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Transmedia Storytelling

Moving characters from books to films to video games can make them stronger andmore compelling.

ByHenry Jenkinson January 15, 2003Several years ago, I asked a leading producer of animated features how muchcreative control his team exerted over the games, toys, comics, and other productsthat deployed their characters. I was reassured that the distribution companyhandled all such ancillary materials. I saw the movement of content across media asan enhancement of the creative process. He saw it as a distraction or corruption.

This past month, I attended a gathering of top creatives from Hollywood and the games

industry, hosted by Electronic Arts; they were discussing how to collaboratively develop

content that would play well across media. This meeting reflected a growing realizationwithin the media industries that what is variously called transmedia, multiplatform, or

enhanced storytelling represents the future of entertainment.

Lets face it: we have entered an era of media convergence that makes the flow ofcontent across multiple media channels almost inevitable. The move toward digitaleffects in film and the improved quality of video game graphics means that it isbecoming much more realistic to lower production costs by sharing assets acrossmedia. Everything about the structure of the modern entertainment industry wasdesigned with this single idea in mind-the construction and enhancement ofentertainment franchises.

And the push isnt just coming from the big media companies. The kids who havegrown up consuming and enjoying Pokemon across media are going to expect thissame kind of experience from The West Wing as they get older. By design,Pokemon unfolds across games, television programs, films, and books, with nomedia privileged over any other. For our generation, the hour-long, ensemble-based,serialized drama was the pinnacle of sophisticated storytelling, but for the nextgeneration, it is going to seem, well, like less than childs play. Younger consumershave become information hunters and gatherers, taking pleasure in tracking downcharacter backgrounds and plot points and making connections between different

texts within the same franchise. And in addition, all evidence suggests thatcomputers dont cancel out other media; instead, computer owners consume onaverage significantly more television, movies, CDs, and related media than thegeneral population.

While the technological infrastructure is ready, the economic prospects sweet, andthe audience primed, the media industries havent done a very good job ofcollaborating to produce compelling transmedia experiences. Even within the mediaconglomerates, units compete aggressively rather than collaborate. Each industrysector has specialized talent, but the conglomerates lack a common language orvision to unify them. The current structure is hierarchical: film units set licensing

limits on what can be done in games based on their properties. At the same time,film producers dont know the game market very well or respect those genre

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elements which made something like Tomb Raider successful. We need a newmodel for co-creation-rather than adaptation-of content that crosses media.

The current licensing system typically generates works that are redundant (allowingno new character background or plot development), watered down (asking the new

media to slavishly duplicate experiences better achieved through the old), or riddledwith sloppy contradictions (failing to respect the core consistency audiences expectwithin a franchise). These failures account for why sequels and franchises have abad reputation. Nobody wants to consume a steady diet of second-ratenovelizations!

Franchise products are governed too much by economic logic and not enough by artistic

vision. Hollywood acts as if it only has to provide more of the same, printing a StarTreklogo on so many widgets. In reality, audiences want the new work to offer new insightsinto the characters and new experiences of the fictional world. If media companies reward

that demand, viewers will feel greater mastery and investment; deny it and they stomp off in

disgust.

So far, the most successful transmedia franchises have emerged when a singlecreator or creative unit maintains control over the franchise. Hollywood might wellstudy the ways that Lucasfilm has managed and cultivated its Indiana Jonesand StarWarsfranchises. When Indiana Joneswent to television, for example, it exploited themediums potential for extended storytelling and character development: theYoungIndiana Jones Chroniclesshowed us the character take shape against the backdropof various historical events and exotic environments. When Star Warsmoved intoprint, its novels expanded the timeline to show us events not contained in the filmtrilogies, or recast the stories around secondary characters, as did the Tales of theCantinaseries, which fleshes out those curious-looking aliens in the background ofthe original movie. When Star Wars went to games, those games didnt just enactfilm events; they showed us what life would be like for a Jedi trainee or a bountyhunter.

On the other end of the scale, independent filmmaker Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy,Clerks), a longtime comic fan, uses this lower cost medium to fill in gaps and extendcharacter background within his New Jersey film series. Joss Whedon, the creatorof Buffy the Vampire Slayer, similarly uses comics to extend his storyline backwards(Tales of the Slayers) and forward (Fray) in time, depicting huge spans in the history

of the Watchers Council and the Slayers. Sony used the Web to offer new insightsinto the characters of DawsonsCreek, mimicking the title characters desktop, sothat we can read his e-mail, sneak a peek at his journals, or even plagiarize hisschool essays. A team of writers updated this content each week in response to theaired episodes, using the Web to both plant seeds for future plot development andprovide background to remind viewers of past actions.

In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best-so that a storymight be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its worldmight be explored and experienced through game play. Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable autonomous consumption. That is, you dont need to have seen thefilm to enjoy the game and vice-versa. As Pokemondoes so well, any given product is a point of

entry into the franchise as a whole.

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Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption. In aworld with many media options, consumers are choosing to invest deeply in a limited number offranchises rather than dip shallowly into a larger number. Increasingly, gamers spend most oftheir time and money within a single genre, often a single franchise. We can see the samepattern in other media-films (high success for certain franchises, overall declines in revenue),television (shorter spans for most series, longer runs for a few), or comics (incredibly long runs

for a limited number of superhero icons). Redundancy between media burns up fan interest andcauses franchises to fail. Offering new levels of insight and experience refreshes the franchiseand sustains consumer loyalty. Such a multilayered approach to storytelling will enable a morecomplex, more sophisticated, more rewarding mode of narrative to emerge within the constraintsof commercial entertainment.

And it also makes economic sense. Different media attract different market niches. Films andtelevision probably have the most diverse audiences, comics and games the narrowest. A goodtransmedia franchise attracts a wider audience by pitching the content differently in the differentmedia. If each work offers fresh experiences, then a crossover market will expand the potentialgross within any individual media. So, women may not play games, but women who like Lord ofthe Ringsmight experiment on a related game title.

Have no fear-not all stories will flow across media. Most wont, but a growing number will.Transmedia stories arent necessarily bad stories; they are different kinds of stories. According toHollywood lore, a good pitch starts with either a compelling character or an interesting world. Wemight, from there, make the following argument: A good character can sustain multiple narrativesand thus lead to a successful movie franchise. A good world can sustain multiple characters(and their stories) and thus successfully launch a transmedia franchise.

Many of our best authors, from William Faulkner to J.R.R. Tolkien, understood their art in termsof world-creation and developed rich environments which could, indeed, support a variety ofdifferent characters. For most of human history, it would be taken for granted that a great storywould take many different forms, enshrined in stain glass windows or tapestries, told through

printed words or sung by bards and poets, or enacted by traveling performers. Sequels arentinherently bad-remember that Huckleberry Finnwas a sequel toTom Sawyer. But Twainunderstood what modern storytellers seem to have forgotten-a compelling sequel offersconsumers a new perspective on the characters, rather than just more of the same.