Ludic Interaction in Doctor Who - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 159

realized characters and detailed worlds are important elements of building
any transmedia franchise. 3 In this case, paratextual board games not only help
generate complex worlds, but also engender audience engagement with those
worlds. With the right positioning within the narrative framework, matching
ideologically but difering in practice, paratextual board games can not only
strengthen and cohere these cult worlds, but can actually make the storyworlds
more real . Paratextual board games make the abstract tangible; there is physical
interaction within a ictional diegesis. Board games replace visualization with
imagination, spectacle with player investment.
he imaginative play of paratextual board games represents a new way of
approaching the relationship between board games and their representative
text. Doctor Who: he Interactive Electronic Board Game and Doctor Who: he
Time Travelling Action Game represent salient aspects of ludic interaction,
a way of interacting with the medium that is more than experiential. 4 Both
games provide a scafold upon which to build the game elements while allowing
the freedom to imagine new scenarios. Both games make use of “interactive”
elements to generate randomness within the play and to create a more satisfying
game experience. he interactive elements use battery power and electronics
to automatically move the board or create random elements without player
involvement. At the same time, these interactive elements function as rituals
that attempt to cohere the player to the original Doctor Who text. By seemingly
increasing the randomness of the game, the interactive mechanisms mirror
the “uncertainty” of a cult narrative, but like a narrative once watched, this
interactivity eventually becomes rote.
Released in 2005, the same year that the irst new series of Doctor Who
premiered in the UK, he Interactive Electronic Board Game features a model of
the TARDIS that randomly ofers one of twelve diferent scenarios whenever a
player lands on a particular space on the board. hese scenarios include “A Black
Hole is pulling us in!” which instructs the player to lose two turns, or “Looks like
the Daleks are leaving,” which gives the player two extra turns. In contrast, he
Time Travelling Action Game , which was released two years ater David Tennant
took the role of the titular Time Lord, features an electronically controlled game
board that rotates at random moments in the game, rearranging the spaces on
the board. Where one's playing piece may be two spaces away from the end, the
rotating board can move it further or closer to its goal.
he inclusion of automated randomness in the two Doctor Who board games
follows a number of “interactive” board games, many of which use DVDs or
VHS tapes to create a multimedia game experience. hese games, like Star Trek: