Nabber
Artisanal Cheese Taster
Because video games aren't primarily a storytelling medium. Hollywood's habit of adapting anything and everything into a movie has convinced people that there could and should be, say, a Mario movie. But people forget that Hollywood adapts things for business reasons. If you took the Battleship movie and slapped any other name onto it, it wouldn't be a Battleship adaptation. But because it has the name, it stands to profit off of the board game.
Novels are a storytelling medium. Books, not necessarily. You can't, or at least you shouldn't, adapt a cookbook into a movie. No one would want to watch a faithful adaptation of How to Read Literature Like a Professor (please don't read this book. it's as bad as its title.).
Video games CAN be a storytelling medium, of course. But not usually. Usually the story is there to support the gameplay, because the developers want you to be focused on the gameplay. Nowadays story can be used to enhance that, to make gameplay feel more epic. And certainly there are games where the gameplay is used to enhance the story, but they're a minority.
And then you have stuff like The Stanley Parable. That game is an experiment of interaction. The whole game hinges on exploiting interaction. And movies don't have interaction. To make a movie of The Stanley Parable would ruin the very essence of The Stanley Parable. Can anyone really argue with me on this? What will you make the story about? The brainwashing of the employees? You could make a good movie from The Stanley Parable, one that does for movies what The Stanley Parable did for games, probably, if it's very well handled. But it wouldn't be The Stanley Parable.
I'm using that as a parable. Mario is not intended for screen. The cartoons are silly. The live action movie is just laughable. No one likes Mario for the story, we like Mario because he's fun. We enjoy jumping over pits and discovering secrets and fighting Bowser ourselves. But if you were to make a decent narrative out of Mario, it wouldn't be Mario. You can't have both.
Novels are a storytelling medium. Books, not necessarily. You can't, or at least you shouldn't, adapt a cookbook into a movie. No one would want to watch a faithful adaptation of How to Read Literature Like a Professor (please don't read this book. it's as bad as its title.).
Video games CAN be a storytelling medium, of course. But not usually. Usually the story is there to support the gameplay, because the developers want you to be focused on the gameplay. Nowadays story can be used to enhance that, to make gameplay feel more epic. And certainly there are games where the gameplay is used to enhance the story, but they're a minority.
And then you have stuff like The Stanley Parable. That game is an experiment of interaction. The whole game hinges on exploiting interaction. And movies don't have interaction. To make a movie of The Stanley Parable would ruin the very essence of The Stanley Parable. Can anyone really argue with me on this? What will you make the story about? The brainwashing of the employees? You could make a good movie from The Stanley Parable, one that does for movies what The Stanley Parable did for games, probably, if it's very well handled. But it wouldn't be The Stanley Parable.
I'm using that as a parable. Mario is not intended for screen. The cartoons are silly. The live action movie is just laughable. No one likes Mario for the story, we like Mario because he's fun. We enjoy jumping over pits and discovering secrets and fighting Bowser ourselves. But if you were to make a decent narrative out of Mario, it wouldn't be Mario. You can't have both.
