Digra Conference Publication Format s4

Playing Along with the Humans in The Walking Dead

Bernard Perron Université de Montréal History of Art and Film Studies Department [email protected]

Guillaume Roux-Girard Université de Montréal History of Art and Film Studies Department [email protected]

ABSTRACT Undoubtedly, Telltale’s The Walking Dead has been one the most critically acclaimed games of 2012 for many good reasons. It has indeed been faithful to the spirit of Robert Kirkman’s original comics (published since 2003). It has focused its attention on characters, rather than on gory fights against zombies. It has showed that, compare to a triple-A game like Resident Evil 6 (Capcom, 2012), a small and smart point-and-click horror adventure game could also deliver a striking videoludic experience. It has demonstrated that the episodically release of games could really be as compelling as the monthly publication of a comic book or the weekly broadcast of a TV show.

But while the evocative spaces (Jenkins, 2004) of the game capture the essence of the transmedial series, The Walking Dead goes a step further by engaging the audience directly in its fiction. The strength of Telltale’s game does not only draw on pre-existing narratives and generic competencies to expand the universe of The Walking Dead, but also uses the specificities of the videoludic medium. As it presses the gamer to make snap decisions at pivotal points in the story, the horror of the game does not only come from the shocking events that are depicted with a brutality similar to the one building up through the comic’s panels nor from the narrative tensions generated through the televisual treatment of the images and sounds (Ruditis, 2011), but from the gameplay emotions (Perron, 2012) generated as the gamer is forced to decide to whom tell the truth or lie, and choose who lives or dies.

Our in-depth close reading of The Walking Dead will analyze the way the series remains a unique gaming experience, playing along with the gamer’s knowledge of the mechanics of the point-and-click adventure and of the zombie fiction. We will link the game to Kirman’s universe, now one very successful transmedia fiction, already scrutinized (see Lowder, 2011; Yuen, 2012). We will underline the input of the cellshading aesthetics in regards of the comics and the way the scenes are “shot” in regards of the TV show. We will focus our attention on the bond between Lee the convict and Clementine the little girl (the two main characters) in order to underline how this relationship elicits empathy. We will chart the consequences of the choices made through the five episodes, comparing the possible versions one could come up with.

Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play.

© 2011 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author. Keywords Walking Dead, horror, transmediality, emotions

BIBLIOGRAPHY Jenkins, Henry (2004). «Games as Narrative Architecture». In Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (eds.), First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, pp. 118-130. Lowder, James, Ed. (2011). Triumph of The Walking Dead: Robert Kirkman's Zombie Epic on Page and Screen, Dallas, TX: Smart Pop. Perron, Bernard (2012). Silent Hill : the Terror Engine, Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Ruditis, Paul (2011). The Walking Dead Chronicles: The Official Companion Book, New York, Abrams. Weis, Matthew (2011). «How the Zombies Changed Videogames». In Christopher M. Moreman and Cory James Rushton (eds.). Zombies Are Us: Essays on the Humanity of the Walking Dead, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, p. 151-168. Yuen, Wayne, ed. (2012). The Walking Dead and Philosophy: Zombie Apocalypse Now, Chicago and Lasalle, IL: Open court.

Game references Telltale Games. (2011). The Walking Dead. [Playstation 3, Download], Telltale Games, USA, 2012.

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