#The walking dead game how to

RPZs highlight the way that “video games teach not only entrenched ideologies of race and racism, but also how gameplay’s pleasure principles of mastery, winning, and skills development are often inextricably tied to and defined by familiar racial and ethnic stereotypes” (Everett and Watkins 150). Craig Watson call “Racialized Pedagogical Zones” (RPZs). We can see how games encourage players to learn and experience race as what Anna Everett and S.

#The walking dead game how to

By meshing together controlled narrative and the core mechanic of player choice, The Walking Dead encourages players to decide for themselves how to define black masculinity through their actions.

Players do this by taking on the role of Lee Everett, a black male who opens the game on his way to prison outside of Atlanta, Georgia for committing murder, but Lee receives a second chance at life thanks to a zombie outbreak. The Walking Dead, meanwhile, by virtue of being an adventure game with the mechanic of player choice at the forefront, allows players to participate in the construction of black masculinity instead of simply consuming it. Thus, in these contexts, black male characters in videogames are typically rendered violent and aggressive due to the roles they are cast in without providing the player any choice or agency in these acts- they simply consume violent black masculinity. Leonard, identify these games as “high-tech blackface” and note that “eight out of every ten black video game characters are sports competitors black males, thus, only find visibility in sports games” (“High-Tech Blackface” 1). From the beginning of the game and throughout, players encounter a drastically different set of opportunities to experience and define race than those seen in games criticized for their representations of black male characters like Madden, NFL Street, or Grand Theft Auto. The winner of several Game of the Year Awards and many other accolades, The Walking Dead also is one of the best examples of a game that complicates the standard representation of black male characters in gaming and provides an opportunity for players to understand and craft racial identity. In 2012, Telltale Games released The Walking Dead, an episodic adventure game, to critical and commercial success.