and animation. For Skybound’s part, I think we laid a good foundation for other teams by developing a clear scenario to frame the whole thing: the fictional community of Prosper Landing, Alaska, has splintered into two factions, Villagers and Plant Workers, with competing ideas about how to use their limited resources to survive the coming winter. It was up to the audience to decide whether these factions would find ways to cooperate or fall into conflict.
When did you realise you were on to something? Was there an “a-ha!” moment? When we saw the outcomes of community bids trending toward collaborative choices more than self-interested and divisive choices, which reaffirmed my faith in humanity. The audience genuinely seemed to care about keeping every character alive. They were invested in bringing the two factions at Prosper Landing together. That felt like a real win.
Was designing the narrative a bit like making a Choose Your Own Adventure book - were there only so many paths the players could go down? A bit, although there was more variability within individual scenes than you would get branching paths. Bid outcomes rippled out to change smaller details as well as large set pieces. Tracking all of those outcomes, and ensuring that each new day’s content was consistent with all previous decisions, was something we could not have accomplished without the narrative designers at Terrible Posture Games maintaining a comprehensive “source of truth” to coordinate variables across all production teams.
How involved was The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman? Robert Kirkman blessed everything from the story concept to the art direction. He’s one of the most in-demand creators in entertainment, especially with upcoming seasons of Invincible in production for Amazon Prime, so while Robert approves everything at the high level, we have a team of experts at Skybound who ensure that every detail, every line, is produced with the authenticity and spirit of his original comics.
How did The Walking Dead: Last Mile come about? Genvid Entertainment created the concept and technology behind MILEs, and produced their first project, Rival Peak, for Facebook. Coming off the success of Rival Peak, they approached Skybound with the idea of a bigger, more story-driven approach set in the world of The Walking Dead. TWD has conquered
March 2023 MCV/DEVELOP | 41
every other medium, and Skybound loves to play on the frontier of interactive storytelling, so it made sense to see what we could bring to this new genre.
What monetisation model did the game use? Last Mile was completely free to play and watch on Facebook. No purchases or microtransactions whatsoever.
How many game designers and writers were on staff for the season?
More than I can count! MILEs start with the word massive, so there were dozens of designers and writers on the project, between our dev partners at Genvidnvid Entertainment, Pipeworks Studio, the narrative team at Terrible Posture Games, the live stream production crew here at Skybound, and the animation crew at Cyber Group Studios.
d wr e team at be
How much turnaround did the team have for coming up with and implementing new scenes for the game?
ming up e?
Turnaround periods were tight. The time between locking in a bid decision and producing a finished CG render and
ween loc
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