Article content

When looking for lucrative intellectual property to exploit, game makers typically turn their gaze to the world of film rather than books.

You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to understand why.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Five books that would make great games: Why the next electronic adaptations should be literary Back to video

Blockbuster movies are front and centre in pop culture, and it’s easy to imagine the cinematic sequences on the silver screen translated to the nearly equally cinematic medium of modern games.

But as an avid reader, I see possibilities for games lurking within the books I read at least as often as I see them in film. We need look no further than Larry Niven’s classic Ringworld, which clearly served as muse to Halo’s inventors at Bungie, for proof that game makers see potential in books as well.

Below are five novels I think could be transformed into immensely entertaining games. From Iain M. Banks’ 27-year-old sci-fi classic The Player of Games to Pierce Brown’s still-in-the-works Red Rising trilogy, I’d pay good money to play interactive versions of all of these books.