Season Three introduces a new feature, Crowd Play, which allows up to 2,000 viewers to cast a vote every time a decision arises. And Telltale is still getting better at harnessing the inherent social power of the series. The end result is a real-time statistical breakdown-a snapshot of how similar or different you are to everyone else who plays the game. Every chapter ends with a statistical breakdown of the choices you made, which are placed alongside the choices of thousands and thousands of people around the world who have also played the game. Telltale understands how to amplify the value of this social component. And the enjoyment is only enhanced when you play with friends, heatedly debating the ramifications of every choice you make. You don’t need to put yourself in the character’s shoes because you are the character. But the Telltale game cuts out the middleman. This is the engine that drives Talking Dead, a frothy talk show that airs immediately after the series proper it’s also fodder for a cottage industry of Walking Dead recaps. When, say, Carol kills a kid in the TV series, we’re implicitly invited to debate whether she was right or wrong to do it. The Walking Dead lends itself to this kind of moral hypothesizing. What if a zombie apocalypse broke out right now? Who would you ally yourself with? Where would you go? What unique skills would you bring to a group of survivors? ![]() Later chapters have even been rewritten to accommodate unexpected reactions from players of earlier chapters.Īnd even if you wouldn’t literally want to live in The Walking Dead’s universe, it’s fun to kill time by sitting around and riffing on the hypothetical scenario-with your friends, or even alone, by looking around your office or subway car. If Telltale discovers that a disproportionate number of players are making the same choice-as in the game’s first installment, where 75 percent of players favored saving one ally over another-they learn from it, and tweak future stories accordingly. That feedback is factored into future chapters. Like the comic and the TV show, the Telltale game unfolds in chapters, which means the creators get real-time feedback on how players are experiencing the story. (In fact, the occasional appearance of a familiar character from the comic is invariably the weakest part of the game, since the player is carrying extra-textual baggage that might dictate their actions.) So how do the game’s creators find the appropriate balance of compelling characters, horrific violence, and unforgiving moral choices? By paying attention to those who are actually playing the game. The video game, which is generally self-contained, doesn’t have nearly as much cross-pollination. ![]() It represents a simpler world-free of technology and built on survival tactics, tight-knit relationships, and rustic simplicity. The Walking Dead franchise offers a kind of wish fulfillment.
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