remixable - posts tagged 'arg'

Welcome to Transmedia Talk, a podcast covering all things Story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia, Dee Cook, and Haley Moore and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. Download | Subscribe with RSS |Subscribe with iTunes Michael Andersen, managing editor of ARGNet, joins us to take a look back at the first half of 2011 in the Alternate Reality Game world. Hosts: Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Haley Moore (and Host Emeritus Robert Pratten from Transmedia Storyteller) Special Guest: Michael Andersen from ARGN From This Episode: Andersen’s article 2011 Year in Review: Puzzling Through Half a Year Wired.com’s Decode games and puzzles section. Transmedia Talk host Dee Cook is an associate editor at ARGN. Ian Bogost’s Cow Clicker ARG The Awl’s Rick Paulas recounts the conclusion of the Jejune Institute game. 5 Wits in Boston produced the interactive experience Tomb, which is now closed. They currently offer two interactive experiences, 20,000 Leagues and Espionage. The city-wide experience Accomplice in NYC, Hollywood, and London. The free-roaming San Francisco experience Message from Z. The QR code driven game Time Trip LA. The Jejune Institute spinoff Elsewhere Philatelic Society. The Toynbee Plaques in Philadelphia. Kcymaerxthaere, historical markers from another world. Pittsburgh’s mysterious protractors Aram Bartholl’s wall-embedded USB project Dead Drops. Haley Moore’s writeup and Lazy 8 Studios’ Gamasutra article on the Portal 2 Potato Sack ARG. Note: Ten indie game studios released games in the Potato Sack. The Game of Thrones extended campaign The Maester’s Path. The Crash of the Elysium, Punchdrunk’s Doctor Who experience for children. 42 Entertainment’s game Test Subjects Needed for 5 Gum. Area/Code’s 2007 ARG ‘Primacy’ for the CBS drama Numb3rs centered around a casual puzzle game Chain Factor, which was later developed into the popular iPhone app Drop 7. Earlier this year, Area/Code was acquired and became Zynga New York. Patrick Carman’s extended book project Dark Eden launched its App today. The Australian tv drama SLiDE The Thomas Dolby game A Map of The Floating City

Transmedia Talk 27: Socks, Incorporated

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 19:46:40 GMT

Transmedia Talk 26 – Dave Szulborski Memorial Show

Wed, 25 May 2011 12:19:40 GMT

Seven Things I Learned from the Portal 2 ARG

Thu, 05 May 2011 22:01:09 GMT

So, Portal 2 is out. You may have heard.

You may have also heard there was an ARG associated with it – or maybe you didn’t. While the game received some media attention right before the launch of Portal 2, it slid past ARG communities without making much of a wave.

The Portal 2 ARG project was a collaboration between several indie studios and Valve. Most of the game was rolled out through hidden content in 13 indie games sold together as “The Potato Sack” on Steam. Playing those games led you to hidden levels and messages from the Portal’s antagonist GLaDOS, and ended up being the key to getting Portal 2 several hours ahead of its official release time.

This game tried a lot of things that are outside the normal scope of ARGs, and I feel like there are valuable design lessons to be learned here.

1) Partnerships are Awesome

Because the ARG was created as a partnership between a large group of video game designers, they were able to deliver the game as a series of easter eggs in video game that were already fully developed and polished. That’s something indie ARG creators wish they could do, but very rarely can.

The additional content inside the games was polished, and the sort of content you could only get from putting quality designers on the project. The GLaDOS levels in Rush and Toki Tori were designed to have the same feel as Portal – they challenged you to be creative with the game’s existing teleportation mechanics. I felt like I was getting a little taste of Portal 2 as I was playing them.

After the game came to its conclusion, we learned that these indie designers were principally involved in designing the entire experience. They created everything from tweets to puzzles to youtube videos and music. The total budget? $100.

The ARG was a labor of indie love designed by Portal fans, who were given free reign to work with the Portal characters and access to Valve resources. I wish I had known this from the beginning because it would have made a big difference in my second point:

2) Don’t Build Your Pay Wall Too High

The primary content for the ARG was distributed through the Potato Sack – 13 indie games that sold in a package on Steam for $38.72. For someone with very limited entertainment cash, that is quite a lot of money.

However, about four days before the release of Portal 2, a little birdie let me know who was responsible for the ARG, and my attitude toward the pay wall shifted completely. Over the course of the next 3 days, I bought Cogs, Rush, Toki Tori, and The Wonderful End of the World for a grand total of $15.

The pre-sale for Portal 2 was priced at $45, so the Potato Sack cost almost as much as the game it was promoting. By contrast, $15 felt like a pretty natural stopping point. (This is pretty comparable to other experiences behind pay walls – the print version of Cathy’s Book retails for $17.95.) That $15 was doled out in four purchases of $5 or less. The option to buy the games individually was the only reason I didn’t just smack into the pay wall face first.

The only thing I can conclude here is:

3) Screw the Curtain

If there’s something cool about the way your project was established, there is no reason to keep it a secret. Valve partnering with indie game designers to create a Portal ARG is cool, and worth supporting. The desire to keep coy and quiet about the history behind this ARG may have kept it from ubiquity.

There’s also a fundamental sales pitch difference. The idea of paying $39 to be advertised to is ridiculous, but it’s reasonable to spend that money to support an indie ARG team.

4) Countdowns Can be Compelling

As the endgame approached for the ARG, a page with a countdown timer was revealed. When that timer ran out, it led to another countdown timer. It sounds like a parody of ARG design, but it worked – and very well – because player interaction drove changes in the final countdown.

Participants had to play the games in the Potato Sack, and earn the secret challenge badges in them, to release Portal 2 ahead of the release time given on Steam. The countdown was a measure of player progress and a call to action, which made it far more interesting than a countdown alone could be. This was another area where the video game roots of the ARG really made for something great.

It didn’t hurt that it was counting down to a much-anticipated event, either.

5) Exclusivity is a Design Flaw

I’m not going to lie. Several times, especially near the end of the game, I was earned my potato badges by replicating cheat videos on YouTube. The extra levels in each of the games were more than challenging; they were hard – and as the clock ticked down, I realized I didn’t have time to beat them by my wits alone.

The previous Portal 2 extended reality campaign, which released last year with the free release of Portal, also had this issue. I had no idea that the extra content in Portal was extra, because I was playing the game for the first time. The content was also a challenge to get to, and in many later levels required a lot of experimentation and gaming skill. It seemed as though the experience was designed to reward veteran players who had mastered the game years ago. That seemed odd, considering the point of giving Portal away was to bring in new players.

This may be a fundamental philosophical difference between video game design and pervasive fiction design. As a storyteller, I seek to create intimacy with the audience. Making players struggle to reach content is one way to make an interaction seem meaningful and personal, but it is far from the only way.

More importantly, it is a bad way to do things if you want to make an experience that will engage a lot of people. To experience the Potato Sack ARG in its entirety, you not only had to buy all of the games, but master them and beat their most challenging levels. That’s quite a lot of work to get to the meat of an experience.

We usually design ARG experiences with late rabbitholes, and mechanisms that allow trailblazers to unlock content for everyone. If you treat every new player as though you expect them to be a trailblazer, only the trailblazers actually play the game. That’s not such a terrible thing if your goal is to create buzz – but when you want people to cross a pay wall, things get a little different.

6) We Can Still Pull Players “Behind the Scenes”

Several players who had been active on the game’s wiki were “kidnapped” during the course of the game. At first, I wondered if Valve had planted fake players – an unpopular but unfortunately common practice.

As it turns out, those players were brought behind the scenes and invited to Portal 2’s launch party as a reward for being active in the ARG. This is something Dave Szulborski did in Chasing the Wish, and it adds a nice layer of audience collaboration to the mix.

7) April Fool’s is a Bad Launch Date

The Portal 2 ARG launched on April 1, which might be aptly called “International Online Fiction Day.” The internet is flooded with interactive and pervasive fiction pieces on April Fool’s, most of which don’t go any deeper than a few web pages and only last one day, as our yearly ritual prescribes. This game got lost in the static, especially after it picked up the name “Potato Fools Day” – which implied that the game was a joke.

BONUS: Music Keeps the Experience Alive

This one is more of a protip than a serious lesson. The popularity of Portal spread in part thanks to Jonathan Coulton and his catchy end credits tune. “Still Alive” has become such a gaming anthem that children’s choirs are performing it, and Portal 2 is continuing that tradition two key songs for the new game. The ARG creators took cues from that, and (along with several remakes of Still Alive) released some original music for with experience.

Audiosurf featured a techno track built on quotes from Portal, called The Device Has Been Modified. 1… 2… 3.. KICK IT included a chill out track called Searching. Emergence. Discovery., and The Wonderful End of the World contains a melodious folk song by Dejobaan Games developer Dan Brainerd called “Hole in the Ground.” This song, with it’s haunting lyrics (“I took up a job that was all absentee”), was stuck in my head for nearly two weeks after Portal 2 launched.

Even though I jumped into the game fairly late, the music cemented my connection with the game and made it memorable. This is something I might be trying for myself in the future.

Find Out How To Monetize Transmedia Storytelling And ARG On Hollywood 2.0!

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:19:40 GMT

My co-host Rich Silverman (Emmy-winner writer) and I (producer/neurocinema innovator) will tell you how…Welcome to Hollywood 2.0, a new podcast that covers innovation in the entertainment industry.

Subscribe to Hollywood 2.0. Follow Rich and Peter.

Transmedia Talk 25 – Mark Harris

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 00:54:34 GMT

Transmedia Talk 24 – Him, Her and Them

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:31:46 GMT

Transmedia Talk 22: SXSW Super Special

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 23:58:57 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk, a podcast covering all things Story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia, Dee Cook, and Haley Moore and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. Download | Subscribe with iTunes Hosts: Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Haley Moore (and Host Emeritus Robert Pratten from Transmedia Storyteller) SXSW Super Special Dee Cook and Haley Moore recap the transmedia presence at SXSW Interactive 2011. From This Episode: The PGA’s Transmedia Producer credit. Fourth Wall Studios’ recent influx of money. SXSW Panel: Help Save SXSW from Marketer Douchebaggery SXSW Panel: Fireside Chat: Tim O’Reilly Interviewed by Jason Calacanis Hitler rants about SXSW. The Transmedia Artists Guild held an introductory panel at SXSW. SXSW Panel: Fan to Fanatic: True Blood’s Marketing Hook SXSW Panel: The Future of Storytelling: DEXTER Fans Play Killer SXSW Panel: Having Fun Yet? 10 Usability Heuristics For Games SXSW Talk: Project 314: Putting The ‘Game’ Back Into ARGs with Adrian Hon SXSW Talk: Hoax or Transmedia? The Ethics of Pervasive Fiction with Andrea Phillips SXSW Panel: Social Media Is Science Fiction with Maureen McHugh and Molly Crabapple SXSW Panel: Can Transmedia Save the Entertainment Industry? Flynn Lives, 42 Entertainment’s ARG for Tron:Legacy. SXSW Panel: New Worlds: Creating Online Sci-fi and Fantasy Experiences in which Felicia Day explains why she rolls her eyes at the term transmedia. The #AntiTransmedia movement. Steve Peters, Geoff May, and Brooke Thompson weigh in on the word “transmedia” in the days since SXSW. Stitch Media’s diagram of possible transmedia definitions. Frank Rose’s book The Art of Immersion Transmedia NYC Meetup The Game of Thrones food carts in New York City and Los Angeles Nick Braccia recommends the Kindle version of A Game of Thrones. Petite Lap Giraffes

Transmedia Talk at SXSW 2011 – Roundtable Discussion on Pervasive Entertainment

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:17:58 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk, a new podcast covering all things Story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia, Dee Cook, and Haley Moore and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. In this special edition from SXSW 2011, Robert Pratten hosts a roundtable discussion with transmedia practitioners from different disciplines. download Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Hosts Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Haley Moore Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Special Guests Adrian Hon, Co-Founder and Chief Creative at Six to Start Marcus Romer, Artistic Director of Pilot Theatre in the UK Rachel Clarke, Head of Engagement Intelligence at Momentum London

Discussion: The Rodshire Archives

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 23:35:46 GMT

Last week, on Transmedia Talk Episode 21, we spoke with Julia Pontecorvo, Noah Workman and Patrick Rousseau from Iris MediaWorks about their transmedia concept The Rodshire Archives. It was an interesting experience unlike any of our previous shows. Usually, we speak with a creative team after they’ve launched their initiative. In the case of Rodshire, we were kicking off a workshop to help shape the development path of a nascent intellectual property.

Julia and team first presented their plan at Power to the Pixel in London this October. You can read Julia’s assessment of the experience here.

The concept for this IP is such: A town populated with residents who act as origin stories for superstitions, popular myths and legends. Anything from Bloody Mary to “7 years’ bad luck” for a broken mirror is fair game.

Here’s what we know:

Iris MediaWorks’ primary experience is in film. In fact, they created an evocative mood video that conveys their vision for the town of Rodshire.

They’d like to create multiple stories about the residents, and expand these tales (while generating new ones) with the help of the audience.

Each story should function as both origin story and allegory.

While the main media type will be video, the team is considering a budget-conscious way to create immersive, but not over-complicated, web browser and mobile application experiences. These would act as both content hub and audience contribution platform.

Iris MediaWorks is interested in monetizing this experiment.

Everything else is up for grabs! And maybe even some of the aforementioned items. If you listen to the podcast, you’ll hear us discuss some basics and ask a lot of questions for about an hour.

What we’d like to do is check back with the RA team every month or so, while continually developing the project together at the Workbook Project. The comments section of this post is where we’ll kick off the convo. Hopefully, we’ll all learn a bunch, some creative and technology people will impact the project with their contributions and The Rodshire Archives will move along swimmingly.

But keep in mind, this is a total experiment for all of us. Keep it constructive. Keep it interesting.

SXSW: What ARG Makers Can Learn from UI Designers

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 23:24:50 GMT

Image courtesy of John Mark Josling

My visit to South by Southwest Interactive took me to a lot of talks on Transmedia – a term, by the way, that was the most overused and under-understood of the conference (Felicia Day even went on a particularly apt rant about it on Monday). Most of the “Transmedia” panels just didn’t seem to get it – there was no takeaway, there was a lot of gobbeldygook, and in one bizarre case, there was a futurist who seemed to be discussing how in 6-10 years we will all be watching programmed television. But I digress.

I ended up going to an exceeding dry-titled panel on a whim. I couldn’t bear to attend another Transmedia panel because the term had lost any meaning to me, and “Having Fun Yet? 10 Usability Heuristics For Games” sounded like the presenters had a good handle on their topic, at least. But what I found there completely blew me away and this panel took the crown for my favorite panel of SXSW Interactive 2011. These design maxims may be old hat for programmers, but I have never heard them applied together like this for ARG development, and there they are highly relevant.

1. Increase interaction speed over time. Repeated tasks should get quicker. Make frequent transactions more easily available. There was a recent game that had information that was only accessible if you entered a username and password. The way the webpage was coded, the browser did not ask if it could save the information for you, so every time you wanted to check for new content (which showed up regularly) you either had to memorize the login or search your email for it. Not good design.

2. Avoid conceptually conflicting inputs. Be conceptually consistent throughout the game. This means that the evil genius hacker organization probably wouldn’t be using simple substitution, folks.

3. Provide immersive cues – ambiguity makes the connection between the player and their world less immersive. If you want a player to call a telephone number or email someone, telegraph that to them. Don’t make them fearful to contact your characters – “Is this in-game or out-of-game?” is not being immersive!

4. Distinguish active from inactive. Provide cues so that players know what they need to touch. If they’re supposed to be hacking into your character’s email, fine – make that clear. But if they’re not, save yourself some trouble by making that clear ahead of time.

5. Prevent surprise errors – and if the user does fail, make sure they understand why. Allow them to undo errors. The first part of this rule can be helped with careful vetting and playtesting. The second part, say if a player thinks that they need to email Character A with information when in fact it’s Character B they have to contact – simply have Character A nudge them in the right direction rather than ignore them completely, so your player isn’t shouting into the wind.

6. Be game-state aware. Provide the correct data to players at the correct time, and let them dig deeper to the areas that they want to find out more about. Practice progressive disclosure. Don’t be absolutely rigid in your game design. Some of the best and most memorable ARG characters started out as throw-aways, but players got attached to them, the designers realized that attachment, and they wrote much larger roles for the characters, creating a much richer experience for the players. Listen to your audience and adjust accordingly. As well, don’t overload them with all the information right away. Just as you read a book chapter by chapter or watch a movie a minute at a time, you don’t play an ARG all at once.

7. Reading is easier than remembering. Make objectives clear and memorable; don’t overburden with information. Reduce the players’ cognitive load. In an ARG sensibility this can be said as: provide a player summary site, and keep it current. ARGs are notorious for being complex, deep, and sometimes impossible to keep up with for all but the most dedicated players. Will you be the one who can come up with the system that lets the casual ARG player join in?

8. Remember real life. Provide quick and easy exits. Consider the environment your game is played in. Another game recently had a live feed that displayed for 24 hours. The designers did it because they wanted to include a global audience. But for those players who started watching the feed at the beginning, it was very hard to turn it off and go to bed. Even a small, tongue-in-cheek card to change viewer shifts would have helped the viewers realize that they could switch off and let someone else take their place.

9. Maintain flow. Minimize content breaks and cognitive dissonance. Does it all feel like one system? Don’t make content breaks feel like punishment. Some games release content on a set schedule and there’s nothing at all wrong with that. But it should be with a small sense of closure that the last item of the chapter is released, so that players don’t receive something highly provocative and have to wait a week (or whatever the timetable is) to receive answers. If they’re punished by time for seeking answers, soon enough they will stop seeking.

10. Ask, “What could I remove?” Don’t include information that’s irrelevant and don’t let bells and whistles overwhelm your project. In other words, consider the principle of Chekhov’s gun – never put a loaded rifle on the stage if you’re not planning on shooting it by the end of the play. One red herring? Maybe. A dozen? Not so much.

As you can see, these principles adapt extremely easily to ARG design, but I think they can branch out into many other fields as well. I’d like to give many kudos to Corey Chandler and John-Mark Josling for a terrific, old-school SXSW presentation that gave much food for thought.

Slideshare here.

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 17

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 06:41:18 GMT

download

Or Subscribe with iTunes

NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us attalk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk.

Hosts:
Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker
Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media
Haley Moore

(and Host Emeritus Robert Pratten from Transmedia Storyteller)

Running Time: 1:11:27

Special Guest:
Lorie Marsh from Lost in Sunshine.

We speak with Lorie Marsh, producer of the Lost in Sunshine story world, who talks about indie films, funding, and experiments in the transmedia realm.

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 15

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:56:04 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. download Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Regular Hosts and Contributors Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Haley Moore Special Guest Andrea Phillips This show talks about Andrea’s work on a range of ARG and transmedia projects and discusses staffing for participation, developing narrative that allows for participation, editorial control & ethics/responsibilities of producers. Projects mentioned include: Cloudmakers for the movie AI Perplex City 2012 Routes - including the game Ginger Dawn! And of course I managed to get in another plug for Lowlifes

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 14

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 04:19:38 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. download Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Hosts.. and Guests for this week Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Dee Cook from Dogtail Media Haley Moore The panelists discuss their early & current experiences with developing and executing transmedia projects. Good discussion about the thrill of interactivity and designing ARGs. Running Time 00:00 Introductions 00:40 Getting started in transmedia (Rob’s story) 04:40 The Lowlifes transmedia project : Objectives & narrative design 16:40 Developing the interactive game for Lowlifes 29:00 Haley Moore discusses The Sketchbook Project 41:00 Dee Cook discusses her work with DogTail Media 44:45 The market for ARGs in 2011 46:00 Changing nature of ARG and developing for different audience segments

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 13

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 06:16:08 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. download Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Hosts Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Guests Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Running Time 01:14 Origins and early experiences 12:00 The Storybible 12:45 Working with Clients 16:40 Understanding the value-proposition at the contract stage 20:20 Types of client 21:45 Removing barriers from transmedia narratives 25:50 Conflicts between writer and producer 28:00 Market development for the role of Transmedia Producers 33:40 Organisation and staffing at Starlight Runner 41:50 Does narrative get diluted as it is spread across platforms? 49:50 Growing an audience across platforms 55:00 Implementing transmedia internationally 58:12 Transmedia misperceptions 1:00:00 Growth of transmedia 1:06:00 New transmedia example (LowLifes) and Industry Discussion. 1:18:00 End

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 10

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 06:52:13 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. download Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Hosts Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Haley Moore from Culture Hacker Guests Jay Bushman from http://jaybushman.com/ Caitlin Burns from Starlight Runner (and Jurassic Park Slope) Timing 1:00 Transmedia Producers Guild (PGA) 2:10 Twitter in transmedia storytelling 50:36 Transmedia Artists Guild discussion Twitter as a storytelling platform Here are some great links provided by Caitlin for those interested to know more about Twitter for storytelling. Twitter Fiction Cellphone (Mobile) Novels (keitai shosetsu) The Shorty Awards – place to look for Twitter fiction And of course Jay Bushman’s work: The Good Captain The Empire Tweets Back Plus… I thought it might also be nice to include an infographic on how an author or producer might approach using Twitter in transmedia storytelling. Please let me have any comments and I’ll update and improve as necessary. Oh, and here’s a neat little Word macro that’ll chop up your text into 140 character bites and add a hashtag if needed.

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 9

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:40:37 GMT

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 7

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:15:37 GMT

Communicating your transmedia experience

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:14:11 GMT

This is a quick post but I thought this template might be useful for some people when they’re explaining their transmedia project. You’ll notice that this is focused on the experience rather than the technology: there’s no mention of platforms or business case or even audience. So there’s more that needs to be communicated to get the full picture but this is a cool way to get your point across in certain circumstances.

This is my Transmedia Radar Diagram – use it to communicate your transmedia experience to interested parties… but probably not your audience Note that there’s no absolute scale for the four axes, it’s their strength relative to each other. Of course, if you’re comparing projects then they need to compare across projects too.

Here’s a few examples to illustrate how you might use the radar diagram…

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 6

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 13:26:50 GMT

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 4

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 07:30:52 GMT

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 4

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:26:11 GMT

Profile: SubmarineChannel

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:11:15 GMT

Dutch media innovators Bruno Felix and Femke Wolting, co-founders of Submarine.com, collaborated to produce Submarinechannel.com, an initiative designed to explore and promote innovative approaches to media. Submarinechannel.com positions itself as both a distribution and production platform for artists looking to create interactive, cross-media projects.

Both Felix and Wolting previously worked at Dutch Broadcasting Organization, VPRO, in the 1990’s, an experimental period in the industry. Felix is credited with the development of new media strategy for VPRO during this time, and both are recognized as early moguls for new media. Their devotion to creating interactive relationships between media and consumer inspired Submarine.com, which ultimately led to the birth of Submarinechannel.com. The site highlights creative participation in various projects and films, and aims to question the multicultural and multifaceted digital identity of the Internet. The content highlighted relies on new modes of storytelling to break down the barrier currently separating arts, media, and politics.

United Vloggers, the guide for understanding the nature of vlogs, is a feature under the tab “Internet” on the site. Introduced in 2007 by Michael Schaap to support vloggers, the project quickly became a catalyst for connecting talent on a global scale. UnitedVloggers filters out quality vlogs and the selection varies from video art to grass roots journalism. Check out the recently posted “Touch My Body” a project where music videos are manipulated into green screens and posted on youtube.com for viewers to respond.

Navigate through Chunks under Film on Submarinechannel.com, the channel’s personal 24/7 online film festival featuring picks from all over the world; there are currently more than 50 to browse through. Another cool project about to debut is Collapsus, their upcoming project that epitomizes the site’s aim to broach the integral nature of global perspectives in digital culture.

Tommy Pallotta, renowned for blending technology, filmmaking, and animation, directs the project. Pallotta produced Waking Life, the groundbreaking computer animated feature film.

Collapsus places the viewer as director in an interactive, documentary-esque, animated film, replete with political agendas surrounding the future global energy crisis. As an active participant in the story, the viewer is required to take action in seeking solutions to the energy crisis; with each decisive click of the mouse the narrative changes to present viewers with varying futuristic crisis scenarios.

Submarinechannel.com hopes to instigate thought, but similarly looks to inspire artists working in every medium. The innovative site also features projects like DUTCH PROFILES, where viewers can learn about innovative projects at the heart of Dutch culture, in a documentary series featuring interviews with various designers in the region. Some other well known projects include: Minimovies, documentaries for the digital age. Sneakers: a guided tour through sneaker culture. Pretty Cool People Interviews: video interviews with creators. The Killer: Motion comic based on graphic novel by Matz and Jacamon.

Ultimately, Submarinechannel.com is an incredible source for those looking to further experiment with the potential of the Internet. Well-curated posts and projects permeate the website, and validate the portal as a content rich aggregator for projects aimed at young audiences ripe with global perspectives on digital culture.

Profile: SubmarineChannel

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:23:56 GMT

Tommy Pallotta, renowned for blending technology, filmmaking, and animation, directs the project. Pallotta produced Waking Life, the groundbreaking computer animated feature film.

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 3

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 18:11:11 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. This episode is in TWO parts PART ONE: download PART TWO: download Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Topics cover in this episode (start time shown in bold) PART ONE (47 mins) Audience building: 01:04 Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, 02:53 Fallout New Vegas iPhone App 05:46 Savage County 09:51 Pervasive Games – JeJune Institute and Nonchalance [Jeff Hull will be speaking at TedxSOMA] 29:34 Mongoliad - collaborative storytelling PART TWO (40 mins) 0:00 Dexter ARG Hosts Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Guests Jeffery Hull from Nonchalance Jeremy Bornstein from Subutai Corp Haley Moore from Culture Hacker Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 2

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:21:05 GMT

Welcome to the second episode of Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. This edition of Transmedia Talk covers the following… NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Topics (start time shown in bold) 0:00:54 Apple’siTV, Google TV, Boxee, Roku and Amazon on Demand 0:07:25 StoryLabs – international network of transmedia & new technology mentors 0:10:18 TransmediaNext – 3 days intensive transmedia training in London Sept 8th-10th 0:14:30 Transmedia funding – public vs private? 0:30:23 YouSuckatTransmedia, Christy’s top 5 tips for transmedia consultants and discussion about what can go wrong 0:46:11 J.J. Abram’s Super8 ARG: Scariestthingieversaw.com, http://www.rocketpoppeteers.com/, http://www.hooklineandminker.com/ Hosts Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Guests Christy Dena from Universe Creation 101 Anita Ondine from Seize the Media Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 1

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:27:52 GMT

Welcome to the first episode of Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. download the podcast running time 51:22 This edition of Transmedia Talk covers the following. Topics: The Web is Dead Facebook Places Transmedia Panels at the 2011 SXSW Scvngr foursquare Gowalla Hosts: Nick Braccia Robert Pratten Guests Lance Weiler Dee Cook Haley Moore

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 1

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:54:07 GMT

What a Filmmaker Learned From Farmville And Other Social Games

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:34:34 GMT

Social games are rapidly becoming one of the most successful forms of entertainment:

Disney purchased Playdom for up to $763.2 million and Club Penguin for $700 million.

EA purchased Playfish for $400 million.

The research form Next Up for pre-IPO trading service SharesPost estimates Zynga is worth three billion dollars.

Why are they thriving (even in a recession):

Social games are accessible throughout the day over multiple platforms.

You are rewarded with digital prizes the more you play.

Players act as evangelists marketing the game all over social networks to recruit new users.

Creators of TV shows and movies can now use similar techniques to have a stronger relationship with their fans. Emerging web start ups are making that possible. Miso injects interactivity into the TV and film viewing experience by utilizing a smart phone, laptop, or tablet as a duel screen with supplemental content. SCVNGR is an user generated location based scavenger hunt for your smart phone.

SCVNGR can create challenges based on a elements from a story e.g. a player is asked trivia from True Blood and if they get the answer correct they are given a clue to find their next location in their city. Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D and Dexter made SCVNGR a part of their marketing campaign by creating scavenger hunts around the San Diego Comic Con. To reach fans where they shop, scavenger hunts can be sponsored e.g. visit Best Buy and purchase a product marked with QR code to get your next clue. People can expand the experience to new locations by creating scavenger hunts revolving around fan fiction.

This keeps fans connected to a story no matter where they are located.

Players receive points and badges in Miso for checking into their favorite shows and movies like Four Square for content. Miso has a list of their highest ranking watchers; this competition keeps an audience coming back to a program to be number 1. By rewarding their engagement over time, I think this can transform casual viewers into hardcore fans.

Users on Miso can share what they are watching on Facebook and Twitter, their friends can now start following that show and converting more fans. They can also recruit them directly on Miso. This sustains and builds a fanbase.

Many games have been inspired by films/TV shows to create more compelling narratives e.g. Grand Theft Auto. Now Hollywood can learn from social games to keep fans connected to their stories.

What else can filmmakers and TV show creators learn from social games?

What a Filmmaker Learned From Farmville And Other Social Games

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:34:34 GMT

Social games are rapidly becoming one of the most successful forms of entertainment:

Disney purchased Playdom for up to $763.2 million and Club Penguin for $700 million.

EA purchased Playfish for $400 million.

The research form Next Up for pre-IPO trading service SharesPost estimates Zynga is worth three billion dollars.

Why are they thriving (even in a recession):

Social games are accessible throughout the day over multiple platforms.

You are rewarded with digital prizes the more you play.

Players act as evangelists marketing the game all over social networks to recruit new users.

This keeps fans connected to a story no matter where they are located.

Many games have been inspired by films/TV shows to create more compelling narratives e.g. Grand Theft Auto. Now Hollywood can learn from social games to keep fans connected to their stories.

What else can filmmakers and TV show creators learn from social games?

ARGFest’s Artifact Academy Puzzle Trail

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:33:47 GMT

At ARGFest 2010, Michelle Senderhauf and I ran a workshop on game artifacts – how to use them to tell a story, deliver puzzles, and reward players. We invited our workshoppers to create artifacts to continue an ARG scenario I cooked up, and lead the players to the next part of the game using physical objects.

The facts were these:

The players had been asked to help a hot brunette recover his grandfather from mysterious kidnappers who have also stolen his uncrackable safe and hidden it in an unknown location. After remotely blowing up a courier car sent to retrieve the safe, and getting the coordinates of its destination from an apparently indestructible GPS unit, the players find themselves in the woods, unearthing the safe. It’s contents may reveal a secret about the hot brunette’s grandfather that he never would have guessed, or they may raise even more questions.

We brought in the tools and materials for a little ARG propmaking jamboree, and what the ARGFesters came up with was truly remarkable. As you can see, we left the prompt wide open for participants of the workshop to create as much or as little content as they desired, and to take the story in any direction they chose.

I never expected that at the end of a frantic hour and a half of crafting, we would have a complete puzzle trail, leading players to the next “live event” in our game.

Let’s rifle through this box of treasures. What you’re about to see is written, conceived, and assembled by the workshoppers. Michelle and I just facilitated.

First, we have a postcard that looks like it was shot in the 1960’s, but the caption on the back says it’s from the 1919 Indy 500 race. Curious.

Michelle found these postcards (front and back) in an antiques store in her native Chesterton, IN, on an artifact shopping trip. Michelle gave herself a $20 budget and was able to procure a good stock of old photographs and other things to modify to tell our story.

Next, we have a compass with no directions on it. Also curious.

I found these toy compasses in the party supply aisle of my local dollar store, with the pirate hats and paper eyepatches. I think they were six to a pack. They did have a direction sticker on the bottom, which was removed for the purposes of the game.

A letter about secret government research into…time travel?

“Dear Adrian,

You were not yet born when it all started, so I do not expect you to predict what will happen should the UNRC’s predictions be incorrect. But despite the agreement I signed and the importance of the information, I feel morally obliged to tell you what our last hope is. If the speculation of our scientists – my coworkers – is correct, we will be able to change history. Time can be changed, and if it cannot then it is already too late for us. I am writing to tell you that despite my distracted behavior recently, your father loves you. Tomorrow I move to the facility constructed in the late Piedmont Park in Atlanta. There everyone is gathering to complete the Algorythm. I only hope we are correct.

God help us.

~ Stefan”

It has a mysterious glyph at the bottom – is it a map?

This letter was hand written at the workshop on some paper that I enoldenated en masse a few months ago. I bought a cheap writing pad from the dollar store and steeped it in tea and coffee at near-boiling temperature.

The scroll unrolls into a nearly unreadable map.

I drew this as a “bonus” at the end of the workshop. The “scroll” is a roll of thermal paper I saved from an old thermal fax machine. Thermal paper is cool in that it “antiques” itself when it is exposed to heat. It is also translucent, like vellum.

There’s also this strange device – is it from the future, or the past? It has a blue monocle on a reel, and a UV LED on the side.

This is cobbled together from a dollar store intrusion detector toy, a UV keychain light from an invisible ink kit, and a real antique monocle that Michelle had picked up (along with a pair of glasses) on her shopping excursion.

And here we have the easiest puzzle of the bunch. Look through the monocle, and you’ll see a US map denoting some ominous and bizarre landmarks.

However, the most interesting thing in the safe is this framed photo – is this the hot brunette’s grandfather as a younger man?

The back of the frame has scuff marks where the backing is held in place. That’s odd. It’s not like you open and close picture frames a whole lot. Or do you?

The image is a real old photo -another of Michelle’s finds. According to her, photos like this usually run a few dollars at antiques stores. The frame is from the dollar store, and was roughed up with a pair of scissors.

Oh-ho! Secrets!

There is a page with letters and holes, and clock drawn on the back of the photo – but it has no hands! However, the shape in the middle looks familiar…

This is the real back of that photo. I love it – its so pretty, and its even more gorgeous with the hand-drawn clock face on it. The letter page was done with stamps for the letters, and hand written numbers. More antiqued paper.

The compass has a notch in it – and it turns out that we can use that to line it up perfectly with the “map” on the letter. We point the compass to the arrow on the letter…

And when we line it up with a similar mark on the clock, we get a time. 6:30. Perhaps this is the time of Stefan’s meeting in Piedmont Park (two blocks from the convention.) But Stefan is a time traveler? What day are we supposed to meet him on?

At this point, we know we’re missing a piece in the puzzle. We have that piece of paper with the holes in it, but the holes don’t line up with anything on the letter, or the clock piece. Where could the missing key to this puzzle be?

Hmm….

Found it! The glue holding the two cards together separates without damaging either, and now we can see that there is a secret star chart inside.

When we stack them, we can see that some of the letters are marked with red dots. From left to right and top to bottom – J, 2, Y, 8, 0, 0, U, 1, L, 1.

I’ll leave that one little puzzle for you to solve. If anyone has spotted time travelers at Piedmont Park, please drop us a line.

The ARGFest workshop was attended by @Ancalime, @DavFlamerock, @egotist, @JimBabb, @TheBruce0, and many others, who made these awesome things. Michelle and I mostly just watched.

Elan Lee: The “Rolling Stone” Interview, Part II

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:35:04 GMT

Elan Lee wants you to convert part of your life into the storytelling experience

Thanks to a fortuitous mix of chance and invention, Elan Lee has found himself to be one of the few recognizable names in the transmedia business. With four separate companies (Fourth Wall Studios, edoc laundry, 42 Entertainment, and the “not worth mentioning” collaboration with Jordan Weisman called Myriad Mobile), a handful of patents, and a certain amount of reckless (or naive) experimentation, his projects have helped to define – or redefine – cross platform storytelling in the 21st century.

Last time we talked philosophy. This time we’re down to brass tacks: what works, what doesn’t, and what you do when you’re in the right place at the right time.

[This dude is dropping some serious insights - read closely, and between the lines - and you, Dear Reader, are better off hearing it straight from him. And he's a talker.]

Holy crap! Steven Spielberg walked into my office!

Phoebe: As a maker of ARGs, what are you selling?

Elan Lee: At first, when I personally started this whole crazy thing, it was not even a marketing effort. I can talk about where the first one came from, if that helps?

So, I was doing game design at Microsoft, and one day Steven Spielberg walked into my office…cause… Holy crap! Steven Spielberg walked into my office! And he basically said, ‘So, hey, your boss just bought the rights to my movie A.I. (A.I. Artificial Intelligence).’ And, the sort of fill-in-the-blank part there was that my boss really wants to get into Hollywood, and he bought anything with Steven Spielberg’s name on it. And he had signed us up to do a fighting game, and a racing game, and a gladiatorial combat game, and all of that sort of fell in my lap. And it was like, you get to build all these great games!

I went and watched the movie… Actually, even before watching the movie, we built those games. We actually built an A.I. fighting game for the Xbox, a racing game for the Xbox, and a gladiatorial combat game for the Xbox. And the problem with all those games was that an audience isn’t going to know how those fit together. They’re not gonna understand how the characters kind of move from one game, to the next game, to the next, especially with a franchise where some of them may not have even seen the movie.

So we thought, what we really need is just kind of like, the glue between those properties. So we thought, what if we built a game that didn’t actually live on any platform, it just sorta lived everywhere. And characters could call you, and characters could send you email, and the characters that you saw in one game could hop out of that game into the real world for a while, and you’d play along with them. And then they’d hop into the next game, and that’s episode two. Episode three they’re gonna hop back out into the real world, play with you, and then episode four they jump into the next Xbox game. So we built that, and we called it The Beast, because we didn’t know what else to call it and we thought it would be cool.

No one’s gonna buy these things

Then we saw the movie A.I., and… I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie A.I., but umm, you don’t exactly… It’s a movie about a fake boy who really wants the love of his mom and would do anything to be real, but at the end we realize he can’t actually be real and his heart is broken and he’s buried at the bottom of the sea forever… No one walks out of that movie thinking, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to play the Xbox game!’ right? You’re screwed. So me and my team walked out of the movie and just thought, ‘Oh, we’re so f**ked!’ We have nothing.

So we went back to Redmond and we canceled all the games. We just killed them that day cause we thought, ‘We have no chance, no one’s gonna buy these things.’ But as we’re slashing these games, we kinda realize ‘But that other thing, the glue, that’s still kinda cool. That actually has emotional resonance, and actually fits in really well with the movie, because it’s all about people’s real lives. And their passions and their hatreds and their conflict, and, it’s just gritty and real and awesome.’ And so we thought, ‘Well, we own the rights anyway, so let’s just release that, even though it’s not promoting any of our games.’ Even though it’s not carrying characters from one piece to the next. We built it anyway, so we might as well just launch it. And so we did. And it wasn’t meant to be promotion for the movie… it was meant as a clue for these other Xbox games, which no longer existed. So we had no agenda. I mean, absolutely no agenda.

And after about a month of running it, we kinda realized – this is really powerful. We’re onto something here. And so I went to my boss and said, ‘I wanna build more of these. This is cool, we’ve just entertained millions of people in a way that no one has ever entertained them before.’ And he said, “How much money did it make?” And we said, “Well, it didn’t make any money. It wasn’t supposed to.” And he said, “Well, go build an Xbox game, then.” And I thought…this job kinda blows. So I resigned from Microsoft, and started a company to build more of these things. And that’s even worse, cause now I wanna build these things that make no money…

Twelve hours later, Microsoft called…

Phoebe: What made you think you could form a company on the basis of this model when you knew…?

Elan Lee: Absolute naivete. I was so dumb. I just thought, this is really cool. This feels like more compelling storytelling than anything I’ve ever done. And I wanna just build them. And I can worry about the realities of… probably that I’m going to starve to death doing so. So, me and some friends literally started a company – we each put in a little bit of cash, and spent about twelve hours freaking out because now none of us have any income and we have no clients, and… Holy crap! What do we do now? And twelve hours later, Microsoft called and they said, ‘So, we’ve got Halo 2 coming out, and you guys are the only ones who know anything about the game (cause we were some of the original designers of Halo 1), and how do you feel about marketing it using that crazy A.I. thing you did?’ And we thought, ‘Uhh…Awesome! Okay!’

Phoebe: When you say twelve hours, do you mean literally twelve hours?

Elan Lee: Yes. It was a very tense twelve hours. … It was the silver platter. It was like, ‘Hey, how would you like to do exactly what you set out to do, and make money doing it?’

It was total wild west

Once we realized that there was money in marketing, and that in fact it was the only revenue we could come up with, then we just went full steam ahead with that. And we said, ‘Alright, let’s become a marketing company. And that will let us fund a lot of this research on someone else’s dime. Cause it really was research at that point. I mean, there were no rules. It was total wild west. Who knows what the hell is gonna work? …

So, 42 Entertainment was built as a marketing company. And to answer your question, ‘What were we selling?’ We were absolutely selling promotional materials. We could walk into most marketing firms, most giant studios, and say, ‘Your revenue model is dying. People are learning how to skip commercials, they pay no attention to billboards anymore, they have absolutely no tolerance for banner ads and every day that gets worse. But we just finished two projects in a row that had unprecedented numbers…’ It was a really easy business. I mean, it was such a compelling case that we could make to say, ‘We have a mechanism by which you can entertain someone in a new way.’

If you fast-forward that about seven years, now it’s impossible to launch a movie, or a TV show, or a rock album, or a videogame without an ARG. Everyone’s doing it. Or, at least, what they call ARGs. Because the traditional stuff doesn’t work, and it’s only the tent-pole projects that a company is willing to put so much marketing money into. Those things work, but everything else needs some edge, it needs some hook. And the irony of the whole situation is that ARGs are no longer an edge or a hook. They’re just commonplace now.

“ARGs” is such a stupid term that no one knows what it means

Phoebe: Well, commonplace, I think, to a certain subculture. A certain niche of people that are technologically proficient… I mean, even though I have a media-engaged background, I have never accidentally come across the rabbit hole for an ARG.

Elan Lee: Fair enough. Nor have I. In fact, I’ve never actually played one. So… (He laughs.)

Most marketing companies, at this point, will call whatever it is they’re doing an ARG. Because what they’re doing is basically saying ‘Let’s do traditional marketing, plus a Twitter account. Let’s do traditional marketing, plus a weird interactive website with a flash game on it.’ And they’re calling that stuff ARGs because “ARGs” is such a stupid term that no one knows what it means. So that stuff I think is actually commonplace – the things that they’re calling ARGs I think are commonplace, and most people at least know they exist. Every movie that comes out, you at least know how to find the website, if you wanted to. And if you were to go there, there would be some embedded flash experience, or there would be a link to a Twitter account, or a link to some other weird thing if they’re more elaborate.

An actual ARG, in the sense of what I Love Bees was, or in the sense of what A.I. was, and the few that we did after that…those are not nearly as commonplace. And those are – very much to your point – entertaining the hell out of that same group of hardcore geeks over and over again…

There is no upside to trading time for money

Which is exactly why I resigned from the company. I woke up one morning and realized two very important things: one is that I’m really good at entertaining the hell out of that small group of people, and two is that there is no upside to trading time for money. In other words, I only make money if I put time into this. And the moment I stop putting time into this, I stop making money. And that’s a service industry. That’s not a happy moment for me. I’m very uncomfortable with that.

And so I started–with some friends–Fourth Wall Studios because I wanted to change that. I wanted to not only entertain the same million people over and over again, but I also wanted to build things with permanence to them, so that even once I stopped pouring time into them, they would continue to generate revenue.

And so now what I’m selling – this is the longest answer to your question ever – so now what I’m selling is a true media experience with built in revenue models, established revenue models. We’ve got some that have microtransactions, we’ve got some that we’re building actual TV shows so those have ad sponsored revenue models built in. People already know these. We’ve got some with text messaging revenue models. We’ve got a book coming out that’s got a built in revenue model. All of those things, what we’re essentially selling to the user is…it’s everything you know, but the coolest version of it you’ve ever seen. Here’s a book! You know how to buy a book…here’s the coolest book you’ve ever seen. Here’s a TV show. You know how to watch commercials in a TV show, but it’s the coolest TV show you’ve ever seen. That’s the new proposition: it’s what you’re used to, plus.

It’s just a psychological manipulation

Phoebe: Now I guess what you’re doing with Fourth Wall is a slightly different take on embedding a business model into the delivery of your story, which is clearly a huge evolution from what you were doing with 42. Most of us, when we think about funding an “interactive experience” (for lack of a better term), the introduction of a new business model is often a hard sell. Especially because people in the media industry are trying so many different things and so many of those things are failing miserably.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Phoebe: And so you go back and look at the marketing model that 42 was using, and you go, ‘OK, but still every marketing person is asking me about ROI and “Engagement”.’ And if I’m only selling the same story, or a different story to the same market, even if those people are fully engaged – which they may be – it doesn’t necessarily translate to selling products.

Elan Lee: There’s a few answers to that. First, let me put my 42 hat on for a second and answer that specific one. Whenever we took on a new client at 42, we would ask one very important question, which is: ‘What are you guys gonna use to judge the success of this project?’ Not, ‘What does success mean?’ but, ‘What do you think?’ And oftentimes, they would answer, ‘Oh, we just want column inches. We just want reporters all over this.’ And so we would tailor things to accomplish that very specific goal. Or they would say, ‘We want to sell movie tickets.’ OK, so we’re gonna tailor that. So, there’s tricks you can use to do exactly that, even if you don’t have a lot of players, you can tailor it to get a sh*t-load of press, or you can tailor it to get massive traffic to a website, even if it’s the same people over and over again, right? You can encourage repeat behavior… So that was one thing that we’d be really clear on: ‘What do you want to get out of this?’ And we’re gonna give you that. And we were very successful at that because it’s just a psychological manipulation…(He laughs.)

It’s not the game that has to be entertaining, it’s the players

The second thing is… Have you ever seen that inverse pyramid of the players?

So, the goal there, what we were always able to say which I think was actually really true, is: If you can build the game that has three core functions – one super hardcore thing that’s gonna keep the players engaged…and it’s gonna be hard and complicated and geeky, and all that’s actually good, cause those are the guys that are going to keep coming back. If you can build one medium engagement thing, so that you can play ten minutes a day–a flash game is a great example of that–then you’re gonna keep that middle group occupied. And, if you can build something that only takes ten seconds, like a really awesome website, something super spooky happens when you’re visiting, or you call a phone number. Then you’re going to get that upper crowd.

When it works right. When all those things are powering each other, what happens is, you get the bottom group entertaining the top. So, the core players are entertaining the medium players, the medium players are entertaining the really casual people. Cause they’re watching, like ‘Oh my god, these guys are going out in hurricanes and answering payphones!’ And you have all that insanity. And what happens is that triangle grows, because people from the top, every once in a while they trickle down to the middle. And people at the middle level start to trickle down to the bottom level. And that bottom level grows when there’s more core players doing more and more and more, the whole triangle grows because now there’s more to be entertained by. And although it looks like a triangle, it’s actually a circle. And if you build it the right way, you can get the player–nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd–you can get these guys to generate the viral spread for you. Because it’s not the game that has to be entertaining, it’s the players that have to be entertaining.

You don’t have to teach your customers how to spend money

Phoebe: So, back to Fourth Wall…and rather than selling somebody else’s product, selling your own original IP [Intellectual Property] in new forms… It sounds like you’ve already experimented with a number of different models, so what have been the most successful? Where do you wanna go?

Elan Lee: The two that have been the most successful so far is actually edoc [that's edoc laundry] clothing company – selling shirts, or clothes, makes a lot of money – and Cathy’s Book makes a lot of money. And I think the reason those two make a lot of money is because they’re established revenue models. If you have to teach someone how to spend money, that’s a loooooong road. So, using those established mechanisms is really good.

We have a lot of other mechanisms. One of the projects that we’re starting to develop right now – actually, the one I’m most excited about – which I can’t say too much about… is… how do I phrase this without totally screwing myself over? OK. (He pauses.) There’s a way that we all behave online. Nope, that’s a bad way to say it… OK. (Another pause.)

Here’s a statement: Marketers spend billions of dollars every year to make television commercials to get you to look at a product. Another statement is: Marketers spend a nearly equal amount to build banner ads to get people to redirect their behavior to a certain URL. To move their eyeballs to a certain URL. I think those are both true statements. OK. We have an experimental revenue model that I’m very excited about, because what it does is it makes part of gameplay moving your eyeballs to very specific websites, over and over and over again. And because that has such tremendous value, I think it’s a revenue model that you don’t have to teach. That you don’t have to teach your customers how to spend money. They just do it. And that has incredible value to marketers.

Let’s call that chocolate and peanut butter

I realize how nebulous I’m being about that, but if you look at it in that very abstract way, there’s something kinda beautiful about that, right? There’s value in people looking at your thing online, and the game is built out of things online, so let’s call that chocolate and peanut butter and put those things together, and build something where everyone wins.

Phoebe: So, if I can summarize: You’re talking about building a revenue model that is based on existing behaviors?

Elan Lee: Correct.

Phoebe: You’ve also had an opportunity with Fourth Wall to explore your own IP, instead of leveraging existing IP. And it seems like you’ve had a lot of opportunity to experiment with different media. Can you talk a bit about that?

Elan Lee: None of those have launched yet. However, we have started the process of writing and selling scripts in Hollywood. Some are television shows, some are webisodes, and some are feature length films. They’re all properties that we wrote in-house. And they’re all properties that have the interactive components baked into the DNA of the property. So, while it is possible to just sit back and watch a TV show…cause that’s not massively broken, and enough people know how to do it.

Lean forward and live in that world

All of the interactive components are an extension of that same experience across your cell phone, across your email address, across your facebook page. And rather than the interactive elements feeling like a marketing thing that was slapped on afterwards, what we’re trying to build – and what’s so exciting – is… When you participate in passive media, when you watch a TV show and watch a movie, you are sitting back. It’s a lean-back experience. And our claim is, in addition to that, the opportunity to then lean forward and live in that world – so that, when you decide to lean back again and watch the characters, they’re just continuing where you left off. My assertion is that that is the future of entertainment.

And getting to work with media where they let us play with that, and fund massive projects geared to not entertain that same million people who look for those marketing projects, but instead geared towards the 30 million people that are going to watch a TV show and then hopefully say, ‘Oh, there’s more? I wanna see what the more is, I wanna see what else there is.’ That’s a much more fun sandbox to get to play in. So, that’s what I’m excited about right now.

I’m sooo happy American Idol exists

Phoebe: Do you think that shows like American Idol, which are scratching surface of some type of audience interactivity – do you think that’s going to help with educating an audience so that they can deal with a cross-device experience?

Elan Lee: Yeah. For sure. I’m sooo happy American Idol exists. And I’m soo happy it’s doing as well as it is. Well, I guess it’s sort of declining a little but…what a run, right? I think that they showed…they took the first and hardest step in this process. They said, ‘For a massive audience, they are not gonna be scared to interact. And we’re gonna teach them over the course of many years how to do it. And we’re gonna reward them along the way, and we’re gonna introduce conflict along the way, and we’re gonna make it part of the experience. Part of the experience of American Idol is picking up another device – a computer or a phone and doing something. And we’re not gonna punish you for that, we’re not gonna make it complicated. We’re gonna make it fun and easy. And that’s the hardest damn step. And they did such a phenomenal job at it! Now, what’s even more exciting is what comes next.

You can just do it. Just do it today, this afternoon.

Phoebe: If I want to grow up and become a “transmedia designer”, what do I do? What’s the path for that?

Elan Lee: Right. Well, the shortest path is build one. What’s really cool about all this stuff is, you can just build one. If you’ve got a microphone and basic HTML skills, or a friend who has basic HTML skills, you can build one.

I think we’re in this phase that I call ‘wild experimentation,’ and no one has any idea what’s gonna work. There are certain lessons out there, but there are no rules. Everything is worth trying. And it’s rapid prototyping, and it’s rapid failure, and it’s wild experimentation. And for anyone who wants to grow up and be a ‘transmedia designer’…there’s no growing up involved. You can just do it. Just do it today, this afternoon. And those lessons that you learn there are what transmedia houses are looking for. Anyone who’s got any experience in this at all is what they’re looking for. But in success, and even in moderate success, people come to you and say, ‘That was awesome! What’s next? What are you going to build next? And can you slap this onto my product? And here’s some development money, and can you build it bigger and better and involve this thing instead?’ There’s quite a boom in this industry right now, because no one’s good at it. And there’s huge potential.

You get to convert part of your life into the storytelling experience

Phoebe: What’s been interesting for me in watching the development of this whole, quote-unquote transmedia environment, has been the role of academia and the media itself shaping the way people understand what it is. I mean even the term “transmedia” is not… I mean, did you coin that term?

Elan Lee: (Shakes his head.)

Phoebe: Right. So, the definitions have influenced what people expect. For example, there seems to be a set of conventions that go along with an Alternate Reality Game. And even within this frame of wild experimentation, it appears that what people are looking for is something formulaic… What do you think of when you think of an Alternate Reality Game? What does “transmedia” mean to you? Or does it have any meaning?

Elan Lee: I think that all it really means is that you get to convert part of your life into the storytelling experience. And the best ones are the ones where you get to define what part of your life that is. I don’t think there’s any formula about what it has to include or what it shouldn’t include. I’m such a huge fan of making people feel like superheroes. I just think that’s the key to everything. And so, if you can get someone to invite your story into their life, and what they’re gonna get in return is to feel like a superhero for doing so…that’s the ultimate transmedia experience. And I hate to define it more than that. I really think that’s the core of it.

Phoebe: More like transcendental media?

Elan Lee: Yeah! That’s a great way to look at it. (He laughs.) Yeah. I mean…I’ve had small experiences watching TV or movies, where I felt like a superhero just voyeuristically, but it wears off immediately. You know where the border of that TV is, and I know if I look to the left it’s not the TV anymore. That’s the wall of my apartment, and that’s the not having that experience anymore. And so transmedia is one where we say, well, the border doesn’t have to be there, the border is wherever I want it to be. And I really believe that’s the future of entertainment.

[But wait! There's more. Next time we'll cover Elan's take on creativity, and what makes him more successful at this than you.]

Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:38:33 GMT

Having decided that you want to get into transmedia and write a transmedia story, where do you start?

Well, I’d recommend that you start with what you know and branch out from there. But knowing where and how to branch out means considering the type of experience you want to create.

There are five questions to ask yourself (shown in Figure 1):

What is the story I want to tell?
How will I deliver the story?
What kind of audience participation do I want or need?
How will audience participation affect the story over time?
How much is based in the real world vs a fictional world?

Figure 1: Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started

The more audience participation you want or need, the more you’ll tend towards writing the storyworld before the story. Figure 2 illustrates what I mean by story and storyworld.

Think of a “story” as one implementation of the world of the story among many potential implementations. I guess you might think of story as one plot line and associated characters from a world of many plots, subplots, and characters and so on – I’ve called this a single “narrative space”. Figure 3 illustrates how an author might take a single narrative space (one story) and develop it into additional narrative spaces (new stories).

Figure 2: Story vs Storyworld

Figure 3: Narrative Spaces

When thinking about delivering the story, put aside the specifics of particular platforms (just for now) and think about the experience in terms of:

the narrative spaces you want to cover (location, characters, time – see above)
the number and relative timing of the platforms (sequential, parallel, simultaneous, non-linear)
the extent and type of audience involvement (passive, active, interactive, collaborative) .

There’s a lot to consider here so let’s tackle it as a two-stage process:

Step 1: decide the narrative space, number of platforms and their timing
Step 2: decide the extent of audience involvement.

Step 1: Narrative Space and Relative Timing of Platforms

Figure 4 shows a “typical” Hollywood transmedia project. It’s a series of single-platform deliverables – a book, a movie, a game. In many ways the platforms are independent except that they often cover different narrative spaces: prequel, sequel, flashback which may dictate a release order or schedule. In any case there’s no apparent audience interactivity between the platforms.

Figure 4: Transmedia Franchise

By contrast, an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) might cover a single narrative space across multiple platforms – each alone insufficient to carry the complete story but like jigsaw puzzle pieces they must be assembled to complete the picture (well… you know… story).

Figure 5: Portmanteau Transmedia

These different types to transmedia can be represented by the diagram in Figure 6. Of course it’s also possible to combine different types of transmedia as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 6: Types of Transmedia

Figure 7: Mixed Transmedia Types

Step 2: Audience Involvement

Audience involvement in the story often bothers indie filmmakers. It’s not just that the indie wants to tell his story without interference; it’s also the fear that amateur involvement will sully the final result. And for those who have tried involving audiences there’s concerns about the effort of “community management” – the time and trouble to guide, motivate, appeal and appease.

It’s not only indie filmmakers that worry about how to tell their story and yet still find room for audience participation. Talk to game designers about audience (i.e. player) interaction and story and they’ll tell you that the more control you give to players (audiences), the less control is retained by the author. In fact the problem is even more pronounced in MMOs where virtual world guru Richard Bartle says “Virtual world designers can’t add story, they can only add content. Content provides experiences that can be made by those who come through or observe them into story.” So at its most open-ended, the virtual world (or transmedia experience) creates a world with lots of actionable content and choices but no plot?

This player-author struggle is tackled by games like Fallout3 and Red Dead Redemption (which are console games, not MMOs) by offering players the choice to explore (create their own stories) or tackle quests (follow the author’s story). Cut-scenes of course offer the most extreme authorial control.

It’s clear that transmedia experiences can borrow from the lessons of games and virtual worlds – creating a storyworld into which the author places a mix of story and content with opportunities for sit-forward and sit-back participation.

Looking further into audience participation I discovered the “storytelling cube” (Figure 8 ) first presented at the 2002 Game Developers Conference by Raph Koster and Rich Vogel to describe how narrative is explored in online virtual worlds. It applies particularly well to ARGs. The three axes are control, impact and context:

Control: How much freedom does the audience have to create their own experience and how much control will you have as the author?
Impact: What long-lasting impact will the audience have on the evolution of the experience?
Context: How much of the experience is based in a fictional world and how much exists in “real life”?

Figure 8 Storytelling Cube (Raph Koster & Rich Vogel)

There’s no right or wrong position to be inside this cube: it’s up to you to decide based on experience, preference and resources. At one extreme you might have an entirely fictional world, tightly controlled by the author with no audience interaction and at the other you could have an experience based around real-world places & events in which the audience is free to completely change how the story evolves and is experienced. And of course the two can be mixed and there’s a lot of space in between.

To be continued….

Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:38:33 GMT

Having decided that you want to get into transmedia and write a transmedia story, where do you start?

Well, I’d recommend that you start with what you know and branch out from there. But knowing where and how to branch out means considering the type of experience you want to create.

There are five questions to ask yourself (shown in Figure 1):

What is the story I want to tell?
How will I deliver the story?
What kind of audience participation do I want or need?
How will audience participation affect the story over time?
How much is based in the real world vs a fictional world?

Figure 1: Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started

The more audience participation you want or need, the more you’ll tend towards writing the storyworld before the story. Figure 2 illustrates what I mean by story and storyworld.

Figure 2: Story vs Storyworld

Figure 3: Narrative Spaces

When thinking about delivering the story, put aside the specifics of particular platforms (just for now) and think about the experience in terms of:

the narrative spaces you want to cover (location, characters, time – see above)
the number and relative timing of the platforms (sequential, parallel, simultaneous, non-linear)
the extent and type of audience involvement (passive, active, interactive, collaborative) .

There’s a lot to consider here so let’s tackle it as a two-stage process:

Step 1: decide the narrative space, number of platforms and their timing
Step 2: decide the extent of audience involvement.

Step 1: Narrative Space and Relative Timing of Platforms

Figure 4: Transmedia Franchise

Figure 5: Portmanteau Transmedia

These different types to transmedia can be represented by the diagram in Figure 6. Of course it’s also possible to combine different types of transmedia as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 6: Types of Transmedia

Figure 7: Mixed Transmedia Types

Step 2: Audience Involvement

Control: How much freedom does the audience have to create their own experience and how much control will you have as the author?
Impact: What long-lasting impact will the audience have on the evolution of the experience?
Context: How much of the experience is based in a fictional world and how much exists in “real life”?

Figure 8 Storytelling Cube (Raph Koster & Rich Vogel)

To be continued….

Elan Lee: The “Rolling Stone” Interview, Part I

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:22:03 GMT

Elan Lee wants you to be a superhero!

[More on that later.]

“I’m trying to define a role in the world that doesn’t quite exist yet.”

A note of introduction: Through the good graces of Lee Sheldon (a game writer/designer and professor with whom I worked during my graduate program), the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, and others at Indiana University, we were able to host Elan in Bloomington, Indiana for a series of talks on the arts of storytelling and game design. I was lucky enough to listen to him speak on these and related subjects, a lot. This three part, “Rolling Stone” style profile/discussion is a mash-up of those talks, a one-on-one interview, and a lot of coffee-fueled conversations–with me and others–over the duration of that visit (and even a couple of follow-up emails).

I should also state that I am now an awestruck fan of his work (the intentions that inform it, even more so), and though I aim to provide some substance, I can’t avoid the occasional out-pourings of puffery that is the hallmark of celebrity profiles. But I guess that begs the question – is Elan Lee even a celebrity?

Elan Lee is Famous

Elan Lee is one of the first individual identities ever associated with Alternate Reality Games, and with the “transmedia” [what do you call it? genre? evolution? debacle? … I’ll settle on…] arena more generally. Along with his fellow 42 Entertainment and Fourth Wall founders, he represents an approach to storytelling and game design that is lauded as the Next Big Thing. He’s the “transmedia” equivalent of Stephen Spielberg (with whom he has, of course, worked). But this gives him a little too much credit. According to Elan Lee, the stories we tell don’t change, it’s the way we tell them that evolves.

The Future of Storytelling

In the early stages of preparation for his TEDxSeattle talk on “The Future of Storytelling,” Elan is obsessed with the image of the horseless carriage, and it’s as an apt metaphor. In the early stages of exploration, the identity of something new is not yet understood or established, so we use the language of the past to intellectually encompass the future. Even further, we use the symbols of the past to iterate what we think will be the future.

Let me be more illustrative: The “Horseless Carriage” is the name for a car in the world of the horse. The “Alternate Reality Game” is the name for a story/game/something whose characters may or may not inhabit physical bodies and whose setting may or may not exist within the boundaries of reality or imagination…in the world that accepts a distinction between those two states.

[Who knew this would get metaphysical so fast?]

The Mercedes F-Class “Horseless Carriage” – new old school

Try Everything

But what does that mean?! Well, according to Elan it means that the field is wide open, and without any hard and fast conventions, we can make anything we want. And it may fail, but that only helps us define this incoming genre for the era where it becomes mundane.

The other half of this, of course, is the participation of the audience. Without an audience that comprehends the mechanisms of cutting and zooming and reverse shots, movies would look inconsistent, and the stories they tell would appear to be nonsensically non-linear and emotionally disconnected.

Such are the frustrations of the “transmedia” designer. We develop vast universes, profound characters, world changing events, the elements of which are constructed in the same way that we acquire narratives in our “real” lives – we see newspaper headlines, watch video clips, monitor facebook pages, and repost twitter feeds. There’s nothing about these activities that appear non-linear or disconnected, and yet, when we make up a story that is absorbed and distributed in these ways, it becomes somehow less easily understood, even though the behaviors stay the same.

“If It’s Not Broken”

Elan’s solution to this is two-fold: 1) talk about what you do in the blandest possible way, and 2) don’t try to fix what isn’t broken. Here’s a factoid that sheds some light on both statements – Elan is now writing TV shows. Don’t be dismayed, he’s bringing a little something new to the table. But only a little. Elan Lee is a pragmatic guy, and this is, of course, pragmatic. If the first car was an Enzo, the local horsebacked posse would have strung up the inventor of that deviltry by his thumbs.

That doesn’t make for very good ratings.

So point two reminds us that we can innovate without intending to spark a revolution, and we’re more likely to change the way people think, what they believe, and how they behave if we nudge them ever so softly, instead of pushing them off the ledge.

And of course, the language in which we talk about what we do has to be consistent with the language that is understood. So if we call something a “comic book” when it’s really an episodic, stop-motion, illuminated epic poem accessed through a fictional character’s Vimeo account, the more traction it’s likely to get with the funders and the audience when it doesn’t sound so avant-garde.

Discussion of the “transmedia” industry, strategic storytelling, and creativity in Part II (7.11.2010)

Elan’s TEDxSeattle presentation