Most big video game releases now come with tie-in books, comics and even movies. But is this really about extending the story or is it just marketing?
It has become routine now. A few weeks after the announcement of any big new game release, there will be another thrilling revelation: a tie-in comic book series, a novel, a made-for-TV movie.
Inevitably, it will be a prequel, released a few weeks ahead of the game it accompanies, or it will slot into the timeline between subsequent titles in a major franchise. "We're excited by the opportunity to flesh out our backstory and give our fans more of an insight into the deep narrative," a producer will robotically intone. When of course, much of the excitement revolves around the marketing potential of the linear tie-in: every new story platform is an advert.
This used to be called merchandising, but now we must use the term "transmedia storytelling". Nowadays, developers are aiming to produce narratives so compelling that they transcend platform limitations; a high-tech realisation of Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk concept. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, however, Epic's European territory manager, Mike Gamble, warned studios away from becoming obsessed with crossovers projects:
It's really easy to be distracted by shiny baubles, whether that be pre-vis on films, doing stuff for car manufacturers, whatever it happens to be. In the end you can end up chasing these things and your core business is then neglected.
But there are deeper problems beyond merely getting a bit distracted. A key issue is that the linear content is rarely of a similar quality to the source material. Assassin's Creed the game is an astonishingly rich and detailed interactive universe, but the novelisation, Assassin's Creed: Renaissance, is lumbering, stilted and repetitive.
THQ's cable TV movie Red Faction: Origins is okay, but the lower production values create a huge aesthetic rift between the linear and video game interpretations. The Mortal Kombat webisodes were a bit of fun (and certainly popular, the first attracting more than 5m views in a week), but how much do we really need to know about a bunch of characters who exist merely to kick each other's heads in and rip out a few spines?
Certainly there have been examples where reasonably well-known authors and filmmakers have been drafted in to produce tie-ins that kind of work. Renowned sci-fi writer Greg Bear provided Microsoft with Halo: Cryptum, while EA used Chris Ryan for its Medal of Honor book, similarly bringing in SAS oldboy Andy McNabb to pen the Battlefield novelisation.
At least they have form and status in the military thriller genre. On the way, there's a movie conversion of Heavy Rain, scripted by Deadwood and NYPD Blue writer David Milch – and, of course, THQ has Guillermo del Toro overseeing forthcoming survival horror title inSANE, and he could well direct a movie tie-in.
Plus, like THQ, publishers Ubisoft and Namco Bandai are now taking more creative control over tie-ins, setting up their own movie production arms to ensure more symmetry between linear and interactive interpretations.
But so far, another core failing has been the sense of platform dissonance. Transmedia is supposed to be about telling a story seamlessly across multiple formats – this is the vision that guided, say, Tim Kring's fascinating project Conspiracy For Good, and the ARGs accompanying the likes of Portal 2 and TV series Numb3rs.
But in the mainstream video game sector, novelisations and movie tie-ins tend merely to extend background narrative detail – nice for hardcore fans, but never a fundamental element of some over-arching story experience. There is also rarely a sense of interaction between gamers and adaptations.
The Pottermore concept, which provides a creative community for fans of the Harry Potter universe, could well evolve into the most advanced and significant transmedia concept yet. Discussing it in an interview with Forbes magazine recently, Jeff Gomez, President and CEO of Starlight Entertainment, said:
What Pottermore.com does is that, for the first time it brings the Harry Potter brand from its basis in being a repurposed or repeated story world, into being a true transmedia brand. Transmedia is signified by interactivity: the audience feeling not only an intense relationship with the storyteller (they already have this with JK Rowling), but a feeling that their input will have some kind of impact on the story world itself. That's what I believe is happening with Pottermore. It is designed to be a two-way portal between all of us and the Harry Potter universe. It will promote participation by validating and celebrating community, dialogue and user-generated content. It exists not just to sell ebooks, but to nurture and ultimately expand the canon of Harry Potter itself. That's historic in many ways."
Frankly, if you don't need to read the books or watch the webisodes it's not transmedia.
What also frustrates is that linear media interpretations of games rarely challenge or explore the source material in interesting ways. There's something to be learned here from the world of big consumer brands. The likes of Coca-Cola, Levi's and MTV regularly use the concept of "chameleon branding", radically re-exploring their image and messaging for different audiences. So, for example, Coke has worked with Karl Lagerfeld and Daft Punk on design projects, while Levi's brought in feted fashion designer Billy Reid to reinterpret its staple wares for a limited edition menswear collection last year.
This is almost certainly a budget issue, but at the very least, the concept of transmedia will only become truly interesting when singular creative visionaries are brought onboard. A Grand Theft Auto novel penned by Bret Easton Ellis, or a Grant Morrison Dark Souls comic book; hand Dead Space to Neil Marshall, or Mass Effect to Matthew Vaughn. The last person a video game tie-in should be given to is a meek and respectful freelance hack, just glad of the chance to meet the guys who made his favourite sci-fi game series.
But it's not all his fault. How can I put this? Game narratives rarely stand up to close, undivided scrutiny. They're often hackneyed, generic, aimless even. Producing hundreds of pages of chronology, dozens of characters and a few intertwining conflicts does not make a rich, complex story. Those are foundations, they are not the building.
A lot of publishers – or at least their marketing people - seem unable to grasp that. Of course, this isn't a problem at all when interactivity is part of the entertainment – I'm more than happy to paper over the cracks in Heavy Rain or Red Dead Redemption because the plot is subservient to the action. But why would I read the novelisation of Quantic Dreams' psychological thriller, when I could read Jim Thompson, John Connolly or Thomas Harris?
Ultimately, there may be an insurmountable issue at the heart of the whole cross-platform phenomenon: the nature of storytelling within an interactive medium is unique and untransferable. When I play a game such as LA Noire or Bulletstorm, the story laid out by the designers and illustrated through cut-scenes is only part of the narrative equation – I do the rest of the work. My Cole Phelps is fundamentally different to yours; he reasons differently, he reacts differently, he has contrasting methods, routines and motivations.
Game designers must never lose sight of the fact that the gamer, through applying his or her own wit, knowledge and abilities to a game world, fundamentally shapes that world for themselves.
If transmedia is really going to work as a mainstream consumer concept rather than a marketing endeavour or a cult experiment, it will have to involve stories designed from the ground up to be both interactive and platform agnostic. Otherwise, all we're really doing is selling comic books to completists.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/aug/03/the-problem-with-transmedia
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