The movie studio has invested in the developer of the Walking Dead games to develop a new crossover concept featuring both TV and game elements

There have been myriad attempts to marry television and games into “holistic transmedia experiences” – and the results have often been as bad as the phrase itself.

All that could be about to change following a decision by film and television studio Lionsgate to make a “significant” investment in Telltale Games, the developer of episodic adventure games based on The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones.

The two are to collaborate on what the companies are calling a “super show” – a drama series that features both television and game elements.

Telltale chief executive Kevin Bruner told Entertainment Weekly that the linear and interactive elements will work together in an episodic format. “Each super show episode [the interactive game and the scripted episode] will be released as a package designed so that you can consume the interactive portion or watch the scripted show portion in any order you’d like,” he said.

Lionsgate diversifies

“For instance, if you play the interactive episode first, certain elements of the scripted episode portion will be tailored to reflect some choices made in your interactive play-through. If you watch the show before playing, some elements in the interactive portions may be presented differently than if you played first.”



Lionsgate has been looking to diversify its entertainment business. The studio best known for the Hunger Games franchise and acclaimed TV dramas such as Mad Men and Orange Is The New Black, set up its own game development studio last April.

Meanwhile, Telltale Games has carved out a niche as a specialist developer of episodic narrative dramas, based around well-known TV and game brands.

The company’s Walking Dead titles have sold 8.5m copies and it has just announced a new series based in the Minecraft universe.

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This is not the first tie-in between television and interactive gaming content. Some experiments have sought to slot TV content into narrative gaps between gaming instalments. The Halo: Nightfall live-action TV series for example, takes place between the games Halo 4 and Halo: Guardians.

Other projects have tried to combine interactive and linear components – US sci-fi series Defiance is accompanied by a massively-multiplayer role-playing game, with battles in the latter originally planned to have ramifications for the television plotline. However, the interconnectivity between the two has proved limited due to differences in production schedules.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is yet to release Quantum Break, the combined game and digital television series, which was announced with much hype at the launch of the Xbox One console.

In May 2013, Microsoft promised that player actions in the game would have an effect on the live-action TV series, and vice versa. The game is expected to released later this year. However, last July Microsoft has closed its Xbox Entertainment Studios arm, which was created to work on transmedia projects.

Telltale told Entertainment Weekly that it still planned to work on traditional narrative games alongside its super show plans. There was also the possibility of adventure games based around Lionsgate properties.

“We have a ton of respect for the IP [intellectual property] they own and control,” said Bruner. “We will continue to explore how we can work together on some of their IP just as we have been doing for some time, but there’s nothing to announce right now.”

Certainly the prospect of an Orange is the New Black adventure game would be an intriguing one, with its large cast of female prison inmates and challenging, adult themes – though Hunger Games: the Adventure is probably more likely.