On Orwell. I got the impression he was an avowed fan of socialism of the era (a radically different concept to what some Americans like to brand socialism today, or more if you are looking at Scandinavia today and thinking that then you are wrong), however he went and actually saw the reality of the situation, realised human nature is what it is, that power structures ultimately reflect that and wrote a semi allegorical (even if he apparently hated the term being applied to it... and if I was clever at this point I would do a "if it looks like a pig" remark) with a bit of future prediction (that was not so accurate) account of the Russian/USSR experiment. In doing so made what now might be considered a scathing critique of the matter even if he still believed (and for the rest of his, rather unhealthy, life still aimed to further a few things).
If we are doing an Orwell reading list then I would suggest a couple of his rather short thoughts on writing itself -- whatever you may make of the man and his politics if you aspire to write, critique writing or otherwise do anything marginally related to it then this stuff is very much on point then and to this day
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/george-orwells-six-rules-for-writing-clear-and-tight-prose.html
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/
they mean classic books, like you don't see anybody going out to make a Great Gatsby video game or an Of Mice and Men farming simulator
Sometimes you do.
Wizard of Oz got a few games. The DS Beyond the Yellow Brick road game being something to note.
If 1984 is classic literature nowadays then Winnie-the-Pooh surely also counts. Ditto various efforts from Dr. Seuss.
I have lost count of how many efforts in doing/takes on Alice in Wonderland we have seen.
Ditto Dracula, even more so if Castlevania counts.
Dante's Inferno was a thing back on the PSP and PS360.
Sherlock Holmes and all the other crime solving games? There are quite a few of them.
James Bond might be an exception in some ways (the films tending to be what people know today) but the novels started in the 50s and it was hardly the earliest of the spy genre to make it big. That said several of the games depart from the films and look somewhat at the books.
Do we count Tom and Jerry here? Though I suppose they were cartoons from the outset.
While many were more related to various films being remade (see things like Planet of the Apes, Tarzan, Treasure Planet, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the like) they did often draw more from earlier material than later/then current, never mind what we make of Lord of the Rings or the efforts for Disney films (Cinderella saw one in 2005, don't know if that was a "Disney vault" year and depending upon who you speak to then Cinderella is probably an ancient story -- 2000 years for some distinctly similar ones). Not to mention while I doubt 1984 the book would have been forgotten too soon I am not going to discount the film in helping it stay as relevant as it has.
While cartoons is a thing above do films count in general? Kong - The 8th Wonder of the World was a 2005 effort from Ubisoft even if Peter Jackson did make a Kong film that year.
Japan plunders their historical stories all the time for plots for games.
While most games here were known more for hideous graphics and boxart then several efforts in the PS2 era were based around fairy tales (and it was not that long before that the brothers grimm compiled a bunch of them, never mind saw the earlier translations to English).
That said stick with things closer to what we normally deal with in handhelds and lesser considered consoles and it gets stranger still. A Sound of Thunder (a 1950s sci fi short from Ray Bradbury) saw a GBA version for instance.
Now were any of these particularly good? Most were not, even by the standards of the time and consoles in question.
Were any of the games in question any kind of exploration of the work suitable to how watching a film might allow you to discuss the work in general (I will stand by the 1984 cartoon I linked earlier -- watch that and you can debate themes and notions brought up in the book quite happily)? Very rarely.
Did any of the games particularly benefit from being set in that universe? That would be rarer still... and that might also be my next series of hacks -- strip out any recognisable proper nouns or obvious settings from various games and see if they resonate accordingly, bonus is many are so old and forgotten at this point that it should not be too hard (you could probably even find some kids that never played Goldeneye on the N64). Maybe even come the other way and find non gaming types that are familiar with the literature and see if they connect any dots or themes.
Mind you I am now curious to see the game equivalents of pride and prejudice and zombies. Sadly at this point I think most of what games have to say here is instead Assassin's Creed and Dynasty Warriors, maybe Young Thor on the PSP.
A few games have a basically [insert Shakespeare play] but in space/modern day/historical cool period with talking animals/toys/items/dragons/future tech type setup to, as do a lot of things. That however is probably getting into there are only 7/8 basic stories or plots
https://issabacsa.com/8-basic-stories/ territory.