Why I’d Rather See My Favorite Online Games Turned Into Animes Than My Favorite Animes Turned Into Online Games

Anyone who’s been playing video games long enough is well aware of Hollywood’s track record of trying to turn popular video game X into a feature film. They’re not so great at doing live action versions of anime either. I’ve long thought that, aside from film makers just not understanding the source material or core audiences, there’s just so much more you can achieve (and get away with) when animating.

The fact remains that players love to see more of their favorite worlds and characters – particularly when dealing with live service games. MMOs, long-running RPGs, heck… even MOBAs have vast universes filled with places and rosters of characters we just don’t get to spend as much time as we might like with. After all, the hero has to keep moving… other places and people to save, and all that.

So, of course, we’re open to more ways to spend time in our favorite universes.

The same holds true for other genres, of course. You can see as much from Grace’s articles about what animes she’d like to see turned into MMOs or other types of games.

But, the more I think of it, while I’ve often thought, “Yeah. I’d play a game set in that world,” I think I prefer it the other way around. There’s something about extrapolating from an anime, book, movie, what have you, and turning into a game, particularly a live service one. I’m not saying it can’t be done, or even done well. I just think it’s a bit more difficult.

For one thing, the nature of telling stories in a televised format is different. It’s more concise. The characters and world are typically more strictly defined to fit within the format. You’re telling a single story, so the world has only been defined to fit that singular narrative. It’s not impossible to work with that and build the world out from there, but it does require more work and… I won’t say it’s easier to mess up, but it’s easier to create something that doesn’t align with what long-time fans have envisioned the rest of the world to be like. (And no, you can’t go reading everyone’s fan fiction to see what they want. That way lies legal problems.)

Live-service video game universes, on the other hand… Those are different, constantly evolving animals. Whether we’re talking something like League of Legends or any of the number of online RPG’s I play, there’s a lot of stories we just haven’t heard yet. Whether it’s the history of a particular MOBA hero or how things change in a particular city players been away from for a few years because you’ve been busy saving other people, there’s always something they’d be happy to know more about.

There’s a reason all the animated shorts companies like Riot, Kuro, or HoYoverse drop are so popular. Granted, part of that is because of the music. The joke that those three companies are actually music companies that sometimes makes video games didn’t exactly come from nowhere. But the real reason is we like seeing more of our favorite characters and worlds.

In all three cases, these companies are out here creating animated short after animated short. Some are silly, some are sad, some are filled with action. All of them give us another peek into the game’s world, the things we don’t get to see as a main character.

As we all know with Riot and Arcane, their foray into the animated series world has worked out rather well. And I do attribute this partially to the series being an anime. As noted, they can just do more. It’s also because Riot is deeply involved in the process, rather than just handing it off and letting someone who may not really know much about the game handle it.

Earlier today, I logged onto YouTube to see that Kuro Games dropped a teaser for a Wuthering Waves anime, “Wuthering Waves: Elysium”. Kuro decided to just do it themselves, creating the animation brand Kuro Onroad. This could be them stretching themselves thin, but it seems to me this makes it easier for them to tell the story they want told and maintain the structure of the WuWa universe.

On the other hand, you have HoYoverse electing to work with established animation companies (despite having an anime division of their own). A Genshin Impact anime being developed by Ufotable was announced a good while back. We don’t know the status on that anime, but we do know the kind of work Ufotable is capable of.

More recently, the company dropped a concept trailer for Honkai: Star Rail made by MAPPA. Again, they technically have their own animation studio, but you can’t blame them for wanting to partner with a studio that well known.

In all three cases, we’re not sure when we’ll be getting these shows, or if we actually will. A lot can happen between now and then. But the fact remains I have more hope for an anime based on any of these games than I would have for a game based on an anime I really like (that doesn’t just end up being another brawler, shooter, or something of the like).

That said, Kuro did do a good job of bringing Cyberpunk: Edgerunners into Wuthering Waves. But that’s also an animated series based on a video game based on a tabletop game, so that might be a weird comparison.