Playing Dead: Transmedia Pathos and Plot in The Walking Dead Board Games

released board games based on The Walking Dead; one for the graphic novel series (Kirkman 2003) and one for its television adaptation (AMC 2010-present), respectively. Both games reference their core text in the artwork and style, and both develop from an explicit association with the requisite text of each medium. The game based on the comic, The Walking Dead – The Board Game (Z-Man) is a complex game using multiple dice, cards, and character options to develop a play experience that, I argue, transmediates the emotional pathos experienced by the characters in the graphic novel. Pathos itself is generated by affective actions occurring to a character in a media text. In this sense, the graphic novel board game (GNBG) generates unique player affect, opening up the definition of transmedia storytelling to include player affect as a constituent element. In contrast, The Walking Dead Board Game (Cryptozoic) is a relatively simple board game played to mirror the narrative experience of the show. The fact that the television board game (TVBG) reflects the narrative trajectory of the television show presents an adaptation of the narrative rather than a transmediation. In other words, each game based on The Walking Dead franchise takes a different approach to the source material, GNBG taking a character-centric approach, and the TVBG taking a narrative-centric approach. In the former case this is realised in the gameplay as a transmediation of pathos and in the latter it becomes an adaptation of narrative. This seemingly minor shift heralds a major change in studies of transmediation. The existence of two board games, each based on the same core text but developed via two different media, offers a relevant opportunity to investigate August 2014 www.intensitiescultmedia.com