How many movie-based video games come out each year? Ask most people who play games and you'll get the same response: Too many.
Because most movie-based video games suck, get it?
That's true and all, but the intersection of Hollywood and... whatever the video game version of Hollywood is is interesting. How many film-based games really come out each year? Are there more in some years than other years? Say, that might make for an interesting study.
Enter Sorbonne-lecturer and author Alexis Blanchet, who went through all of the games that have been adapted from movies from 1975 until the present day, charting which years gave us the most movie-based video games.
His findings are interesting: During his 35-year period, 547 films gave rise to more than 2,000 games, meaning that a lot of films have more than one game based on them. That makes sense to me, since most films that could work for games tend to get milked for more than one. For example, Blanchet finds that the 6 Star Wars films have inspired more than 120 video games (though certainly that franchise is an outlier.)
1984, 1994 and especially 2006 mark peaks for game-movie adaptations; Blanchet says he thinks that 2006's noticeable spike is in part because there were many more films released that year.
Anyhow, it's a bit wonky, but I love this kind of deep analysis of numbers. Do you remember playing any film adaptations in 2006? I don't, really.
The Real Data Behind Movies Becoming Games [Gamasutra]