Does Transmedia Have to Be Interactive?
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 9:58AM
A couple of weeks ago, commenter John Sietsma left a thought-provoking statement on my ethics of transmedia post:
Nothing to do with ethics, just a nitpick about your definition of transmedia. It ignores interaction.
This may be my misunderstanding about transmedia, but I would have thought audience reaction would be a vital part of shaping and connecting with a story.
But, I live in a world of games, where story and interaction wrestle each other constantly.
According to the definitions of transmedia I use in that post, he's right; there's nothing in there about interaction. So is this an omission on my part? Does transmedia have to be interactive?
I've been thinking about it ever since, and my answer is a tentative no. (And I'm as surprised as anyone else that it panned out this way.)
What Does 'Interactive' Mean?
To talk about why, we get to have another conversation about definitions! Tra-la-la, oh happy day! What the heck does interactive mean, anyway? Let's examine the few ways that people tend to use this delightfully ambiguous word.Definition 1: Uses the internet.
A lot of you will wince over this, but let's face it, this is a definition that is really out there and that people really use, albeit a very shallow one. There are still ad agencies out there who use 'interactive' as their in-house shorthand for 'banner ads and SEO.'
Does a project have to use the internet to be transmedia? Not on my watch, buster. I think the esteemed Henry Jenkins would be on my side, here. Think of the Matrix example: A video game, graphic novel, and trilogy of films with intertwining plot threads taking place in the same world, and in which the events in each element inform the storyline of the other elements. There is a game there, which falls into some definitions of interaction yet to come. But was the internet a necessary part of the experience? Nah.
According to my WTF is Transmedia? post, I'd call that a sequential transmedia experience. But does a spiderweb transmedia experience have to use the internet? Still no dice.
Let's think for a second about Cathy's Book: It's a novel which includes an evidence packet -- photographs, birth certificates, letters. There are phone numbers to call, voice mails to listen to. That experience does use the internet -- there are email addresses to write to and websites to hit -- but it's very easy to imagine a similar spiderweb experience that doesn't. Cathy's Book without the internet is still a great piece of transmedia narrative. The internet is a powerful creative tool, but not a necessary one.
That's not to say that a lot of the experience wouldn't wind up on the internet. A lot of every experience winds up on the internet; recording experiences is one of its primary functions. But intense threads about, oh, Survivor or Desperate Housewives on Television Without Pity doesn't make those shows inherently transmedia.
Definition 2: The outcome is influenced by audience participation and/or action.
If you read Cathy's Book enough times, does the ending change? ...does that make it not transmedia? I should think not.
In fact, I harbor a suspicion that most of the big ARGs and transmedia experiences out there not only don't let the players directly affect the outcome, but are structured very specifically to provide them with the illusion of influence where no actual influence exists.
Or maybe it's just me and I'm projecting. Anyone?
Definition 3: Requires or allows audience participation and/or action to further the story.
Here's where we start to get into some fine semantics and hair-splitting. In my reply to John Sietsma, I said that I think interaction is an emergent property of transmedia. It's like talking about teeth in a definition of eating; it's not a strictly necessary part of the definition. I can envision transmedia projects that don't require audience action or participation. (But boy howdy does it help).
Let me cut and paste those definitions here for you again so we can take a harder look at them:
trans-me-di-a (n.)
1. A method for telling a story via multiple communication channels used simultaneously.
2. A method for telling a story via the communication channels your audience already uses in their everyday lives.
Under the multiple-communication-channels definition of transmedia, there is a certain amount of interaction built in to the definition... kind of, sort of, maybe, almost. After all, it's up to each audience member to choose to seek out each constituent piece of a multitextual narrative. But I don't think this is the sort of action that people mean when they say 'interaction.' You have to choose to read each successive issue of a comic book, too, but I don't think anybody is calling a comic book interactive on that basis.
I think, then, we can conclude that the sequential model of transmedia, in particular, does not require interaction.
But that distinction gets pretty blurry indeed if you're talking about spiderweb transmedia -- storytelling using an audience's everyday communications channels. Is having a Twitter feed interaction? It can be a totally passive experience, but the audience must locate the feed and make the choice to follow. I think we can agree that asking a player to make a phone call is requiring audience participation to consume the story. Is it interaction if your game calls the player? I find it tempting on the surface to call that a passive experience.
It hints at action even so -- the audience member being called had to give you their number, after all, and had to choose to pick up the phone. There's a dance going on. But again, to watch a TV show, the player has to make the decision to turn on a screen and tune in the show. So I still don't think that making the decision to consume is inherently interactive.
It's totally possible to consume a transmedia experience in a completely passive mode -- reading blog posts, watching videos, reading Tweets, without ever doing the actions that in my gut I feel are interaction-the-way-we-mean-it: sending emails, leaving comments, reaching out and touching the story world.
What's more, I think this passive method of consuming a transmedia experience is by far the type that the most audience members engage in.
So no, I don't think interaction is a necessary component of a transmedia experience.
I Love Interaction
This should in no way be taken as an endorsement for ignoring interactive elements in any transmedia project. But it's not a requirement for me, nor is it something I'd want to hang a definition on.
Interaction is for many of us the heart and soul of a transmedia experience. It's the magical thing that makes us want to do this. It's what electrifies the certain segment of our audience. And let's be clear, even that silent majority of passive audience members are electrified -- by the spectacle of other, more active participants reaching out and seeing the story reach back. It makes a world and a story come alive like nothing else.
But maybe somebody without the same motivations and sweet spots as me has a great idea for a project, and they're not sure if it's OK to call it transmedia. Me, I say take the name. I want to include as much as I can under the transmedia umbrella.
There's net-native literature to be made in a kaleidoscope of structures and forms. Let's keep our minds open.
Reader Comments (15)
Your #2 where you ask whether other ARG creators allow for the illusion of player control when perhaps there isn't very much is something I've been asking about, as well. http://irenelpynn.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/obligations-to-arg-audiences-also-outlines/ (edit: oh, I see Space Bass is already linking -- thanks!)
Basically, I find that many ARG players (though definitely not all) seem to want both a reasonable story line AND the ability to interact with the plot. The question I hear/read in so many post game chats of great games is, "So, what (insert name here) always supposed to (insert fate here), or did we mess something up?"
I'm glad you clarified how important the interaction is for many players, though I agree that you're right; transmedia the term does not require interaction! Interesting post. :)
Even choose your own adventures have guidance (in a manner of speaking)- I've read a few items that offer advice on how to leave hints, clues, and "help" the user through the experience to make sure it flies....
And in that vein, I think making an ARG is a lot like making a trail up a mountain and then telling you players to climb up and acting as their sherpa. You're hoping they go up the way you marked, but there's a chance they'll wander off into the woods instead...
One way of interacting is dialog. Perhaps this is similar to def 3? The story tellers are actively part of the story's community and they adapt the story based on people's reactions to story events, characters, etc.
Another way is through play. The story doesn't change, but the audience dresses up, makes fan fiction and find other ways to play with the story cannon. Story tellers can encourage, recognise and reward this interaction/immersion. Perhaps this is part of what you meant about interaction being a by-product?
Play leads towards games. Which to me is play within a structure or rule set. Perhaps this is not transmedia any more. Open-world game designers know the difficulty in making a linear story work with complete player freedom. But it can't be ignored for it's ability to generate fun and immersion.
So, the definition doesn't need to include interaction, but I'm surprised it is simply about delivery of the Big Up Front Story. The delivery mechanisms change the act of story telling too much. Although, it is easy to expand the definition of one's own field until it includes everyone else's! Can you, or should you, come up with a definition that includes The Matrix and I Love Bees.
I don't have a better definition, and definitions can get bogged down in black and white when the world is all shades and colour.
I wonder if this relates to the AR is not a game post? A label is dropped because of connotations, but the alternative label simply refers to delivery media. Broadening the term may have diluted the concept.
Dialog and game mechanics would, I think, fall under that third definition of allowing player participation and action to further the story. That's what makes something like a video game interactive, right? Even if the player isn't making meaningful choices, if they don't hit any buttons, nothing happens in the game.
I should probably work up a Venn diagram of transmedia and games -- they CAN overlap, but don't necessarily.They definitely both have a lot of the same tools in the box -- narrative, characters, interaction. But the core requirements are different. You don't need interaction to make transmedia, and you don't need narrative to make a game. Though the result is generally a lot more interesting, in both cases, if you use it anyway.
I agree with you that it does not have to be "interactive."
I've been struggling a lot with how much of an interactive "game" to make for my film, and how much to just make some sideline stories and subplots that play out in different media.
Personally, I like the idea of interactive elements, like emailing and phone calls and such. I really like them in theory. But in reality I don't actually do them. I do however, love fishing through a LOST website for Dharma information, or digging through the Dune glossary. I like having more and more stories and world to explore. So I think this kind of thing is perfectly valid as "Transmedia."
This is one of my dilemmas with my own project. How much of this stuff do I do if I myself am not that into it?
I've been all over the new Stephenson digital novel thing, and one thing that really stuck me about it is the user-enabled wikipedia for their world. I like the idea of users being able to contribute to the mythology. And they say, if you write a good story set in their world, they will in fact add it to the Canon. I see this as another kind of interaction different than what we're talking about, but I think valid.
At any rate, thanks for putting out some thoughtful...thoughts for us to chew on.
What I like about this is it organically mimics how we use the web now. You search something, get sucked into some story, then get out again and go about your way...
This is part of the purpose of what I'm doing with our WP plugins now, is give the ability to cross link an entire storyworld, and related content, in one place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_the_Khazars
Same concepts, no linear narrative, really, but three cross-referenced "dictionaries" that lead you into stories.
A great great book...
To me, to be interactive, an activity must provide potentially different outcomes based on user input.
That said, interactivity is a spectrum, from a binary true/false outcome all the way top the infinite potential of reality itself (where every minute action can be said to result in an immediate feedback).
The goal of most interactive experiences is to appear to be as deep in the spectrum as possible, regardless of the actual number of potential outcomes.
Part of the job of a game designer is to construct world in such a way that simple mechanics can be used to give the illusion of infinite interaction potential while keeping actual complexity at a manageable level.
There is obvious correlation between the perceived level of interactivity of an activity (ie number of potential outcomes) and the potential for engagement with said activity.
I believe this relates to a desire in all of us to personalize experiences in order to better identify with them.
I think that a big part of future entertainment content creation will have to do more with World Building than Story Crafting.
Simply because: now that we can, in a way, we all want to the heroes of the stories we chose to experience, to make them a part of our own personal story.
Just like any other type of experience, a transmedia experience, to a user, can lie at any point in the interactivity spectrum. But having none at all will severely impact how engaged the audience can become.