Commenting on Henry Jenkins "The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Principles of Transmedia Storytelling."

Henry Jenkins, is often seen as the pioneer of transmedia, if not it's pioneer then at least one of it's most staunch and well known advocates. He has often held the belief that if a story is strong enough then it is are often greatly enhanced by telling across a range of different media, be it comic books, animation, novels or film.

One of the points he spoke on in the blog was seriality. This intrigued me as where does seriality end and transmedia begin if they use different forms. Can something be considered one continual story if it begins life as an animation and ends as a novel? Indeed can it work?

Jenkins describes seriality in media as "A serial, then, creates meaningful and compelling story chunks and then disperses the full story across multiple installments" It is interesting to think then if a franchise was created as a film and ended in a cliffhanger which would be concluded in a comic book which ended in a cliffhanger which is concluded in a novel. In theory the concept would work but not on as large a level at least financially as a purely movie-based franchise would. There would be an audience which would be loyal enough to a story which would follow the cross-media jump for instance the TV show 'Buffy the vampire slayer' created by Joss Whedon ended at season seven when a large chunk of the city was swallowed into hell and thousands of people became slayers as well, a few years later Joss Whedon wrote 'Buffy the Vampire slayer: Season 8' comic book which continued from that point in the story and the comic continues to do well.

However this is perhaps almost incidental as a lot of the comic book's patrons were already comic-book fans, so it's hard to say if the crossover would work if it was only continued in one form at a time.

As Jenkins writes "There still is a lot we don't know about what will motivate consumers to seek out those other bits of information about the unfolding story" and it will perhaps only be proved successful if a company is daring enough to be the pathfinder and take the risk on a transmedia serial. An interesting way to approach a possibility of creating a expansive universe via seriality would be in the same way that films such as 2004's 'Crash' and to a lesser extent 2009's 'Crossing Over', where separate stories with separate characters begin to interweave. This would be interesting to see if this would work via transmedia; for instance one story in comic book, one animation, one digital game and one film all begin to affect each other and the stories interweave.
This is something that I would like to see happen more in digital games in the future and I think the realms of comic book, cinema, animation and TV are closely enough linked to allow the transition to be successful if done well.

Transmedia storytelling

Transmedia storytelling

Transmedia storytelling if done effectively can tell a story across any number of media and each form will have its own unique style, it’s own voice.  A recent example of this done well would be ‘Tron’, at first there was the original film, then came the digital games (which were set soon after)such as ‘Tron 2.0’. Following on from this was the film’s upcoming sequel. Then came the digital games and later, the prequel comic books and prequel digital game.

As first mentioned each of these media told a different part of the story, making best use of those mediums particular strengths. If the transmedia story telling is successful and effective it will also form part of an interconnecting story. If we take The ‘Tron’ example, The ‘Tron: Evolution’ digital game and the ‘Tron: Betrayal’ comic books would tell a background story to main film and would reinforce and open up and enhance the film as an experience.

Although Tron in all its incarnations is a good example, it was not the first nor the most effective example. Many other titles have done this. Unfortunately, it’s often the case that bad examples are the rule rather than exceptions as many companies will pump out ‘Tie-ins’ to popular products which rather than enhance the story, are just another way to sell a product.

The scope of transmedia storytelling allows people to enter a story at any level from whatever their primary interest may be and brach off from there, for instance an anime fan may have first seen anything to do with the new incarnation of WB's Batman via the 'Gotham Knight' anime title which had a series of short Batman episodes by various popular anime artists on DVD and then had went to watch the Batman Begins film and the greater their interest, the more they will pursue the other media the story is told in. There are almost limitless possibilities and companies who have or wish to create popular franchises are starting to see this potential and use it wisely instead of pumping out 'tie-ins'.

Many of the most successful transmedia stories do not stick to a singular character as this often creates continuity issues for instance: if Marvel wanted to create a comic book based in the Iron Man movie universe, they couldn't involve characters who haven't yet been introduced in the films as the versions would most likely not be similar. Instead, successful transmedia involves a wider scope. Henry Jenkins agrees with this and states "Most often, transmedia stories are based not on individual characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds which can sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories."


With transmedia so readily attainable by games companies, it's unsurprising that it is now almost commonplace for a games company to dabble in transmedia when a large-scale game is being released, prequel comic books are almost par for the course. The difficult part is allowing these different media to have a vibe of their own and make them part of the same universe as the 'hub' media without having to employ all the same characters and storylines.

The transmedia scope is something I would like to explore further in the future and something I would like to utilise in my own digital game designs, specifically the use of comic books and animated films to expand an established fictional world.

Sound bites

Importance of sound in digital games...

Chris Goodswen’s lecture was insightful and revealed a lot of information about the games industry, in particular the fact that if you wanted to be creative, don’t join one of the main studios, go independent. Due to the investor constraints within the major games studios, they would prefer to play it safe and either create carbon copies of existing games or sequels to them. The smaller companies have the freedom to experiment with more creative and unique games which push the envelope.

Chris also spoke about his opinion that although games designers should be specialised within their field, they should also push their own boundaries; 2D designers mastering 3D programmes and vice versa. This was something that rang true with my own studies, as although my main interest in 2D I still want to be able to use the 3D programmes to better bring my work to life.

One of the things I also picked up on in the lecture was the importance and perhaps decline of sound as a core aspect in digital games, this was briefly touched upon and this was something I wanted to explore further.

Although digital games didn't have any sound until the release of Computer Space in 1971, sound in video games always seems to be the last thing thought of, almost an afterthought. However, effective sound design can make or break a game.  In fact some games are so closely linked with their sound that they are synonymous with them, for instance how can you think of Tetris without thinking of the theme music?

Unfortunately there is a recent trend for digital games to mimic cinema, not only visually but in terms of sound design as well. The video game designers want the sound to echo films or more specifically summer blockbuster Michael Bay-esque films that are all spectacle and have little depth. These parallels may have arisen as soon as video games were able to emulate films with their graphics and video game bosses wanted to emulate not only their visual style and look but their revenue as well.

Rob Bridgett  [online] 2010, states “How many times have phrases like "more bangs per buck", "beef-it-up", "more, louder, faster, harder" been heard at audio meetings?” He continues to explain that these parallels may have increased in recent times but that their tendency to be loud and brash may stem from video games competing with each for sound in the arcades of the late 70’s and 80’s.

Thankfully there are games such as ‘Ico’, which are learning the lesson that subtlety can be just as effective, if not more so, than crashing drums and obvious crescendos.

The Xbox live game 'Limbo' also made use of silences and subtleties to enhance it's mood and added to the films atmospherics far greater than any large booming music would have done.

Perhaps recent highly successful films such as which lack soundtrack completely such as 'The Blair Witch Project', 'Paranormal Activity' and this years 'Buried' will show the digital games industry that the sound of what is happening onscreen can be more than enough to create tone. Capcom's 'Resident Evil' showed this can be done with the simple eerie ticking of the grandfather clock in the mansion







Coherent worlds via transmedia

In my blog I will try to reaseach and discuss how a cohesive world can be augmented by successful transmedia.

I will try to illustrate my findings with examples of successful and unsuccessful transmedia.

Bilson [online] (2010) writes "The beauty of transmedia storytelling is that they can all live together and complement each other in a consistent universe. And if you are a fan who loves that universe, you have the opportunity to experience as much of it as you like." This is a perfect way of looking at transmedia, a jumping-on point for a fan of a franchise from any media. Each one adding to the whole.

In the games industry, worlds are created everyday which are as different from the next as night and day. Each world if the game is designed well has it's own style, feel and setting. Digital games which are successful at this have a definitive universe which is instantly recognisable such as the 'Tron' digital games. Everything in the game is designed around a core concept and all of the games aspects such as it's objects, attributes, internal relationships and the environment itself coalesce to produce a unique world.

If the world works well in each of these ways and is unique enough in its concept the transmedia can become a natural expansion of the core concept.

If we take the Tron example for instance, this is a franchise that has spanned over two films, digital games, comic books, novels and soon an animated TV show. Each medium works on it's own merits and adds to the universe without  necessarily using the central characters from the original concept. Because the concept and universe Tron created is entirely cohesive in it's own style and mythos, stories can be set in the same universe using entirely different characters and still successfully contribute to the overall world.