Videogame Adaptations as Opportunities for Remembering Gameplay

There are forty-seven English-language films based on videogames with an estimated production budget of at least ten million US$ and primarily intended for theatrical release. The article understands the viewing of these films as opportunities for remembering gameplay. A grounded cognition approach to remembering, which includes game studies inspired by phenomenology and ecological psychology, focuses the article on the body as well as on genres (for example, first-person shooter and survival horror). Examples illustrate how filmic adaptations of videogames can trigger memories of both deliberate and habitualised gameplay, of having one’s body schema extended with and through an avatar, of re-enacting micronarratives and perceptual cuing--some of which are perceived as sensorimotor affordances. Videogame adaptations can also make intermedial reference to specific games, game genres and to the medium of videogames, which include distinct types of players as well as the relationship between players and avatars. Gameplay is maintained throughout as the article’s key concept, firstly, to have the article resonate with the pleasures and frustrations experienced by gamers who watch filmic videogame adaptations and, secondly, to mitigate the risk of overreliance on narrative tropes such as story and character in both scholarly and popular criticism.