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| © Jackson Davis/Netflix Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp in season 2 of Stranger Things |
By Gil Kaufman, Billboard
Get ready to dive even deeper into the Upside Down. As part of the avalanche of gaming news coming out of the E3 Expo in Los Angeles this week, fans will be thrilled to hear that Telltale Games has reached a licensing deal with Netflix to release a Stranger Things video game.
Like just about all things that happen in Hawkins, Ind., the details are a bit sketchy and hard to decipher at this point, but in a tweet on Wednesday (June 13), the gamemaker confirmed that it's working on a Stranger title and plans to publish to consoles and computers "at a later date."
Telltale -- which has released narrative-heavy games based on The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones -- also revealed that it's developing an "interactive adventure" title based on Minecraft: Story Mode for Netflix.
Following the tweet about the news, Netflix issued a clarification to Techradar about the two titles. "We can confirm Minecraft: Story Mode is a licensed 5-episode interactive narrative series coming to our service this fall. It's an extension of our other interactive stories we have on our service like Stretch Armstrong: The Breakout, Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale and Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile," read the statement. "The Stranger Things project is being published by Telltale at a later date, not on the Netflix service. It's part of our marketing and title promotion efforts."
Netflix said it is not planning to get into gaming, but that they view interactive narrative storytelling as an important part of their service. "We are pursuing video games because we believe it will drive meaningful show awareness/buzz and allow fans to 'play' our most popular content," the company explained in a recent job posting for a Manager of Interactive Licensing position. "We want the interactive category to help promote our titles so they become part of the zeitgeist for longer periods of time and we want to use games as a marketing tactic to capture demand and delight our member community."
