Show HN: Parsing CSV files with GPU - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/antonmks/nvParse

<comment><USER2> This title is incredibly misleading.

* This isn't parsing a CSV, this is a program written to split this exact dataset. (The code is filled with hard coded values)

* You're comparing a single-threaded run on a low-end CPU to a top-tier GPU.

* Your dataset can fit into GPU memory.

* There is a pull request for a missing semicolon, which means the posted version of the code won't even compile, so couldn't have been the version used to generate the benchmarks.

* The amount of branching in the GPU code makes it hard for me to believe that it actually ran that fast. GPU parallelism does not work well with branching since all cores in a cube must executing in lock-step, if you branch, then you now have to go back and execute all of your branches separately.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry if you are misled :-) The program does parses selected fields, there are strings-to-binaries procedures.

I tested this approach on multiterabyte files, take a look at my alenka project, it uses the same method to load large CSV files into databases. It just have to be done in chunks.

The program compiles fine, that pull request was referring to incorrect earlier version of test.cu file.

Test it for yourself, see if you get similar results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm skeptical of the 8x speedup for several reasons, the main one being that this particular problem does not fit the paradigm of problems that work well on the GPU; the GPU cache is not used at all, and there are also many branches. You need to be able to use the cache of the GPU in your application, otherwise your performance is guaranteed to be memory-bound. The reason you want to avoid branches is that there is only one control unit per a number of cores on the GPU, which means that if some threads follow one branch they will have to stall until the other threads complete. Generally the only code that maps well to the GPU is that which contains large for loops and has good spacial locality (e.g. matrix multiplication).

The author is comparing a GPU to a CPU, yet the CPU is only running a single thread (supposedly, the author did not provide the CPU code used in the comparison). For a true comparison the full capability of the CPU should be exposed by means of a multithreaded application (and, as someone else has already mentioned, vector instructions such as SSE). Think performance per socket, not performance per thread.

<comment><USER4> > Generally the only code that maps well to the GPU is that which contains > large for loops and has good spacial locality (e.g. matrix multiplication).

You also need high _arithmetic intensity_ (the ratio of arithmetic/logical operations to memory loads). Of common CPU-bound tasks, CSV parsing has one of the lowest arithmetic intensities imaginable.

<comment><USER3> Right, maybe I should have said that instead. In my mind locality implies arithmetic intensity, but intensity may not necessarily imply locality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Though there is no standard definition of CSV, de facto processing it properly requires recognizing quotes, and also escapes of literal quotes using double quoting:

        this, "is, like, CSV", "with three so-called ""fields"""

Note that unquoted leading and trailing whitespace, and whitespace around the commas, is deleted, too.

(See CSV page in the Wikipedia)

A GPU-accelerated string split could be useful but it's not quite "parsing CSV".

<comment><USER6> This is a perfect example of how text parsing is really inherently non- parallelizable. It's very rare that you can do anything useful with a buffer of text without knowing the precise state of the parse at the beginning of that buffer.

The kinds of patterns that would make parsing more parallelizable, like marking the beginning of a delimited region with its length, are human unfriendly so would never be part of an actual text format. Who would ever want to write this?

        # Update "19" whenever string length changes.
        x = {19}"String of length 19"

<comment><USER4> > This is a perfect example of how text parsing is really inherently non- > parallelizable. It's very rare that you can do anything useful with a buffer > of text without knowing the precise state of the parse at the beginning of > that buffer.

There are two mechanisms that are usually used to get around this:

(1) Perform a fast, sequential "skeleton parsing" pass before the main parse that scans _just enough_ to find "split points" that are consumed by the parallel parser. This is what some of the parallel XML parsing work [1] did.

(2) Guess the state you're in based on some heuristics, and roll back on failure. This actually works surprisingly well in practice for many grammars, for example HTML [2].

[1]: [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=410047...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4100476&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D4100476)

[2]: [http://www.cs.wm.edu/~xshen/Publications/taco14.pdf](http://www.cs.wm.edu/~xshen/Publications/taco14.pdf)

<comment><USER6> > (1) Perform a fast, sequential "skeleton parsing" pass before the main parse > that scans just enough to find "split points" that are consumed by the > parallel parser.

I'm not able to access the full text of this paper. But from the description I wouldn't really consider this "parallel parsing." For the "skeleton parser" to be correct, it must transition through a state machine that is exactly as complex as the real parser. I suspect (again, not being able to read the paper right now) that what makes the "skeleton parse" faster than the "real parse" is not the speed of the parser itself, but the speed of the "load" on the parser.

For the skeleton parse, the "load" on the parser is just finding split points (cheap). At the application level, the "load" on the parser in many cases is building a tree of some sort. The tree-building is often significantly more expensive than the parse itself because it usually involves a lot of dynamic memory allocation.

So yes, if you do a preliminary parse that chunks up the document, and then a second parse that has a heavier load on it like tree-building, the second parse can indeed be parallelized. But I wouldn't consider this parallelizing a parser, I would consider it parallelizing the tree-building. In raw terms you have probably spent _more_ CPU on the actual parsing logic than in the single- threaded case.

I don't mean for this to be a semantic quibble. I'm really interested in parsing architectures that decouple the parser itself from its "load." Event- based parsers like SAX parsers do this. I'm interested specifically in the parser part itself, and the limits of how it can be optimized.

> (2) Guess the state you're in based on some heuristics, and roll back on > failure. This actually works surprisingly well in practice for many > grammars, for example HTML [2].

Looks like an interesting paper, I'll have to dig more into that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I kinda suspect he might be measuring the time it takes to launch a kernel rather than the time it takes the kernel to complete.

Thrust device calls, like those of the underlying CUDA library, are asynchronous by default. The only exception is calls that result in a memcpy, which are synchronous. To wait until an async call is completed you need to call one of the synchronize commands, like cudaDeviceSynchronize.

Looking through his test.cu file, he snaps a timestamp using std::clock right after doing the kernel launch with for_each. Ignoring the fact that this is not an accurate way to benchmark a GPU (you need to use events to accurately benchmark the kernel) what you're capturing will just be the processor time it takes to make the async kernel launch. Std::clock measures CPU time, which is (rightly) close to 0 for a program that runs on the GPU.

It's entirely possible that you're not even getting valid results out of the other end - note that you don't show output. I don't know if thrust's magic device memory access function triggers a synchronization or not. I kinda remember having to make an explicit call when I did a GPU simulation.

I don't have access to a CUDA box at the moment, I'd have to add those cudaDeviceSynchronize calls after the for_each invocations to be sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thrust CUDA calls are synchronous to each other. You can add an explicit synchronization call cudaDeviceSynchronize() and there won't be a difference in results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand the benchmark. How can a 750GB file be read from disk in 1.5 seconds, let alone be parsed? He mentions it's a 2TB drive, so it's not even SSD presumably?

<comment><USER9> The README has just been updated to change 750GB to MB.

[https://github.com/antonmks/nvParse/commit/fab4c4728096003bc...](https://github.com/antonmks/nvParse/commit/fab4c4728096003bcbe2fa98ffa2e10aa50e5603)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very interesting. From my experience, the hard part about parsing CSV isn't to identify the individual cells, but rather parsing those cells afterwards (as numbers, dates, etc).

What is the performance of those operations (e.g. parsing YYYY-MM-DD dates to Unix timestamps) when performed on the GPU ?

My company actually picked another optimization strategy, by making the tokenization significantly longer, but it de-duplicates the tokenized cells so that each distinct cell value (a date, a number, a string) can be parsed exactly once. We have seen some fairly good results out of this, compared to the naive approach of stream-token-parse:

[https://github.com/Lokad/lokad-flatfiles](https://github.com/Lokad/lokad- flatfiles)

<comment><USER11> Makes sense for low-entropy data. Though I can see that approach choking on some datasets. What happens if every entry has a GUID, for example?

May be better to do a best-effort deduplication instead of an exhaustive approach.

<comment><USER10> At some point, we considered tweaking by dropping any strings longer than a certain length from the deduplication (it also helps with memory usage when streaming the data).

Our method makes most sense for many-to-many data (several orders per product, several orders per day), which happens to be the largest data sets we manipulate (by 3 orders of magnitude). I can certainly see situations where this would not be the case (e.g. web crawler logs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I gotta admit, having written a high-speed, multi-threaded streaming CSV parser for the browser[1], I'm quite impressed by your project. I've done CUDA programming before and it's not easy (albeit libraries do help). Good work!

[1] [http://papaparse.com](http://papaparse.com)

<comment><USER13> I just used Papa at the office today. Remembered it from a while ago, it really turned out to be effortless. Excellent work.

(While I'm at it, may I suggest to provide CDN URLs on the website? IMO it would make the otherwise awesome page perfect.)

Thank you again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For file sizes where parsing speed really makes a difference, loading the entire file into memory doesn't seem feasible. Maybe some sort of a hybrid approach (load chunks into memory and parse them via the GPU) would provide some real benefits though.

<comment><USER15> And if you're going to load it, you may as well parse it on the way in.

<comment><USER10> A streaming CSV parser is very difficult to get right, once you get past a certain level of complexity.

Sometimes, you are not lucky enough to have perfect control over the encoding, number format and date format of the input, so you need to look ahead at a value sample to try and find out what those are.

Sometimes, you cannot even assume that the software that produced the file didn't mangle the quotes around fields, and you have to detect that you are 40960 bytes into a quoted field, decide that it's probably an error, and backtrack.

If you have enough memory to load the entire file, you will save a lot of time by giving up on streaming processing.

<comment><USER16> if you use mmap(), there is virtualy no difference between the streaming/non streaming parsing code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think CPU and GPU is going to make much difference here. You speed up in GPU run could be because of hot cache of file system. Try running GPU run first and non-GPU after that and plz post the results.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used average time for multiple runs, both GPU and CPU benchmarks ran from memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like your creativity in applying the GPU to a less typical task.

Is it the case that the CPU version could be sped up dramatically by using multiple cores and a variation on the line splitting technique?

<comment><USER19> You could use a lockfree queue, fill it, and spawn a suitable number of consumers that will put the parsed data back into a new queue. If the data order matters, then some extra boilerplate is needed, and I do not know how it's done on the GPU, or if it's needed at all.

Seeing that it takes 14.5s with the handrolled code to parse 750GB, I however doubt the optimization is needed - it's more than 50GB every second and you need some really really exotic hardware to generate that much data. You still need to do something with the data and it's likely significantly more computational intensitive - that should be on a different thread.

That said, using the GPU would free up the CPU to do meaningful work with the data. But to be fair, assuming 1GB/s datarate, it's still 12,5m to read it all and you only gain 14.5s or less than 2% speedup if you're CPU bound.

<comment><AUTHOR> It should be 750MB, not 750GB. There is no way a single hard drive can read 750GB in 14 seconds.

<comment><USER20> Heh, you cant even DMA 750GB from memory to the graphics card (assuming 16GB/s, using 32 lanes) in 14s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "However this method of parsing is CPU bound because * it doesn't take advantage of multiple cores of modern CPUs. * memory bandwidth limitations"

So not CPU bound at all then.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think it would be really cool to integrate a GPU into a database to speed up certain operations if an optimizer can decide that certain parts of a query will benefit from it. The thrust docs [0] indicate that the C++ gpu library can be used effectively for sorting, I wonder if sorts on non-indexed fields can be sped up by attaching a GPU to my database!

[0] [http://thrust.github.io/](http://thrust.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER16> In the real world, the slow part of "parsing" a CSV file is IO: reading the file content from disk to memory, and from memory to CPU cache.

You would avoid reading the file content more than once if you had to parse it.

> The first line counts the number of lines in a buffer (assuming that file is > read into memory and copied to gpu buffer d_readbuff).

but this is what is done here, first search to find all \n, then multi-core GPU stuff for each line content.

<comment><USER23> Things have been changed in a world of SSDs and machines w/ much memory. Actually, parsing a CSV in a single thread will never reach several hundred megabytes per second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In the real world... read the CSV into a database (doesn't really matter how fast or slow it is). Access the data from the database.

<comment><USER25> In the real world, sometimes you have an external data source, in csv (which you can't control), which is changing, which you want to reread as quickly as possible. :)

<comment><USER26> You then use PostgreSQL Foreign Data Wrapper (aka SQL/MED)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Am I crazy? With a hot disk cache, the cut command he gave takes 1.2 seconds on my machine.</comment>


NYT: Chinese and Russian spies routinely eavesdrop on Trump's iPhone calls - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/10/nyt-chinese-and-russian-spies-routinely-eavesdrop-on-trumps-iphone-calls/ <comment><USER2> These breaches in operational security by GRU assets seem to be happening more and more frequently.

<comment><USER3> I think it's important to note that this is only known to happen when he uses his personal iPhone. He has a separate, secure line that he also uses.

For that reason, I don't see evidence in this story itself that breaches are becoming more frequent. Previous presidents also had secure lines, presumably because consumer-grade communications have never been secure enough for a president.</comment></comment>


Massive security flaw may threaten millions of Samsung Galaxy phones - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/06/17/samsung-phones-security-flaw/

<comment><USER2> NowSecure has some details about this flaw [0]. Summary:

The SwiftKey keyboard (which can't be uninstalled) checks for language packs via HTTP:

        http://skslm.swiftkey.net/samsung/downloads/v1.3-USA/languagePacks.json

That returns a list of download URLs and SHA1 hashes (which are obviously useless when they're in the same plain text response). These download links look like:

        http://skslm.swiftkey.net/samsung/downloads/v1.3-USA/en_US.zip

The zip file is downloaded and then extracted as system user. The zip file may contain paths like ../../../../../../../../data/payload, which basically allows to write anywhere on the file system.

This can be (ab)used for a system level remote code execution.

Ryan Welton also published a video demonstrating the exploit. [1]

0: [https://www.nowsecure.com/blog/2015/06/16/remote-code- execut...](https://www.nowsecure.com/blog/2015/06/16/remote-code-execution-as- system-user-on-samsung-phones/)

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvvejToiWrY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvvejToiWrY)</comment>


Large Hadron Collider's heir likely destined for Japan - <AUTHOR> http://dvice.com/archives/2012/12/large-hadron-co-15.php

<comment><USER2> The writing style of this post is pretty fun. Sometimes bringing highly technical science down to "sorting out this extra crap (that you don't care about)" level of accessibility is a good way to give people an overview of a concept they may not otherwise have the time to dig in to.

</comment><comment><USER3> I found the last line to be the most important one, "it's good to know that even with scientific funding losing priority in the west, the importance of fundamental science is still recognized somewhere in the world."</comment>


Ask HN: Data Engineers, what's your job description, skillset and actual role? - <AUTHOR> I've seen too many variations for this specific title. Wanted to hear from the horses' mouths. <comment><USER2> In my case it's coding either some batch jobs in Scala, Spark (on a Hadoop cluster) and Oozie or some real-time pipelines with similar technologies (+Kafka, Spark streaming). The job pays well, but the tech is clunky and slow to develop in.</comment>


Saccadic masking - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccadic_masking

<comment><USER2> The linked optical illusion, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronostasis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronostasis), is interesting as well. This is why when glancing at a clock, its second hand may appear stalled. I've always experienced this; never knew it had a name.</comment>


Start In The Middle - <AUTHOR> http://coderoom.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/start-in-the-middle/

<comment><USER2> My hard-drive is littered with projects where I did tackle the cool bits first. It's how I work. Most of them aren't finished though because I lose interest when I hit the boring bits.

The only way I get through boring code it would seem, is by getting paid to slog through it.

This will likely lead to premature aging and an early grave for me...

<comment><USER3> I started to write this exact comment this morning and then got distracted. Upvote for you.

Luckily, my current side project has someone offering feedback and is interested in turning into a real product. That is the motivation to handle the boring bits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ironically, I started reading this article in the middle, got to the end and then read the top half.

</comment><comment><USER5> often the sum of all the boring bits is what distinguishes your product.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can't say that I've abandoned that many projects due to distraction of starting from scratch... I just haven't started that many, but I mostly agree with this line of thinking. I think programmers (myself included) tend to get distracted by optimizations and minutia which actually have no bearing on project/product success. That makes the boring, routine part much longer than it needs to be.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is exactly why I switch hobbies every few months. You spend so much time learning to do the thing before you actually try it. Like kayaking, or rock climbing, then you figure out that once you know what you are doing it just becomes repetitive. I wish there was a to just jump past the learning curve to experience things before you learn how to do them.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love how everything has a fancy name now. We've been doing StartInTheMiddle / MinimumViableProduct / Prototyping / GetSomethingOut / StepwiseRefinement for years:

Customer: I must have anything I want from the database without asking you.

Me, 1 hour later: No problem, here's your screen.

Customer: This only does does Customers. I want to pick _any_ table.

Me, 1 hour later: No problem, now you can pick your table.

Customer: This dumps every column. I want to pick my own.

Me, 1 hour later: No problem. Now you can pick your columns.

Customer: This doesn't sort. I want it to sort.

Me, 1 hour later: No problem. Now you can sort.

Customer: But I want multiple sorts, some ascending, some descending.

Me, 1 hour later: No problem. Sort any way you want.

Customer: It dumps the whole table. I want to filter.

Me, 1 hour later: No problem. Now you can filter.

Customer: It only give me local columns. I want columns from other tables, too.

Me, 5 mins later: Give me an example.

Customer: Here. Give me these linked columns and accumulators, too.

Me, 2 days later: OK. I figured out how to give you all this data too.

Customer: OK. This will work. Why didn't you do all this in the first place?

Stepwise Refinement Method: Time to beta: 1 hour. Time to production: 3 days.

Waterfall Method: Time to beta: not applicable. Time to production: who knows?

<comment><USER9> The problem with the approach you just described is that it's missing analysis. You got a list of features, not use cases. Maybe the customer wanted to solve a particular problem, but the only way they got to elucidate it was in terms of incremental functionality. Better than the wrong thing, but not the way to delight your customer either, I bet.

<comment><USER8> _The problem with the approach you just described is that it's missing analysis._

It's not missing analysis, it's missing the analysis _phase_.

Instead of working against human nature by tediously building use cases, data flow diagrams, logic flows, process breakdowns, etc., etc., etc. before doing any development, analysis, design, development, testing, and deployment are tightly coupled in many small iterations. That's the whole point.

<comment><USER9> No, I'm not talking about an analysis phase in a waterfall development. I'm talking about the blindness you can get when you're incrementally developing at the level of features, when you can no longer see the bigger goals.

<comment><USER10> The key question is "Why" that needs to be asked. A customer may think they want to sort, select, and aggregate the data, but fundamentally "get the data" is very rarely the real reason for doing something.

That data is used to make a decision, and it's important that developers seek to understand exactly what that decision needs. Your users will often walk their way into a bad solution to their real problem because they will use their (incomplete) understanding of what is available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I absolutely concur, at least with respect to my own motivations and habits. Every successful project I've built started in the middle; whereas every abandoned project started with grandiose organizational plans.</comment>


Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie? - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/entertainment/video-game-movies/ <comment><USER2> So many video game movie projects are missing the simple question, "why?" So many of these games are inspired by movies in the first place, and their stories are mostly just cliches based on their source material. It's fine in the context of the game, because the player is doing something, but when you put that into a non-interactive medium, the flaws become obvious.

If you take Indiana Jones, turn it into a game with a sexy woman as the main character[1], and then try to make a movie out of it, then of course the critical reaction is going to be "Indiana Jones but not as good." Mortal Kombat is basically Enter the Dragon with a simpler storyline, so why would you decide to turn it into a movie?

It's an issue that comes up in most adaptation, whether it be a book, or a comic, or even a song. There needs to be some reason to do it. Some idea that the source material does that hasn't already been done to death in film. "This game/movie/book is popular" isn't a good enough reason. It might get a movie greenlit, and it might even make money. Heck, it might even make a TON of money, but it won't make the movie good.

[1] Later iterations of Tomb Raider have been much more feminist, but the original concept was entirely based on sex appeal

<comment><USER3> I think Mass Effect trilogy is fairly original and does away with a lot of the space sci-fi cliches like humans being the ruling class of the galaxy, or all species having a united voice, etc. I'd love to see it made into a movie.

<comment><USER4> Movies and games are sufficiently different that the the key to making a good "video game" movie may be to pick a property that _gives_ more options than it _takes_ away.

For example, Tomb Raider has to be based on Lara Croft raiding tombs, or it's not Tomb Raider. You have your main character, type of action, and key plot points determined before you start, and viewers _will_ compare them to the games. This is very limiting.

With Mass Effect, you have a rather well realized universe in which you could set a movie that would be easily recognized as Mass Effect, without necessarily being forced to use the main characters from the Game or plot points from the game trilogy. You are given settings, races, ship designs, factions, conflicts, etc. that can be explored from a different angle.

Create a movie that _coexists_ with game plots rather than trying to sum them up or replace them and you'll have more freedom to make a movie that's actually good.

Of course, 95% of everything is crap. Maybe we just haven't seen a good video game movie yet because there haven't yet been enough made to beat the odds. Probably a quarter of the number that _have_ been made were directed by Uwe Boll, and those probably shouldn't be counted as serious attempts at making a good movie anyways.

<comment><USER5> > Create a movie that coexists with game plots rather than trying to sum them > up or replace them and you'll have more freedom to make a movie that's > actually good.

The challenge with this is that a studio would be alienating fans and making a large investment into an IP and then throwing most of that in the garbage...

Mass Effect isn't enough of a name to carry an untried, unanchored, narrative into the mainstream. Most fans of any work have a superficial relationship to the underlying IP, so most people people who walk into a Batman movie are only gonna want to see Batman, not some "good story" told about unrelated people in Batmans world.

If the story is so solid, and it's so exciting you want to put a hundred million dollars behind it, then why share profits with an unrelated IP owner? Change the 'universe', keep the money. If you're going to pay for an IP, why not use it?

Using established IPs is all about risk management. Paying extra for the joy of increasing the risk is how execs end up not execs ;)

<comment><USER6>
      The challenge with this is that a
      studio would be alienating fans

A standalone Boba Fett movie would coexist with Star Wars without much interaction with the main plot, but still attract fans as he's a cult character. The studio would benefit from the IP's profitable reputation, but they'd retain the freedom do new things and attract new audiences.

<comment><USER5> That's a bit of a tortured example: Boba Fett was highly popular, a named character, and was featured in literature and promotional materials. Mass Effect has no character remotely as iconic or well established as Boba Fett, much less a side character, much less "a different angle".

Star Was illustrates my point quite nicely: after a couple decades of world building they're already plumbing diminishing returns in one of the worlds largest and most popular IPs only one or two stories removed from their main narrative. I have high hopes for the Han Solo prequel, but Disney isn't putting money behind "alternative" Star Wars narratives until the nostalgia well is tapped, and even then they're going full-court on a trilogy.

<comment><USER7> "I have high hopes for the Han Solo prequel, but Disney isn't putting money behind "alternative" Star Wars narratives until the nostalgia well is tapped, and even then they're going full-court on a trilogy."

Um, Rogue One?

<comment> Digit-Al Rogue One is not an "alternative" Star Wars narrative - it's linked very strongly to the original story.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but unless I'm mistaken it's largely new characters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mostly because videogame plot lines aren't as good as we give them credit for. Videogames are great at being interactive diversions, but their stories leave a lot to be desired and are really just thin background dressing for the real reason we play videogames: for the gameplay.

The most successful videogame movies tend towards genre films like Mortal Kombat (the film) and Resident Evil (the series).

Of course, let's not forget that it can be hard to make a good movie, period.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. You have games like The Last of Us, The Uncharted Series, Yakuza 0, and even the latest Wolfenstein game having very well made and engaging stories which I think can translate well on film.

<comment><USER10> I'd go back to GP's "why" question.

I thought that The Last of Us was an absolutely fantastic game. Honestly, its one of the few games I've managed to stay engaged with all the way to the end. It works as a game. It's wonderful within its medium. A movie can't give you moral choices (did you guys kill the doctors at the end??), nor the time required to really get aquainted with the characters.

The narrative works best in the medium it was designed around. As a movie, I Dunno, what would the medium bring to the table? I suspect it'd just be another throw away zombie movie

<comment><USER11> That's what series are for! I could see The Last Of Us as a series.

<comment><USER12> All of the repetitive missions in games would work well in a series. I mean most TV shows follow that formula, you know at a certain time in a cop show they will figure out whodunnit and proceed to the thematic close of events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's funny that Assassin's Creed was mentioned as being too close to the game, but I thought it managed to miss most of the major points of the game series (which wasn't super complicated to begin with).

I mean, it doesn't even succeed at convincing the audience they should root for the Assassins instead of the Templars.

It's like they assumed everyone who was watching who didn't already know the story would be too stupid to understand it.

<comment><USER14> I felt there was so much potential for that movie! The plot in e.g. AC2 is intricate. It's easy to stand on the sideline of course — I understand that this stuff is really hard to get right. It obviously is. But in my opinion, an actually great movie, movie series or series based on the plot lines in AC is still a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think the reasons are too complicated here, I think they really just come down to a mixture of the following:

1\. Most games are created as interactive experiences, and the storytelling reflects that. For example, look at something like the Metroid Prime series. Almost all the lore is found in logs and in universe worldbuilding, not in the form of a linear narrative. That's hard to adapt into a non interactive medium, because you have tell such a story in a completely different way.

2\. Many successful games either have poorly thought out or non existent stories because they focus on the mechanics and gameplay. See for example the Mario platformers (the RPGs might work better here), the Pokemon series, Sonic, any puzzle game like Tetris, Minecraft etc.

(It's also worth pointing out that much of what's needed for a fun game would be seen as bad writing in any other medium, since a realistic hero likely wouldn't be able to handle the challenges in many games. Most video game protagonists would likely be seen as Mary Sues/wish fulfilment in a non interactive medium).

3\. Hollywood has a tendency of going after popular franchises regardless of whether they have a story that works in film form. This means being stuck trying to adapt games that simply don't work well in the format rather than ones like adventure games or visual novels which would adapt pretty well. The recently announced Tetris movie trilogy is a good example of this, since the source material has basically nothing you can adapt into a non interactive film.

Video games are just difficult to adapt by virtue of the medium and what's needed to succeed in it.

</comment><comment><USER16> The 2016 Warcraft movie doesn't count? It got a 77% audience score, and a 27% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, grossed almost half a billion, and is the highest grossing video game movie of all time[1].

I watched it out of a sheer morbid curiosity, and haven't played any Warcraft title newer than II: Tides of Darkness. I thought the movie was crap.

But maybe I and critics just aren't the audience for these movies. Seems most people who saw it liked it. Doesn't that make it at least "Good"?

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games)

<comment><USER17> It is a cliche to say this, but the movie really was made for fans and not for the general "Normie" audience.

They would just name drop locations and people, expecting you to know what they were. It was just mostly a fan service, "here is your movie, loyal fans!" types.

It still wasn't "great" even if you were a fan, but I can't imagine how bad a lot of it would have come off as if you didn't follow things pretty closely to begin with.

<comment><USER18> This is exactly how It felt to me.

I've only got pop culture knowledge of World Of Warcraft, and the way they explained most parts of the movie was really hard to follow. They needed:

\- More world-building, geography was hard to follow, jumping around too much.

\- Better character introduction, characters would just appear, banking on fans recognising them.

\- Less assumed knowledge...

The whole movie came off a bit amateurish in how the story was told...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Actually, in some ways, Hardcore Henry ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3072482/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3072482/)) was a great video game movie. It has lots of problems, but it captures both the feel of a video game with the power of film. While not based on a specific game, it's easy to see many gaming cliches (intentionally) in the film.

<comment><USER20> I'd say Scott Pilgrim, Jumanji, and Edge of Tomorrow are better video game movies in that sense.

<comment><USER21> ⌘F Edge

"Edge of Tomorrow" is a fantastic video game movie in spirit. The Groundhog- Day-Formula is not new, but it nails the game experience of having a "savepoint" and getting better and better until you master the bullet hell level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I still have hope. It took many decades before we entered the golden age of comic book movies, and while I don't think the wait will be as long, I think we're still not quite there yet with video games. What makes a good video game movie is what makes any movie good: when the creative team behind the endeavor believes in it and is tied to the source material. Read some of Nolan's early interviews before Batman Begins comes out and you'll get a sense of that.

I would love to see a Bioshock movie done right, or honestly a proper Metal Gear film. But if the filmmakers don't relate to the material or see it as more than just another narrative engine, we'll get the dime-a-dozen action flicks that try to hype up a few moments without capturing what makes so many VG experiences special.

<comment><USER23> > a proper Metal Gear film

They're working on that (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, guy who did _Kong: Skull Island_ ). I have no idea how you could possibly turn Metal Gear into a movie that is appealing to people who haven't played the games, but he seems to be a huge fan of the series, and has claimed to have "cracked the code" about how to make an appealing movie based on a video game, in the same way that Hollywood has cracked the code for making comic book movies. He's also working with Hideo Kojima. I'm cautiously optimistic.

<comment><USER24> Mulling over the concept, I think the only way to direct a quality Metal Gear film is to ditch the idea of mass appeal and intentionally attempt to create a cult classic that captures the spirit and story of the original, not unlike Dredd or the new Blade Runner film. And with the correct marketing and angle, hopefully crossover into mainstream appeal like Mad Max: Fury Road. Tricky, but there's a first time for everything.

Alternatively, they could go The Shining/2001: A Space Odyssey route and just make a very good film that doesn't resemble the original work very much. But Vogt-Roberts is not the Kubrick for that, nor does he seem like the type to piss off original authors.

<comment><USER23> Here is the reddit AMA where he talks about it a bit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/5y9y4o/i_am_jordan_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/5y9y4o/i_am_jordan_vogtroberts_director_of_the_film_kong/deoj1nl/?context=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There have been good video game movies, but the number is vanishingly small. Many are "so bad it's good" such as anything Uwe Boll makes, but there are a couple that seem to be created by directors who genuinely love the source material and take it in interesting directions (e.g. the first Silent Hill film, the first Resident Evil film, arguably Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within).

Also, Mortal Kombat (1995) is a good film.

<comment><USER26> Kinda cheating to call the Spirits Within a video game movie. It was titled Final Fantasy but was a wholly unique story and new characters and everything.

<comment><USER25> I did say "arguably". I know it's not a direct translation but to be fair many video game movies don't directly translate the source game either.

For another example, see Final Fantasy: Advent Children which is a sequel to Final Fantasy 7. It's pretty enjoyable.

<comment><USER15> Most video game movies probably shouldn't directly translate the source game, since what works in a game and what works in a movie are so different.

And to be fair, most films based on other media don't directly translate their source material either. Oh sure, novel based films do, but most comic book movies seem to have plots written specifically for the movie, with elements from various comic issues mixed in. And most based on TV series usually have new stories too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I guess I'll be the odd ball who thought that Mortal Kombat was a decent movie. The fact that it seemed to use existing martial arts movies (Enter the Dragon and Game of Death, in particular) as a template rather than the game itself seemed to help.

<comment><USER28> I was pretty young when I saw that movie for the first time, but I still re- watch it from time to time and enjoy it. There is something charming about how hyper serious it is, while being absolutely ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The same reasons why adaptations of books aren't better than the book, usually. The medium is different, books can go into much more detail and leaves many things up to the readers imagination which is based on their own worldview, perceptions, knowledge, etc.

A movie glances over many details and doesn't leave much to the imagination of the viewer.

Movies and books are both scripted stories. Video games involve choices by the player which can't be done in movie medium. I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid, which are an exception to that medium being scripted.

Hollywood makes them the same reason why there are WordPress or Salesforce plugins: a proven market of people with interest and willing to spend money.

<comment><USER29> I think the audience is being unfair and have flawed expectations if they go into a movie adaptation of a book and expect it to be "better".

They're fundamentally different, and as long as the creators and the audience are on board with that fact you can absolutely make quality movie adaptations from books as long as you play to the strengths of the medium.

You can't make a movie with as much depth and breadth as a book. You can't cram as much exploration and detail in and hope it'll come out even halfway decent. What you can do however is show beautiful and breathtaking imagery, and offer action and thrill-rides the likes of which you can't hope to match with the written word.

Reading Lord of the Rings makes me appreciate just how special it is that Legolas and Gimli become friends, because there's more room to explain the relationship between dwarves and elves. I get to feel what Frodo feels when he leaves his home behind.

But when I saw Rivendell or the Mines of Moria for the first time in the movies it overshadowed what the books had told me about those places. And I still to this day get goosebumps whenever I see the charge of the Rohirrim. Something I never experienced in the books.

Is one set of experiences better than the other? Or are they just different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> In 1982, Hollywood did make a good video game movie. The title of that movie is _Tron_. [0]

It's just that it was about a video game that didn't exist at the time the film was made; the Tron video game

> is based on an early draft of the film's script [1]

[0] [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(video_game)#Differences_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_\(video_game\)#Differences_from_the_film)

EDIT: convert HTML tags to markdown-compatible glyphs.

</comment><comment><USER31> Good by what standards? I think Resident Evil is pretty good. Doom was fun. So was Mortal Kombat. The first Tomb Raider was fine. It is too bad it doesn't seem that the recent one did well because Alicia Vikander is good.

<comment><USER32> Of any of the action movies I've seen in a long time, Alicia Vikander did a great job making her character feel like she was a real person struggling through a crazy situation. There were weak moments but overall there was a degree of empathy which most superhero movies lack. Well except for Iron Man; who doesn't empathize with being a genius billionaire jerk?!

But given my take of the flick I almost didn't go as I thought "eh, game movie".

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I actually really liked Prince Of Persia. I don't know that it compares to the game, but I liked it.

<comment><USER13> I thought it was better than than the trailers made it look like it would be. It's probably better without the game, though since, it simultaneously makes no sense within the game's universe and yet leads right into the beginning of the game version of Sands of Time.

<comment><USER34> I've never played the game or seen the movie, but the trailer looks pretty bad to me.

If _I_ were making a movie about that subject (and maybe this will make it clear why I'm not a producer), I'd go for more of an "Adaptation" style film. Viewers can't control time? Play it up, by (visually) admitting that the game powers like "rewind" are done on film through multiple takes, and stunt men, and editing. That's how you translate game to film, and this game mechanic provides the perfect opportunity.

So you've got a normal action film for the first X minutes, and then there's a fight scene, and Jake trips and flubs it, and we hear someone call "cut!", and you see everything freezes while the crew rush in to reset everything to 10 seconds earlier, and they run it again. The first time this happens, it's super quick, so the audience is left wondering if they really saw it or not. As the film goes on, it happens more often, and more extensively. Maybe sometimes the actor tries several times and then gives up and runs off stage, and a stunt man runs in. Maybe sometimes you expand and see that the whole thing is happening on an editing workstation, and they move clips around to make it look like everything worked, and then they hit "play" and you're back in the story.

Then at the very end, it zooms out to show the filmmakers watching what we just saw, and they say "Nah, nobody would ever believe that it all just worked out perfectly the first time like this". Fin.

If the whole point of PoP:SoT is the protagonist's ability to control time, film already has a way to do that. Don't try to just embed an old mechanic in the new medium. That's like building an interpreter for C, and calling it a day. You've got a native JMP here, so use it.

<comment><USER35> Exposing the deus ex machina as a mundane studio recording effort is an interesting idea, but detracts from the immersiveness and suspension-of- disbelief.

Great humor potential, though it'd get stale and instead become the story.

<comment><USER34> I suppose it depends on what you're looking for in a film.

For example, I can't stand musicals, because I think characters breaking out into song and dance every 5 minutes destroys any attempt at immersiveness or believability. But lots of people love them, and don't find this incongruity problematic. So I don't think breaking from the flow of the main story _necessarily_ breaks the story.

Did the structure of "Adaptation" detract from its 'immersiveness'? I'd say it's the wrong question to ask.

My purpose was not humor, but to pull back the curtain and show the absurdity inherent in all action movies, and the work involved. Satire can be humorous, but that's not really the goal. I'd still love watching Jackie Chan outtakes even if his movies weren't comedic.

I have no use for yet another (whitewashed) action movie. Then again, as I said, there's probably a reason I'm not a Hollywood filmmaker.

<comment><USER35> Honestly I really liked Adaptation, but then again I liked Stranger than Fiction, and many other existentialist flicks (Run Lola Run? hell yes).

I know a bunch of folks who walked out feeling cheated or confused.

I think most of the issue is that people want a) a story b) to be entertained and c) to forget about the outside world for a bit.

Anything that fills these boxes is good for mass consumption (from Hollywood producer/ purely dollars point of view). Enlightening the subject or shocking them with with new points of view are entirely stretch goals.

<comment><USER34> That's believable. Also, my idea is a single movie. It doesn't easily generate other movies. Hollywood today wants franchises, i.e., mass _production_ , too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Hot take: 95% of major releases are bad. So if we get up to 20 video game movies and there still isn't a good one, then maybe we can let ourselves think there's a problem.

<comment><USER37> The reality of the situation is that the big studios are not trying to make good movies, they are trying to make movies that make the most money. As a result, scripts are created by committee and according to what market researchers say will maximise the potential audience. In the end, you have have an endless stream of incredibly formulaic blockbusters. Take the Marvel MCU as an example: Most of these movies are pretty run-of-the-mill, but they are printing money. Same goes for the latest Star Wars movies. None of those were terribly inspired, but they were never meant to be. Disney played it safe, because they knew they would make a ton of money that way.

At the other end of the spectrum you have something like "Blade Runner 2049", which was a great movie with a large budget, but it basically bombed at the box office. It's easy to see why studios are hesitant to take risks with projects like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is an easy answer I'm sure I've given on here before; when you adapt a book to a movie you have an excess of story and character development. You boil it down to its essential ingredients. Sometimes it still turns out bad but this is why book adaptations are far more successful than video hames.

Video games get away with a lot less plot and character development because of their interactive nature and because they are graded on a curve. Many classic games have basically no character development at all.

People think adapting a game into a movie should be a natural transition but it isn't at all. They are totally different forms.

<comment><USER38> If this were the case, Warcraft would've knocked it out of the park. It's lore covers many hundreds of hours of gameplay content and a decent number of full books.

<comment><USER39> Again, having lots of content doesn't necessarily mean it is good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I recently spent a lazy Sunday morning watching the Doom movie. It was a lot better than it had any right to be, in my book - I haven't played Doom 3, but by the standards of action-sci/fi-horror movies starring The Rock, it was excellent.

I also thought the WarCraft movie was very good, but there I did grow up playing the hell out of WarCraft: Orcs and Humans, and reading and re-reading the manual with the backstory covered by the movie (not to mention the lovely concept art). Bit of a shame that it didn't do quite well enough to continue the story.

<comment><USER41> Doom could have better. They gratuitously changed the plot, which is funny because Doom has practically zero plot at all. And they managed to change it without improving it in the slightest—for the purposes of the movie, they could have easily gone with the "opened a portal to hell" and the rest of the movie would have been the same. Their changes were really dumb _and_ completely pointless which was really frustrating.

Also the first person part at the end was unnecessary and just wasn't good cinema (compare to Hard Core Henry which was 1st person but it worked because they really committed to it).

<comment><USER42> The first person part was harmless and was a call out to the game. It was fun.

<comment><USER41> I thought it was embarrassing, poorly done, and not fun at all. And I _love_ first person shooters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > _Why Can 't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?_

Short answer, because they have hard dates, and games are usually on Valve time [1].

Forcing creativity and creating fun usually ends badly, the creativity and fun come through research, prototyping and play testing.

Creativity like John Cleese said is an open mode, but you have to be in closed mode to ship [2]. Forced hard dates lead to more closed mode than open mode and the creativity and fun are compressed to times where it just doesn't work out right.

> _We 've become fascinated by the fact that we can usually describe the way > in which people function at work in terms of two modes: open and closed._

> _So what i can just add now is that creativity is not possible in the closed > mode._

Sometimes games for events or product releases like movies can be good, usually it is because most of the fun and systems are from existing, already successful games or formulas. So the other problem movie games run into is they are usually just a re-skinning, but those are usually more fun and better built for fun and performance.

[1] [https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time)

[2] [https://genius.com/John-cleese-lecture-on-creativity- annotat...](https://genius.com/John-cleese-lecture-on-creativity-annotated)

</comment><comment><USER44> They have, silent hill. All the other bad game movies, doom, the later resident evils, and super mario bros really didn't tap in on what made those games great in the movies. They just parroted the story and hope it would translate well.

</comment><comment><USER11> I started making a list

* Super Mario Bros * Silent Hill

And then realized that I couldn't add more to it... It's insane. There are so many good stories in video game. I'd argue that The Last Of Us is the most beautiful entertainment story every created be it a movie, video game, comic, book, ...

Anime have the same issues, they have insane stories and they either end up being ignored or worse, being shit on by directors. See Dragon Ball Evolution or Netflix Death Note...

<comment><USER45> The Last Of Us was brilliant in that the game mechanics were just something great around a wonderful storyline. Come to think about it some of the Final Fantasy games were really great stories too but the translation to screen was such a washed down version that it failed at what mattered: making us feel something.

On screen today we have shows like Game of Thrones that really deliver at making us feel things and keeping us surprised. Before there was Game of Thrones though I reckon that the death of Aerith Gainsborough in Final Fantasy 7 was one of those twists that TV shows and movies shied away from until recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> They did make a good video game movie: it's called "Pirates of the Caribbean", and it's an adaptation of Monkey Island.

I know, I know, it's the other way around. But it should be proof that a good videogame movie is at least possible - you would have to change surprisingly little.

<comment><USER47> Actually its an adaptation of the Pirates of the Caribbean disney ride. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCkl1eGmxTM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCkl1eGmxTM)

<comment><USER48> Actually, both Monkey Island and Pirates of the Caribbean are inspired by the same attraction.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Island_(series)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Island_\(series\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The Super Mario Bros movie is a treasure of a terrible film.

Even reading the production retrospectives is hilarious. And the fact that Dennis Hopper is in the movie is priceless.

<comment><USER50> I'd like a startup kinda like airbnb but it just gets a bunch of nerds on HN together to watch bad films and have a group discussion afterwards at a rented apartment LOL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Wreck-it Ralph is a good movie. And so was the first Resident Evil movie.

<comment><USER52> I think calling Wreck-It Ralph a video game movie (at least in the context of this discussion) is a bit of a stretch.

<comment><USER53> I don't think it's a stretch.

They even made an actual arcade game for the movie:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cvErIWbwZI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cvErIWbwZI)

And the way it shows other characters, especially Q-Bert and Zangief, was hilarious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I just wanted to say that this article displayed quite nicely on my phone and was nice to read through.

On the topic, I do believe that there are worthy stories in video games that can be translated to the screen not just for those who don't play games, but also for gamers who want to relive some of the story without the tedious bits in between (like farming for XP or upgrading).

The new tomb raider was probably the closest so far. I liked the tie-ins with the game and the actress did a great job of bringing the game character to life. The few things I didn't like were some of the acting and one-dimensional supporting characters. Also some scenes were just contrived, but I suppose that creeps in according to budget and timing.

</comment><comment><USER55> They are different things with only a very superficial overlap. Yes they all may have: writing, 2D/3D art, acting and audio etc. But, only games have an interactive _mechanic_. You can tell if a game will be fun without any of the aesthetics. Just a controller, the code and simple geometry (debug/collision boxes) for the avatars and the map. Once you have found a fun mechanic all the art merely enhances a bit. Don't get me wrong, there are lots a bad games (bad mechanics!) that try to be movies with beautiful art and no real fun. But a great game is like nothing else we know of so far.

<comment><USER56> >You can tell if a game will be fun without any of the aesthetics. Just a controller, the code and simple geometry (debug/collision boxes) for the avatars and the map. Once you have found a fun mechanic all the art merely enhances a bit

This is only true for a limited subsection of games. (granted, this subsection of games is pretty much exclusively the source of Video Game Movies).

There are many games where mechanics are just a delivery mechanism for the art, story and overall experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> To quote Andrzej Sapkowski, author of the Witcher books, "I don't think different media van converge". Each medium has unique properties that enable a story to be told in a certain way that may not be reproducible in another medium.

Take Dark Souls for example. The game's story and mythology are blended with the game world, hidden in little details and item descriptions. If you take its bits and pieces and assemble them linearly, it's nothing special, it could never serve as the plot for a good movie. However, if you experience it properly, by being immersed in the game world, it gets way better.

</comment><comment><USER58> Not just video game movies, but also movies based on books about video games.

Having read Ready Player One and then seeing the movie, it's like they didn't even try to capture what made the book successful. The book had clues that were hard for the characters to figure out, but in the movie, it was basically trivial for them.

They should have done 3 movies, each one focusing on obtaining a single key and opening its respective gate. It would have left plenty of room for character development and the underlying love story that are in the book. They could have been Netflix movies too.

<comment><USER59> I think the incentives behind mainstream film-making would make that impossible. Studios are risk averse, they would rather focus on what makes a book marketable and palatable to the masses than successful, especially when dealing with a property without a guaranteed audience. No studio in their right mind would fund a trilogy based on a book few people would have heard of prior to the first film adaptation.

It might work on an alternative platform like Netflix, but not out of the studio system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm a huge RPG fan, so don't get me wrong, I love video games...but let's be honest, the stories only go skin deep. They are mostly shallow and the characters are mostly stereotypes that belong in a D-list movie at best (think Billy Baldwin).

My opinion is stop making super hero movies and video game movies. They may be somewhat fun, but they provide no sustenance, it's like eating Ramen.

Make some movies from the DragonLance books. There are some fantasy stereotypes in there, but the stories are awesome overall.

</comment><comment><USER61> Storywise I think a lot games would make a good source for good movies. My personal problems with the ones we're getting is, that they are so similar to the original that they are basically just remakes.

Take the recent Tomb Raider movie, after I've seen the trailer I had no desire at all to go watch it. Why would I watch something that I've experienced for over 20 hours in depth and on my own pace already. I don't know, maybe a lot of people got excited when they saw her with the plane: "Hey, look, it's exactly like the game!" For me it was just boring.

Instead focus on a character that isn't the main one in video games, use the setting etc. F.e. as a Dark Souls fan I would love for a movie to add some backstory for Solaire. Scrap any stupid references to the game like putting a white sign on the ground to summon somebody, instead just let Solaire meet another traveller (at a bonfire ;D) or anybody dying and then respawning. There you have it: (A already beloved character, ) a man of faith looking for divinity (or whatever) while travelling to faraway lands (supernatural or not) is confronted with the unbearable evils of this world to have a crisis of faith which he either overcomes or goes mad over.

</comment><comment><USER62> This article makes it seem like it's almost inevitable for video game movies to be bad, almost as if there's some objective formula which dooms video game movies to failure. For example, the author mentions something like: "stray too far from the original and you get weird movies that alienate fans, but stick too closely to the original and you get something boring and overly game- like." Seems like a false dichotomy to me.

There's definitely a way to create a highly-compelling side story that "fulfills" the promise of an original series without being overly constrained by it. For example, Tell Tale Studios is a game company that is quite famous for making good side stories that latch onto existing franchises, and their Walking Dead video game is one of the best video game storylines I've ever played through. It seems like it's quite possible to turn good movies and good tv shows into compelling video games; surely this is possible in reverse as well! It's also really easy for me to imagine an alternate universe where video game adaptations are like comic-book or novel adaptations, which are capable of performing quite well.

I do think that making good movies that are entertaining and have artistic merit is always hard, and since the problem of making good movies is already not easy, adding additional constraints from a video game premise probably makes it more difficult, especially since film types are probably more likely to be passionate lovers of comics and books than they are to be passionate gamers. There's probably also a problem with the prestige of video game titles that makes it difficult to find good writing talent.

</comment><comment><USER63> The only thing worse than a video game based on a movie is a movie based on a video game.

Maybe if someone makes a movie based on Zork - basically 3 hours of Star Wars "crawl"?

<comment><USER64> There's at least one example of something that's even worse. Street Fighter: The Game: The Movie: The Game is as horrible as it sounds: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4UdQVYkCZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4UdQVYkCZg)

</comment></comment><comment> oh-kumudo TBH, Hollywood is not sending their best for making a game adapted movie either..

</comment><comment><USER65> The Sims dodged the bullet (so far) -- it would have been just so horrible:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims#Film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims#Film)

Film

A live action drama film based upon The Sims was announced in 2007. [15] On May 25, 2007, it was announced that The Sims film rights had been purchased by 20th Century Fox. [16] It was to be written by Brian Lynch and produced by John Davis. [17] [18]

[15] "The Sims Coming to the Big Screen". ComingSoon. May 25, 2007. Retrieved October 31, 2007. [http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/20635-the-sims- coming-...](http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/20635-the-sims-coming-to- the-big-screen)

[16] ""The Sims" to move from PC screen to silver screen". Reuters. May 28, 2007. Retrieved October 31, 2007. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us- electronicarts-thesims/th...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us- electronicarts-thesims/the-sims-to-move-from-pc-screen-to-silver-screen- idUSN2519868120070528)

[17] "Producer John Davis Gives Updates on THE SIMS Movie, the Aliens vs. Predator Movies and Jason and the Argonauts! | Collider". 2008-09-21. Retrieved 2016-08-09. [http://collider.com/producer-john-davis-gives-updates- on-the...](http://collider.com/producer-john-davis-gives-updates-on-the-sims- movie-the-aliens-vs-predator-movies-and-jason-and-the-argonauts/)

[18] "The Sims movie planned". Retrieved 2016-08-09. [https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-sims-movie- planned/110...](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-sims-movie- planned/1100-6171544/)

</comment><comment><USER66> You can probably make a pretty good movie adaptation of Bioshock. It's setting, music, world and character designs, even it's action would translate quite nicely. But can you keep it's "would you kindly" aspect without it sticking out right away? And would it be worth it making a movie without it?

</comment><comment><USER67> I always figured it was an issue with turning an inherently interactive form of media into a form that's taken passively. That seems like a rather difficult transition to make, hence movies about video games _in general_ doing better than movies based on a _specific game._

</comment><comment><USER68> There are lots of good comments here and I don't know where my response belongs, but I still think a good movie is possible.

I know it was a commercial disaster, but Final Fantasy is the closest we've come IMO. The series has a great aesthetic and style that doesn't feel too derivative of anything else, and it's known for having great plots and characters (by video game standards). If anything, they strayed too far from the source. Make it about a group of adventurers in a weird cyberpunk/fantasy universe with outrageous haircuts fighting an insane demigod and I think it can work. Obviously that works in the games.

What you have to do is take games that have strong styles already and adapt the feeling and personality, not the mechanics.

</comment><comment><USER69> Not even Half Life, the best movie-game would be a good movie. But it was damn great as a game.

<comment><USER50> Put christopher nolan in a chair and say he has to write a good script or the universe will end, and i think it wouldn't be a bad movie...

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> "The Last of Us" would be a blockbuster.

<comment><USER58> I don't want that story to be ruined by directors/producers/writers taking creative liberties.

Some things just shouldn't be live-action movies. Look at all the anime movie failures. They were perfectly fine in their original animated format. No need for live action, except to keep people in the movie industry employed.

<comment><USER71> It's also just a way longer story than fits in a movie yeah?

<comment><USER11> That's what series are for! But it would need a good budget to honor TLOU

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I honestly liked the original Hitman movie. Timothy olypheant nailed the character of agent 47. The sequel basically said "hey you know everything that game is about... Let's do the opposite"

</comment><comment><USER73> This is incredibly obvious.

Games are not films for a reason, usually because the interactivity is tightly interwoven with the story, otherwise the artists would've picked a different medium.

Take away the game elements and you may have something that has a high percentage of not translating well.

If it was meant to be a movie, it would've been one to start. If that's not the case, it's an exception to the rule.

NiGHTS Into Dreams...(Saturn) is a fantastic game that IMO would make a shitty movie I dare say even if Miyazaki himself gave it a shot.

<comment><USER74> I basically agree, but I do think it's possible to make a narrative from a game. The pokemon tv show and movies were very successful and widely enjoyed by the audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> 'tptacek: Thanks for linking that article. It was relatively short, but the interactivity made it feel even shorter to the point of painless (even slightly enjoyable). In addition, it also didn't take too long for my Firefox to load (I do use adblockers though). If traditional media tried to restructure their bread-and-butter long-form articles in a similar manner, we wouldn't be talking about their eventual demise as often, if at all.

</comment><comment><USER76> I'm suprised more movies haven't been made around League, DotA and other video games. I know some have been made but none with the big budgets like Avengers or Iron Man. The younger generation identify with video games not superheroes created in the 50s and 60s yet DC Comics and Marvel dominate this movie genre. It's a big opportunity waiting to be exploited.

</comment><comment><USER77> This headline is clickbait. Everyone knows that the first good feature film licensed from a video game was Resident Evil (2002).

</comment><comment><USER78> They're always missing the superior siege weapon in superior games. GoT uses them and you see how well that does

</comment><comment><USER79> I would say the west has failed to make good video game movies, or proper adaptations of an anime.

e.g: street fighter? mario bros? dragonball evolution? death note? ghost in the shell?

You need to be extremely creative to ruin those.

The reverse has also been true: bad game adaptations from good movies. e.g: ET, back to the future, etc.

</comment><comment><USER80> Max Payne was pretty good. They had something there with the norse mythology stuff that was interesting.

<comment><USER58> Couldn't sit through the whole thing. I just don't buy Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne. He's a little too clean-shaven in that movie. Was he at least using pain killers to fight past his injuries?

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I have to say that reading this was great fun. I normally loathe attempts to get fancy like this, but the experience was purely positive and actually served the content of the article, although it got a little tiresome toward the end. Really cool reading experience.

</comment><comment><USER82> Top 5 Video Game Movies That Aren't That Bad:

1\. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2010)

2\. Resident Evil (2002)

3\. Doom (2005)

4\. Mortal Kombat (1995)

5\. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2003)

</comment><comment><USER83> my personal feeling with Hollywood today is that they probably can't show something new.

It seems that every corner in this medium has been covered and faded it shine(?)

I'm afraid that knowing this, they seeked to explore new grounds like games and comics books, nevermind that it basically the same story but utilizing the special effects to attract young audience.

So i think it's not just video game movies, imo it's the whole medium struggling to stay relevant.

knowing this, i keep my eyes on the black and white movies. they don't try to impress, they're simple and easy to follow and the actors are really great.

one of my favorites is Buster keaton, the greatest stuntman ever imo.

</comment><comment><USER84> Most video games story pacing isn't made for movies. Converting it to a movie they add all kinds of fillers and patches to remove game elements that makes game fun but movies not so fun to watch and nobody has been able to do this well.

</comment><comment><USER85> I am one of those people who can enjoy a video game inspired movie, but only if I've played the game. I believe that is because the movie reminds me of game play that I enjoyed so it gets that extra bonus feeling. If I haven't played the game the movie is definitely less engaging. This can be true for movies adapted from books like the Lord of the Rings, I enjoyed reading the books and the movie reminded me of that enjoyment.

But given that, it seems it can go the other way as well. I saw Ready Player One (and have read the book) and the differences between the book and the movie, while understandable, interfered with me enjoying the movie.

There are also fairly formulaic movies that unroll just like a video game. With early levels, a mini boss, more levels, another boss, a few more levels and then the big boss. Watching Kong skull island was like that.

</comment><comment><USER86> I feel like making a deal between game publisher and movie studio is not an easy process and creatively game publisher would like to have sign off on pretty much everything.

Negotiating split and who puts money upfront would be a nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER87> It's hard to make something you don't like.

For example, Ready Player One focused on movies in large part because _Spielberg really loves movies_. You can tell they move him, whereas the video game parts are largely gags.

</comment><comment><USER88> Can anyone tell me why the Warcraft movie was so awful? I felt like, out of all of them, that one would at least be pretty good, but it felt worse than a Warcraft 3 cutscene.

<comment><USER89> Too many characters, too much plot armor, too much name dropping, moves too quickly.

The cutscenes in WC3 worked because they were paced well (Due to gameplay in between them), and each one established a few basic facts about the world, or one of its characters. If you were to sit and watch through all the cutscenes back-to-back, they would not hold up well.

The film sucked for the same reason that Lord of the Rings would have sucked as a two hour movie. It would just be a dumb, disjointed montage of action and scenery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> To be fair, Hollywood is improving. Their first attempt was the Super Mario Brothers movie, which was so bad that it's difficult to understand how they finished it.

<comment><USER11> Super Mario Bros was fucking awesome

<comment><USER90> Try telling that to Dennis Hopper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> The Wizard with Fred Savage.

[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0098663/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0098663/)

So, maybe 30 years?

</comment><comment><USER92> Good video games are good because they make good use of the unique aspects of the medium. In my opinion, the better a game is, the worse it would be as a movie.

</comment><comment><USER93> This article illustrates why. Some things don't cross over well. Like this article for instance. They should not have made it into a fucking video game.

</comment><comment><USER94> I thought Children of Men was basically a HL2 episode.

<comment><USER95> No way. What made HL2 was the inter-dimensional space politics/warfare

<comment><USER96> To say nothing of Garry's Mod and the resulting fanfiction equivalent culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Just to invert the model, Why is it that some movies turn out to make good scenarios for video games, but not the other way round?

</comment><comment><USER98> If they pick a game worthy of making it into a movie, that would be a good start.

Halo would have made a great movie but MS messed that one up and the guy they hired went on to make District 9.

There are plenty of games worthy of movie treatments. Dark Souls, SkyRim, Zelda, Mass Effect, Ico, Last Guardian, just to name a few.

If you start with Rampage or Mortal Kombat than you end up with equally shallow movies. There just isn't enough 'story' to make it worthwhile.

<comment><USER99> > _Halo would have made a great movie but MS messed that one up and the guy > they hired went on to make District 9._

Indeed. Ten years ago, Microsoft could have just taking the existing plot of Halo-1 (Combat Evolved) and turned it into a movie. They could have just cast Steve Downes, Jen Taylor and the other voice actors to play their own roles. And just use the original musical score too. They would have had audiences jumping to their feet and cheering.

I'm not saying it would have been easy, making a truly great movie (or at least a truly great action movie) is never easy, but it would have been straightforward and easily successful.

<comment><USER98> I remember seeing some of the art work they'd developed and it looked fantastic. It would seem like one of the easier game-to-movie adaptation out there.

For anyone interested, the script was leaked at some point. You can read it here (I have not yet): [http://www.spumonte.com/files/pdfs/Halo%20Movie%20Script%20-...](http://www.spumonte.com/files/pdfs/Halo%20Movie%20Script%20-%20Garland%20Alex%20\(2-6-2005\).pdf)

<comment><USER99> I haven't read all of it yet. It's not bad, but I think elements like the conflict with Major Silva takes away the focus from the main storyline. A lot of that is: What is Halo? What do the Covenant want (other than killing humans)? And what is the Flood and how do we stop it? That's plenty of story for a 2-hour movie, I wouldn't spend a lot of screen time on much else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> Street Fighter may have disappointed fans of the series, but as an action movie I think it's pretty enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER101> I liked Resident Evil, both as a movie its own merits, and specifically as an adaptation of the video game.

</comment><comment><USER102> This makes me wonder what a game based on a Kusturica movie like Underground would actually look like.

</comment><comment><USER103> _Tomb Raider_ was pretty good, and crucial crucial to Angelina Jolie where she is now.

</comment><comment><USER104> I thought the real life Halo short films were pretty incredible. I think the problem is Hollywood insists sex, gory violence, and pretty actors are the only motivators for people to watch movies. Story, character development, convincing dialog, non-cgi graphics all come second to making sure the sequel is setup.

</comment><comment><USER105> Because Takashi Miike did it with "Yakuza" (2007). It's perfect.

</comment><comment><USER106> Video games plots don't seem like they would generally lends themselves well to movies since they seem to only exist for the purpose of gameplay.

I think movies would do better converted to games like Golden Eye. I would love to check out Gone in 60 Seconds as a game, similar to GTA.

<comment><USER11> All successful movies have video games associated to them (to some extent).

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> It's very simple: those two are not the same media. A movie, a book are made to tell a story. A video game is made for playing, not for telling a story. They should stop adapting video games, it's pointless.

<comment><USER39> I remember back in the day the Final Fantasy 7 trailers had a voiceover that went something like: "Dozens of characters, hundreds of locations, a plot spanning 40 hours, they said it couldn't be done in a movie, they were right."

Lots of games tell stories these days. There's no fundamental reason those stories couldn't be adopted to the silver screen. Of course many of these stories aren't really very good, but the same can also be said of any medium. There are elements that might not translate, but that's true of any adaptation. For instance Bioshock's infamous "Would you kindly" plot point won't come though the same way in a movie.

<comment><USER108> The quote "Dozens of characters, hundreds of locations, a plot spanning 40 hours" (and the much larger numbers for some modern games) by itself is a fundamental reason those stories are hard to adopt to the silver screen.

A movie needs a couple hours of _focused_ plot, and a limited number of in- depth characters whose motivations can reasonably be covered in this short time. A blockbuster game generally involves a much larger cast of characters, and a much, much longer/wider plot story to cover the hours.

If you leave the story as-is and just cut the "sidequests", then the movie will be full of characters who are barely introduced and whose motivations make no sense to those who haven't played the game and don't know the backstory; and if you cut the story to be "movie-sized", then it will have little resemblance to the original, as key points will need to be drastically altered.

<comment><USER52> >If you leave the story as-is and just cut the "sidequests", then the movie will be full of characters who are barely introduced and whose motivations make no sense to those who haven't played the game and don't know the backstory

FFVII: Advent Children is a great example of this. Half the characters from the original game just come stumbling into the plot with no introduction or explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> Maybe we need Ewe Boll to do more video game movies.

</comment><comment><USER110> because a video game movie can rarely evoke the emotions as felt in the video game medium.

what I think is that they tried so far to adapt games with a protagonist, which just fall flats when you are not in control. a war movie inspired to some strategy franchise where they set up the scene to the game events would fare much much better because the audience would already care about the world as opposed as to a single non interactive character.

</comment><comment><USER111> I'll just leave this here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs)

</comment><comment><USER112> Too short. Make a video game tv series.

</comment><comment><USER113> Quit killing me, you jerks.

</comment><comment><USER114> Because there are no good video game movie ideas

</comment><comment><USER115> Videogames have garbage stories. They're pablum. Because of the aggressive censorship in the videogame medium (aided and abetted by gamers), no videogame features a film-worthy story. At their most "extreme", videogames verge on PG-13 garbage action movie territory. Keep in mind videogames feature animated characters, not people. Ratings are different for animated media.

Good movies push people. They bring intense experience to the table. Insight. Important things. Videogames literally avoid all of those like the plague. Out of an infantile fear of government-led censorship that has been proven wrong over and over and over since the 1980s, gamers defend a system of far-more- perniscious censorship by private companies. And so they get what they have worked so hard for. Milquetoast garbage in terms of emotional content in games.</comment>


EasyJet reveals cyber-attack exposed 9m customers' details - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/19/easyjet-cyber-attack-customers-details-credit-card <comment><USER2> Same thread at #1 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23233795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23233795)

Don't forget that when two threads talk about the same thing, you basically prevent one interesting article to show on the front page

</comment><comment><USER3> Also on the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23233795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23233795) .

</comment><comment><USER4> Comments moved thither. Thanks both of you!</comment>


iPhone 6s Smart Battery Case - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MGQL2LL/A/iphone-6s-smart-battery-case-charcoal-gray <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10695695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10695695)</comment>