Transmedia Pathos and Plot in The Walking Dead - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 71

“You can't think forever...”
If transmedia storytelling is becoming a major marketing and creative aspect
of television entertainment and the digital media environment, then it
behooves scholars and game players to examine any other avenues it begets.
his includes both focusing on ancillary products that are not normally
considered narratively signiicant, like paratextual games, and delving more
deeply into aspects of narrative storytelling. As we reine our understanding
of transmediation, it becomes a critical foundation of contemporary media
studies, allowing new opportunities and creative potentialities in media
production.
Board games can become part of the transmediated media environment, but
must be designed to augment more complex aspects of the media franchise than
just the plot. Remediating the plot of a television series, he Walking Dead board
game based on the television show becomes an adaptation, an ancillary product
that, at least in appearance, seems to exist as promotional item rather than an
expansion of a storyworld. In contrast, he Walking Dead board game based on
the graphic novel series becomes part of a transmediated experience, drawing
on the pathos of the characters' adventures as depicted in the comic. he game,
while drawing on the aesthetics of the comic, maintains a unique identity that
focuses on player afect and emotionality.
Splitting transmedia narratives into their constituent elements reveals
multiple ways that stories could be spread across outlets. As Henry Jenkins, Sam
Ford, and Joshua Green describe, this split allows producers of transmediated
stories “to prolong audience engagement with media texts in order to expand
touchpoints.” 70 On one hand, media producers ind transmediation to be a
lucrative franchising endeavor. Derek Johnson's analysis of media franchising
points out that this “inter-industrial franchising … across the social and
industrial context of multiple media industries” helps to fuel the production
of multiple ancillary products across media. 71 he media industries ind within
transmediated products a proitable structure.
On the other hand, it is not just the media industries developing transmedia
outlets. Jenkins, Ford, and Green see transmediation as intimately tied to
viewer engagement, stressing “the importance of relationship building”
between producers and audiences. 72 Audiences are an integral part of
transmedia franchises. When audience pathos is removed from the game/
text transmediation, more than just empathy is lost. he potential to deepen