Transmedia Pathos and Plot in The Walking Dead - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 52

rather than augmenting it. Fan iction could be considered an example of “What
If ” transmedia, as the work of fans would not be considered canonical but does
open up new possibilities to read the narrative. Although both the Walking Dead
board games exemplify Mittell's conception of “What If ” transmedia stories, the
comics-based game deepens the world through pathos while the TV-based game
deepens the world through plot . Both games play on their connections to their
core text, but do so in radically diferent ways.
By participating in the games, the player experiences a level of pathos
engendered by the larger the Walking Dead narrative structure. Each game
approaches pathos diferently, and the relationship between the players and the
characters becomes less grounded in the overall the Walking Dead narrative
than in the relationships between the characters themselves. he players ind
themselves discovering that same connection. his is transmedia, but it is not
a general transmediated narrative—it is a transmediation of afect, of deep
and experiential emotion. his connection between player and character afect
establishes a sixth principle of paratextual board games:
Principle 6: Paratextual board games rely on mixing familiar characters and
unfamiliar characteristics to facilitate player investment.
First, I will discuss transmediation as it has traditionally been applied to
narrative. In trying to transmediate the television narrative, the WDTV ends up
downplaying the character-based afect generated by the television series in favor
of focusing on plot-driven narrative adaptation. hen, I will discuss what I term
“transmedia pathos,” an emotional connection between transmediated texts, as
it applies to the graphic novel and the game based on it. As Kevin Veale points
out, “the afective dimension of something refers to a spectrum of subjective
things that we feel but that we are less conscious of than our emotions.” 5 In other
words, the game based on the comic does not replicate a narrative situation, but
rather places the player in the same situations and with the same type of pathos
as the comic book characters. Finally, I will conclude with some observations
about the future of transmedia and what this might portend for further studies
of paratextual board games.
Transmedia pathos
In the previous two chapters I have looked at the way rules and play can govern
modes of game design and mechanics in terms of paratextual board games. In