Fallout: the TV series is another success, is it the spring of video game adaptations?

It seems like a long time ago that we used to look askance at any advert adaptation from video game to film or TV seriesbecause it would almost certainly have been a disaster as taught by the many precedents starting from the 80s. The most recent case is that of the Fallout TV series, liked by practically everyone and capable of further confirming atrend reversal which, to be honest, has been going on for quite some time. We also talked about it at the time of the HBO series The Last of Us – which also just won the award for best new television series at the WGAA 2024 – which was seen as decisive in breaking the curse of failed conversions, noting however that this it seemed to have been averted for some time already, to be honest.

It is difficult to establish precisely when the new direction began and what the determining factors were, the fact is that between the Sonic films, the Super Mario film and these recent adaptations, in addition to the great success also achieved by Five Nights at Freddy's, which a sequel has been confirmed in recent days, we are evidently going through a spring of video game adaptations, which have finally become good products for trans-media operations. It is curious to note, however, how this rise corresponds almost precisely to the downward trajectory that comic book adaptations are going through, with Marvel productions in particular encountering serious difficulties in regaining the prominent places they had on the market until a few years ago.

A new way of understanding video game adaptation

The original problem of the transformation from video game to film or TV series was probably found in the very way in which this was understood: the fact of starting from a video game often seemed to imply that the final product had to aim at a certain segment of passionate public, calibrating the downward production and almost taking it for granted that only a B-series title could emerge from such a source material. The substantial evolution recorded in recent years, therefore, does not only concern the fact of choosing more challenging subjects (screenplays of The Last of Us and Fallout can already represent a medium-high level even compared to standard television productions), but above all a different way of understanding the production, with a broader scope and obviously a more adequate budget to achieve important results.

The second aspect is decisive: the subject can remain very simple, as demonstrated by the Mario and Sonic films, but if a scaffolding is built behind it aimed at achieving a high-profile result, it is more likely that a notable result will be achieved and recent cases they are proving it. All this also shows that video games now have one important space in popular culture and beyond, and rather than continuing to chase other media with a poorly concealed inferiority complex, I am now able to offer subjects, stories and concepts that can find expression through other artistic forms, highlighting and evolving the latter too with new ideas.