Why Is It So Hard To Make A Good Game Of Thrones Video Game?

From the moment video games became more complex than Pong and Spacewar, they became a platform for high-concept genre fiction. Science fiction and fantasy have thrived in gaming because gaming’s interactivity allows players to live vicariously as courageous heroes in strange, exciting locales. It’s remarkable to see how, in just a half-century, the fantasy genre has grown from the text-based Zork to staggeringly immersive works like Skyrim, Elden Ring, and Baldur’s Gate 3.

Not only have video games provided the opportunity to create rich original worlds, but they’ve also let gamers inhabit worlds that have already been dreamed up. There have been numerous hit games based on The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and the Witcher books provided the basis for one of the most acclaimed RPG series of all time. But curiously enough, A Song of Ice and Fire and the resulting HBO television franchise, Game of Thrones, have never enjoyed a serious success in the world of gaming — which raises the question of why.

It’s not as if there haven’t been any attempts; on the contrary, we’ve received several video games since Game of Thrones began airing in 2011. Four separate games were released in just four years: A Game of Thrones: Genesis in 2011, Game of Thrones in 2012, Facebook’s Game of Thrones Ascent in 2013, and Telltale Games’ Game of Thrones in 2014. Extremely uninspired naming conventions aside, each approached the property in different ways, from real-time strategy to action RPG to Facebook social game to interactive narrative, but none were memorable. Many more have come and gone since then, but most have been relegated to the world of mobile games or met with negative reviews.

It seems like such an astoundingly successful franchise would be a layup for video games, but upon closer inspection, the struggle does make some sense. Both A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones are rigid in their plotting, which is a strength on television and the page, but makes it difficult to find a natural entryway into the timeline that fans recognize.

There’s always the option to set a game in the more undefined eras and locations of Martin’s vast world, because a game that takes place in the North during the original Long Night or in Dorne during Aegon’s Conquest could give developers and players more freedom to create and experience a story not so set in stone. But that also comes with its own problems: fans of the series understandably want to interact with recognizable characters and locations, and even the less defined historical worldbuilding of Westeros was meticulously engineered by Martin to reach the point where the story takes place.

Another strength of the franchise that might be an obstacle for game developers is its approach to action. While the series is filled with epic battles that form part of a massive conflict, the books choose to avoid the spectacle in a way that other fantasy franchises (and even the show) don’t. Martin’s stories never lose sight of the human toll of conflict, as opposed to abstracting it with inhuman enemies like orcs. The inherent evil and soullessness of the opponents in LotR make it easy for a gamer to carve them up without losing sleep, but it’s much harder to make that feel satisfying in a series that’s constantly reminding you your opponents are ultimately regular people wearing different colors.

There’s instead an emphasis on political maneuvering and manipulation, the machinations of rulers that govern large-scale conflicts. This lends itself well to real-time or turn-based strategy, where you can control armies and kingdoms from the top-down, but this again runs into the issue of canon. Games like Civilization and Crusader Kings give players the freedom to make decisions that drastically change the fabric of the world, but most of Thrones’ video game adaptations have tried to fit into the established canon, which makes it hard to give players the agency to, for example, conquer Westeros as House Lannister. There is a new Thrones strategy game slated for 2026, but it will likely need as much canonical freedom as fan-made conversion mods enjoy to succeed.

The sad truth is that many licensed games have been transparent in their attempts to cash in on the success of Game of Thrones without giving much thought to how to marry the world with a satisfying gaming experience. The closest so far was Telltale Games’ 2014 attempt, specifically because their approach to games is intensely narrative-focused, but the trade-off is that their gameplay fits a very specific niche. The debate between narrative “movie-like” games and gameplay-intensive experiences has been raging for over a decade now, and for the most part, people want to play games that feel like games. It’s an understandable viewpoint, but when it comes to a franchise with such a defined timeline and narrative structure, it’s hard to create something in the lineage of fantasy video games while also honoring Martin’s setting and themes.

The best possible solution is one that might sound blasphemous: set an Ice and Fire game within its own canon. Creating a world that diverges from Martin’s canon at some point (whether it be the Long Night or Aegon’s Conquest or Robert’s Rebellion) would remove many of the issues that arise from developers not having a lot of wiggle room, and you could engineer circumstances that justify plenty of different gameplay approaches, from the large-scale freedom of a proper strategy game to the hack-and-slash satisfaction of an action-RPG. Beyond that, there’s always hope for a truly phenomenal game in the future — all it takes is a team of developers who don’t just want to cash in on the series’ name, but who earnestly want to create a unique and engaging interactive experience that replicates the atmosphere, ideas, and aesthetics that are evoked when fans think of Westeros.