Before I explain how this will all work, you guys need to know one thing (Directors and screenplay writers should understand it too): A game is a set of goals given to the player by the designer/programmer. Completeing these goals lets the player see the story unfold in front of them while they are participating in the action. Movies give the audience a direct view of the story. Directors and screenplay writers don't understand how to directly take the story from a video game and create a smooth transition to the big screen. What gamers end up seeing is video game fan-fiction in video form. Got it? Good. We may now begin.
1. Understand Your Source Material
If you really want to make a movie adaptation of your favorite game, you're obviously not going to play the game once. You're going to play through it tens, maybe hundreds of times. You need to take notes, you need to talk with the designers of the game, you need to read the instruction manual thousands of times, you need to study game artwork, you need to understand the story's twists and turns, you need to play through other games in the series. This step is the easiest to understand because you already knew you had to do it. But why?
Playing through the game tons of times obviously allows you to understand the game's main storyline. Taking notes is undoubtedly going to help (main plot points, character proggresion, etc. etc.). Talking with designers who worked on the game is another obvious one. These guys are the ones who are going to make sure you're keeping the story intact and the way it should be.
Gamers wouldn't want Sora to be a girl, would they? The original development team will make sure you don't make that mistake.
2. Visuals are Your Friend
Another thing you must remember when creating a project such as this is that your main audience is obviously going to be gamers. Obviously. There are two properties found in modern video games that immediately grab the attention of today's gamers: Great gameplay and amazing graphics.
Right there, you can now see the main problem that haunts previous video game to movie adaptations. There is no possible way to include great gameplay in a movie without it becoming a video game itself. Visuals are your only option. That's why filmmakers need to devote all of their attention toward providing the audience with the most beautiful images ever seen on a cinema screen. That, my friend, is the only way one can bring in that core gamer audience. And that, my friend, is where your luck ends, and production stops.
Riddle me this: How many video game based movies ever released brought in any great financial profit or have been fairly accepted by the gamers who loved the game? If your answer isn't n0, then, please, tell me to stop typing this right now. It's wasting both of our time.
Ok, great...good luck finding a generous production studio! Gamers are a hard crowd to please; if you don't have that 200 million to back your vision up, don't bother bringing that vision to the people in the first place. You're better off drawing your own graphic novel, even if it looks like this:
If the story is right, the writing and drawings are legible, and it's in color, people will come.
3. Actors and Actresses Should be Unknown
This one's really simple. Let's just say, I don't want to see Tom Cruise playing the role of Link:
Hmmmmmm...I guess it's not too bad.
If filmmakers use performers who are unknown to the viewing audience, then the majority of us gamers won't be so dissapointed by the match seen above. Besides, that leaves filmmakers with more money for fancy visual effects.
Conclusion: Well, that's all I can really think of at the moment. Of course, this type of topic evolves as new movie and/or game technology increases. For instance, if a Wii game were to be translated into a movie, new filmmaking techniques may be required.
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