Will a new age of TV series based on video games start soon, with talented people who are really into the original content?
The video game industry has created a unique scenario where Hollywood is incentivized to reuse successful concepts, in contrast to remakes of movies and TV series, even though the entertainment industry’s stance on video games has always been polarizing. Despite the continued difficulty, studios have benefited from a preexisting fan-base when adapting video games for the big screen. Hollywood has started digging video games for potential future projects due to its growing obsession with proprietary rights, and to cash in on the video gaming industry’s meteoric rise, several big-name film publishers are willing to shell out millions of dollars.
While in most cases, TV series or movies based on video games haven’t been all the successful, that doesn’t mean the television industry hasn’t produced some worthy adaptations recently. Movies based on video games have occasionally done well at the box office, even if some think the industry is still missing a groundbreaking video game adaptation.
The fact that animated series made up four of the top five entries may indicate that this kind of media is best suited to video game adaptations because it closely resembles the look of the original games. Resident Evil and The Witcher: Blood Origin are two live-action adaptations that typically garner substantially lower marks, with HBO’s The Last of Us being the sole exception.
Since there will soon be Fallout adaptation in addition to new episodes of the current series, we thought it would be good to examine what has and hasn’t resonated with viewers. Movies based on video games need to find a happy medium between catering to long-time fans and drawing in new audiences. Failing to adhere to the source material and being poorly directed and scripted might lead to them alienating both populations.
Over the last six years, the most well-liked video game TV series adaptations were analyzed by an online gaming magazine’s online audience review scores. They used audience review scores from Foursquare, IGN, Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDB to determine which TV show was the most popular; each was scored and shown in order of popularity.
The most well-received TV series based on a video game was Arcane: League of Legends (2021), which averaged a 9.4/10 from viewers. In addition to a perfect score of 10 from IGN, IMDB, and Metacritic, users gave it 9 out of 10 and 96% by Rotten Tomatoes. Adapted from the popular free-to-play MOBA game League of Legends, the animated steampunk action-adventure TV series Arcane debuted on Netflix.
With an average viewer rating of 8.85 out of 10, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022) took second place. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 95%, while IMDB gave it an 8.3 out of 10. Netflix launched Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, an anime web series set in the cyberpunk world based on the action role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077.
Castlevania (2017) came in third place, averaging 8.48 out of 10 from viewers. Its highest individual ratings were a perfect score of 9 from IGN and an 89% user rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic gave it a 7.7 out of 10 for its worst score. Adapted from the 1989 Japanese video game Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse for its first two seasons, the adult animated action series Castlevania is a Netflix original.
Next in line was The Last of Us (2023), which averaged 8.28/10 from viewers and finished in fourth place. Despite a pitiful 6.4 on Metacritic, it was well-received by IGN (9/10) and Rotten Tomatoes (89%). Born out of the eponymous video game series, The Last of Us is a post-apocalyptic thriller that has been developed for HBO.
The average audience score for Sonic Prime (2022) was 8.13 out of 10, placing it fifth. Metacritic and IMDB gave mixed reviews, with the former giving it an 8.7 and the latter a 7.3. Netflix Animation’s Sonic Prime is the sixth installment in the Sonic the Hedgehog animated series adapted from SEGA’s video game icon.
Aside from Twisted Metal (2023), other shows in the top 10 include Dota: Dragon’s Blood (2021), Carmen Sandiego (2019), The Cuphead Show (2022), and The Witcher (2019). With a mean overall rating of 3.6 out of 10, Witcher: Blood Origin (2022) ranked last among all participants. Metacritic gave it 1.2 stars, and Rotten Tomatoes gave it 13% of that. However, IGN gave it 7 out of 10. As a prelude to the tenth-ranked fantasy miniseries The Witcher (2019), Netflix produced Witcher: Blood Origin. The Witcher video game series has inspired both of these TV series.
The Witcher on Netflix may be based on novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, but it definitely features elements from the The Witcher video games developed by CD Projekt RED. Sure, things are looking up now that Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu are getting so much acclaim from critics and fans alike. Given the abundance of upcoming TV series, such as Disco Elysium, Life Is Strange, God of War, and Fallout, it is uncertain if the standard achieved in recent years can be sustained, but the outlook is encouraging.
Not that there aren’t any other mediums that could work just as well as television when adapting video games. However, it is a platform that offers video game adaptation makers a more significant opportunity to create something unique while preserving the essence of the original content since the narrative structure of video games is similar to that of TV series. A new era of video game adaptations may begin, staffed by skilled individuals deeply invested in the original content.
