Adapting a Game into Film, TV, Animation, or other mediums isn’t just about retelling its story—it’s about capturing the core Player Fantasy and translating it into new formats. But first—what exactly is a Player Fantasy? Let’s break it down with examples from Cyberpunk 2077, Super Mario, and Fallout.
🎮 Step 1: Define the Core Player Fantasy
The Player Fantasy is the core value proposition of a game. In short—it’s WHY we play. A great Player Fantasy provides a specific, visceral experience of being inside a world and engaging with a Game's systems and mechanics.
🦾 Cyberpunk 2077 – Delivers a fantasy of power and survival in a dystopian future, where players customize their cybernetic enhancements, navigate moral dilemmas, and carve out their own legacy in a neon-soaked world.
🍄 Super Mario – All about joyful movement and adventure, giving players the thrill of platforming mastery in vibrant, imaginative worlds.
☢️ Fallout – Embodies choice, consequence, and survival in a post-apocalyptic world, immersing players in faction politics, resource management, and emergent storytelling where every decision shapes the Wasteland.
🎬 📺 🎵 🏰 Step 2: Medium Mapping – Assigning the Right Story to the Right Format
After the Player Fantasy has been defined, the next step should be Medium Mapping—a multi-tiered storytelling strategy that assigns each medium a distinct function in an overall transmedia strategy. By tailoring each expansion to reinforce the Game IP’s core Player Fantasy while leveraging the unique strengths of each medium, franchises can maximize their reach and engagement.
🎬 Movies – High-Stakes, Event-Level Storytelling
Movies thrive on big spectacle, emotional payoff, and cultural impact, making them ideal for (re)introducing new audiences to an IP and distilling the core player fantasy into visually dynamic, high-energy storytelling.
🍄 The Super Mario Bros. Movie – Translating the Fantasy of Playful Movement
Super Mario isn’t really about intricate plotting—it’s about joyful movement, platforming mastery, and whimsical adventure. The 2023 Super Mario Bros. Movie succeeded by prioritizing kinetic energy over plot-heavy storytelling, ensuring that every set piece mirrored the feel of playing a Mario level.
Why It Works
The film’s action sequences recreated gameplay mechanics as cinematic moments, from obstacle course-style platforming to power-ups that worked exactly as they do in-game. The Rainbow Road Mario Kart chase felt like a direct gameplay translation. By focusing on colorful action, rapid pacing, and playful design, the movie captured the sensation of playing Mario without a controller.
Result
With $1.36 billion in box office revenue, The Super Mario Bros. Movie became the highest-grossing video game adaptation ever, revitalizing Nintendo’s transmedia strategy (along with Super Nintendo World) and proving that capturing the Player Fantasy is as critical as adapting a game’s plot.
📺 TV & Streaming – Character-Driven, Serialized Worldbuilding
Television allows for slower, more immersive storytelling, making it the ideal medium for deep character development, long-form narrative arcs, and expanding lore. TV has the space to explore moral complexities, faction conflicts, and worldbuilding that make open-world RPGs like Fallout so engaging.
☢️ Fallout – Translating Open-World Exploration into Narrative Discovery
Fallout isn’t about one fixed story or protagonist—it’s about moral dilemmas and how different groups survive in the post-apocalyptic Wasteland. A traditional adaptation that followed a single hero’s journey would have risked flattening the world’s complexity, so instead, the Fallout TV series smartly avoids imposing a single “canon” storyline.
Why It Works
The Fallout series succeeds because it adapts the experience of playing Fallout—not just its setting. By structuring the show around multiple perspectives—Vault Dwellers, Wastelanders, and the Brotherhood of Steel—the series mirrors the game’s branching narratives and player-driven exploration.
The show also embraces Fallout’s signature tone—a mix of dark humor, retro-futurism, and moral ambiguity. The Wasteland is simultaneously brutal and absurd, filled with violent raiders, mutated creatures, and a crumbling society that still clings to the aesthetic optimism of 1950s America.
Result
Within its first two weeks, Fallout garnered 65 million viewers and eventually surpassed 100 million viewers worldwide. At the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards, Fallout secured 17 nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, while Walton Goggins received a nod for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
🎨 Animation – Stylized, Action-Heavy Storytelling
Animation thrives on exaggerated action, high-energy pacing, and stylized aesthetics, making it the perfect medium for games with fluid combat and rich visual identity.
🦾 Cyberpunk: Edgerunners – Translating Cyberpunk’s High-Octane Power Fantasy
Cyberpunk 2077 is about power, survival, and the consequences of cybernetic enhancement. Rather than retelling the game’s story, Edgerunners crafted an original narrative that captured its core themes of ambition, rebellion, and burnout, staying true to the game’s mechanics and world.
Why It Works
David Martinez’s arc in the anime mirrors the player’s experience—starting weak, enhancing his body with cyberware, and grappling with the high-risk, high-reward nature of Night City. The anime’s fast-paced action, neon-drenched visuals, and cybernetic combat sequences feel ripped straight from the game, translating its high-speed, high-stakes power fantasy into animation in a way that live-action never could.
Beyond the spectacle, Edgerunners leans into Cyberpunk 2077’s emotional core—the cost of chasing power, the inevitability of burnout, and the haunting reality that in Night City, no one truly wins. This depth gave the show an impact beyond just thrilling action.
Result
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and won Anime of the Year at the 2023 Crunchyroll Awards. But its biggest success? It revitalized Cyberpunk 2077. Following the anime’s release, the game saw a 300% spike in players. CD Projekt Red confirmed that the Edgerunners update and Netflix show led to over 1 million daily active players, cementing the anime as a game-elevating transmedia success.
📖 Books & Comics – Expanding the Mythos for Hardcore Fans
Books and comics extend a game’s universe, history, and character depth beyond what players experience firsthand. Unlike games—where interactivity shapes the story—books and comics offer structured narratives that deepen the world’s lore and explore unseen perspectives.
🦾 Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence – Translating the World’s Crime & Power Structures
Cyberpunk 2077’s core Player Fantasy is about power, survival, and navigating Night City’s ruthless underworld. The game gives players agency, allowing them to forge alliances and shape their fate, but it can’t fully explore every gang conflict, corporate conspiracy, or street-level struggle.
Why It Works
No Coincidence expands Cyberpunk 2077’s world as an extension of the game, not a replacement. By focusing on a new cast of outcasts, the novel tells a self-contained crime thriller that mirrors the player experience—survival, betrayal, and the constant battle for power. The story fleshes out factions and locations only briefly touched upon in the game, adding depth to Night City’s ecosystem.
The book also retains Cyberpunk’s gritty tone and high-stakes decision-making, making it feel like a natural extension of the IP rather than a disconnected side story. Readers don’t just learn more about Night City—they experience it from new perspectives, reinforcing the world’s depth for longtime fans.
Result
Since its release, Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence has been well-received by fans and critics (4.3/5 stars on Amazon), praised for its rich worldbuilding and expansion of the Cyberpunk mythos.
🎲 📖 TTRPGs – Shaping the Storytelling for Hardcore Fans
Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) offer a unique way to engage with an IP, giving players the freedom to craft their own stories within a game’s universe. Unlike passive media like film or TV, TTRPGs allow for collaborative storytelling, deep world exploration, and emergent narratives.
🦾 Cyberpunk: Gangs of Night City – Translating the Underworld Power Fantasy
Cyberpunk 2077 is about carving your own path in a dystopian world where power isn’t given—it’s taken. The game allowing players to augment their bodies with cyberware, forge alliances with dangerous factions, and decide whether to play by the rules or burn Night City to the ground. However, the video game still operates within a set campaign structure, limiting how much of the world’s underworld politics can be directly shaped by players.
Why It Works
TTRPGs succeed where other adaptations can't because they don’t dictate a single narrative—they empower players to create their own. In Gangs of Night City, the story isn’t told to the player; it’s built collaboratively, ensuring that every session feels like an organic extension of Cyberpunk 2077. The ability to negotiate with fixers, take on high-risk jobs, or betray allies reinforces the game’s theme of power and consequence, keeping the experience authentic.
Result
While Cyberpunk: Gangs of Night City is still an upcoming release, its hugely successful Kickstarter campaign signals strong demand. With over $1 million raised and thousands of backers, it’s clear that fans are eager to immerse themselves in Night City beyond the constraints of a traditional game campaign.
🎵 Music – Passive, Immersive Experiences
Music and audio dramas offer a completely different form of immersion—they don’t require the audience’s full attention, making them perfect for passive engagement and allowing fans to stay immersed in an IP’s world while doing other activities.
🦾 Cyberpunk 2077’s Soundtrack & Edgerunners’ Music – Keeping the World Alive Via Sound
From the moment players enter Cyberpunk 2077, music defines their experience. The game’s radio stations are curated with in-universe lore, reflecting Night City’s underground culture, corporate influence, and societal decay.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners took this a step further. The anime’s use of "I Really Want to Stay at Your House" transformed a previously overlooked in-game track into a huge hit. The song became an emotional centerpiece of David and Lucy’s tragic romance, deeply resonating with fans. After the show’s release, it surged in popularity, charting on Spotify, TikTok, and YouTube, with many players revisiting Cyberpunk 2077 just to hear it in-game.
Why It Works
Edgerunners’ soundtrack worked because it wasn’t just background music—it was woven into the narrative’s most emotional moments, creating a deep subconscious association with the story’s themes. This extended audience engagement, making the Cyberpunk universe feel alive even between major content releases.
Result
The impact of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ soundtrack was undeniable. After the anime’s release, the track had been streamed over 269 million times on Spotify, reflecting an increase of more than 26 million streams compared to late September 2022.
🏰 Location-Based Entertainment – Bringing the World to Life
Location-based entertainment (LBE) extends a game’s fantasy into the real world, offering immersive experiences through theme parks, pop-ups, and interactive attractions. Unlike passive media, LBE turns fans into active participants, allowing them to engage with experiences that capture the interactivity, mechanics, and core player fantasy that define the game itself.
🍄 Super Nintendo World – Turning Gameplay into Real-World Interaction
Nintendo didn’t just build a visually accurate Mushroom Kingdom—they gamified the experience. Super Nintendo World’s Power-Up Bands let visitors collect coins, complete challenges, and interact with the park like a real-life Mario level. From hitting question-mark blocks to racing through Bowser’s Castle, every detail mirrors Mario’s movement-based gameplay, ensuring that guests aren’t just looking at Mario’s world—they’re playing in it.
Why It Works
Super Nintendo World translates core game mechanics into a physical space, reinforcing the IP’s identity beyond consoles. Visitors jump, explore, and compete, just like they do in the games. The Power-Up Band system bridges digital and real-world engagement, encouraging repeat visits and keeping fans actively involved with Nintendo’s ecosystem.
Result
Super Nintendo World has been a massive hit, drawing millions of visitors to its locations in Japan and the U.S. Since its 2021 debut, the park has driven high engagement, sold-out merchandise, and expansion plans for Orlando and Singapore. By turning Mario’s core fantasy of movement and discovery into a real-world experience, Nintendo has created an enduring, multigenerational attraction that cements its IP beyond gaming.
☢️ The Fallout Experience – Turning a Digital World into a Real One
Fallout’s LBE approach leans into role-playing and worldbuilding, immersing fans in its post-apocalyptic setting through pop-up events, themed bars, and escape rooms. Instead of passive observation, attendees interact with costumed Raiders, Brotherhood of Steel members, and Wasteland survivors, making choices that affect their experience—just like in the game.
Why It Works
Fallout’s RPG mechanics translate seamlessly into real-world storytelling. Instead of just recreating set pieces, these experiences give fans agency—scavenging for supplies, negotiating with factions, and making moral decisions. This ensures that it doesn’t just look like Fallout—it feels like it.
Result
Fallout’s real-world activations have generated massive engagement, driving viral social media moments and sustaining franchise relevance. By making the Wasteland a tangible experience, Fallout’s LBE keeps fans emotionally connected to the franchise, ensuring it remains culturally significant even between major releases
🎯 🚀 🌍 Final Takeaway: Strong Game IP Expansions Uses Every Medium with Intention
The best Gaming adaptations don’t just retell the story—they translate the experience of the core Player Fantasy.
For a Game adaptation to work, it must:
Capture the core Player Fantasy, not just the plot.
Use each medium’s unique strengths to expand emotional engagement with the IP.
As studios expand Gaming IPs across Film, TV, Animation, Theme Parks, and more, the key isn’t just where they expand—but how they use each medium to enhance the Game’s Player Fantasy while keeping audiences emotionally connected.
At Magnus Rex we specialize in translating a Game IP's Player Fantasy across different mediums. If this resonates with you, reach out to our team at hello@magnusrex.com.
Thanks for reading—
Derick Tsai | Founder, CEO
Magnus Rex: An IP Development Studio
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