Some indie movie producers are trying to level that drastically uneven playing field. Game writer and podcaster Alanah Pearce recently announced that her new production studio, Charred Pictures, would work closely with indie video game developers on forthcoming movie adaptations like the survival horror trilogy Faith: The Unholy Trinity and the first-person psychological horror game Dead Take. “I don’t think it makes any sense at all for an adapted screenplay not to include direct input from the writers of the original source material,” Pearce tells The A.V. Club. “It’s their world—they created the story, the characters, and the plot that has resonated with the audience so much. They know it better than anyone else.”

Some recent horror video game adaptations, like the supernatural psychodrama The Mortuary Assistant, suggest that Pearce might be on to something. The Mortuary Assistant was directed by Jeremiah Kipp and co-adapted by the game’s original solo developer Brian Clarke. Kipp had previously collaborated on several Fessenden-produced indie horror titles, so he knew about Fessenden and Reznick’s lack of recognition for Until Dawn—something that gave him extra motivation to seek out Clarke’s advice. Better yet, Clarke ensured that Kipp and his co-writer Tracee Beebe maintained creative control over their adaptation, since their movie was produced by Epic Pictures Group, which owns the publishing company that made the game in the first place, DreadXP. “Epic really wanted Brian to be happy, and he protected me,” Kipp tells The A.V. Club. “When I was brought on, Brian called me up right away to say, ‘The best way to honor this game is for you to make a good movie.'”

Clarke recalls that while Epic Pictures provided some notes throughout the screenwriting process, they mostly suggested ways to better achieve certain storytelling effects. “They never really had heavy opinions when it came to the story itself,” Clarke says. DreadXP also didn’t provide much feedback on the adaptation since, according to Clarke, “that’s not their wheelhouse.” Rather than the by-committee approach of these larger adaptations, it was a direct collaboration.

Conversely, producer-turned-writer-director Genki Kawamura showed his appreciation of the horror-themed walking simulator The Exit 8 by not approaching his movie, Exit 8, like a normal adaptation. That’s partly out of necessity, since Kotake Create’s game doesn’t have a traditional story. Like the game, Kawamura’s movie follows a commuter’s nightmarish journey through a non-descript Japanese subway tunnel that has no traditional exit. Instead, the end of one corridor loops back to its start, like a Möbius Strip or an improbable M.C. Escher design. The only way for the nameless commuter (Kazunari Ninomiya) to escape is by making eight complete circuits of the tunnel, turning back every time he spots an “anomaly” in the tunnel. In Kawamura’s movie, the commuter’s frustrated escape attempts reflect his own tortured mindset after his girlfriend unexpectedly tells him that she’s pregnant and he’s the father. 

“For this movie, we were like architects,” Kawamura tells The A.V. Club. “It was as if Kotake Create gave me the blueprints for a new structure and I, along with my production designers and other collaborators, built something new.”

Ironically, Kawamura took to heart some advice that he received from Nintendo’s Miyamoto, who argued that the key to making a great video game is to make something that’s not only fun for the player to engage with, but also for anyone watching the player. “Sometimes I put the movie’s audience in the player’s shoes,” Kawamura says. “Other times I present the game’s action as if the audience is watching another player’s livestream.”

Kawamura adds that he wouldn’t have enjoyed so much creative freedom if Kotake Create was as big as, say, Nintendo. “The source material is an indie game, so we weren’t interfacing with a giant organization. In reality, it was one person,” referring to Kotake, the company’s solo developer. “So we were able to communicate with him and tap into the purest form of his vision for his game. This direct interaction between creators is what led to this movie’s success.”

While involving video game writers and developers in the adaptation process obviously doesn’t guarantee a better movie, having their support and input usually helps. Just don’t expect the makers of AAA games to learn that lesson any time soon, according to Pearce. 

“When the system is so focused on profit, AAA publishers are always going to want to ensure their writers are writing full-time on video games, and outsource the film production side of things,” Pearce says. Pearce also doesn’t expect the WGA and other movie unions’ recognition of video game writers to change in the near future either. “I do recognize that including video game writers is difficult for the WGA, being that our contracts work so differently,” Pearce says, referring specifically to how most video game writers are full-time, salaried employees while most screenwriters are contract employees. “I have sympathy for how complicated it might be to find terms that recognize these vastly different approaches. But just because something is hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.” It might be hard to believe that movie studios would ditch the MCU-style approach that helped create the modern superhero boom in favor of something more creative-friendly, but idealistic and dedicated producers like Pearce—and an incoming wave of smaller adaptations—make it easier to imagine a future where better video game adaptations are made with the help and recognition of their original creators.