I wanted to point out that the video games you listed as being somewhat generic or lacking in history (World of Warcraft and Halo) actually do have a significant amount of history that is obvious or easily avoided during the game play. I believe you commented about the Halo books, which I site as an example. If I remember right Halo had its history developed prior to the game being developed and is linked to the Marathon series of FPS games released a long time ago. Just the majority of the theme was only provided to you in terms of cut-scenes. World of Warcraft actually has a significant amount of lore and history that was developed after Warcraft 2, mostly to help deviate it from its roots in the Warhammer miniature war game that it was originally meant to emulate (hypothetically). I can understand casual and even hardcore players of these two games not seeing or knowing about the history. In World of Warcraft it is easily overshadowed by leveling and power use, mods that make reading quest text quicker, and the lore of the game being "hidden" in books scattered across the world that have no links to questing or gameplay. In Halo the world was hinted at in cut-scenes that are easy to skip, broken up by long levels. Of course not all games have these histories. It is rare for a game to have a history created before the game is actually developed and not included in the game (such as in adventure games, some RPGs, etc). And I agree that a major hurdle of game to movie adaptations is creating that character that you have control over, at least for adapting first person shooters. Adventure games and RPGs not so much... So really I think the conclusion to make here is that FPS games require a better effort than a lot of movie companies are willing to put into them to be a good movie, but also make up the US's primary obsession in terms of their favorite games (at least for the last few years). For example there have been decent movies based off of games that weren't horrible but were not good either that came out. Max Payne, Hit Man, the Resident Evil Series, and Silent Hill. As a side point I'll say Uwe Boll should never be allowed to make another video game movie ever.