We offer a provisional schema which accounts for the variety of “attractors” informing these dynamic engagements: simulated, relating to the gameworld lived, relating to participants’ real world experiences and orientations conventional, relating to participants’ prior engagements with other related media and situated, relating to the localized and embodied settings of play. Eschewing perspectives that view the player/game avatar relationship as an exchange between two fixed and stable entities, we draw from microethnographic explorations of participants’ playing and commenting on The Walking Dead (Telltale, 2012), to illustrate the ways in which their relationship to Lee shifts from moment to moment. The Walking Dead video game offers a compelling site in which to explore whether, how, and through what processes players form associations with the game’s playable character, Lee Everett. Me and Lee: Identification and the Play of Attraction in The Walking Dead by Nicholas Taylor, Chris Kampe, Kristina Bell Abstract: Her work uses critical and interpretive methods to explore issues of gender and race in digital media and pop culture. Qubein School of Communication and a Ph.D student in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at North Carolina State University.

Kristina Bell is an Instructor of Communication in the Nido R. His research falls within Games Studies, with attention to: the use of games as pedagogical tools or as a medium to discuss serious issues the role of interface in participant experience of digital spaces lastly, how games are changing the ways we tell and engage with stories. He is co-founder of Circuit Studio, a collaborative maker space at NC State.Ĭhris Kampe is a PhD student of the Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media Program at North Carolina State University. His work applies critical, feminist and socio-technical perspectives to experimental and mixed-methods research with digital gaming communities.

Nicholas Taylor is Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the Department of Communication at North Carolina State University.

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