A DEBT REPAID

Shout-out to videogame adaptations

Abstract

Trouble awaits the scholar who decides to study movie adaptations of videogames – or, as they are more commonly called, ‘videogame adaptations’. Literary and post-literary biases, an unfriendly critical environment and the lack of systematic references are but a few of the many obstacles on her or his path.

By addressing these issues and attempting to understand them against the historical and theoretical backdrop that informed them in the first place, this paper aims at a reevaluation, however partial, of these productions as symptoms of a self-reflexive tendency present in contemporary commercial cinema.

In the process of nearing a new understanding of these cultural and industrial artifacts, a cross-examination of key concepts belonging to three fields of studies (game studies, film studies and adaptation studies) opens up the possibility of an interdisciplinary cooperation aimed at the adjustment and rectification of mutual assumptions and misconceptions.