Pitch a Television Adaptation of a Game Without Confusing Watching With Playing
Pitch a Television Adaptation of a Game Without Confusing Watching With Playing
Two pitches, same source.
The first: Episode one opens at the north gate. Kestrel comes in hot, the alarm goes up, cut to the next objective. Episode two, the flooded tunnel.
The second: A ferry captain has to name a route before the tide turns, and the only person who can tell him what he doesn't know is ashore, with a broken radio and a passenger who needs to be somewhere else tonight.
The first is a level list with dialogue. The second is a television show. Getting from one to the other isn't mainly a matter of fidelity, or taste, or how much of the story you keep. It's a trade with a specific loss in it — nobody watching gets to choose — and a specific replacement, which you have to name out loud before anyone will believe the pitch.
The short version, then the working. Separate the game's story, its world, and what the player does. Pick one experience of doing. Decide whose choice becomes fixed on screen and where the viewer's uncertainty now comes from. Invent a material reason for every constraint you keep. Write one ordinary episode a stranger could follow. And be honest in the pitch about which parts are yours.
What the player contributes
Almost every game you'd consider adapting is at least three things stacked together. There's a story: who did what, in what order, and how it ended. There's a world: the places, the props, the rules of the setting, the look of the thing. And there's player activity: what you do — what you decide, what you learn, what you risk with somebody else.
Adaptations go wrong by folding the third thing into the first two. A mission is not a plot point. A mechanic is not a character trait. If the game's charge came from the doing, then the doing has to be rebuilt somewhere, and the only place a television show can put it is inside characters the viewer watches.
So describe one bounded situation, concretely. What information does the player have? What action do they take? What consequence do they help produce? That's the unit you're translating. Lore isn't it. Neither is a memorable set piece, which is just a place where something happened.
The two common kinds of game split this differently. A tabletop game may hand the action around the table, with no permanent protagonist at all — four people each holding a piece of the situation. A video game may give you a named character with a full history and still get most of its charge from the fact that you are the one steering her through the corridor. Neither arrangement contains a television episode. The first has no fixed person to follow. The second has a fixed person whose most interesting quality, that she is you, evaporates the moment somebody else is watching her.
Here is an invented situation to work with. Two players, one ferry crossing. Each holds a route card the other can't see: one card carries the tide table and the depth of the western channel; the other carries the dredging schedule and the state of the eastern one. Each player has three signal tokens, and a signal is one short message — no follow-up questions. Before the boat leaves, a route has to be named out loud. Then the game is over.
Nothing about that is exciting written down. What's exciting is spending your last token on a question that won't get you a full answer, then saying "west" while looking at somebody who knows something you don't. The information is partial and unevenly held. The action is a commitment. The consequence arrives after you've lost the ability to change it.
That's what you're adapting. Not the ferry. The committing.
Who chooses now
Translate the ferry and something has to give. On screen the route is named by a captain — a character the show keeps, with a face and a job and a reason to be up at four in the morning. The mechanic on the quay has the radio that reaches the boat, and the paperwork that crosses his bench. The dredging schedule isn't in it yet; it comes with the morning's post, after the crossing is over. The captain chooses. The viewer doesn't, and no amount of handheld camera work changes that.
Say so in the pitch rather than pretending around it. Watching does not reproduce playing, and an audience vote at the end of an episode doesn't restore it either — it just puts the decision somewhere no one has to live with it afterward.
The suspense has to come from somewhere else. Consequence, mostly: what the choice costs, and to whom. Incomplete knowledge: the captain can't check the dredging schedule and the mechanic can't read the tide. Conflicting commitments: the mechanic has a stranded passenger on the quay who was supposed to be on the island tonight, and every minute at the radio is a minute not spent dealing with her.
Notice how little of the tension is which route. The route is decided in the first ten minutes and then it's fixed. What the viewer can't see is the aftermath — and the aftermath is exactly what the game threw away when it reset the board.
What the adaptation gives in return is duration and consequence: sustained access to one person's choosing and its effects on somebody else. You stay with the mechanic after the boat turns back. You watch him explain to a woman that there's nothing until morning. You watch him start to wonder whether he was told the truth. The game can't do that, because the game needs you busy being a player.
Keep the experience, not the rule
The tempting mistake at this point is to keep the rule. Three signal tokens becomes a rule that these two people may exchange three sentences. The mechanic has the dredging schedule in his hand and simply doesn't mention it. The captain refuses to answer a direct question. Characters who could have an ordinary conversation spend forty minutes not having one, because the game said so.
Nothing in that is dramatic. It reads as people being inexplicably terse, and the audience has no way to forgive it.
Keep the experience and rebuild the cause. In the television version, the harbour repeater went down in the storm, so the workshop set is the only one that reaches the boat — and the boat's radio draws on the same battery as its bilge pump, and the boat is taking water. Every exchange costs the captain pumping time. Asking is now expensive, and the audience can see the cost on a gauge. The mechanic's cost is different and just as material: the only working set is at the bench, and the passenger is outside on the quay.
Notice that the adaptation doesn't have to distribute the cost evenly, the way the tokens did. It only has to make the cost visible, so that a choice to speak means something.
While you're at it, keep your own material and the source's material separated in your head. Recognizable props carry the world forward — the boat, the harbour, the names, the look of the water at four in the morning. They cannot do the translation. A faithful-looking ferry with the right colours on the funnel and a cast with no reason to keep talking is a diorama, not a series. The radio, the battery, the repeater, the note: all of that is yours, and the pitch should say so.
An episode, not a level list
An episode has three moving parts: a local problem, a consequential decision, and a situation that ends up changed in a way that continues. Test it by asking whether a newcomer could understand the stakes from the pitch alone.
Here's the one that comes out of the ferry.
The crossing. The captain names a route. Two exchanges, at the cost of the pump: one to say what the captain needs, one to answer with what the quay can see. That settles the water within sight and leaves the eastern channel open, because the dredging schedule that would close it is still in the morning's post. Nothing further is worth the pumping. The west channel is too shallow at this tide, the boat turns back, and the one passenger who needed the island tonight is still on the quay with a connection she'll miss. The mechanic spends the evening with that. In the morning's post, the dredging schedule: the eastern channel was finished on Thursday. The captain's reason for going west can't be right. The note doesn't prove a lie — the notice might simply have been out of date — but it takes away the comfortable version. The mechanic has to decide whether to raise it on the next crossing, when raising it costs the boat pumping time.
That's an episode. The route was resolved early and the consequence ran long. And it produces the next one without reaching for the next named location: the note is still in the workshop, the captain still doesn't know he's been doubted, and the next radio window is a real decision for the mechanic because it will cost the captain something to hear it.
Compare the failure version. In that one the characters won't talk to each other for no reason, and the episode list reads: episode two, the north crossing; episode three, the night crossing; episode four, the crossing in bad weather. Nothing accumulates. That's a level list with better weather.
Two things to keep out of the pitch's argument. Whether an audience recognizes the boat, and whether you're allowed to use it, are separate questions from whether the episode works. So is what existing players will think — you can't know that yet, and a commissioner can't either. Familiarity gets you the first minute. It doesn't get you the second.
What the pitch still owes
Everything above is an invented premise. Nobody played that game, no ferry exists, and no scene was shot. That's the point: this is a method for making decisions, not evidence that the decisions are right for a specific title.
Applied to a real game, three claims would have to be earned rather than assumed. First, what the playing actually feels like — which needs the game itself, or authorized gameplay, not a trailer or a publisher's summary. Second, what its makers say they were doing, from a creator account rather than promotional copy. Third, whether you can use any of it, which is a rights question and stays one.
As a small illustration of the gap: the public conversation around a game adaptation tends to measure it by how much of the source story a film or a season carries. That's a real adaptation question, and a good one, but it isn't the one this method turns on. It says nothing about what the games ask a player to do. Nothing in it settles what a viewer gets in place of playing. A publisher's success claims aren't evidence about the method either.
Which is why the honest version of this pitch spends its last page on what you invented, not on what you preserved.
The pitch in four lines
Keeps: committing to a route while depending on someone who can see what you can't.
Invents: a captain and a shore mechanic who have to keep working together; a repeater the storm took out; a radio that draws on the pump; a passenger left on the quay; a dredging schedule dated after the crossing.
Episode: the choice, the cost, the note, and a decision about whether to say it.
Gives up: your control. What replaces it is a view from inside a choice and its consequences for the person standing next to it.
Four lines, and a stranger knows whose problem the series is — which is more than most game pitches manage with a trailer and a mood board. The invented parts are the show. State them as decisions rather than as fidelity, because that's what they are, and because the person reading needs to see that you know the difference between the game somebody loves and the series you're proposing to build on top of it.
Frequently asked questions
What are the game's three stacked elements an adaptation must separate?
Story — who did what, in what order, and how it ended; world — places, props, rules and look; and player activity — what you decide, learn, and risk with somebody else. Adaptations go wrong by folding the third into the first two: a mission is not a plot point, and a mechanic is not a character trait. If the charge came from doing, the doing has to be rebuilt inside characters the viewer watches.
In the ferry example, what is being adapted, and what must the pitch admit about watching versus playing?
The thing adapted is the committing: information is partial and unevenly held, each player holds a route card the other can't see, and the route is named before the boat leaves. On screen the captain chooses; the viewer doesn't. The pitch should say so rather than pretend around it, because an audience vote doesn't restore the player's control and just puts the decision somewhere no one has to live with it afterward. Suspense must then come from consequence, incomplete knowledge, and conflicting commitments.
What is the difference between keeping the experience and keeping the rule?
Keeping the rule would turn three signal tokens into two people exchanging three sentences, with the mechanic simply not mentioning the dredging schedule and the captain refusing direct questions. That reads as inexplicably terse behavior the audience has no way to forgive. The adaptation should rebuild a material cause: the storm took out the harbour repeater, so only the workshop set reaches the boat; the boat's radio draws on the same battery as the bilge pump; the boat is taking water, so every exchange costs the captain pumping time. The mechanic's cost is that the only working set is at the bench, with a stranded passenger outside.
What makes the ferry episode an episode rather than a level list?
An episode has a local problem, a consequential decision, and a situation that ends up changed in a way that continues. In the ferry episode, the captain names a route, two exchanges settle what is visible, the boat turns back, and a passenger misses a connection. Then the morning post brings a dredging schedule saying the eastern channel was finished on Thursday, which takes away the comfortable version and leaves the mechanic deciding whether to raise it on the next crossing. The route resolves early and the consequence runs long. The failure version has characters not talking for no reason and an episode list that merely moves to the next named crossing; nothing accumulates.
What limits does the article place on its method?
The ferry premise is invented: nobody played that game, no ferry exists, and no scene was shot. The method is for making decisions, not evidence that decisions are right for a specific title. Applied to a real game, three claims would need to be earned: what playing actually feels like, which needs the game or authorized gameplay rather than a trailer or publisher's summary; what its makers say they were doing, from a creator account rather than promotional copy; and whether you can use any of it, which is a rights question. Familiarity gets the first minute, not the second; the honest pitch spends its last page on what you invented.