BA4 Contextual Studies: Creating Coherent Worlds #05

Contextual Studies Lecture

Recently our CS tutor, Sharon, gave us an interesting lecture focusing on transmedia. Transmedia is when a form of media is taken and applied to other varieties of media such as Batman.

Batman originates in character form in a detective comic. It then moved onto larger scale DC comics where he was known as the Batman. Batman became a transmedia phenomenon when the character starred in various TV adaptations of the comics. This flower of transmedia kept growing with Batman's popularity and now there are hundreds of ways fans can appreciate Batman through big variety of different medias such as films, comics, soundtracks, video games; each one embracing and fulfilling the batman universe making it more and more popular. 

Transmedia & South Park (S10ep8) 
Sharon started off her lecture showing us a short clip from an episode of South Park (yes, you read that right haha). This was the episode in which the boys (Stan, Kyle, Kenny & Cartman) are playing  Blizzards popular MMORPG World of Warcraft.

>> CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE EPISODE <<

It’s an hilarious episode and any of you who are interested in games should watch it. But how does it relate to transmedia? Well South Park is taking something which is a completely different media into its own media type. South Park is a comedy animation cartoon and uses the video game World of Warcraft to influence and structure its episode. It uses the World of Warcraft universe as if it were a real place and makes jokes about how seriously people in real life consider the game and its universe. 

Transmedia & Henry Jenkins

Sharon then showed us a TED Talk in which Henry Jenkins was talking about his views and opinions on transmedia discussing participatory culture and how people use the internet for all manner of purposes to create their own virtual worlds, how they go about creating their online cultures and how the virtual worlds seems to grow from and spawn new forms of realities.

  

Transmedia, Sharon’s Lecture & My Notes

Sharon then gave us a talk in which she gave her own examples of transmedia. I wrote a few notes whilst watching so here they are...

Transmedia & The Matrix

The Matrix is a film directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski released in 1999. The story is incredibly complex but it is still one of the most famous films of my generation spawning various other transmedia outings such as comics, novels, animes and video games. This is why it’s a beautiful example to show how transmedia works. 

Enter The Matrix (Video Game)

This is the example Sharon showed us, Enter The Matrix was the first video game spawned from the films. It was produced, developed and released simultaneously with The Matrix Reloaded (the film) which shows how the two separate form of media were growing. Scenes were specifically shot for the game which coincided with the films to please fans. It basically gave fans another way to “enter the matrix” through another media. 

Transmedia & The Hunt For Gollum (Lord of The Rings)

  

The Hunt for Gollum is a fan made film directed by Chris Bouchard influenced and based on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings novels. Lord of the Rings is an fantastic example of transmedia, originally a book, it was adapted into three feature length films which were immensely popular. Since then there have also been various fan made art, books and music inspired by the world Tolkien created. There have also been a number of video game adaptations of the books, all of which try to recreate the world of The Lord of the Rings fully and correctly for the fans. 

Sharon explained that The Hunt for Gollum was an example of how fandom causes creativity sparked from a form of media, it was a way for fans to show their appreciation/fandom/ideas in their own media format. 

Transmedia & Sharon’s Questions

Towards the end of her presentation, Sharon proposed 3 questions for us to consider based on the lecture, here are those questions and my answers. 

#1

Is the World of Warcraft episode of South Park a transmedia story?

I think the Warcraft episode of South Park is more of a parody than anything else, and even then it doesn’t “mock” WoW in similar ways that it does to other areas of culture. Transmedia suggests that a fan can re live their time with something they love but through another media, as if the first media instance spawned a new one in a domino effect for the fan to enjoy. The WoW episode doesn’t do this, you cant play as the WoW characters IN south park, nor can you play as South Park characters in WoW.  At the most it is an transmedia REFERENCE; it’s referencing another form of popular media, it is not a transmedia itself. 

#2

Where do games fit into the transmedia story telling world at present?

I think games fit in “somewhere”. There have been quite a few media spawns from games in the past 10 years such as the Resident Evil books and more commonly known films. This goes for Silent Hill too which has seen spawn 2 feature length films of its own back. However, the more commonly shared opinion on these transmedia “jumps” are that often they do not stay true to the game. Resident Evil seems to have gone off on a completely ridiculous 3D gimmick trip where character names are about the only blend of ingame reference you’ll get. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are other forms of media spawned from games which take on their worlds and recreate them successfully for the fans such as figures, comics and art books. Lets not also forget games such as Lord of the Rings and Enter The Matrix which were very popular among fans and sold well but they aren't often critically acclaimed video games. The only video game adaptation I really loved was Batman Arkham Asylum. I'm not a big Batman nerd but that game was amazing. I think currently feature films struggle to find a coherent way of creating game worlds and stories in its media but this doesn’t mean it cant be done well (and still appeal to a wider, non gaming audience) but I believe that ultimately its smaller transmedia spawns such as comics and art which are more successful from a fans point of view. 

#3

What characteristics do games have that give them transmedia potential?

Games have everything you could need to recreate them into another form of media; rich characters, intriguing story lines and engaging worlds to list the main criteria. These elements are ripe to spawn other forms of media such as comics. An example come from the incredibly popular Uncharted series on the Playstation 3 has recently had its storyline and characters put into a graphic novel/comic for fans to read which meant that as a video game it had the popular characteristics to give it transmedia potential. 

CS 10 Minute Presentation Notes

As a few of us were still confused after the presentation Sharon gave us on transmedia about what we actually had to do for our presentations, we stayed back to talk to Sharon about it. She reminded us that the core subject for our presentations is how coherent worlds are built and that we should be considering this in every piece of research we do. The presentations we have been given so far are to make us think differently about worlds and to think more analytically about how they are built and why they are built that way. They were to give us a few ways to consider approaching the presentation task. 

I now have a better understanding of what I would like to do for my presentation. I did like the transmedia lecture but ultimately I want to study games as a media, not games and a variety of other medias too. That is why my idea currently is to take the research we did on Vladimir Propp and his 7 spheres of action and apply them to a small variety of different games. Similarly to how we did for a previous “homework” task where I studied Journey’s game world but of course my presentation version will be a lot more in-depth and will include analytical comparisons between genres. That is about all I have right now though so I will post up again when I have thought more about it :D