Dedicated video game player Nathaniel Wise has a rule: Don't play any that are based on movies.

"They're generally terrible," said Wise as he browsed through titles at the Electronics Boutique in The Mall in Columbia recently.

But like a wine snob who tries a California blush and actually likes it, Wise has found himself playing The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers video game more and more. He's even limited his playing time because the game closely follows the film's plot. The 23-year-old is now planning to attend a midnight showing when the film is released on Dec. 18 and doesn't want to know too much beforehand.

"I don't want to ruin the experience, so I'm careful about how much I play," he said.

Wise's new fascination with The Two Towers reflects a seismic shift in the relationship between video games and movies.

Just a few years ago, video games were generally afterthoughts to a successful film and were often "horrible, horrible garbage," said Jason Della Rocca, program director for the International Game Developers Association, a nonprofit trade group based in San Francisco.

But many agree the two sides are cooperating more these days. Hollywood is giving more game programmers access to films' footage and producers. Commercials that meld scenes from movies into video games are flooding the airwaves. And games based on Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Spider-Man and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets are being released before the movies as a quasi-marketing tool.

"People have realized that games and movies could have one synergy, that they can expand their stories horizontally from movies to games. The line between video games and movies has become murkier and murkier," said Henry Jenkins, a professor of media studies at MIT.

Back in the days of Atari, the formula was simple: Make a film. If it's successful, try and follow up with a quickly made video game that would appeal to the movie's fans.

"There was a guarantee that the game would sell," Della Rocca said. "Of course, it was generally lousy."

Many view E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial as the height of lousiness. The game, a follow-up to Steven Spielberg's beloved film, featured little more than an animated E.T. eating candy and had little to do with the movie's plot.

But the relationship between games and movies began to change as video games became more profitable. Americans spent nearly $6.4 billion on video games last year, more than twice the sales of 1995, an industry survey indicated.

By contrast, there were nearly $8.4 billion in movie box office receipts last year, and store shelves are full of titles such as Reign of Fire, Blade II and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"I think the film industry is increasingly saying ... 'this is a huge audience' and we need to reach them," said Doug Lowenstein, president of the Interactive Digital Software Association, which conducted the video game-spending survey.

The new cooperative mentality is especially evident in The Two Towers. The game was released in late October, nearly two months before the movie. Furthermore, the game offers movie fans a preview of the film, featuring interviews with the actors and director and a full-length trailer from the movie.

But the game isn't just an extended promo. Unlike the blurry E.T. of the past, the characters from Lord of the Rings are sharp enough to almost blend in with their movie counterparts, which they do in television commercials.

The high quality of the game is a direct result of the partnership between Electronic Arts, which produces the game, and New Line Cinema, which is releasing the film.

New Line had never worked with video game designers so closely, said David Imhoff, senior vice president of worldwide licensing and merchandising for New Line.

Imhoff said that in the past, movie executives were often wary of working with the gaming industry but that "people making business decisions at the studio level are playing video games ... and have an appreciation of it which wasn't there a decade ago."

As a result, New Line granted game makers access to movie footage and set models. Film producers met with game designers. The film's stars even did their own voiceovers for the game, which was unheard of just several years ago when B-list actors provided voices for games.

The collaboration seems to have paid off. The Two Towers has been consistently ranked among the top games of the year by gaming magazines and is approaching a million sales, Imhoff said.

While most experts agree that The Two Towers is a cutting-edge video game, it is old-fashioned in one sense: Its plot is closely linked to the plot of the movie.

But other games are using movies as a launching pad to create whole new stories. For example, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter fleshes out the story of Jango Fett, a minor character who is beheaded in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. As players pass levels in the game, they learn more about the bounty hunter's history and how he created clones of himself.

Even Stephen Gray, the director of game development for the Lord of the Rings video game franchise for Electronic Arts, sounds slightly envious of the creative liberties that other game designers could take. Because of licensing agreements, Gray and his team had to stick fairly closely to the movie's script.

"We really would've liked to [expand on the plot], but we couldn't," he sighed.

But the makers of the Minority Report video game, which was released two weeks ago, changed the story line of the Tom Cruise movie significantly. The film was essentially a high-tech murder mystery while the game is more action-based, with the Tom Cruise character having to fight through 40 levels of enemies.

"We created a story that was more conducive to the game we wanted to make, but we still ... wanted people who had seen the movie to say 'oh yeah, there's that scene from the movie' when they play the game," said Gene Bahng, a producer at Activision, which made Minority Report.

Many say that games such as Minority Report: The Video Game are the future.

"It's a growing-up of the video game industry which parallels the growing up of the players," Gray said. "Once players get into their 30s, they're going to want a more sophisticated game with sophisticated characters and stories."

It appears that game players of all ages are already making those demands. Alex Person, 15, said he admires the new Lord of the Rings game, but his eyes light up when he talks about the Bounty Hunter game.

"It plays like a movie," said Person, from Marriottsville. "You didn't really learn anything about Jango Fett in the movie, so it feels like he's much more developed now. It makes me excited to see the next movie."