Filmmakers have adapted the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky over 200 times, but it's no big surprise we've still yet to play Crime And Punishment: A Telltale Adventure. Novels and film go much further back, obviously, and also share more in common with each other than either does with games. Games can be non-linear, branching, uninterested with plot at all or layered with story only after control and progression systems—interactivity makes games so different that basing them on novels might be hinderance more often than not.

But on the flip side, we've been jabbing games for weak characters and storytelling—in a loving way—for a long time. There are obviously cases of brilliant original storytelling in games, as well as some great games that are based on books, like The Witcher, but even so it’s become cliched to point out cliche and pastiche in games. For every Witcher, Kentucky Route Zero, or Planescape: Torment there are 20 convoluted melodramas.

If the games industry drew more inspiration from great novels, would it help? Maybe not—it isn’t as if movies are good just because they often adapt books, and lots of them suck regardless of their source. But for fun we’ve imagined a world where games and books do have a closer relationship—what novels would we want to see adapted and how might they be done? Mostly science fiction novels, it turns out, because that's who we are.

Flip to the next slide for our first imaginary videogame adaptation, and let us know it the comments what books you’d want to play.