Books based on movies or computer games: Are they doomed to be bad?

[elvet]

These are books from games that I read and quite enjoyed. I did read them after playing the games and found that they enriched the experience.
Myst - there are 3 books - Atrus,Ti'ana, D'ni. I thought the Myst game back story is detailed enough to make an interesting fantasy story.
Jane Jensen's Sins of the Fathers and The Beast Within - corresponding to the first 2 Gabriel Knight games. Again, the books complemented the games. There was a 3rd game but no book, then the series stopped. I still wish for a GK 4 (I'll take either a book or game )

 

[Vladd67]

The last book of a game I read was Assassin's Creed: Renaissance. It isn't that bad. You can tell it was based on a game by the way the hero keeps finding blueprints which he takes to Leonardo De Vinci who then makes a new gadget for him. These he then uses to reach his next objective.

 

[AE35Unit]

Actually if I'm not mistaken, the Halo FPS games are based on the books. Or at least the universe created by the books. I wouldn't know about new Halo-books as I never even liked that setting in the first place.

Hmmm not according to what I read on Bear's website...

 

[CyBeR]

Hmmm not according to what I read on Bear's website...

This is true. The Halo books have come AFTER the original XBox game and were part of the first attempts at maximizing the appeal of the franchize. Which worked out rather well, taking into account the HUGE success that Halo 3 gathered, since everyone at that point, gamer or not, was drenched in Halo merchandise.

 

[Connavar]

I read a writer called Nylund writing a Halo book which i thought was decent written and actually fun read. Which was a huge surprise since license books is suppose to suck.

Halo is dullest game series around but the book made me care about the world that the games only use now and then.

 

[AE35Unit]

Just for the record I've never played a Halo game...yet...

 

[No One]

Nothing to add, other than to gaze fondly into the air and say, ahhh Halo.

To this day I think if a Viking played Halo, he'd think he'd found Valhalla.

For the record, the first is a classic in every sense of the word, the second very good, the third excellent, ODST also very good, and Reach. Is. Stunning.

 

[Norlan]

What about a book that was originally planned to be a movie or computer game? There is a good coming out called Drylor The First Artifact that was originally intended to be an MMORPG but instead the author used the world he created for the MMORPG and made it into a book. Just curious since thats like the opposite of what you said you were steering clear from =P

 

[woodsman]

Lots and lots of good points

Ok. I'll say that there's no real reason anything produced as part of a franchise has to be bad, I just feel that the situation is not conducive to the production of anything groundbreaking.

The rest is down to personal preference. I personally am not going to delve at great depth into a world/universe which has been porly written about at some point. A) I don't get enough time to read for leisure as it is without having to sort out the good from the bad. B) There's so many great authors out there I really want to read, that confiing myself to one or one world/franchise is the last thing I'm going to do at this point. In twenty years maybe.

Finally we clearly have different definitions of 'Classic' (doesn't everyone ) but if you are willing to recommend some from the franchises you like, I'll give them a try. Doesn't have to be here, whip me a PM.

 

[Menion]

What about a book that was originally planned to be a movie or computer game? There is a good coming out called Drylor The First Artifact that was originally intended to be an MMORPG but instead the author used the world he created for the MMORPG and made it into a book. Just curious since thats like the opposite of what you said you were steering clear from =P

Sounds similar to Steven Erikson. At the start of his first book there are soem author's notes, he explains that his world was originaly made for a tabletop game, but they made so much history of the world he just had to write a book about it.

 

[Lemmy]

The last book of a game I read was Assassin's Creed: Renaissance. It isn't that bad. You can tell it was based on a game by the way the hero keeps finding blueprints which he takes to Leonardo De Vinci who then makes a new gadget for him. These he then uses to reach his next objective.

The first book I read based on Resident Evil does the same thing. It feels like the author played the game and took notes along the way, then used the notes to write the book. It focus a lot on finding the correct keys, examining things and so on. It's not bad, but could have been much better. But already the second book isn't based on a game at all, and it's much, much better. The last one I read (Resident Evil: Zero Hour, the sixth in the series) is based on a game (Resident Evil: Zero), but it doesn't feel like it at all. I think it has to do with getting to know the setting and learning how to succcessfully "translate" it to a book.

Hmmm not according to what I read on Bear's website...

Sorry, I guess I got it wrong. I never read those books and only played the first Halo in co-op. It was fun, but nothing special. Or are you saying forum users can't be trusted now?

Ok. I'll say that there's no real reason anything produced as part of a franchise has to be bad, I just feel that the situation is not conducive to the production of anything groundbreaking.

The rest is down to personal preference. I personally am not going to delve at great depth into a world/universe which has been porly written about at some point. A) I don't get enough time to read for leisure as it is without having to sort out the good from the bad. B) There's so many great authors out there I really want to read, that confiing myself to one or one world/franchise is the last thing I'm going to do at this point. In twenty years maybe.

Finally we clearly have different definitions of 'Classic' (doesn't everyone ) but if you are willing to recommend some from the franchises you like, I'll give them a try. Doesn't have to be here, whip me a PM.

You have some great points, and yet you completely miss some. Skipping a book simply because it's based on a movie- or game-franchise is very much ok if you have had bad experiences with franchies like that, but who say authors who write in those franchies are bad? Take Richard Knaak as a good example. He is rated a very good fantasy-writer, and I know him the best from his Dragonlance-novels. (btw if you get the chance, pick up 'Dragonlance: The Legendo Huma'. It's pretty darn good, and written by him.) But you might also know him from his World of Warcraft or Diablo-books. I haven't read his Warcraft-books, but I did read Diablo: The Sin Wars Trilogy by him. I think he had a few quick solutions and the characters got too powerful, but other than that it's pretty good. And it's based on Diablo, of all thing. A game based entirely around beating up endless waves of monsters, collecting stuff and not much else. There is a story in both games, but it's not exactly Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley-quality.

My point is I enjoy reading books based on movies or games I loved, but even so, I often focus more on a certain author than the franchise. Going back to the Resident Evil-example, the books I read are all written by a S.D. Perry. (Stephanie Danielle Perry, if I'm not mistaken.) I think she's a great author, so naturally I want to read more of her stuff. It doesn't matter if it's Resident Evil, Aliens, Star Trek or whatever. I like the franchise, and I like her. Reading her stories in a franchise I like is a win-win for me.

 

[soulsinging]

The same goes for any other franchise. If you watch a tv-series and they made an episode you didn't like, should it mean the end of the series for you? Hardly. You sit through the episode (or shut it off), watch the next one and enjoy the series. So why doesn't this go for books as well?

Because I can watch a tv episode in 25 or 50 min. It can take several hours over 2-3 days to read a book. It's a much bigger time investment, so if the book isn't good I've wasted a lot of my time. If I come across a bad episode of a tv show, it doesn't waste that much of my time.

 

[Lemmy]

But if the book is good, wouldn't you say it's well worth your time?

 

[soulsinging]

But if the book is good, wouldn't you say it's well worth your time?

No. 50% success on tv adds up to an hour of my week. 50% success on books means I'm wasting all of my free time for half a week. So a good book is not worth the time I waste on bad ones... especially when the good is mostly good because it's got a familiar setting and I could have spent ALL of that reading time reading GREAT books by several different authors in several different worlds instead of the same old, same old.

 

[Cayal]

It's a little damned if you do and damned if you don't in regards to video games.

Theyre essentially interactive movies anyway, so if you base a movie exactly on the game, you've already done it.
If you try and create your own story, it never captures the feel of the character or the games atmosphere.

 

[woodsman]

No. 50% success on tv adds up to an hour of my week. 50% success on books means I'm wasting all of my free time for half a week. So a good book is not worth the time I waste on bad ones... especially when the good is mostly good because it's got a familiar setting and I could have spent ALL of that reading time reading GREAT books by several different authors in several different worlds instead of the same old, same old.

Boom. Said what I wanted to, but much better.

Even with authors I love, I don't go out and read everything they've written - I've read four of Erikson's Malazan book of the fallen and will get round to reading them all, but I'm in no rush. I like reading lots of different things by different people, in different worlds. I gather you prefer to thouroughly immerse yourself in a world. Fair enough, I don't see why everyone else should be expected to though. Yeah as I've said several times, personally, bad books can easily kill a world/series or even an Author for me.

I'll happily look at a reccomendation but when there's so many in the Masterworks series (and the general body of SFF & literature in general) I have yet to read, I'm not going to pick up game/TV/film tie-ins.

 

[digs]

So would anyone buy this Pong novelisation I'm working on?

 

[cornelius]

So would anyone buy this Pong novelisation I'm working on?

You kidding me?

Bloop

Bleep

Bloop

Bleep

Bloop

Bleep


intense!

 

[Rodders]

Yeah, what's not to like.

I think people buy these books because they enjoy and would like to remain in a specific setting (universe).

Lemmy, just out of curiosity, have you ever read a Tie-in book and enjoyed it?

 

[Lemmy]

No. 50% success on tv adds up to an hour of my week. 50% success on books means I'm wasting all of my free time for half a week. So a good book is not worth the time I waste on bad ones... especially when the good is mostly good because it's got a familiar setting and I could have spent ALL of that reading time reading GREAT books by several different authors in several different worlds instead of the same old, same old.

How do you get to read any books at all? No one has written only good books or stories. Not even Lovecraft. But how do you know if a book from your favorite author is good before you read it? My point is you can't know if it's good before you read it, so why are you so quick to say a book based on a videogame franchise or movie franchise is bad?

So would anyone buy this Pong novelisation I'm working on?

Well, they made a Pac-Man movie, so...

IMDb Video: Pac-Man: The Movie

Lemmy, just out of curiosity, have you ever read a Tie-in book and enjoyed it?

Indeed, and from a lot of different settings. Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday 13th, Star Wars, Aliens, Predator, Resident Evil, StarCraft, Diablo, Dick Tracy (based on the movie that was based on the comics) and probably a few more I don't even remember right away. Most of them are pretty decent, but some, like Friday 13th: Church of the Divine Psychopat, was even better than the movies. And let's not forget comics! I really, really loved my Terminator Omnibus volume 1 and will be getting more as soon as I remember. I didn't enjoy the Alien Omnibus as much, but the Predator Omnibus was pretty good. And of course, Indiana Jones. The first omnibus had a story based on Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis, the fourth movie. (Crystal Skull was so bad it doesn't count, and Fate of Atlantis is so good it does count even if it's a computer game.) I just think it's wrong to say all books based on a franchise like video games or movies are bad just because some are.

And sure, someone said further back that anyone can write in a franchise, so we get a lot of different authors. But that's not entirely correct. What you are thinking of is fan fiction. I usually hate that. Books are different. They need to be approved by whoever owns the license, so we get only a few writers in said franchise. That's why I love the Resident Evil-books. I only have six, but all of them are written by a S.D. Perry. Some are written by someone else, but they are based on the crappy movies. But if you check, you'll see that several writers write in several franchises. If you like someone who wrote a good Aliens-book, chances are he/she wrote other books based on other franchises like Predator, Star Trek etc as well. I think tie-ins have a bad reputation, but the writers are just as qualified as "normal" writers. Most of the time.