Hollywood Versus Video Games

A friend of mine is convinced that the Hollywood movie juggernaut is trying to destroy the video game industry (since money spent on games is not being spent on movies) and that this is evidenced by the plethora of crappy film adaptations of video games and crappy video game adaptations of films. Anyone have any thoughts on this idea, why it's right/wrong/irrelevant/etc.?

It's... certainly an amusing conspiracy theory. One I haven't heard before.

I myself don't completely buy it, though I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say that the film industry doesn't like other media cutting into its profits.

Wrong, duh.

Movie tie-ins are a transmedia effort to cash in on franchises. Often, much of the money made from these games goes to the movie studios. They profit from it, and in business, profit is the bottom line.

The competition between Hollywood and video games would become more pronounced if one medium really took off in terms of quality. Unfortunately, the people who tend to run each medium at the highest levels don't really care about films or games.

Yeah generally the movie-based games are half-assed by sub-par studios as a cheap effort to score some extra quick cash, not a concentrated effort to torpedo another industry.

And vice-versa, movies based on games are generally a cheap way to cash in on the game's franchise.

edited 27th Feb '12 11:57:31 PM by MarkVonLewis

Crappy adaptations is a result of switching between passive and active mediums.

I'm sure Hollywood doesn't much like video games cutting into their audience base, but I doubt there's any real battle going on.

My reaction at thread title : Whaaaaat?

It's quite an unfounded theory really. Both are forms of entertainment, and have gradually similar targets (audience), but each has something the other doesn't. For box office media, they lack interactivity and Catharsis Factor. For games, they lack casting, plot and theatrics

But if there happens to be morons from both sides thinking each is shaving off their profits, they should be looking at their own business flaws quick.

EDIT: I phrased it better now

edited 28th Feb '12 7:43:08 AM by Cassie

I think you got that backwards. Movies aren't interactive.

Hanlon's Razor, enough said.

The way I think of it is: what kind of a person thinks that what works in one medium can translate to another? A crappy film maker or a phoning-it-in game developer, that's who.

That Conspiracy Theory?

That would be valid only under the grounds of people either going to see movies or playing videogames, which isn't the case because both mediums are entirely self-contained. People don't watch a movie because they don't want to play the game or vice-versa.

Plus, from a business standpoint, trying to intentionally bring down a medium that can be exploited for profits (game adaptations, movie adaptations) would be detrimental to the medium in question. It takes a lot of money and time to produce crappy Shovel Ware in order to bring down the entire games industry, or shitty movie adaptations for the opposite, and even so, movie adaptations and game adaptations still bring back money when they're done right (Goldeneye, From Russia With Love, Batman Begins, and all the other actually pretty good movie-to-game adaptations), so in the end you'd have to be either the worst businessman in the world or a Silver Age Super Villain to actively try to do so.

Yes, I do realize that the whole thing is a Joke, but it was just too much fun writing this.

edited 28th Feb '12 9:27:30 AM by ThatOneGuyNamedX

I don't think all games lack plot, some have very good ones, and sometimes the gameplay and spending time with the characters makes you care about them better than a movie does. I think it's not fair to generalize games because the genres are too varied (more so than movie genres). FPS, adventure games, RP Gs, MMORP Gs.... As for the conspiracy theory, nah. That's just mediocre people realizing that movie/game adaptations don't have to be good because the followers of the game/movie will see them anyway, so they can save money by making something mediocre and still make a success out of it.

edited 28th Feb '12 10:06:48 AM by Anfauglith