Transmedia Camp 101

REXplorer: A mobile cultural heritage game at the Rex Regensburg Explorer Museum in Regensburg, Germany. The game encourages exploration of the city: players use a Wiimote-like device to interact with the city’s monuments, solving puzzles along the way. The game’s story involves helping a professor understand and research Regensburg’s “perpetual magic.” (In reality, exploring the history of the city.) The game also automatically blogs the experience for players to revisit as a memento of the experience.

Jewel of the Valleys: A mystery puzzle from the National Civil War Museum that could be solved using Civil War communication technologies and museum documents. Sadly, the game’s not still online; the link goes to a wiki of all of the game’s clues.

An Expedition with Mr. Mirrors: A one-day game at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, a Victorian-themed game where amnesiac players met strangers in the museum and solved puzzles in hopes of regaining their memories.

See the original blog post for more examples & links to earlier and following post:

http://museumbeyond.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/museum-game-thought-experiment-p…

Excerpts from the site – see http://witchfactory.com/projects/adore/ for more details

“Adore is an original 360° Transmedia franchise, composed of interwoven narratives that are told through multiple media platforms designed to immerse the user in a unique and magical universe….

Adore is an innovative transmedia franchise currently in the packaging and pre-production phase of development. Adore will release core internet interaction, graphic novels and merchandising and evolve into film, musical theatre, toys and gaming. We have a deep and comprehensive understanding of the media and online technology industries and an agile business model where each transmedia franchise will be its own legal entity consisting of Witchfactory Productions, strategic partners and investors. In this model funds will flow back into Witchfactory Productions through original rights assignments, licenses, royalties, consultancy fees and share dividends….”

See Torino FilmLab’s site for a full description of this transmedia project for kids:

Excerpt describing the transmedia elements!

“Animation movie

At the core of the project lies an animation movie. The story will revolve around Tim Tom’s efforts to save the Tower of Fables, Storyville and its inhabitants from the clutches of Utrek, the evil wizard.

Interactive website / App

However the project will start with the creation of a web based portal where kids are introduced to Storyville, its inhabitants and most of all to the magical Tower of Fables.
Children will be asked to create an avatar… Once this is done, children are allowed to roam freely around the whole of Story Town. They can play free games and meet many of the characters of this universe. The mythology and the back story of the place are introduced slowly. Children will be able to understand the history of the place by playing various games with many of their favourite characters… Like helping Little Red Riding Hood cross the woods etc.. However the children will always be directed towards visiting the magical tower. There they can read, listen and even write their own fairy tales.

Publishing

A series of books about the history of the Tower and the inhabitants of Story Town will be released in conjunction with the site…

Live Events

Various events will be organized where a PHYSICAL TOWER is taken to various schools where children will listen to stories as actors act them out but also they will have the possibility to leave the books they have finished reading for others to make use of.

Game
A Wii game will bring the story arc to a conclusion as children will be able to don the uniform and go on a quest to defeat the evil wizard who has returned and is keeping Little Bo Peep hostage…

StoryWorld 2011 in San Francisco: Day 3

Written By: Christine - Nov• 03•11

DAY 3:

Talk: Story Architecture – Crafting Transmedia Design

Siobhan O’Flynn, Karine Halpern with Scott Walker

• How to lead audiences across different platforms is still a challenge of transmedia, and it is a crucial question for experience design.
• Stories are so popular because they communicate experiences and emotions.
• Design principles for transmedia stories:

• Non-linear spatial storytelling – whilst keeping the coherent and cohesive.
• Break the 4^th wall: augmented reality. Transmedia offers tremendous opportunities for individuals to enhance their own experience of the story, to play with the content on their own terms.
• Social (relationships, sustainability, social media marketing): The sustainability of communities surrounding storyworlds becomes increasingly important. It takes a huge amount of commitment and energy to foster and maintain fan communities, and stopping this fostering and maintenance is a seen as a betrayal of the audience by the fans. Producers must be aware of this from the very beginning.
• Participatory and/or UGC: Both allow the audience to move from passive to active by offering opportunities to ‘touch’ the canon.

• Transmedia allows for a shift towards spatial design:

• Non-linear narratives open new narrative spaces for audiences
• Fans can move between multiple platforms (spaces)
• Characterss and story archs extend over time and across platforms
• There are multiple points of entry into the story universe
• There is increased room for interactivity

• Producers need to ask themselves what the audience experience is supposed to be -  thrill, threat, excitement, competition, for example – and base their narrative design on this experience type throughout all platforms.
• Your story and the technology are only two tools in transmedia storytelling. Your audience also becomes a tool in itself, particularly through interactivity and participation. This means that as a producer, you must understand people’s behaviors, their instincts and needs, etc. and use this knowledge to shape the transmedia experience.

• The 5 “E’s” of experience design:

• Entice – You have to find a way to invite your audience into your experience, and to lead them across the different platforms involved. Often, teasing them helps to accomplish this.
• Enter – Once the audience enters your transmedia experience, you must make it clear to them what they have to do and what is expected of them. Direct them through the use of appropriate sign posts; genre, familiar story archs, and characters are very strong cues as well.
• Engage – Now that your audience is invested in your experience, allow them to engage with it and to derive satisfaction from the engagement.
• E-motion – Even if your audience is invested in your experience, they can still leave easily. You have to find ways to prevent audiences from leaving and to move them deeper into the experience instead. Once one sub-set of the overall experience is finished, help them to move to the next.
• Extend – Help your audience to share the experience and to draw in others.

• Designing a transmedia narrative doesn’t mean there is no ending to the story. There has to be a grand narrative composed of many smaller narratives, and all of them have satisfying endings in themselves.

Activity: Interactive Storytelling

Grazie to Christine Wietbrecht’s Thoughts on the T Blog for reposting!