Touche. I felt that one at least kept many of the same events. Just omitted things in a way that changed the theme. That said, I can see the err in that way of looking at it.

Wing Commander felt different because it was basically keeping a few of the names, but a completely different story. Not even the same mechanics, since there was no magic to the main character in maneuvering through space in the games. That just came out of nowhere.

A lot of these "adaptations" take the name, the cachet, and a handful of the character names and throw them into a blender.

Like World War Z. The screenwriter perhaps looked at the title of the book for inspiration, but that much could be coincidental based on the movie.

The problem is that a movie's fundamentally different as a storytelling method. You can't give the same insight into a person's mind. You can't reveal things about a character or situation that are intrinsically visual by describing them later on. Film is visual, it needs to show, but it's also not engaging in the same way a game is.

You can give people a taste of surviving in the wilderness, on a far-flung planet, at the bottom of the ocean in a film, but these films are at best a few hours long.

A game can take forty or more hours to complete and you're that much more immersed in the world. To replicate that experience in a two hour movie is impossible.

Be fair, though. Most of the 40+ hours in games are typically held in building levels fighting rats out in the wilderness. Compared to most of the time while reading, where you can psychologically enter the minds of the protagonists.

Not to say that some of that time can't be immersive, but it isn't as extreme as the time would have you believe.

Oddly, the closest direct competitor to the two hour movie, is the multiseason show. And even those have trouble making the jump to larger formats.

I think the truth is just that story telling is hard. Crossing mediums of any kind is far from easy. (Though, I have grown rather fond of audiobooks.)