How games became interactive films and turned into art

Yesterday we pressed "Start" to shoot, jump and survive. Today, it's to cry, make a moral choice, or experience an Oscar-worthy drama. Video games are no longer hiding in the shadow of cinema - they have become cinema themselves, only with a gamepad in hand. And while Hollywood is churning out remakes, gaming offers 20-hour emotional stories where the player is no longer a witness but an accomplice to the plot.

Fast forward

• When games went to the cinema: what happened
• How games started copying cinema
• From viewer to participant: the evolution of interactive storytelling
• How games became art: what makes the interactive form attractive
• How games and cinema influence each other and merge into one
• What's next. Games, cinema, and artificial intelligence merge into one big "wow"

When games went to the cinema: what happened?

Before AAA games finally turned into films, there was a period of film adaptations. Transferring video games from the world of the gamepad to the cinema screen is a nervous process. At first, everything went wrong: failed adaptations, criticism, cringe. Then came the long "it seems to be better, but not yet". And only recent years have shown that adaptation of games into films can still be successful - if you respect the source. This whole story shows not only the complexity of the transition between media, but also how the status of games in culture is growing. They are no longer just a pastime for teenagers, but a full-fledged media phenomenon that has to be taken into account.

First attempts and the "curse of video games in cinema"

The first full-length films based on video games appeared in 1986 in Japan - the anime Super Mario Bros., The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! and Running Boy: Star Soldier no Himitsu. Two years later, the first live action game arrived - Mirai Ninja, based on the Namco game. But the real explosion - and not in a good way - came in 1993, when Super Mario Bros. starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo was released. Critics destroyed it, fans rolled their eyes, the plot was chaos, and the Goombas looked more like mutants in coats than game characters. Hoskins himself later admitted that he had no idea what he was getting himself into.

Mario's failure opened the floodgates: Double Dragon and Street Fighter (1994) followed. The latter did well at the box office, especially thanks to Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raúl Juliá's farewell role, but the critics and the direction were a whole new level of disorientation. But over time, the film became a cult film as an example of camp absurdity.

That's how the fame of the "curse of game adaptations" was born, as if every new attempt was automatically doomed to failure.

A shift occurred in 1995 with Paul Anderson's Mortal Kombat. The film was a box-office success, received moderately positive reviews, and was not ashamed to be what the game was: style, characters, carnage - everything was there. It didn't go into the depths of the plot, but the visuals provided the retinal punch that fans were expecting. For comparison, Mortal Kombat has 47% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Street Fighter has a miserable 11%.

At the same time, animation showed how to do it right: Pokémon became a global sensation, and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is still considered one of the best adaptations.

But the joy was short-lived. From about 2002 to 2017, Hollywood went back to the drawing board. Yes, Anderson's Resident Evil sold well, but the ratings were consistently "so-so". Silent Hill impressed with its atmosphere but stumbled over the plot. Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed looked expensive, but remained dead in terms of plot. Warcraft was barely breathing in America, but took off in China. And the icing on the cake is the career of Uwe Boll, the director who turned game adaptations into a farce. House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Postal, Far Cry - each film was like a slap in the face to the genre: under-editing, under-directing, under-scripting. And each time it was a new blow to the reputation of feature films.

Critical reception and transfer problems

The chronic failures and occasional successes in the world of video game adaptations pointed to one thing: the screen and the gamepad are two different worlds that do not communicate well with each other. The main problem is not only the plot, but also the tone, characters, and visual language. Many films based on games were doomed to weak scripts, cardboard characters, and a plot that lacked the spark that made the game exciting.

The root of the problem lies in the format.

A game is an interaction. You are the main character, everything depends on you. In cinema, you are just an observer.

When developers try to transfer the emotion of choice or the thrill of mastering mechanics into a linear film without interaction, they end up with something that doesn't work. Early adaptations often looked like a shell without a heart: the picture looked familiar, but there was little of the game left.

And as a result, the audience shrugged their shoulders, fans screamed into their pillows, and critics recalled the comics of the 90s. Because if you take away the player's control, you have to give them something equally powerful. And this was rarely possible.

Modern era: on the way to loyalty and success

In the second half of the 2010s, something began to change - and this time for the better. Film adaptations of video games suddenly stopped being ashamed of their origins and began to consistently collect positive reviews and box office. Detective Pikachu, Angry Birds Movie 2, Sonic the Hedgehog - all managed to get fresh ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, which was a wheel turning event for feature films.

"Detective Pikachu was not only a tribute to the fans, but also a good film. "Angry Birds 2 threw out the logic from the first part and relied on madness - and it worked. And after the redesign, Sonic returned with a new face and a new wave of popularity.

What are the reasons for success? First of all, money. Studios finally started investing in production: graphics, special effects, design - everything was brought up to the level of modern games. Secondly, the characters have finally acquired traits other than "shooting," "running," and "screaming." If Lara Croft was a standard action doll from the 2000s, the new adaptations are now about people, not combat mannequins.

But the real breakthrough happened on television. The Last of Us (2023, HBO) and Fallout (2024, Prime Video) didn't just hit the ground running - they were nominated for Emmy Awards as drama, not fan service. Viewers are delighted, critics are delighted, and fans of the game exhaled: everything was done with respect, attention, and by the hands of those who created the game in the first place. Neil Druckmann wrote the scripts, directed and had his finger on the pulse - so it was not something "based on the game", but a continuation of the spirit of the game in a new format.

This created an interesting loop: the series stimulated new game sales. Cyberpunk 2077 came to life after the Edgerunners anime, and Fallout showed that an old franchise can get a new lease on life - again, thanks to the right approach. The curse? It's already gathering dust. The secret is not to throw away the game and write from scratch. The secret is to love the source and work with it as it deserves.

How games started copying cinema

While directors were puzzling over how to make a film out of a game, game developers themselves were taking all the best things from cinema: camera language, editing, drama, and emotional tension. This is how the phenomenon known in the community as the "cinematisation" of games was born. Cameras began to move like in Villeneuve's films, scenes like in HBO series, and characters like living ones. This was driven not only by hardware (engines and graphics), but also by ambition: game developers were no longer satisfied with shots and quests - they wanted to tell stories that would touch the heart.

The visual evolution of video games is a path from the squares of Pong in 1971 to the photorealism of The Last of Us. The 80s saw pixelated characters with fat sprites, and the 90s saw the first 3D worlds with polygonal Lara and Mario. The 2000s brought cinematic facial expressions and dynamic lighting, and now we have pores, tears, and realistic lighting in real time. When the image became authentic, games gained space for real drama - because you want to live in the real world.

At first, there were almost no stories in games: Pac-Man was played without a story, and Super Mario was all about saving the princess. But text adventures like Zork showed that players wanted stories. Then came Zelda and King's Quest, where the story became the foundation. RPGs like Final Fantasy turned storytelling into a real art form, and Final Fantasy VII even made us cry.

Later, games began to borrow techniques from cinema: cut scenes became more and more complex. Metal Gear Solid turned them into a full-fledged dramatic show, and Kojima took it to 11 hours of star-studded video in Death Stranding. Neil Druckmann turned games into emotional dramas with The Last of Us and Uncharted. And Valve relied on integrating the story into the gameplay itself.

Today, games such as The Last of Us or Red Dead Redemption 2 are like cinema with a gamepad: strong stories, acting, and deep themes. Whether you're playing or experiencing it, the difference is blurred.

After games have mastered the plot and cut scenes, they took on another cinematic attribute - the visual language of cinema. They started with the camera: camera angles, composition, depth of field, chiaroscuro, motion blur - everything is like in the cinema to better control attention, evoke emotions and create a mood.

The Order: 1886 went all out - the game modelled the behaviour of physical camera lenses. The developers deliberately abandoned the "perfect window" that gaming cameras usually provide and relied on the slight distortions typical of a real lens. The goal was simple: to make the player feel: "I'm watching a film, but with a gamepad in my hands".

But God of War (2018) showed the most daring camera. The whole game is one continuous shot, no editing. You enter the game and leave only after the final credits, without a single pause for a smoke break. This creates the effect of maximum presence - you are always with the characters, both in battle and in moments of silence. To make this technique work, the developers have perfected every movement, light, and frame, just like filmmakers on a movie set.

Other games draw inspiration from entire genres. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a love letter to westerns, especially to the films ofJohn Ford. There is even a separate "cinema mode" with a smooth camera that shoots like in old films. Ghost of Tsushima went even further and added a "Kurosawa mode": black and white, film grain, full samurai arthouse.

This cinematic twist is not about copying. It's about how games take the power of cinema to tell stories in a deeper, more tangible and convincing way. But with this came criticism: where is the gameplay when everything is shown for you? The concept of "feature films" appeared, in which participation is minimal and the viewer's experience is maximised.

This is the whole point of a modern game: a constant balancing act between player control and the desire to make it beautiful. Between interactivity and direction. And it is in this tension that something new is born - a hybrid that is no longer called just a "game", but a media with its own voice.

From viewer to participant: the evolution of interactive storytelling

While some games flaunted cinematic angles and cutscenes with Hollywood on their shoulders, others went in the opposite direction - deeper into interactivity. And this is where the real evolution was born: games stopped being a set of mechanics or a gasket between story scenes and started putting the player at the centre of everything.

The point is that the player is more than just an observer or a shooter - they influence, choose, and shape the story. This was the beginning of the era of interactive narrative, where decisions matter, the plot doesn't always go in a straight line, and the game becomes a joint creation between the player and the script. It is in this direction that games have established themselves as a unique art form - not cinema, not literature, but a third form where choices determine the development of events.

Pioneers of interactivity: text adventures and FMV games

The first interactive stories were born in text games: Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork gave only descriptions, and the player "wrote" the plot himself. In the 80s, the first "interactive films" appeared on LaserDisc, such as Dragon's Lair with cartoon graphics and Quick Time Events (a game technique where you need to quickly press the right button or perform a combination of actions to make something happen on the screen: avoid a blow, grab a weapon, jump, run away, etc.) It looked cool, but it was almost impossible to play: pressing the wrong button was a mistake. The technology died quickly.

In the 90s, the CD-ROM gave the genre a second wind: Night Trap, Phantasmagoria, and The 7th Guest promised a hybrid of a game and a film. But the video quality was poor, the acting was weak, and the choice was an illusion. FMV games (Full Motion Video) looked like "movies that don't let you play" and disappointed players. They promised a revolution, but delivered a VHS with buttons.

Despite the failure of the FMV era, games did not give up and began to look for true interactivity. This is how two key concepts emerged: player agency (Player Agency, which can be translated as game activity) and a branched plot. Agency is when your choices have real consequences and change the world of the game.

You don't just press buttons - you influence. And a branched plot gives you not just one linear story, but a web of paths, endings, and character reactions.

Together, they create a unique language of games - where you don't watch, you act, experience, make mistakes and discover.

When the plot in games began to go beyond "save the princess", a conflict appeared in the world of game studies, which would later be called - pretentiously, as it should be - ludology versus narratology. That is, is a game a game or is it a narrative?

This progress is from banal choices in FMVs to multi-level plots in Mass Effect, The Witcher 3, Detroit: Become Human, or Life is Strange - is not just about new technologies. It's about a deeper understanding of how to create stories that live in the player's hands. Not because they read them, but because they become a part of them.

How games became art: what makes the interactive form attractive

Games have long gone beyond "shooters for schoolchildren" and become complex, emotional, and sometimes cinematic stories. And that's why an old debate has flared up with renewed vigour: are video games art? Some people are still hesitant, but most have long since moved on to a more important question: what makes interactive art unique?

The essence of the debate now lies in an attempt to understand the aesthetics of games and how they affect the player as a work of art. No one is surprised anymore that a modern game can evoke emotions no worse than a film, or even deeper, because you don't just watch, you participate. That's why today we analyse not abstract "games in general", but specific masterpieces that combine gameplay, story and visual language - like The Last of Us, Journey, Inside, Red Dead Redemption 2, Disco Elysium. It is no longer an equation to cinema, but its own path - and this path is increasingly looking like a new form of high art.

Debate: Are video games art?

The question "Are video games art?" has haunted the industry for decades. The loudest sceptic, the legendary film criticRoger Ebert, once said that a game will never become art because it has rules, goals, and victories. And where there is a win, there is no room for the author's vision. His position was supported by other critics: they say that a player who can change the plot automatically destroys the "purity" of artistic expression. Jack Kroll believed that games were incapable of conveying emotional complexity. And Jonathan Jones insisted that art should be one person's reaction to life, and therefore the game team and the player do not fit into this scheme.

But the opposite position is no less well-reasoned and increasingly influential. Proponents remind us that games combine all known arts: music, image, animation, scripting, acting. Philosophers Aaron Smuts and Grant Tavinor say bluntly that modern games easily pass the test by most definitions of art. And the main thing is that interactivity does not distort art, but adds depth to it. Empathy, choice, personal experience - all of this creates a connection with the work that a film or novel does not always provide.

Today, the discussion has changed: not "whether" but "how" games function as art. This is evidenced by museum recognition: games are already in the collections of MoMA and the Smithsonian.

The world has come to terms with the fact that a gamer is no longer a hedonist on the couch, but a participant in the cultural process. And this is the future.

Aesthetics of interactivity: formal properties and player experience

To understand why games are art, it is worth going beyond the old school, where the main thing is the picture and the plot. Video games have their own aesthetic rules. They are built not only on visuals, music, or story, but also on things that don't exist in cinema at all: gameplay, rules, interface, interaction design, and how you feel in all of this.

The real aesthetics of games is in the interaction. How does the game react to your actions? Do you have control over the camera, like in God of War, or is the script "guiding" you? How are you given choices - through dialogues, buttons, or the environment? These are not technical nuances, they are aesthetic decisions that shape your experience and influence how you perceive the story. Even the lack of resources in a game can reflect the theme of survival - not through words, but through the game process itself.

There's also phenomenology, which is, in human terms, how your body feels when you play a game. How the gamepad reacts, how you "experience" the virtual space, how you identify with the character. Gaming is a sensory act where your psyche and pixels merge into one. This is the power and uniqueness of game art.

Case studies of interactive cinematic art

To see how all this works in real life, it is worth looking at specific games that have become rappers in their genre. They show how cinematic presentation and interactivity can create a real artistic experience. These are not abstractions, but living examples where directing, gameplay and narrative work together - not interfering with each other, but enhancing each other. And it is through them that it is best to understand that a video game can be more than a game. It can be an emotional experience, a work that speaks, not just shoots.

The Last of Us

The Last of Us (Parts I and II) is no longer a game "with a story". It's a story in the form of a game, constructed by Neil Druckman as an emotional blow to all areas of responsibility. A game where rotting buildings and left-behind letters tell more than the three cutscenes combined. There are no explanations on the fingers - only glances, pauses, silence and a guitar in Eli's hands.

Yes, you shoot, hide, collect resources - the gameplay is not complicated. But the meaning is always there: in Ali's diary, in the letter on the corpse, in small dialogues between two people who have lost too much. Druckman deliberately leaves space for the player - he believes that the player will feel everything. And when he needs to show something that cannot be conveyed through mechanics, he freezes the game. Like in the scene of Joel's death: you watch, but you can't do anything, and this helplessness is the maximum emotion.

Yes, there is a narrative dissonance here: you cry in the cutscene, and in a minute you kill ten people. But this tension - between what you feel and what you have to do - is the heart of The Last of Us. It's rough, hard, sometimes contradictory - but that's how great art works.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Red Dead Redemption 2 is not a game about cowboys. It is an epitaph to an era, the decline of the Wild West, written in an open world format. Rockstar has not only collected beautiful rocks and horses here - the developers have built a living world that breathes, changes, and remembers what happened yesterday. Visually, this is Western America through the lens of serious cinema.

At the centre is Arthur Morgan, not a hero, but a man. His path is a dilemma of honour, loyalty, fatigue from violence and belated remorse. The plot is deep, multilayered and is built not only on the cutscenes, but also on how you behave in the world. The level of honour changes the ending, the reactions of NPCs, and even the tone of the story itself.

RDR2 balances between guided story missions and complete freedom. You can go on a heist - or go fishing with your child. This is not a game that shouts: "Look how dramatic I am". She gives you time to experience every moment, from the dialogue around the campfire to the intense look at the faded photographs. And this is its artistic power: not in the scale, but in the silence between shots.

Death Stranding

Death Stranding is not a game at all, but it's not quite a film either. It's Kojima in his "I can do anything" state. Hyper-realistic post-apocalyptic America, Norman Reedus with a baby in a capsule, Mads Mikkelsen in tears, Guillermo del Toro as an NPC, and a player sweating while carrying 40 kilos of parcels in the rain. And it's all about connection.

The gameplay here is strange and brilliant: you don't kill, you deliver, you seek balance not in the balance of complexity, but in the physical balance on the hills. Players leave each other stairs, bridges, and likes. And this is not a social network, but a caring mechanic that works better than Instagram.

Death Stranding is a game about loneliness, which you do not go through alone. It's about death, but without pathos. It's about the gamification of labour, which suddenly turns out to be a deep philosophical experience. Some people will call it a "postman simulator". But someone else will call it one of the most daring works of interactive art of the decade. And both will be right.

It's Kojima-style: slow, strange, beautiful - but it's also catchy.

Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human

Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human is no longer a "film in a game", but a game that looks you in the eye and asks: "What are you going to do?" Quantic Dream Studio has created a format where the gamepad is your emotional keyboard: every gesture, every button is part of the choice that changes the fate of the characters. The camera behaves like in a good thriller, and QTEs are even woven into the washing of plates - because, strangely enough, this is also a part of the drama.

In Heavy Rain, you can literally feel how the ending depends on your actions - and this is no exaggeration: wash a key in the rain and everything goes completely wrong. Detroit has taken the formula to an absurd level of branching: the decision diagrams look like an intricately constructed labyrinth. And the plot - about android rights, rebellion, free will - hints that this is no longer sci-fi, but a parable about us today.

Yes, there are criticisms - they say that the choice is sometimes illusory, the branches merge, and the QTEs (Quick Time Events) are a bit wooden. But the fact remains that these games have pushed the boundaries of what a "gaming story" is. They don't let you play - they make you live.

These examples show how games with a cinematic slant reveal their power in different ways. They take cinema's picture, sound, and drama, but add something that films don't: choice, action, and your personal involvement. Some take you through the post-apocalypse with a shotgun (The Last of Us), some take you through moral dilemmas in the wild west (Red Dead Redemption 2), and some put the drama on your shoulders, like in Heavy Rain or Detroit: Become Human. Their artistic weight is not in how they "look like a film", but in how they combine film language with interactivity, creating an experience in which the player is not a spectator, but a participant. And this is where their unique aesthetics lie.

How games and cinema influence each other and merge into one

The relationship between video games and cinema is no longer a copycat or a fan service. It's a two-way exchange of ideas, technologies, visual techniques, and even the pace of storytelling. Games have long borrowed cameras, editing and actors from cinema. And cinema borrows engines, interfaces, and immersive methods from games. More and more projects live on several platforms at once: TV series, comics, add-ons, spinoffs, trailers, TikTok quests.

Mutual influence: aesthetics and technology

Games used to learn from cinema: how to set up a camera, how to convey emotion, how to edit. Nowadays, both sides are learning. Films are increasingly using footage from the game: first-person view (Hardcore Henry), continuous action in the style of a shooter on steroids, or just scenes that look like a trailer for an AAA game.

Even more interesting is the technology. The Unreal Engine, created for games, is now being used in TV series and films. The Mandalorian was not filmed against a green canvas - they built entire worlds in the engine and broadcast them in real time on LED walls. Instead of imagination, it was a full-fledged virtual set. Motion capture, once a gimmick of game devs, is now a standard in cinema. Everything that worked for characters like Joel in LoU or Snake in Metal Gear is now bringing Hollywood actors to life.

And here comes Kojima with the line "and we're going to make a film too". Because for him, a game, a film, and a dream are the same thing, just in different export formats. The line between cinema and games has long been blurred, and we live on this line.

Storytelling for all screens: how stories become entire universes

When a single story is told across multiple platforms, and each of them adds something new, rather than simply repeating the same thing, it is called transmedia storytelling. It's not "the same film, but in the form of a game", but something deeper: a game that tells a backstory, a TV series that shows a different angle, a comic book that reveals a secondary character.

For example, The Last of Us: first, the game is about Joel and Ellie, then the HBO series reveals more about the world and the characters. Or League of Legends - there is a game, there is an Arcane animated series, and each of them works to build a common universe. Star Wars, Marvel, The Witcher are the same. The game allows you to "live" the plot, the film allows you to see it from the side, the book allows you to understand the background.

Kojima is even taking his Death Stranding to the cinema with A24, and promises that it will not be a remake of the game, but an expansion of its world. All this is about fans who want more, deeper, further. But you need to put all these parts together correctly to create not a puzzle of different boxes, but a real coherent universe.

What pushes games and cinema to unite: business, fashion, and creativity

Money.

The gaming industry now earns more than $200 billion a year, which is more than cinema and music combined. Therefore, it is a gold mine for studios: if there is a game with millions of fans, let's make a film, there is less risk and more profit. Sony, for example, has both cinema and games in one pocket, so it's not a sin to cross over. A TV series comes out and game sales jump. A game is released - more views on streaming. Everyone benefits.

Culture.

The new generation are gamers. Gen Z and millennials spend a lot of time playing games and TikTok, not in cinemas. They are already emotionally attached to characters from games and want more - TV series, comics, films. And studios are well aware of this.

Art.

It is also just interesting. Games take cinematography, acting, and editing from cinema. And films experiment with game logic (Bandersnatch, gamified scenes). More and more actors, directors and technicians are working on two fronts at once. And the result is something new - not just a game, not just a film, but a hybrid where you can both watch and live the story.

What's next? Games, cinema, and artificial intelligence merge into one big "wow"

The boundary between games, films and reality has long been cracking. And with new technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, it may disappear altogether.

AI (artificial intelligence ) will soon write dialogues, react to your emotions, and change the plot in real time. Imagine not just an NPC, but a character that actually "understands" what you are doing and does not behave according to a prepared script. AI can also help creators: generate graphics, prototypes, and entire storylines, which will greatly simplify and reduce the cost of development.

VR and AR are no longer a gimmick for tech fans but tools for full immersion. You don't just "control" the hero - you are there, in the game, with your head. Kojima has already hinted that he wants to play with these things, and it will be something serious.

New formats? Already on the way. Kojima's PHYSINT is a game-film spy thriller with no clear boundaries. This is the second phase of Kojima Productions, as the master himself says. And Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet by Drachman (yes, the creator of The Last of Us and Uncharted) is also preparing something unconventional - again, stories that put pressure on emotions, but with new tools.

Bottom line: hybrids are coming, not quite a game and not quite a film, but definitely something you won't want to put down. And it seems that we are only at the beginning of this new story.

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