When looking for lucrative intellectual property to exploit, game makers typically turn their gaze to the world of film rather than books.
You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to understand why.
Blockbuster movies are front and centre in pop culture, and it’s easy to imagine the cinematic sequences on the silver screen translated to the nearly equally cinematic medium of modern games.
But as an avid reader, I see possibilities for games lurking within the books I read at least as often as I see them in film. We need look no further than Larry Niven’s classic Ringworld, which clearly served as muse to Halo’s inventors at Bungie, for proof that game makers see potential in books as well.
Below are five novels I think could be transformed into immensely entertaining games. From Iain M. Banks’ 27-year-old sci-fi classic The Player of Games to Pierce Brown’s still-in-the-works Red Rising trilogy, I’d pay good money to play interactive versions of all of these books.
Minor spoiler alert: Best skip any blurbs pertaining to books you might want to read. I don’t give away any endings or twists, but I do get into some overarching plot details you might want to discover on your own while reading.
The Red Rising trilogy, by Pierce Brown
I could almost feel my thumbs twitching as I read through the first two installments in this raucous, action-packed sci-fi saga about a class-based society spread throughout our solar system and one man’s mission to tear it down.
Its hero – a fierce young man with a wounded soul – is a slave surgically transformed into a member of the ruling class, a breed of super men and women who tower over almost everyone else. Through a series of war games he becomes a brilliant melee combatant and tactician. He eventually ends up fighting on various planets, moons, and space ships, wearing grav boots and power armour while wielding a variety of futuristic weapons.
It’s basically a sci-fi action game waiting to happen. Think Halo, minus the aliens and with a richer story filled with memorable characters and some jaw-dropping narrative corkscrews.
The trilogy has already been optioned for a film, but unless it’s given an immense Avatar-like budget I’m not sure celluloid could do justice to the alien settings, the low-gravity combat, or the story’s epic nature. I’d prefer it as a game.
The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks
Scottish nationalist Iain M. Banks (who sadly died a couple of years ago at age 59) is perhaps my favourite sci-fi writer. His novels set in the Culture universe present not a stereotypical dystopia, but rather a utopia in which technology has solved virtually all of our problems, from gender identity issues to death. Most of the issues in his books have to do with Culture citizens travelling outside their society and interacting with other civilizations.
Some of his books could be turned into action/adventure games (the excellent space opera Consider Phlebas), others tactical space combat simulations (The Hydrogen Sonata), but if I were to translate only one of his novels into a game I think I’d pick The Player of Games, the second book in the Culture series, released back in 1988.
It’s about a skilled board game player whose abilities are put to the test in a fabulously complex game of strategy called Azad, which is played on multiple three-dimensional boards big enough that the players can walk around them. It involves sophisticated terrain, a huge array of playing pieces, cards, and dice, and some parts of the game are entirely separate games unto themselves. It can take days or even weeks to play.
Mr. Banks never fully describes the rules of the game, focusing instead on its significance as a determiner of social status on the world on which it’s played. But I’d love to see a skilled maker of vaguely similar video games – say, perhaps, Firaxis (of Sid Meier’s Civilization fame)– attempt to ferret out the basic systems and create an experience that approximates what’s described in the book. I imagine it might be something hazily akin to the game of thermonuclear war that James Bond plays against Maximillian Largo in Never Say Never Again, just on a much grander scale.
Bird Box, by Josh Malerman
There’s crazy potential for a thrillingly original horror game in this terrific page-turner.
The book focuses on a mother living with her children in a post-apocalypse world. Her house is insulated from the outside; windows covered, doors locked. As the tale unfolds we come to learn that there is something new and terrible in the world – we know not what – that drives people mad upon sight. It has almost completely destroyed the world’s population. Any excursions outdoors must be made blindfolded, lest she or her children see the thing that drives people mad.
It’s a chilling book filled with the woman’s terrified thoughts as she tries to navigate with her kids outside using only her ears and hands.
Admittedly, a story without any combat and in which the main characters spend much of their time blind poses some problems for the medium of video games, but the answers to these problems could result in some wonderfully inventive – and intense – play mechanics.
Scenarios could be designed so that players spend much of their time in enclosed spaces, scavenging and fulfilling objectives in spaces where they need not be constantly blindfolded. Then certain cues – audio, visual, instinctive – could warn them to cover their eyes, at which point the player character’s hearing might be represented visually, perhaps a bit like that of blind superhero Daredevil. Touch could be simulated via tactile feedback in a controller’s triggers and joysticks.
There would be times when it would become necessary to remove your blindfold in open areas where the mysterious terror might be – perhaps to fiddle with a latch, check a map, or just gain your bearings – and the fear of what might be seen in that moment or two would be palpable.
I want to call every developer I’ve ever interviewed or met right now and beg them to make this game.
The Martian, by Andy Weir
Despite its title, The Martian isn’t about an alien. And it doesn’t involve any combat or action. It’s a story about a human astronaut (who also happens to be a botanist and mechanical engineer) who finds himself stranded alone on Mars for more than a year and must use his wits to survive until a rescue mission can reach him.
So it would make a fine first-person puzzle game, naturally.
The vast bulk of the book’s 369 pages are spent describing the many problems that the astronaut faces – food, water, air, how to travel 3,200 kilometres across unexplored Martian terrain – and the inventive ways in which he deals with them.
Similarly, a game based on The Martian would force players to scavenge and make efficient use of all available resources, coming up with solutions to seemingly catastrophic problems as they arise. Clues to solutions would be scattered around the environment in notes and videos, and Mission Control back on Earth could provide hints as needed.
It could even be moderately educational, providing players with real scientific information delineating the difficulties involved in living on a world so inhospitable to Earth life.
However, if a game were made it wouldn’t be able to beat the film adaption to the screen. Ridley Scott’s take on Andy Weir’s novel, starring Matt Damon as the astronaut, is slated to land in theatres this fall.
Locke & Key, by Joe Hill
This unforgettable series of graphic novels penned by Stephen King’s son tells a brilliantly conceived and expertly executed tale about a group of kids in a big old house who discover magical keys with amazing powers.
A big part of the fun lies in finding out what each new key does, so I won’t ruin any of them here save to say that with perhaps one or two exceptions the concepts are wildly original – and intertwine perfectly with the carefully planned plot.
This is another print work with film aspirations. A TV pilot failed to make the cut on Fox back in 2011, but Alex Kurtzman announced last summer that he plans to make a trilogy of films based on the books.
I’d rather a game.
And I see it as a kind of narrative adventure. Lots of exploration, discovery, and chatting, and little in the way of traditional video game action. Think something with elements of Gone Home, Dear Esther, and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, but with some Telltale Games-style dialogue thrown in. An interactive story.
Production and presentation would be key. We would see, amongst many other graphical wonders, characters physically gazing inside each others’ heads to see entire worlds at play, so the publisher wouldn’t be able to skimp on budget. The experience needs to be as visual as it is cerebral.
If it were done right and with enough care, I think a game based on Locke & Key could have potential to be the next The Walking Dead, drawing in casual and serious gamers in equal number. Its story, ideas, and characters are that compelling.
