Movies and gaming have been bumping into each other for decades, and Hollywood has never been particularly shy about bending the rules. Sometimes a film gets things surprisingly close to reality. Other times, well, you can tell the writers have never actually picked up a controller or sat at a casino table.

That does not necessarily make these films bad. In fact, getting things slightly wrong can be part of the fun. Gaming simply has to look good on the big screen, and real gaming is not always quite as dramatic as Hollywood would like us to believe.

Video games get the Hollywood treatment

Video gaming is probably where we see the biggest gap between reality and movies. Characters can sit down at a machine and suddenly become elite players, solve impossible puzzles or react to everything happening on screen with superhuman speed.

Films based around competitive gaming sometimes get closer to the mark. The concentration, repetition and pressure can all be genuine parts of serious gaming. What is often skipped is the boring bit in between. Real players spend an awful lot of time practising the same moves, learning maps, studying opponents and making tiny adjustments.

There is also the familiar movie scene where somebody picks up a game for five minutes and becomes brilliant at it. Anyone who has spent several hours getting repeatedly beaten by the same boss will know that is not quite how it works.

Casino movies have their own rules

Casino gaming has perhaps received a slightly more serious treatment over the years, although Hollywood still likes to turn the volume up.

Take Rain Man. Its blackjack scenes have helped introduce card counting to a huge audience, and the basic idea behind counting cards is real. Nowadays, blackjack is an extremely popular casino game, and counting cards can be tempting. However, the movie makes the process look considerably more dramatic and straightforward than it would be in an actual casino.

Then there is Casino Royale, which famously swaps the traditional baccarat game from the novel for an enormous poker showdown. The game itself is real, of course, but the stakes, characters and sheer cinematic tension are dialled up several notches.

That is generally the trick with casino films. The games are often genuine, but the surrounding circumstances are anything but ordinary.

When the screen gets it right

There are plenty of occasions when movies capture something important about gaming. Casino films can show the pressure of making decisions with real money involved, while gaming movies can demonstrate just how much concentration and preparation competitive play requires.

They can also get the atmosphere right. A casino is not simply a collection of tables and slot machines, just as gaming is not simply somebody staring at a screen. There are people, noise, competition, frustration and plenty of moments when things do not go according to plan.

The rise of esports has arguably made this easier for filmmakers, too. Competitive gaming is now a genuine spectator activity, so the idea of large crowds watching players compete no longer seems particularly strange.

Reality versus entertainment

The simple answer is that movies usually get the basics of gaming right and the drama wrong. Video games do not magically make somebody an expert, and casino games rarely produce the kind of perfectly timed twists that seem to arrive every few minutes on screen.

But perhaps that is exactly what movies are supposed to do.

If every gaming film showed hours of practice, long waits between casino hands and somebody spending twenty minutes reading the rules, there would not be much of a story. Hollywood takes real games, adds a lot of drama and hopes we enjoy the ride.

And, more often than not, it works.