Podcast-in-Video: Video games in TV/Film (most of them suck… but why?)

Seriously. Don't watch this new Resident Evil TV series.

////
1 min read
Resident Evil TV series sucks

A number of us had the unfortunate experience of watching the recent Resident Evil TV series, and we have come away with very strong feelings and opinions indeed (mostly along the lines of “just stop them doing this.”).

In this in-depth chat, the podcast team talk about why games often fail when brought to TV and film, and what producers and directors might be able to do to improve things.

Matt S. is the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of DDNet. He's been writing about games for over 20 years, including a book, but is perhaps best-known for being the high priest of the Church of Hatsune Miku.

  • Seriously, it’s pretty simple. Most TV/film sucks these days, and has for over 20 years. Everything is corporate. Brilliant projects, creators and actors are marginalized in favor of easily-produced and easily-digestible pablum. Video game centered TV/film is no different.

    • There is that, and that’s a good point. Between Hollywood and the new “premium” TV budgets, a lot of this stuff in the mainstream is paint-by-numbers entertainment.

  • Well, I mean , the reverse is true too, isn’t it. Video games based on movies don’t have the best track record either. Maybe the two mediums are so close as to be incompatible if that makes sense. Think about it. Film is visual storytelling, and video games are that too among other things, but I wonder if filmmakers feel that they don’t want to just copy and paste a game’s cut scenes, so they try to come up with their own thing and it’s usually no good.

    I don’t know if any of this makes sense or if it’s just word salad but, that’s my take on it.

    • I feel like there’s a far better chance that a game of a film will be good than a film of a game. Certainly there have been plenty of utterly woeful ones, but there are also more than the other way around. Think about stuff like Aliens Vs Predator from way back, or Goldeneye 007, or the Blade Runner game, or the EA Lord of the Rings games… and so on and so forth.

      I really struggle to get to five games-to-film that I would watch again.

  • Previous Story

    Podcast-in-Video: The big game releases in August

    Next Story

    The Dragoness: Command Of The Flame – We need to talk more about this game

    Latest Articles

    >