Quantic Dream’s advice when making films out of games and games out of films

Written by Martin Thörnkvist | April 28, 2010 | 1 comment

Guillaume de Fondaumière of Quantic dream shared some advices to people that are planning to make game/film adaptations.

Pitfalls when films becomes games
The idea to make a game often enters the picture late in the process which make up for impossible time constraint for the game developer. Sometimes movies just aren’t suited for a game because ”there’s absolutely no game play in the original story”. Games (see the Matrix example) often only have one element from the movie, read action, the point of the movie missing in the game and “that’s why they not sell”.

Pitfalls when games becomes films
Often there’s just no ground for a movie in a game since there’s no story to tell. Sometimes the involved persons have the wrong preconceptions. ”Film people doesn’t understand why people play games, people like the game because of the game play”. There also seems to be a bit of an identity thing going on because “games aren’t recognized as an art form”, which leads to a unbalance when the different kinds of creators are about to discuss a project.

Lessons to learn
- learn from past failures (Top 10 Worst Video Game Movies, by Times Magazine)
- entrust your franchise only to people passionate about your IP
- don’t forget what makes a good movie and what makes a good game
- never rush to bring it out there
- better not do any game/movie than create another disaster
- think outside of the box and invent new ways of collaboration
- how about developing from ground-up a joint movie/game project?
- do truly complementary experiences
- share talents across the board
- cross-sharing revenues, so all are invested in the success

And, a suggestion from me, focus on the successful cases. Lara Craft – Tomb Raider (2001) the movie made 250 million US dollars in gross revenue. I’m sure they did a lot of things right.

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