Games to Board Games or Screens

It is pretty normal for many video games to have new adaptations into different mediums. Some of them are movies, books, TV series and board games, each one with varying levels of success.

Different adaptations?

Video games are one of the many mediums used to tell a story or other forms of entertainment. It isn't uncommon for many films, books and other mediums to turn into a video game. In that regard, there are a lot of video games that had been written as a movie, book and other mediums.

Whether it is for something simple as fan service or money, or something complex like a different take on a video game's story, each adaptation had varying degrees of success. Here are some of the mediums that had a decently long history of alternative adaptations.

Board Games

Recently, Donald Mustard of Epic Games has pushed out a tweet detailing a Fortnite Monopoly board game. Of course, this isn't the first time popular video games have had board game adaptations, let alone with one as huge as Monopoly. Mass Effect, Skyrim and Fallout are just some of the most popular games that had their iterations of Monopoly in the market.

Combining two major franchises together is a solid idea of bringing more fans to the table (no pun intended). After all, it has proven to have success if HASBRO continues to make several Monopoly games based off Video Games. With Fortnite joining the mix, it won't be a surprise if it becomes a success, especially if you consider how popular it is as a game.

However, not all adaptations of video games are Monopoly board games. Some, like League of Legends, have spinoff board games based on the video game. While it may not have the backing of a collaboration, it still would interest fans of the video game, especially if it could provide additional content like lore.

Film and TV

Source: Tech4gamers

It isn't a secret that most if not all movies based on video games tend to struggle critically. While it certainly hadn't discouraged Hollywood and other studios, the long history of 'less than good' films doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in future films. Assassin's Creed and Tomb Raider (2018) only scored 18% and 51% respectively on Rotten Tomato and they were just some of the more recent films.

There could be many reasons why film adaptations of video games generally tend to do mediocre at best. However, many directors and creators are still looking to find ways to bring a strong showing on the screen, just on a different one. TV series for games like Halo and Witcher(though technically based off a novel) are looking hopeful.

There may be reasons why such adaptations struggled to do critically well, but as of now, the sample size of video game based films are still relatively small compared to other genres of films.

Books

It is more common for video games to be an adaptation of a book as the source material. For example, Witcher series, Metro and Ghost Recon are some of the novels that were used to inspire very popular video games.

So what are some books that were written based on video games? Diablo and Starcraft (both created by Blizzard) have a couple of novels that were written to expand their respective universe's lore. While the majority of their lore is usually explained through their video game series, novels are written to expand and enrich that universe through world-building.

What are some of your favourite non-video game works that are based on video games? Do you think that game studios should invest in these kinds of mediums that could enrich current popular video games?