Recent events require us to take a trip back to Hollywood. Just a few weeks ago I pointed to a number of promising exemplars among video game-adapted shows representing “gaming going to Hollywood,” where Netflix’s The Witcher was an example of a show succeeding because of it’s reverence to the source material, not despite it. This, I argue, is the primary fulcrum upon which the balance of gaming IP being successfully adapted to TV shows and movies rests vs. a long history of very poor executions that either would or could not do the same.
We could soon see the validity of this argument play out in real time. Shortly thereafter, the news breaks that Henry Cavill, the star of the show, will be stepping away after the next season (to be replaced by second-choice Hemsworth brother, Liam). One could reasonably interpret this shift to the fact that Cavill will resume his role as Superman in the DC universe, which is quickly lining up an embarrassment of other “really powerful guys in capes that can fly” for him to contend with.
A more charitable explanation to Mr. Cavill’s previous stance, and not just because he’s one of the few game fans that can turn a PC build into a thirst-trap, is that ongoing debates between him (a Witcher superfan) and the writers finally came to a head - Cavill wanted to stay true to source material that the show’s writers did not care for.
I’ve never written a TV show, but I can partially understand the writer’s stance on this - writing a show based on an existing story probably feels more akin to working with a coloring book than a blank slate. What we’ll see over time is whether this negatively impacts viewership, and whether the negative impact is a result of lacking Cavill’s starpower or the writers finally winning-out by enacting a “Hollywoodification” of the story, where the source material is overridden by silver-screen sensibilities - the more predominate force acting against the success of gaming franchises being adapted to TV shows/movies rather than the quality of the source materials from the games per se.
On this point I’m obviously biased, but one cannot say without cause. The relationship between the games industry and traditional media has been fraught due to various forms of “Hollywoodification” or a lack of fit between gaming content and more traditional forms of media consumption (a rough catch-all we’ll use encompassing TV shows and movies). There is a long legacy of ill-fitting collaborations between traditional media and gaming, ranging from the recent shuttering of G4TV and Venn to the ~2008 crash in the esports industry.
More recently, G4TV and Venn both failed at the same goal (albeit with some time between them - G4TV within the last few weeks, Venn about a year ago): Bringing TV-style gaming-lifestyle programming to both traditional TV and streaming platforms (YouTube and Twitch). While this strategy is theoretically sound insofar that the potential audience footprint between the channels would be immense, a mis-match of expectations around when/where/how to insert ad breaks and who the core demographic that this content was catering towards created immense (and expensive) strain. Moreover, they were working backwards from a premise set 15 years earlier: Content showcasing gaming isn’t well-fit for TV, epitomized by the crash the esports industry suffered in 2008, due in part to the shuttering of competitive gaming TV content.
Queue our media history lesson for today: In 2006, DirectTV debuted the “Cyber Gaming Series” (CGS) in the United States. The series failed to solidify an audience by showcasing games with broader commercial appeal (such as Project Gotham Racing) rather than those with well-established competitive communities, in addition to prioritizing TV drama and aesthetics over competitive norms (for example, they shortened the rounds in Counter-Strike). This created a “worst of both worlds” scenario where esports fans were alienated and new viewers not given quite enough to buy into the competitive stakes. Amidst a broader economic slowdown, the show was canceled in 2008, which caused corporate interest in competitive gaming to dry up and tournament prize purses to be cut in half, knee-capping the existing esports industry.
The revival (and current lifeblood) of viewership within esports came with the proliferation of Twitch around 2011. Twitch and other streaming services which feature gaming (now reduced to a duopoly between YouTube Gaming and Twitch) solved a number of issues that the traditional TV format could not amend: “Massifying” disparate communities/viewership in esports into tangible groups, giving occasion and tools for socialization in what are otherwise geographically disparate fandoms, and facilitating means through which gaming talent could augment their income beyond prize purses. The “TV dream” for esports was anything but - what was required was a platform that was digital-native and well-fit for the consumption patterns of competitive gaming fans.
Notably, the original G4 TV existed during this same era, though managed to live a little longer than CGS (it shut down in 2013), due in no small part to a broader focus than competitive gaming (including pop-culture more generally). The potential of a revitalized G4 in an era where interest in gaming has never been greater or more relevant to popular culture, leveraging the combined power of streaming as the de facto home of gaming content and the “legitimacy” provided by traditional TV, was a convincing proposition. However, it may be that the case for gaming TV is too far gone: Streaming services may have become the center of gravity for gaming content given that the demographic gaming TV attracts tends to be cord-cutters or cord-nevers (e.g. those with no access to traditional TV), thereby making the millions of dollars required to produce traditional TV content downright wasteful.
Whether we are discussing gaming adaptations or gaming content through the lens of traditional media, the overarching point remains the same: Where traditional forms of media attempt to enter the gaming ecosystem, it is almost always on the terms and standards of traditional media, as evidenced either by dismissing the storytelling power in modern games and/or misalignments with how game-fans consume content. When this is the case, failure is quick to follow. Expensive lessons, and yet ones we will continue to see for the foreseeable future.
My rather glum outlook is influenced by the fact that the traditional media industry will almost always follow the money: As it pertains to ad-supported content (i.e. the case of G4TV or Venn), the advertising industry is not particularly known for pivoting quickly. At a minimum, one can point towards the now Lich-like existence of linear TV and spectarial promise of “connected TV” - both held alive by a desire to keep the “TV viewership” model of media consumption relevant (the obscure undead references felt particularly apt so close to Halloween). As it pertains to the box-office or driving subscriptions (i.e. the case of game adaptations), banking off existing and popular IP within gaming is a sure-fire way to drive audience interest and in many cases is likely cheaper than developing new IP, but the propensity to unnecessarily “Hollywoodify” the product leads to to a high likelihood to stumble.
I talk about the rise of gaming in recent years not just as a form of entertainment becoming more popular, but as a signal towards a fundamental shift in how individuals consume media - a shift towards more immersive, interactive experiences which can be woven into life on their own terms. Not entirely unlike the tendency of traditional media to integrate with the gaming ecosystem on their own terms, the same standoffish disposition may be evidenced towards their customers. The result is that we may never see traditional gaming TV, nor have debates about whether a TV show adapted for a game is successful, because at this rate traditional TV as we know it now might not exist.
A historical review of esports and the needs consumers are looking to fulfil when consuming gaming or esports content can be found in my new book, Get in the Game: How to Level Up Your Business with Gaming, Esports, and Emerging Technologies, availiable wherever books are sod.