Transmedia Pathos and Plot in The Walking Dead - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 59

intention to argue that one game is “better” than the other; rather, the evaluative
judgments I use allow me to probe deeper into the mechanisms of transmediation
itself. Ater all, the efectiveness of transmediation as a concept must somehow
relate to the efectiveness of transmediation as a narrative form.
Participation and interactivity are integral to any game (see Chapters 6 and 8),
but they are even more so when discussing the relationship between paratextual
elements of a narrative franchise. his is an inherently diicult proposition, as
Montola suggests:
play is a temporary and ever-changing social process that can only be analyzed as
a whole in retrospect. Participants obtain diferent pieces of information during
the play, and no participant can ever accumulate all the information related to
a game. 41
Yet, it is necessary to assume standard attributes in order to generalize about
the mechanics of the games for the players. here are some standard elements
in he Walking Dead that make this analysis slightly easier. he Walking Dead
relies on audience afect, what Kyle Bishop terms “dramatic pathos,” to engender
a connection to the characters. 42 Both the comic book and the television series
relect this, as Jay Bonansinga notes: “the spiritual center of the comic series—a
human story laying out amid all the gore—translates well to the intimate conines
of television.” 43 Zombies may be the most obvious characters from he Walking
Dead , but they are not necessarily the titular characters: the “walking dead” are
also those humans let alive ater the outbreak.
he generative process of game-based pathos emerges from player empathy
for characters. Empathy is what allows players to feel emotion within a ictional
world and for ictional characters. As Salen and Zimmerman show, the complex
relationship between game player and game character generates afect in game
players by giving them “permission to play with identity.” 44 his pathos translates
particularly to the WDGN. Indeed, while many of the same characters are present
in both games, only the close connection between the player and the character in
the comic-based game engenders a transmediation of afect. In other words, the
WDGN generates transmedia pathos through the character attributes and the
player investment in the unfolding of the game.
In order to examine the salient diferences between the two games, I will
focus this analysis on three elements: the gameplay mechanics, the player/
character interactions within the game, and the artwork of the game. hrough an
investigation of these elements, I will show how the WDGN functions through