REPOSTED!!
Henry Jenkins OTHER article from MIT's Technology Review.
***
Why The Matrix Matters
The third and final film in The Matrix franchise, The Matrix:Revolutions, opened this week. I haven’t seen it yet because I have been hiding out in the North Georgia mountains but I have been doing a lot of research and thinking about the Matrix phenomenon this year for my new book project.
To understand why The Matrix is important, you have to go back to the concept of Transmedia Storytelling, which I spelled out in a column earlier this year: “In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best--so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced through game play.... Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption.... Offering new levels of insight and experience refreshes the franchise and sustains consumer loyalty.“
The Matrix pushes this idea of transmedia storytelling as far or further than anyone has gone before, building out the world of The Matrix across not only three feature films, but also a series of comics (first released on the web and now in print), a series of anime movies (The Animatrix), and an ambitious video game (Enter The Matrix) which contains more than an hour of original footage featuring the cast of the movie. Each of these works adds something important to our appreciation of the whole--none of redundant, each has its clear aesthetic contributions.
Game designer Neil Young uses the term “additive comprehension“ to describe the ways that we accrue information in transmedia storytelling, so that The Second Renaissance (one of the anime) fills it the events between our present society and the world depicted in the films, The Kid’s Story (also anime) introduces a minor character who appears without explanation in Reloaded, and Enter The Matrix (the game) provides backstory on Ghost and Niobe (two marginal characters in Reloaded who get more screen time in Revolution). In one of the flashier examples of transmedia storytelling, an urgent message gets introduced in The Flight of the Osiris (anime) and left at a post office, where the player retrieves it in Enter the Matrix (game), and the impact of its contents are made clear in the opening scenes of Reloaded (feature film).
The Wachowski Brothers sketched out the game levels with Shiny Entertainment’s David Perry, developed scenarios for many of the anime, and writed scripts for some of the comics. Fans argue that this gives these other works creative integrity.
Yet, at the same time, they work with distinctive and recognized artists in these other fields, artists like Paul Chadwick (Concrete), Neil Gaiman (The Sandman), and Peter Bagge (Hate) in the comics or Mahiro Maeda (Neon Genesis Evangelion), Peter Chung (Aeon Flux), and Andy Jones (Final Fantasy) in the anime, who bring their own thematic preoccupations, visual style and fan followings to the project. Each of these, and many The resulting works cohere, more or less, together, but also are distinctly different and accomplished on their own terms.
Even within the feature film, the Wachowskis have consistently showcased the contributions of other creative artists, including conceptual artist Geoff Darrow (who brings a Euro-comics influence to the project), martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping (who links it to the Hong Kong tradition), and costume designer Kym Barrett (who brings to it the high style we associate with her work on the films of Boz Luhrman).
Most film critics frankly haven’t been willing to make the effort to “get“ this franchise because they are stuck within a mono-media rather than a trans-media paradigm--and thus, the second two films walk away with a row of Gentleman’s Bs. They can see something new is going on here but they really don’t know what to make of it.
Traditional film aesthetics assumes not only that everything you need to know will be in the movie but that it will be repeated at least three times in case you blinked. The Matrix isn’t playing by those rules: it is experimenting with a new kind of popular culture, one which is by design more open-ended, more multilayered, more provocative and evocative, more exploratory than any one spectator is going to be able to process.
You are always going to feel inadequate before The Matrix because it expects more than any individual spectator can provide. That is its strength and its limitations. The film depends on the power of internet communities to look at the work from many different perspectives, pool their knowledge, and compile the information for us. The Matrix isn’t designed to be the end of the communicative and creative process but rather the beginning.
In the end, there is not one Matrix experience, but many. We hear this from no less an authority than Keanu Reaves: “What audiences make of Revolutions will depend on the amount of energy they put into it. The script is full of cul-de-sacs and secret passageways.“
So far, the audience has been prepared to give them more leeway than the critics have. The dramatic sales figures for Enter the Matrix and the Animatrix suggest audiences were ready to buy into the concept of transmedia storytelling.
Some critics are arguing that the third film suffers because it is trying to do too much, close off too many openings, and has this feel of ticking off plot elements. This is not surprising given the fact that the aesthetics of transmedia storytelling are still relatively undefined.
Transmedia storytelling is trying to take an economic imperative (the need to build up franchises in an era of media conglomeration) and trying to turn it into a creative opportunity. There remains an uneasiness about what is ruling this process—art or commerce.
The Wachowskis are violating a core principle which I described in my column: “Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable autonomous consumption. That is, you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa.“
Whether The Matrix experiment fails or not, it marks an important chapter in the emergence of this new transmedia aesthetic.
Friday, February 27, 2004
Thursday, February 26, 2004
REPOSTED!
Henry Jenkins article from MIT's Technology Review... in all of its glory.
***
Several years ago, I asked a leading producer of animated features how much creative control his team exerted over the games, toys, comics, and other products that deployed their characters. I was reassured that the distribution company handled all such ancillary materials. I saw the movement of content across media as an enhancement of the creative process. He saw it as a distraction or corruption.
This past month, I attended a gathering of top creatives from Hollywood and the games industry, hosted by Electronic Arts; they were discussing how to collaboratively develop content that would play well across media. This meeting reflected a growing realization within the media industries that what is variously called transmedia, multiplatform, or enhanced storytelling represents the future of entertainment.
Let’s face it: we have entered an era of media convergence that makes the flow of content across multiple media channels almost inevitable. The move toward digital effects in film and the improved quality of video game graphics means that it is becoming much more realistic to lower production costs by sharing assets across media. Everything about the structure of the modern entertainment industry was designed with this single idea in mind—the construction and enhancement of entertainment franchises.
And the push isn’t just coming from the big media companies. The kids who have grown up consuming and enjoying Pokemon across media are going to expect this same kind of experience from The West Wing as they get older. By design, Pokemon unfolds across games, television programs, films, and books, with no media privileged over any other. For our generation, the hour-long, ensemble-based, serialized drama was the pinnacle of sophisticated storytelling, but for the next generation, it is going to seem, well, like less than child’s play. Younger consumers have become information hunters and gatherers, taking pleasure in tracking down character backgrounds and plot points and making connections between different texts within the same franchise. And in addition, all evidence suggests that computers don’t cancel out other media; instead, computer owners consume on average significantly more television, movies, CDs, and related media than the general population.
While the technological infrastructure is ready, the economic prospects sweet, and the audience primed, the media industries haven't done a very good job of collaborating to produce compelling transmedia experiences. Even within the media conglomerates, units compete aggressively rather than collaborate. Each industry sector has specialized talent, but the conglomerates lack a common language or vision to unify them. The current structure is hierarchical: film units set licensing limits on what can be done in games based on their properties. At the same time, film producers don't know the game market very well or respect those genre elements which made something like Tomb Raider successful. We need a new model for co-creation—rather than adaptation—of content that crosses media.
The current licensing system typically generates works that are redundant (allowing no new character background or plot development), watered down (asking the new media to slavishly duplicate experiences better achieved through the old), or riddled with sloppy contradictions (failing to respect the core consistency audiences expect within a franchise). These failures account for why sequels and franchises have a bad reputation. Nobody wants to consume a steady diet of second-rate novelizations!
Franchise products are governed too much by economic logic and not enough by artistic vision. Hollywood acts as if it only has to provide more of the same, printing a Star Trek logo on so many widgets. In reality, audiences want the new work to offer new insights into the characters and new experiences of the fictional world. If media companies reward that demand, viewers will feel greater mastery and investment; deny it and they stomp off in disgust.
So far, the most successful transmedia franchises have emerged when a single creator or creative unit maintains control over the franchise. Hollywood might well study the ways that Lucasfilm has managed and cultivated its Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises. When Indiana Jones went to television, for example, it exploited the medium’s potential for extended storytelling and character development: the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles showed us the character take shape against the backdrop of various historical events and exotic environments. When Star Wars moved into print, its novels expanded the timeline to show us events not contained in the film trilogies, or recast the stories around secondary characters, as did the Tales of the Cantina series, which fleshes out those curious-looking aliens in the background of the original movie. When Star Wars went to games, those games didn’t just enact film events; they showed us what life would be like for a Jedi trainee or a bounty hunter.
On the other end of the scale, independent filmmaker Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy, Clerks), a longtime comic fan, uses this lower cost medium to fill in gaps and extend character background within his New Jersey film series. Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, similarly uses comics to extend his storyline backwards (Tales of the Slayers) and forward (Fray) in time, depicting huge spans in the history of the Watcher’s Council and the Slayers. Sony used the Web to offer new insights into the characters of Dawson’s Creek, mimicking the title character’s desktop, so that we can read his e-mail, sneak a peek at his journals, or even plagiarize his school essays. A team of writers updated this content each week in response to the aired episodes, using the Web to both plant seeds for future plot development and provide background to remind viewers of past actions.
In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best—so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced through game play. Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable autonomous consumption. That is, you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa. As Pokemon does so well, any given product is a point of entry into the franchise as a whole.
Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption. In a world with many media options, consumers are choosing to invest deeply in a limited number of franchises rather than dip shallowly into a larger number. Increasingly, gamers spend most of their time and money within a single genre, often a single franchise. We can see the same pattern in other media—films (high success for certain franchises, overall declines in revenue), television (shorter spans for most series, longer runs for a few), or comics (incredibly long runs for a limited number of superhero icons). Redundancy between media burns up fan interest and causes franchises to fail. Offering new levels of insight and experience refreshes the franchise and sustains consumer loyalty. Such a multilayered approach to storytelling will enable a more complex, more sophisticated, more rewarding mode of narrative to emerge within the constraints of commercial entertainment.
And it also makes economic sense. Different media attract different market niches. Films and television probably have the most diverse audiences, comics and games the narrowest. A good transmedia franchise attracts a wider audience by pitching the content differently in the different media. If each work offers fresh experiences, then a crossover market will expand the potential gross within any individual media. So, women may not play games, but women who like Lord of the Rings might experiment on a related game title.
Have no fear—not all stories will flow across media. Most won’t, but a growing number will. Transmedia stories aren’t necessarily bad stories; they are different kinds of stories. According to Hollywood lore, a good pitch starts with either a compelling character or an interesting world. We might, from there, make the following argument: A good character can sustain multiple narratives and thus lead to a successful movie franchise. A good “world” can sustain multiple characters (and their stories) and thus successfully launch a transmedia franchise.
Many of our best authors, from William Faulkner to J.R.R. Tolkien, understood their art in terms of world-creation and developed rich environments which could, indeed, support a variety of different characters. For most of human history, it would be taken for granted that a great story would take many different forms, enshrined in stain glass windows or tapestries, told through printed words or sung by bards and poets, or enacted by traveling performers. Sequels aren’t inherently bad—remember that Huckleberry Finn was a sequel to Tom Sawyer. But Twain understood what modern storytellers seem to have forgotten—a compelling sequel offers consumers a new perspective on the characters, rather than just more of the same.
Henry Jenkins article from MIT's Technology Review... in all of its glory.
***
Several years ago, I asked a leading producer of animated features how much creative control his team exerted over the games, toys, comics, and other products that deployed their characters. I was reassured that the distribution company handled all such ancillary materials. I saw the movement of content across media as an enhancement of the creative process. He saw it as a distraction or corruption.
This past month, I attended a gathering of top creatives from Hollywood and the games industry, hosted by Electronic Arts; they were discussing how to collaboratively develop content that would play well across media. This meeting reflected a growing realization within the media industries that what is variously called transmedia, multiplatform, or enhanced storytelling represents the future of entertainment.
Let’s face it: we have entered an era of media convergence that makes the flow of content across multiple media channels almost inevitable. The move toward digital effects in film and the improved quality of video game graphics means that it is becoming much more realistic to lower production costs by sharing assets across media. Everything about the structure of the modern entertainment industry was designed with this single idea in mind—the construction and enhancement of entertainment franchises.
And the push isn’t just coming from the big media companies. The kids who have grown up consuming and enjoying Pokemon across media are going to expect this same kind of experience from The West Wing as they get older. By design, Pokemon unfolds across games, television programs, films, and books, with no media privileged over any other. For our generation, the hour-long, ensemble-based, serialized drama was the pinnacle of sophisticated storytelling, but for the next generation, it is going to seem, well, like less than child’s play. Younger consumers have become information hunters and gatherers, taking pleasure in tracking down character backgrounds and plot points and making connections between different texts within the same franchise. And in addition, all evidence suggests that computers don’t cancel out other media; instead, computer owners consume on average significantly more television, movies, CDs, and related media than the general population.
While the technological infrastructure is ready, the economic prospects sweet, and the audience primed, the media industries haven't done a very good job of collaborating to produce compelling transmedia experiences. Even within the media conglomerates, units compete aggressively rather than collaborate. Each industry sector has specialized talent, but the conglomerates lack a common language or vision to unify them. The current structure is hierarchical: film units set licensing limits on what can be done in games based on their properties. At the same time, film producers don't know the game market very well or respect those genre elements which made something like Tomb Raider successful. We need a new model for co-creation—rather than adaptation—of content that crosses media.
The current licensing system typically generates works that are redundant (allowing no new character background or plot development), watered down (asking the new media to slavishly duplicate experiences better achieved through the old), or riddled with sloppy contradictions (failing to respect the core consistency audiences expect within a franchise). These failures account for why sequels and franchises have a bad reputation. Nobody wants to consume a steady diet of second-rate novelizations!
Franchise products are governed too much by economic logic and not enough by artistic vision. Hollywood acts as if it only has to provide more of the same, printing a Star Trek logo on so many widgets. In reality, audiences want the new work to offer new insights into the characters and new experiences of the fictional world. If media companies reward that demand, viewers will feel greater mastery and investment; deny it and they stomp off in disgust.
So far, the most successful transmedia franchises have emerged when a single creator or creative unit maintains control over the franchise. Hollywood might well study the ways that Lucasfilm has managed and cultivated its Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises. When Indiana Jones went to television, for example, it exploited the medium’s potential for extended storytelling and character development: the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles showed us the character take shape against the backdrop of various historical events and exotic environments. When Star Wars moved into print, its novels expanded the timeline to show us events not contained in the film trilogies, or recast the stories around secondary characters, as did the Tales of the Cantina series, which fleshes out those curious-looking aliens in the background of the original movie. When Star Wars went to games, those games didn’t just enact film events; they showed us what life would be like for a Jedi trainee or a bounty hunter.
On the other end of the scale, independent filmmaker Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy, Clerks), a longtime comic fan, uses this lower cost medium to fill in gaps and extend character background within his New Jersey film series. Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, similarly uses comics to extend his storyline backwards (Tales of the Slayers) and forward (Fray) in time, depicting huge spans in the history of the Watcher’s Council and the Slayers. Sony used the Web to offer new insights into the characters of Dawson’s Creek, mimicking the title character’s desktop, so that we can read his e-mail, sneak a peek at his journals, or even plagiarize his school essays. A team of writers updated this content each week in response to the aired episodes, using the Web to both plant seeds for future plot development and provide background to remind viewers of past actions.
In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best—so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced through game play. Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable autonomous consumption. That is, you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa. As Pokemon does so well, any given product is a point of entry into the franchise as a whole.
Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption. In a world with many media options, consumers are choosing to invest deeply in a limited number of franchises rather than dip shallowly into a larger number. Increasingly, gamers spend most of their time and money within a single genre, often a single franchise. We can see the same pattern in other media—films (high success for certain franchises, overall declines in revenue), television (shorter spans for most series, longer runs for a few), or comics (incredibly long runs for a limited number of superhero icons). Redundancy between media burns up fan interest and causes franchises to fail. Offering new levels of insight and experience refreshes the franchise and sustains consumer loyalty. Such a multilayered approach to storytelling will enable a more complex, more sophisticated, more rewarding mode of narrative to emerge within the constraints of commercial entertainment.
And it also makes economic sense. Different media attract different market niches. Films and television probably have the most diverse audiences, comics and games the narrowest. A good transmedia franchise attracts a wider audience by pitching the content differently in the different media. If each work offers fresh experiences, then a crossover market will expand the potential gross within any individual media. So, women may not play games, but women who like Lord of the Rings might experiment on a related game title.
Have no fear—not all stories will flow across media. Most won’t, but a growing number will. Transmedia stories aren’t necessarily bad stories; they are different kinds of stories. According to Hollywood lore, a good pitch starts with either a compelling character or an interesting world. We might, from there, make the following argument: A good character can sustain multiple narratives and thus lead to a successful movie franchise. A good “world” can sustain multiple characters (and their stories) and thus successfully launch a transmedia franchise.
Many of our best authors, from William Faulkner to J.R.R. Tolkien, understood their art in terms of world-creation and developed rich environments which could, indeed, support a variety of different characters. For most of human history, it would be taken for granted that a great story would take many different forms, enshrined in stain glass windows or tapestries, told through printed words or sung by bards and poets, or enacted by traveling performers. Sequels aren’t inherently bad—remember that Huckleberry Finn was a sequel to Tom Sawyer. But Twain understood what modern storytellers seem to have forgotten—a compelling sequel offers consumers a new perspective on the characters, rather than just more of the same.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
The Transmedia Story: Themes and Approaches
A simple summation of Jenkins' thinking... good if you haven't got the time to read a pair of two page articles.
A simple summation of Jenkins' thinking... good if you haven't got the time to read a pair of two page articles.
Monday, February 23, 2004
Wired News: James Bond: Great Game, Bad Movie
An excellent discussion on convergence storytelling. Of course, the Bond franchise has long been known for this sort of potential and we're now seeing it truly come to life.
Fundamental question, though: is the climax result better video games but much worse movies?
An excellent discussion on convergence storytelling. Of course, the Bond franchise has long been known for this sort of potential and we're now seeing it truly come to life.
Fundamental question, though: is the climax result better video games but much worse movies?
Thursday, February 19, 2004
An article from CNN challenging the conventional wisdom... unfortunately, the link sent with is now broken.
So take it with a grain of salt.
Study: Women over 40 biggest online gamers
Atlanta, Boston most game-happy cities, AOL says
Wednesday, February 11, 2004 Posted: 10:41 AM EST (1541 GMT)
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Think teenagers are spending all night long playing online games on the computer? Wrong -- it's their mothers burning the midnight oil.
AOL, a unit of CNN's parent company Time Warner Inc. , released a study showing that U.S. women over the age of 40 spend nearly 50 percent more time each week playing online games than men and are more likely to play online games daily than men or teens.
Of those women over 40 who had formed online friendships, AOL said, more than 20 percent converted those virtual connections into real-life relationships.
Fueling the arguments of those who say that gaming takes away from other activities, 44 percent of the women over 40 who responded to the survey, conducted by Digital Marketing Services, said they spend less time watching TV or movies, reading or being physically active because of their game play.
More than a quarter of those women, the survey found, play their favorite games between midnight and 5 a.m. Women in the poll tended to favor word and puzzle games.
About half of teens surveyed reported spending more time playing games than reading and more than a quarter doing more gaming than homework.
AOL also did research on gaming habits in major cities, finding that people who play games online in Los Angeles are far more likely (31 percent) to form off-line relationships than the national average (18 percent).
Atlanta and Boston were the most game-happy cities overall, at about 8 hours per capita per week, the survey said.
The survey was conducted online with 3,613 respondents between mid-December and mid-January, the company said.
So take it with a grain of salt.
Study: Women over 40 biggest online gamers
Atlanta, Boston most game-happy cities, AOL says
Wednesday, February 11, 2004 Posted: 10:41 AM EST (1541 GMT)
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Think teenagers are spending all night long playing online games on the computer? Wrong -- it's their mothers burning the midnight oil.
AOL, a unit of CNN's parent company Time Warner Inc. , released a study showing that U.S. women over the age of 40 spend nearly 50 percent more time each week playing online games than men and are more likely to play online games daily than men or teens.
Of those women over 40 who had formed online friendships, AOL said, more than 20 percent converted those virtual connections into real-life relationships.
Fueling the arguments of those who say that gaming takes away from other activities, 44 percent of the women over 40 who responded to the survey, conducted by Digital Marketing Services, said they spend less time watching TV or movies, reading or being physically active because of their game play.
More than a quarter of those women, the survey found, play their favorite games between midnight and 5 a.m. Women in the poll tended to favor word and puzzle games.
About half of teens surveyed reported spending more time playing games than reading and more than a quarter doing more gaming than homework.
AOL also did research on gaming habits in major cities, finding that people who play games online in Los Angeles are far more likely (31 percent) to form off-line relationships than the national average (18 percent).
Atlanta and Boston were the most game-happy cities overall, at about 8 hours per capita per week, the survey said.
The survey was conducted online with 3,613 respondents between mid-December and mid-January, the company said.
Friday, February 13, 2004
EA and Marvel Ink Development Deal - GameMarketWatch.com - Insight for the Electronic Entertainment Industry
More movement on the home front... is there any game genre NOT being developed in Vancouver just now?
More movement on the home front... is there any game genre NOT being developed in Vancouver just now?
Friday, February 06, 2004
DNA/HHGG Infocom Adventure
Boy, does this one take me back. Whatever happened to good old text-based adventures. Oh yeah, graphics.
Boy, does this one take me back. Whatever happened to good old text-based adventures. Oh yeah, graphics.
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