Video games have shaped contemporary cinema in more ways than providing stories to adapt. Their influence appears in film structure, quests and constructed worlds, visual and interface design, attempts to recreate the intensity of play, and even film-production workflows. The relationship also runs in reverse: cinema has long influenced the look and storytelling of games.
Game influence reaches beyond adaptations
Films can borrow from games without adapting a particular title. Film scholar Lasse Juel Larsen’s framework describes this broader process as “cinemafication”: game-like qualities expressed in a noninteractive form. The categories below are ways to analyze a film’s form, not proof that a specific game directly inspired it.
- Play worlds: environments that feel designed for exploration, discovery, or navigation.
- Ludified quests: journeys organized around objectives, obstacles, and stages of progress.
- Controllers and interfaces: visual or narrative use of menus, maps, status displays, or other interface-like elements.
- Play experience: cinematic efforts to evoke the pressure, suspense, repetition, or sensory intensity associated with playing.
- Game structure: plots shaped by rules, levels, branching possibilities, or repeated attempts.
These traits help explain why game influence can be present even when a film has no licensed source. Jasmina Kallay’s Gaming Film: How Games are Reshaping Contemporary Cinema maps related questions across narrative architecture, spatial and visual design, audience involvement, changing modes of reception, and transmedia storytelling.
Why adapting a game means translating it
A player acts within a game; a film fixes the viewer’s path through images and sound. Adaptation therefore cannot simply transfer a game intact. Filmmakers choose what to preserve, compress, omit, or invent, and the right balance depends on what the source offers.
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| Approach | What the film carries over | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Adapt an established story | A developed plot, characters, and world, while reshaping material for a fixed screen narrative. | The Last of Us: Sony executive Asad Qizilbash describes its story and characters as a strong foundation. The adaptation involved deciding what to leave out and what to add, including greater depth for side characters. [Sony interview] |
| Build around a game concept or real-world connection | A premise or activity rather than an established fictional plot. | Gran Turismo centered on Jann Mardenborough, a player who became a professional racing driver; Qizilbash says the game had no established story to adapt. [Sony interview] |
| Tell a new story in a familiar world | The setting’s identity and atmosphere, without retelling a game’s plot. | The BFI describes Fallout as a fresh story in an authentic recreation of the game world. [BFI feature, 3 August 2026] |
| Translate a rule or gameplay loop | The repeated actions, constraints, or pressure that define play. | The BFI presents Exit 8 as turning looping gameplay and its rules into a claustrophobic cinematic experience. [BFI feature, 3 August 2026] |
| Make a film inside a game | The game as a performance space or production environment rather than a plot to adapt. | Grand Theft Hamlet is a documentary performed within Grand Theft Auto Online, rather than a conventional adaptation of a game story. [BFI feature, 3 August 2026] |
The BFI argues that recent adaptations work best when they engage with a source’s distinctive feel, not just its name or characters. That is the BFI writer’s analysis, not a universal rule or guarantee of success. Its examples show why “faithful” can mean preserving an emotional arc, a world, or a gameplay rule—not necessarily reproducing every event.
Game technology and studios connect film and play
The influence is also practical and industrial. Sony Interactive Entertainment created PlayStation Productions in 2019 to adapt its game intellectual property for film and television. Qizilbash describes the company’s aim as reaching new audiences for game IP and fostering closer collaboration within Sony; these are Sony’s own statements about its strategy. [Sony interview]
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One concrete production example is Gran Turismo: Qizilbash says its game engine was used to create tracks, environment, and cars for stunt previsualization. That account documents a particular use of game technology in film production; it does not establish that the same workflow is standard across productions. [Sony interview]
Cross-media strategy helps explain why adaptations attract investment. Deloitte’s 29 November 2023 analysis described the global games industry as nearly US$200 billion and forecast that video-game IP’s share of theatrical box-office revenue would double by 2025. The latter was a prediction made in 2023, not a verified current result. [Deloitte, 29 November 2023]
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The influence runs both ways
Video games have drawn on cinema’s visual language and storytelling, while films have taken up game-like structures, designed worlds, and the sensations of play. The relationship is therefore better understood as reciprocal exchange than as a one-way pipeline from screen to screen. Direct adaptations are one visible part of that exchange; formal influence and production convergence are others.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Further reading
For a book-length study of the subject, see Jasmina Kallay’s Gaming Film: How Games are Reshaping Contemporary Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; ISBN 978-1-137-26293-6). [Palgrave Macmillan]
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