In a 2022 interview for the New York Times, Naughty Dog Co-President Neil Druckmann addresses a question that has haunted Hollywood and game studios alike: Why do videogames adaptations into movies are usually such failures? For Druckmann: “Sometimes the source material is just not strong enough for a direct adaptation. So all you’re left with is a name that has some value to it, but really you’re starting from scratch. Other times it’s that the people in charge are not gamers. They don’t understand what made this thing special.”
Druckmann who, along with Craig Mazin, co-created the video-game adaptation of The Last of Us into a TV series for HBO points out that several recent movies based on video games attempted to solely capitalize on the game’s success. Such race for profit usually backfires by overlooking that, more often than not, the key to the game’s success is utterly untranslatable into a cohesive movie. Think, for instance, of movie flops like Hitman: Agent 47, Warcraft, and Assassins Creed, just to name a few. All these films condense several hours of gameplay, character buildup, and complex stories into two to three hour long films with major plot holes and formulaic character interiority.
Because of this reputation about adaptations consistently missing the mark on what made a video game so special, recent news have hailed the HBO version of The Last of Us as a pioneer, a first of its kind that breaks the curse. While I do not want to take away any merit of the show’s incredible production and acting, I think it is important to nuance such claims about the show’s exceptionality.
By maintaining that this show is the first to chart this path, first, we overlook what I consider to be the main change that studios have introduced to make successful adaptations. That is, the change from film to TV format. To acknowledge this shift from one visual medium to another and the possibilities that TV can offer is vital if we want to grasp why recent and upcoming videogame adaptations might break away from their bad reputation. Instead of condensing a videogame into the time constraints of a blockbuster film, here we have a whole season that spans over multiple episodes that by themselves feel sometimes like a movie (The Last of Us’s first episode is 80 minutes long). Because of this leeway, the show can develop the story arc that made the game so special among gamers in the first place. It takes the time to expand upon the game’s carefully woven narrative about mourning the ones we lost in a pandemic, the new bonds we create in a post-pandemic world, and the ethical dilemmas we can face if given a second chance to protect our loved ones.
The second reason for nuancing these claims, is that, once we recognize the difference between film and TV adaptations, we quickly realize that The Last of Us is not the first one to successfully make that endeavor. In the last two years, two other TV adaptations have showed us that it is possible to create a successful franchise out of a game whose dynamics are not properly movie friendly. On December 8th, 2022, the show Arcane won Best Adaptation during The Game Awards, one of the most important ceremonies in the game industry. The close runner up was Cyberpunk Edgerunners, developed by CD Projekt Red in collaboration with the Japanese Studio Trigger. For the first show, its source material is League of Legends, by Riot Games, and for the second one, it is Cyberpunk 2077, by CD Projekt Red. Both distributed by Netflix, Arcane and Edgerunners earned critical acclaim by taking the risk of using the multi-episode format to strengthen character development and story-driven content, even if it meant diverging from the source material.
Arcane preemptively avoids the pitfalls that Druckmann signals about not having enough material for a direct adaptation. It does not attempt to recreate the plot of League of Legends, a 2009 multiplayer online battle arena game. Rather, the show centers on Jinx and Vi, two out of the overwhelmingly large list of 140 main characters –also called champions– within the game. This narrow focus becomes the lynchpin for an endearing story about kinship and clashes between social classes, while slowly introducing the lore of the successful multiplayer game. Over the course of nine episodes, we see a profound investment in character development, we witness the sisterly love between Vi and Jinx, we care about them and about the other characters that they encounter. The show guides us through the painful events that lead to their relationship’s downfall while also helping us dimension the vastness of an unjust world where social tensions are about to reach a tipping point.
Such approach has attracted both diehard followers from the game who revel in discovering how their favorite champions interact with one another, and new viewers intrigued by a plot as well-crafted as the artwork. Arcane allows the spectator to step into a beautiful world that fully integrates the steampunk aesthetic with Art Deco and Art Nouveau motifs. Because of such strong investment in both a story-driven plot and a sophisticated aesthetic, most non-gamer viewers only do realize that Arcane is based on a video game after a few episodes in. To showcase Arcane through its story and visuals instead of highlighting its affiliation with the successful video game has both paid off for the French animation studio Fortiche and for Riot Games. It has become the entryway for a new generation of players onto League of Legends and of new spectators into the show’s likely franchise.
Just like Arcane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners takes the time to create its characters over several episodes. Yet, Edgerunners had a formidable task. Its source material is a game released in 2020 whose bugs and errors created a backlash that resonated well beyond gaming circles. Edgerunners faced nearly unsurmountable odds of successfully creating a story in a fictional universe once derided by gamers and non-gamers alike. And it was a success: it currently has a 100% in Rotten Tomatoes and jumped onto Netflix’s top 10 list of most-watched (non-English) shows worldwide. Like Arcane, one key element for success is the divergence from the plot of its source material while remaining in the same futuristic metropolis of Night City.
The anime series tells the story of David Ramirez, a Latino teenager who joins a group of mercenaries –Edgerunners– and enhances his physical and mental capabilities via cybernetic implants. Its storytelling structure bears an eerie resemblance to a Greek tragedy. The characters’ excessive pride and arrogance –hybris– only leads to their final demise –hamartia. This traditional storytelling device, however, goes hand in hand with a risqué approach to visuals: at its most intense moments, Edgerunners introduces experimental animation that verges on abstraction. The combination of these two narrative strategies is one of the principal tools to display the Cyberpunk lore beyond the shortcomings of the game. As CD Projekt Group financial statement reveals, this was an excellent advertising strategy. The anime series bolstered a significant increase in the company’s sales in the third quarter of 2022.
It is against this backdrop that HBO presents its adaptation of The Last of Us. Its great contribution lies not in being the first one to successfully adapt a videogame to other media format. This is more of a marketing strategy from HBO than an accurate representation how the industry has been adapting to TV formats. The show is groundbreaking because it strives to accurately translate into prestige TV the immersive experience that gamers enjoyed. Using Druckmann’s words, the show is an effort to convey “what made this thing special.” What comes next if the show is successful? It would lift the barrier of skepticism that broader audiences have about video games, a medium that has not quite shaken its reputation of being little more than a toy.