Some video games originate from books or are inspired by them. MeinMMO presents a few titles.
Ideas for video games can be inspired by a variety of sources or use other media as a template. Manifest examples are of course games like the The Witcher series or the Dune titles.
MeinMMO presents 6 video games and/or series whose origin lies in books or that were strongly inspired by them. However, we focus on games that are not so obvious.
The “Tom Clancy’s” Games
Tom Clancy was an American author who wrote thrillers during his lifetime. His books dealt with themes surrounding military, intelligence agencies, and geopolitics.
The “Tom Clancy’s” game Rainbow Six from 1998 is based on the novel Rainbow Six from the same year. There were no book templates for Splinter Cell from 2002 and Ghost Recon from 2001, but the stories take place in Tom Clancy’s world.
Tom Clancy was co-founder of Red Storm Entertainment, the game studio that developed Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon. During the development of these games, Tom Clancy provided content consulting.
His influence on the games gradually decreased over time. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell only took place in the author’s world but no longer followed a storyline from a book.
After his death in 2013, Ubisoft only uses the name Tom Clancy for their titles. The Tom Clancy brand stands for the realistic depiction of the military.
His action characters Jack Ryan and John Clark have also been adapted into films and series, portrayed among others by actors John Krasinski and Willem Dafoe.
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series
The games of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series draw their inspirations from many different sources, the largest being clearly from the novel Roadside Picnic
. The science fiction novel was written in 1972 by authors Arkady & Boris Strugatsky.
The book is about the appearance of an alien intelligence on Earth that creates bizarre zones full of anomalies in certain places. People explore these zones and benefit from the artifacts present in them. The novel also inspired a film: Stalker, from 1979.
From the novel and the film came the first game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl in 2007. The first-person shooter adopted the atmosphere but changed the setting. The mysterious zone did not arise from the visit of an alien intelligence but from the Chernobyl disaster. The focus of the game is on survival, military, and mutants.
The series was expanded from 2008 to 2024 with the games S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Starting in 2007, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. book series was released, which expanded the world following the success of the games.
