Ready or Not is one of many films involving or based on games

Having games as the focus of a film's story is not new, of course. The idea of hunting humans for sport has been used many times. Richard Connell's classic short story The Most Dangerous Game (with its punning on "game") - in which a former Russian general living on an island incarcerates, releases then tracks and kills down anyone who arrives, for sport - has inspired many films, more or less loosely, under different titles. The original title was used for the 1932 adaptation; later versions have included A Game of Death (1945) and Run for the Sun (1956). The Australian movie Turkey Shoot (1982), set in a totalitarian state, had prison camp inmates being hunted by the camp master and VIPs.

But hunts are not the only games people play in movies. Chess featured heavily in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) - which made it sexy - and The Seventh Seal (1957) - where it was used by a knight, who challenged Death to a game in order to delay his own mortality.

The latter film was wittily spoofed in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey where Death gives the boys their choice of games for their lives and they beat him in Twister, Clue (Cluedo here) and Battleship.

The last two games were the basis of films, more nominally in Battleship (2012) and more closely in Clue (1985), a comedy mystery featuring the characters from the board game and three different endings (and solutions).

The Ouija board, not surprisingly, has inspired a few horror movies and Dungeons & Dragons (OK, that technically is not a board game, but close enough for discussion purposes) with its sword and sorcery elements has also been the source for a few.

Jumanji and Zathura went in the opposite direction, from books to films to board games.

Not based on existing games and more serious and original were The Game - where Michael Douglas finds himself unable to discern reality from fiction in an experiential - and the moody, tricksy House of Games, David Mamet's first film. It began his cinematic interest in confidence games.

The seriocomic Paper Moon, the very dark The Grifters, and the character-study Matchstick Men introduce familial elements, real or putative, helpful or not, into the world of the confidence trickster.

And Sleuth, based on Anthony Shaffer's play, has two very different men playing increasingly complex games with each other in what becomes a deadly battle of wits.

But probably the best-known example of the con-game movie is The Sting, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford starring and the ragtime music of Scott Joplin.

It's not that surprising that Hollywood turned to games for inspiration in its ever-enthusiastic search for properties that audiences are familiar with to adapt into movies that will - it's hoped - capitalise successfully on that familiarity.

And confidence tricksters are a never-ending source of fascination and material.

Expect to see more of both kinds of movies, both for commercial and creative reasons.

Who doesn't love a good game?