Game creators use literary tricks

[Jazzy]

Once known for being crude and violent, some video games now feature sophisticated storylines and characters. Some players see a new literary tradition arising.

Clementine is a girl who is trying to survive a zombie apocalypse in a video game series based on the comic book and television franchise The Walking Dead. But for Michael Abbott, who teaches theatre at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, she is more than that.

"I would just be driving down the road in the car, and I'd be thinking about her," he said.

In this way Clementine resembles great figures from literature - she looms large in people's imagination, he said.

Abbott and many other fans find her even more compelling than a character in a work of fiction, because players of the game are responsible for her survival.

Writer Robert Kirkman and illustrator Tony Moore came up with the storyline for The Walking Dead for a comic book series almost a decade ago. Now it's the most-watched drama in the history of cable television, with a 16.1 million viewers for its fourth season premier.

Telltale Games will release the second season of The Walking Dead video game series next week.

Abbott says the best way to experience The Walking Dead is through the video game, since players are forced to confront tough moral choices. Players have to decide, for instance, whether a former history professor named Lee Everett should abandon a character named Lilly to die.

The relationship between literature and video games is close, and many developers have adapted works of literature into games.

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Do agree or disagree that the relationship between literature and video games is close and why?

 

[Sinon]

Abbott and many other fans find her even more compelling than a character in a work of fiction,

It is a work of fiction.

I don't disagree. Considering games with storylines need those storylines to be written, it'd be stupid to not believe there's a close relationship.