Electronic Gaming and Media Culture

Beyond the immediate industry, electronic games have had a pronounced effect on media culture. For example, fantasy league sports have spawned a number of draft specials on ESPN as well as a regular podcast, Fantasy Focus, on ESPN Radio. On FX, fantasy football has even inspired an adult comedy called The League.

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MOVIES LIKE PACIFIC RIM (2013) with their focus on fantastical special effects and epic fight scenes, are sometimes compared to video games—and spawn an increasing number of game tie-ins. In the past, these games would routinely trail their movie counterparts by months; the game version of Pacific Rim was released concurrently with the film.
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Like television shows, books, and comics before them, electronic games have also inspired movies, such as Super Mario Bros. (1993), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), and the Resident Evil series (2001–present, including a fifth installment in 2012). A movie inspired by video games, Tron (1982), spurred an entire franchise of books, comic books, and arcade and console video games in the 1980s; and it was revived a generation later with an Xbox LIVE game in 2008, a movie sequel (Tron: Legacy) in 2010, and a Disney television series. For many Hollywood blockbusters today, a video game spin-off is a must-have item. Box office hits like Avatar (2009), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), Brave (2012), The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), and Iron Man 3 (2013) all have companion video games for consoles and portable players.

Books and electronic games have also had a long history of influencing each other. Japanese manga and animé (comic books and animation) have also inspired video games, such as Akira, Astro Boy, and Naruto. Batman: Arkham Asylum, a top video game title introduced in 2009, is based closely on the Batman comic book stories, while The Witcher, an action role-playing game for PCs, is based on Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher saga. Perhaps the most unusual link between books and electronic games is the Marvel vs. Capcom series. In this series, characters from Marvel comic books (e.g., Captain America, Hulk, Spider-Man, Wolverine) battle characters from Capcom games like Street Fighter and Resident Evil (e.g., Akuma, Chun-Li, Ryu, Albert Wesker).