Reels and Symbols: Why Movies are Revived as Casual Games? Reels and Symbols: Why Movies are Revived as Casual Games?
Why do game developers reach out to the world of movies for inspiration? Well, one of the reasons would be that they want to... Reels and Symbols: Why Movies are Revived as Casual Games?

Why do game developers reach out to the world of movies for inspiration? Well, one of the reasons would be that they want to give their games a head start – building on the success of a movie, even if it’s a decades-old one, will trigger a lot of talking and often excitement on the part of fans. There might be some other, more “sinister” things going on in the background, though. Sometimes the social or casual revival of a movie franchise precedes its big-screen revival, likely trying to push the characters back into the minds of the public, thus trying to ensure a bigger excitement and success about the reboot.

This might be the case of two video slot machines released in 2014 at the Vegas Palms Casino. Both games were based on 1990s blockbusters – Jurassic Park and Terminator II Judgement Day – and both of them were released months before their respective franchises were back on the silver screen. If you ask people who routinely play the best online slot games at Vegas Palms casino, you’ll see that both games were quite successful, bringing back memories. But their small screen success did not contribute equally to the success of their silver screen revivals: where Jurassic World became a hit, with over $1.6 billion in revenues, Terminator: Genisys was a failure both when it comes to revenues (even if it generated over three times its production costs) and the story (the franchise was not successfully revived, with the movie’s sequel being scrapped by the studio).

Microgaming, the developer behind the games offered by the Vegas Palms Casino, has announced the signing of a licensing agreement with Universal for the creation of a slot machine based on Jurassic World in 2016. The game might already be ready for release, yet it’s nowhere to be seen at this time – it might be a hit set aside for later or it might wait for the filming on the sequel to be completed so it would be part of its marketing effort – the above-mentioned Jurassic Park slot machine was, after all, released months and not years before the re-launch of the franchise. The reasons for the delay might also be completely different but one cannot help but speculate.

So, why do game developers reach out to the world of movies for inspiration?

Sometimes it’s nothing but marketing in the background, other times it’s the size of the fan base requesting a gamification of the story – if the potential players’ pool is big enough for the game to be worth the effort, it will most likely be done sooner or later. In the end, the reason doesn’t really matter, as long as the game is fun to play, right?

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Jon Dingle Editor

A film journalist, writer and a filmmaker in business for over 20 years. I am passionate about movies, television series, music and online games.