about what makes a great film. I would worry less about what the [game’s] creators wanted and less about what the studio felt the gamers wanted.”
“The core audience makes it so hard on filmmakers,” he stated. “Their absolutism can actually be very disruptive to what’s going on in the filmmaking process.”
Di Bonaventura is currently the producer of the “G.I. Joe” and “Transformers” movies and is in development with Nicholas Cage on a movie version of “Dead to Rights.” We will see if his instincts will bring us good movie adaptations of some of our favorite games.