scholarly journals Writing for Emotional Impact in Film and Video Games: Lessons in Character Development, Realism, and Interactivity from the Alien Media Franchise

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Christian Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Creative Writing ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Character Development ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
Film And Video ◽  
Walking Dead

This article compares Ridley Scott’s film Alien (1979) with Creative Assembly’s video game Alien: Isolation (2014), which is based on Scott’s film. Guidance for academics who teach creative writing—as well as for working screenwriters and video game narrative designers—emerges in the comparison, particularly with regard to the importance of developing strong yet vulnerable main characters who put themselves in danger in order to protect other characters with whom they have meaningful relationships. Examples from other media, including Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby (1967), James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead (2012), and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (2013), are also discussed as they relate to larger principles involved in crafting sympathetic characters, realistic settings, and compelling gameplay for media within the horror and sci-fi genres.

scholarly journals Choices and Consequences: The Role of Players in The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game Series

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 350-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Genovesi
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Interactive Approach ◽  
Transmedia Storytelling ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Walking Dead

Abstract One of the most important features in a transmedia structure, as Max Giovagnoli argues in his book Transmedia: Storytelling e Comunicazione [Transmedia: Storytelling and Communication], is the development of the user’s decision-making power, defined by the author as “choice excitement.” In this, every choice of the user should have a consequence in the fictional universe of a specific franchise. Consequently, a narrative universe that wants to emphasize choice excitement and the active role of people can focus on video games, where the interactive approach is prominent. This essay will discuss a specific video game, based on the famous franchise of The Walking Dead. This brand, which appears in comic books, novels, TV series, Web episodes and video games, is analysable not only as an exemplary case of transmedia storytelling, where every ramification of the franchise published in different media is both autonomous and synergistic with the others, but also by focusing on the choice excitement of users in the first season of the video game The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game Series.

Comic Books, Video Games, and Transmedia Storytelling

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Ecenbarger
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Transmedia Storytelling ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Book World ◽  
Walking Dead

This article illuminates the transmedia storytelling techniques in The Walking Dead comic book and video game. Telltale Games' The Walking Dead localizes itself within the comic book world of The Walking Dead by acting as a transmedia storytelling device and using intertextuality comics to assist game players with meaning-making. By participating in the game, Telltale rewards players with additional information about The Walking Dead universe, as well as creating a contingent but separate narrative that expands upon the existing Walking Dead world. This exploration of The Walking Dead offers insights into the specific methods that are being employed by creators to further engage the audience in the transmedia storyworld.

scholarly journals The World of The Walking Dead – Transmediality and Transmedial Intermediality

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Beil ◽  
Hanns Christian Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Transmedia Storytelling ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Adventure Game ◽  
The World ◽  
Interactive Nature ◽  
Walking Dead

Abstract As transmedia franchises increasingly populate our cultural environment, many questions arise about the effect of the different media involved in the depiction of storyworlds. Through the analysis of different examples, with special emphasis on the particular case of The Walking Dead, and drawing primarily from Henry Jenkins’s concept of “transmedia storytelling” and Jens Schroter’s concept of intermediality, this paper aims to show how different media aesthetics contribute to the process of storytelling and enrich the experience of the consumer. Usually overlooked in other analyses, we argue that these formal and aesthetical characteristics, such as the interactive nature of video games, call for a broader approach that transcends the accustomed search of common narrative aspects. This will be exemplified by a closer comparative look at the adventure game The Walking Dead: The Ganie (Telltale Games, 2012) and The Walking Dead: Survival Instiiict (Terminal Reality, 2013). The transformations that the different media demand contribute not only to the narrative, but also provide different tools for the construction of storyworlds and different ways to engage with it.

Monster Stories/Storied Monsters

2019 ◽  
pp. 195-214
Author(s):  
Adam Charles Hart
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Face ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Walking Dead

This final chapter continues the discussion of monsters by engaging with the writings of Robin Wood, who theorized monsters as fundamentally ambivalent figures who allow us to envision alternatives to the restrictive social order. It then realigns Wood’s terms to show how the recent horror genre has been structured around questions not simply of monstrosity, but of asserting or maintaining humanity—and recognizing the humanity of others—in the face of monstrosity and other inconceivable horrors. This is the explicit theme of The Walking Dead TV series, as is emphasized in its first video game adaptation, The Walking Dead: The Game (2012), but is there at the beginnings of the modern genre in the 1960s with a film like Night of the Living Dead (1968). The chapter concludes with a discussion of how understandings of “monstrosity” and “humanity” are redefined around questions of morality with two high-profile, integrated horror films, Get Out (2017) and The Shape of Water (2017).

scholarly journals Black (anti)fandom's intersectional politicization of "The Walking Dead" as a transmedia franchise

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Rendell
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Black Male ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Academic Discourses ◽  
Walking Dead

Despite axiomatic industry and academic discourses of The Walking Dead's (2010–) status as quality TV—linked to its graphic visuals and compelling story lines—strong counterclaims question the text's (mis)representations of race and its propensity for systematically killing off Black male characters. An analysis of African Americans' responses to marginalized Black male characters politicizes the racial milieu of the series against the backdrop of wider racial relationships in the United States. Moreover, The Walking Dead is a successful transmedia franchise, and thus racial discourse shifts and changes, depending on which transmedia texts are being consumed. Thus, Black antifan rhetoric aimed at the spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead (2015–) centers on the zombification of Black men, a metaphor of the mistreatment and othering of young Black men by US police. Comparatively, The Walking Dead video game (TellTale Games, 2012) offers character development for its Black male lead character that fans praise against wider cultural representations in relation to both the franchise's hyperdiegesis and to video games in general. Therefore, Black audiences may read The Walking Dead as both racially reductive and radical. In doing so, aspects of self-identity, such as race, can inform (anti)fan positions through intersectional politics.

Transactionism

Media in Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 19-48
Author(s):  
Daniel Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Film And Video

This chapter proposes a theoretical approach to media use that treats media and their users’ minds as continuous with one another. It calls this approach “transactionism.” It shows how the philosophy of John Dewey is relevant to the study of contemporary media. The chapter shows how Dewey’s ideas can clarify historical problems from throughout the history of media studies. It uses examples from video games and films to illustrate the utility of transactionism in thinking about individual media and in thinking about relationships among media. It shows how contemporary philosophy of mind extends concepts from Dewey’s philosophy. This clarifies the relationship between Dewey’s ideas and the film and video game examples that the chapter presents.

Making players care: The ambivalent cultural politics of care and video games

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-672
Author(s):  
Bonnie Ruberg ◽  
Rainforest Scully-Blaker
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Cultural Rhetorics ◽  
Game Development ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Tend And Befriend ◽  
Video Game Development ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between care and video games is fraught. While the medium has the potential to allow players to meaningfully express and receive care, the cultural rhetorics that connect video games to care are often problematic. Even among game designers and scholars committed to social justice, some view care with hope and others with concern. Here, we identify and unpack these tensions, which we refer to as the ambivalent cultural politics of care, and illustrate them through three case studies. First, we discuss “tend-and-befriend games,” coined by Brie Code, which we read through feminist theorists Sarah Sharma and Sara Ahmed. Second, we address “empathy games” and the worrisome implication that games by marginalized people must make privileged players care. Lastly, we turn to issues of care in video game development. We discuss Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead series (2012–18) and strikingly care-less fan responses to recent employee layoffs.

scholarly journals “No one gives you a rulebook to raise a kid”: Adoptive Motherhood in The Walking Dead Video Game Series

Loading ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Sarah Marie Stang
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Father Figure ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Mother Figure ◽  
The Way ◽  
Walking Dead

This article closely examines the representation of adoptive motherhood in Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead video game series. It builds off previous research which has examined The Walking Dead: Season One as an example of a ‘dadified’ game to explore the ways adoptive motherhood is represented throughout the series. More specifically, this article focuses on the series’ protagonist, Clementine, as she develops from a daughter-figure to a mother-figure. Overall, this article argues that although TWD has been discussed primarily as a dadified game and much of the extant literature on the series has focused on Lee as a father-figure, TWD series can also be read as a ‘momified’ narrative. While there are several problematic aspects in the way Clementine is portrayed, the series is notable in that it explores adoptive maternity, centralizes the experiences of non-white characters, and reinforces the message that family is not limited to blood relations. Because of its centralization of Clementine – a young, potentially queer, adoptive mother of colour – TWD series should be considered as a maternal narrative, rather than only categorized as another dadified series.

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