[davb]

It’s amazing how much work went into making it look like an abandoned 2003 arcade, even down to the team worrying about the color of the legs of a machine that might give it away as a more recent release. Then HBO stuff a Papermate Inkjoy RT pen in Sarah’s hand right in the first episode. The Inkjoy brand didn’t appear until around 2012 (and the retractable one was a little later). I’m assuming it was a product placement thing but it was quite in your face.

https://productplacementblog.com/tv-series/inkjoy-gel-pen-in...

[bee_rider]

I think the obvious conclusion here is that canonically Papermate is operating normally, releasing products on the same schedule as they did in the real world, until 2012 at least. Presumably they use the communication advantages endowed by superior writing instruments to weather the apocalypse.

[selfhoster11]

I would read a post-apocalyptic book about this.

[dfxm12]

I think a possible simple answer here is that there were bigger videogame nerds on set than pen nerds.

[differentView]

In the video game, the outbreak was in 2013. Maybe the product placement deal was made with that in mind before they changed the outbreak in the TV show to 2003.

[davb]

That’s a great point. Even if it’s not the real reason, it’s plausible and better than “we took one of the brands currently popular products”, especially when they’ve tried so hard (within reason) to get everything else just right.

[alwayseasy]

That's it. 100%

[hotpotamus]

I played (and greatly enjoyed) the games, but haven't seen the show, so I don't know how big this arcade scene is, but sometimes it amazes me how much work goes into constructing sets for large TV/Movie productions. I dabble in arcade restoration, so I'm aware of how much of a time and money suck it can be, and to think about how much work would go into just this one scene of one episode shows how easy it is for them to spend millions of dollars per episode on a big show these days.

[stevenwoo]

They constructed houses (and completely finishing at least the camera facing exteriors, then weathered them) for several blocks on an abandoned street for one scene in the episode where Joel has to take out the sniper (very similar to the game with different story beats) and this scene took three weeks to film for only about 10-15 minutes of screen time. The mall scene had some amazing detail for just background scenery, the faux shop signs looked authentic next to historic shops.

[davb]

I played the games when they were first released and loved them - they’ll forever be amongst my favourites. I’ve also really enjoyed the TV show.

I know very little about TV production and set design but I, too, was blown away by the amount of work and attention to detail. That the studio worked with experts in the retro arcade community was really cool. I found the description of the of the playout system for the MK machine fascinating, and reminiscent of the staged UIs I’ve read about being created in Unity and friends for other productions. Staged, but not green screen staged. And on the other hand, the description of the photo booth setup was just as fascinating - and that one was a green screen!

What a wonderful crossover career that seems to be.