The Last Of Us And Fallout’s Successful TV Adaptations Will Likely Pave The Way For More

There was a time when video game adaptations almost felt like they were doomed to fail. While it might seem like a long time ago, the truth is up until recently, Hollywood really struggled with making big-budget adaptations for popular video game franchises. But recently, with The Last of Us and Fallout coming out, it’s clear that the so-called video game movie curse is more or less gone.

From live-action projects to even animated ones like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Arcane, we’re heading into a new era of gaming-related content coming to our screens. And this has a unique potential to change up gaming in a way that’s pretty unprecedented. Potentially even allowing for unique collaborations as developers begin working across multiple mediums. Here’s everything you need to know.

Adaptations Could Breathe Life Into Old IPs

While the gaming industry is undoubtedly a huge moneymaker, in terms of how many people it attracts, it still feels a tad niche compared to movies and TV. By making adaptations of gaming franchises, developers have the opportunity to get a new set of eyes on their projects, potentially allowing for a resurgence as more people try it out. 

We already saw this happen with Fallout 4 recently. The player numbers for the game spiked after the success of its recent TV series. I think it’s fair to say that even if the game were to get a new DLC or update, it likely would not have been able to attract as many new players as an adaptation did. Other games like Cyberpunk 2077 also saw a similar spike in player count when its anime came out.

While it’s certainly not a sustainable or long-term increase, it still does a great job of introducing new people to the IP and potentially even reigniting interest in old titles. Who knows, developers might just consider producing new shows to see if audiences still care about their franchises before working on full-fledged sequels or remakes.

Gaming Films and Shows Could Open New Avenues For Storytelling

Stories in video games tend to be quite self-contained. While the medium has definitely shown that it’s more than capable of great storytelling, enhancing the experience with additional content via television or cinema can definitely help to make it better. Imagine if players could see the climatic conclusion of a game play out in the form of a TV series they can tune into after playing the game.

Or a title could elaborate on other characters and storylines that didn’t get the chance to be fleshed out in the game itself. The possibilities are endless and it helps to keep more and more people engaged with a franchise across all mediums. Of course, making films and shows, especially good ones, isn’t cheap. In some cases, the investments might need to be as much as the game itself.

However, having this multi-faceted approach to content creation could really shake up the industry in a big way. And who knows, it might end up being successful. We’re seeing now how Sonic x Shadow Generations is launching around the same time as Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is coming out. And as we all know, it’s going to feature Shadow as one of the main characters.

It’s obvious studios are already waking up to this potential. So it’ll be interesting to see how things shake up in the coming years.