Transmedia Pathos and Plot in The Walking Dead - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 51

to investigate alternate versions of transmediation (the spread of narrative
information across multiple media texts) and adaptation (the translation of
one media text into a diferent medium) within nominally similar media texts.
However, in our rapidly converging media environment, the relationship between
games as ancillary products to a narrative core franchise generally problematizes
conceptions of transmedia narrative coherence. Rarely can media-based board
games inluence transmedia narrative development. If games are not narratively
consequential, can they even be considered transmediated? Transmedia games
require the active participation of the audience as well as key attributes of the
core medium. In other words, while players of games must actively generate
their own meanings from the game, each paratextual game beneits from the
particular afective experience of the original text as well. But this process relies
on a conception of transmedia that develops interactively from both author and
audience, both creator and player. his notion of interaction development leads
to the ith principle of paratextual board games:
Principle 5: hrough player/text interaction, paratextual board games can
transmediate pathos and afect better than they can transmediate narrative.
A structural analysis of narratives reveals that diferent aspects of a narrative
can be transmediated in diferent ways, rather than from a strictly story-oriented
perspective. Some of these aspects include static existents, like character, setting,
or plot. Other aspects would fall under what Marie-Laure Ryan calls a more
dynamic category, including the development of character relationships. 2 For
example, Christy Dena notes that a cross-media franchise might develop a
character more thoroughly than a core text would have time for, by ofering
more time across the multiple outlets for character development. 3 Splitting
transmedia narratives into their constituent elements reveals multiple ways that
stories could be spread across outlets. Jason Mittell has shown how diferent
types of transmediation can function in television texts, including what he terms
“What Is” transmedia and “What If ” transmedia on television. “What Is” tends to
focus on expanding the storyworld through augmentation—adding additional
paratexts to explain a central narrative. he television series Lost , with ancillary
products like jigsaw puzzles, video games, and DVD extras all focusing on one
overarching story, represents a “What Is” type of transmediation. In contrast,
“What If ” tends to pose “hypothetical possibilities rather than canonical
certainties, inviting viewers to imagine alternative stories and approaches to
storytelling that are distinctly not to be treated as potential canon.” 4 In this case,
paratexts ofer possibilities not explored in the original text, running parallel to it