Walking Dead game producer: "The community is renewing my faith in humanity"
"We need that in 2022."
The Walking Dead: Last Mile is a massively interactive live event (or MILE), a sort of hybrid between TV storytelling and video-game levels of community interaction. Basically, in this corner of TWD canon, the players decide where the story goes.
The game has already been through a prologue period and completed its first major 'act', and now the second act is under way, with two rival factions continuing to clash in the icy domain of Alaska, where resources are dwindling and a walker herd is nearing. A classic Walking Dead dilemma, now with player agency at its heart.
Players can access the game through Facebook, create their own character and complete daily tasks. Everything you do in the game helps you earn influence points, which you can use to 'bid' on big community decisions.
These decisions could be the difference between life and death for the central characters in the game, and your custom character could even appear in widely-seen cut scenes if you earn them the right.
Brought to life by Genvid Technologies and Skybound Entertainment, The Walking Dead: Last Mile is a unique blend of episodic storytelling and gaming elements, and we've said before that it could revolutionise the link between games and TV.
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So when we caught up with the developers at the Gamescom conference this summer, we wanted to ask what it's like creating an experience like this, where a growing community of players will ultimately get the final say on all the major decisions.
We couldn't help but ask, does the community tend towards chaos and destruction when you let them take the wheel? Skybound Entertainment VP Shawn Kittelsen told us: "No, the community seems to have an instinct to protect and preserve, which I'm grateful for. It's renewing my faith in humanity, and we need that in 2022.
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He added: "We tried to set up situations so there wasn't a right or a wrong decision - all the decisions in the bids are equally valid. Some of the decisions, that could lead to harsher consequences, usually have a good motivation behind them.
"So maybe the community is voting that they don't want to share as many resources with the rival faction, but they're only voting that way and bidding that way, because they want to make sure they take care of the characters that are in their camp. So it seems like there's not too much outright villainy in the community, at least, but we'll see - tensions are rising, and the conversation is about to get a lot more heated."
Kittelsen admits that "it's hard" to craft entire situations that may never get seen, if the community votes to go in a different direction. He tells us "that means being prepared to come up with some really great storylines, really great scenes, that no one is ever going to see. But it also puts that pressure on to make sure that everything that we write is going to be as good as the other.
"Because we just don't know what people are going to choose. If there's anything - it's less killing your darlings, [and more] making sure every darling can be a darling, and not leaving any duds [among the options for players]."
The Walking Dead: Last Mile is available on Facebook now. You can watch our full interview below, where Kittelsen shares a message for intrigued TWD fans that may not have gotten involved yet:
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