You guys brought up The Walking Dead game- just wanted to say that I never would have played it if I hadn’t heard about it on this podcast. Thanks! You also briefly mentioned projecting your personality into the game. I had an experience with The Walking Dead that I’ve never had before. I played the game, then watched my girlfriend play the game, and after she finished it we discussed the choices we made, and had an inciteful conversation that told me more about her, and told her more about me (and then I felt bad about myself). I’ll try to tell this story briefly. Spoilers (maybe), but I’m only gonna mention stuff from the first episode.

I can’t remember his name, but at the beginning of the game you briefly go to a farm and stay with a senior man and his son. At one point the senior man is trying to dig into your past, and he asks something like ‘Where were you headed?’ I answered with ‘WE were going…’ So then he asks ‘Who were you riding with?’, and I reply with ‘Nobody’-he takes this as if he caught me in a lie, which wasn’t at all how I meant it (I knew I’d said ‘WE earlier, so I said ‘Nobody’ as if to say ‘Nobody worth mentioning’, or “None of your business’). Long story short, the old guy really annoyed me. I felt like ‘hey, I just helped your son out of a crappy situation; be thankful and leave me be.’ But he kept probing me, which eventually left me feeling very unsympathetic when bad things happened (don’t want to say too much).

When my gf played this part she answered all his questions without holding back, and felt more like ‘Thanks for letting us stay here, and I understand you wanting to know who is under the roof of your barn, so this is who I am, and this is what I’ve been through so far.’

We discussed this part of the game over dinner, and it soon turned into a (heated) general discussion on whether it’s better to be completely honest with people you meet, or to hold back a bit so they don’t have ‘ammo’ to later use against you. As she spoke to me it became so clear that how we played that game is pretty much how we live-I don’t tell people anything about me, while she is an open book.

I could say more but I’ll just end by mentioning that, like in the game, my girlfriend ‘took note of what I said’…and I realized that maybe I said too much.