Sean Vanaman Walking The Lines

The Man Behind the Walking Dead Series and Indie Hit Firewatch Reveals the Secret Art of Telling Tales.

- Chris Schilling

Sean Vanaman was planning a career in television before he joined Telltale Games as a writer and designer. TV’s loss is gaming’s gain, as Vanaman has quickly become one of the industry’s most respected scribes. His work as project lead on The Walking Dead helped earn Telltale a raft of awards, and gripping first-person adventure Firewatch looks likely to do the same for his new venture, Campo Santo. The day after inking a deal with Good Universe for a Firewatch movie, Vanaman talked to OXM about the challenges of interactive storytelling, and why his next game won’t include any trees.

How did you get started in games?

I was a college student in LA, and didn’t really know what I wanted to study, so I spent time in many different programs. Along the way, I started working with Disney in their games group just to earn the money I needed to get through college, and I ended up with a degree in Film and English. Around that time, I was writing a lot. Working at Disney wasn’t the best environment for [that] just because the company was so big and it was hard to get anything greenlit there, especially when you’re a young guy. I was honestly kind of done with games, and I figured with my degree and the friends I had I could probably become a writer’s assistant in TV. But then I met a guy who was an executive producer at Telltale Games and he was looking for more writing-focused designers, and I had experience, and I got hired to work on the Wallace and Gromit series for Xbox 360.

The Walking Dead marked a turning point for Telltale, and a shift away from the usual puzzle-focused adventures. Did the structure of the company change at all?