jake-rodkin
Latest
Campo Santo studio formed by former Telltale Games, Klei developers
A new San Francisco-based video game studio called Campo Santo has formed, and is composed of former Telltale Games and Klei developers. Namely, The Walking Dead designers and Idle Thumbs Podcast hosts Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman joined Mark of the Ninja lead designer Nels Anderson and artist Olly Moss on the team. Vanaman noted in the studio's announcement blog that Campo Santo's first game will be "both backed by and made in collaboration with" Portland design studio Panic, Inc.
The Walking Dead gets new life with dev webseries, Playing Dead
Telltale's video game adaptation of The Walking Dead is making slow, shuffling, possibly even moaning progress into reality, at least from our perspective. Luckily for us, Telltale has created a new web show, Playing Dead, in which developers and designers talk about the tone and progress of the game, instead of taking that time to actually make it.Don't get us wrong, we love hearing details about a game based on one of our favorite comic series in recent memory, but we won't be responsible for our actions if we don't see a gameplay video soon. We might write letters.Playing Dead launches alongside a new website for Telltale's The Walking Dead, and the first episode is watchable above. In it, lead designers Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman discuss the timeline of their Walking Dead, which runs parallel to the beginning of Rick's canonical story, and the authentic approach they're taking to original writer Robert Kirkman's lore.Rodkin and Vanaman reveal that players will interact with established characters such as Glenn and Hershel, and the video offers some in-game screenshots, one featuring a woman that could be Lori. We have provided the screens below for closer inspection.Choices players make, such as saving a character's life, will carry through the month-to-month episodes, Rodkin and Vanaman say, affecting later decisions and gameplay options. Vanaman notes that the game is five episodes, spread over five months.Supplementing all the new Walking Dead info, The Book of Eli writer Gary Whitta announced today that he is working with Telltale on their adaptation.%Gallery-147727%
Telltale elaborates on the story and choices of The Walking Dead
Telltale Games didn't have much of The Walking Dead to show off at Comic-Con except for some screenshots and concept art, but we were provided with game designer Jake Rodkin's assurance that it would not be just another zombie game. "The last shot of this game is probably not going to be a guy with two axes on top of a mile-high mountain of zombies," he said. Telltale's garnered a reputation for building licensed games not just around a popular setting, but around strong stories and characters as well. The Walking Dead game will fit right into that tradition. It won't feature the main characters of the comic book or the TV show, however -- Rodkin said they didn't want players coming in with preconceived notions about how the game's story should play out. If the game presents you with a choice of going left or right, players may think, "'Well I've seen him turn left twice now, I saw it in the comic book and in the show, so I'm going to go left.' And as much as a designer would hope that people are going to experiment with your system, people would just want to see that story again." Telltale's game will follow Lee, a prisoner, and Clementine, a young girl he comes across in the zombie apocalypse. And anyone with hopes of anything resembling a feel-good ending should probably check that at the door on the way in. "The Walking Dead," Rodkin said, "is not really a game about people who save the world. It's more about a story of trying to survive as people inside of this huge and horrible situation." %Gallery-125847%
