When USC professor Henry Jenkins, a leading authority on transmedia, is moderating your Comic-Con panel, you'd better believe that this is serious business. THQ let it be known that they are very serious about pioneering the art of transmedia and they're using their vaunted Red Faction franchise as a jump-off point.
Transmedia producer Jeff Lopez described transmedia as a property that people can experience in many different ways through a variety of different means of delivery, whether its a game, a movie, a comic, a website or virtually any other media. He added that it's a technique that broadens the lifecycle of a world and makes it deeper and richer, where the user will want to share their experience with others. He went on to explain that in a typical franchise, the game, movie, graphic novel and other media are set in the same basic world, but other than that there's little continuity. In other words, the whole is usually less than the sum of its parts.
Red Faction creator Danny Bilson added, "We don't want to just build a game or a story, we're building a universe." He continued, "The key to transmedia is that it's a partnership, not just licensing a franchise and passing it off to the next medium when you're done with it." He further explained how he is in constant communication with Lopez (who is tasked with creating a written history of the Red Faction universe, giving it a timeline and chronology that fits everything together) and Alan Seiffert, the senior vice-president of SyFy Ventures, which is developing a feature-length movie for the franchise.
The movie, tentatively titled Red Faction: Origins, takes place between Red Faction: Guerrilla and Red Faction: Armageddon. The movie's writer, Andrew Kreisberg, explained that Guerrilla focused on Alec Mason, Armageddon is centered on his grandson Darius Mason, and Origins will tell the story of Darius parents, essentially filling the gap between generations.
Seiffert said SyFy is always looking for opportunities to build content beyond just TV and they wanted to partner with THQ on this venture because THQ gets it when it comes to transmedia. He noted that Red Faction will be an epic saga, but instead of a game trilogy or a series of books, it will be a game-movie-game hybrid.
by Josh Engel
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bigheadzach
I think Mass Effect is one of those franchises with enough depth to carry it through several media forms. It's already got 2 AAA titles (and a third on the way), a mobile game, 3 novels... the tabletop RPG ain't far behind, and if Bioware wasn't so busy working on SWTOR, a Mass Effect MMO would surely be on their list.
Issues with individual games' interfaces/gameplay aside, you can't deny the depth and characterization that ME provided to its players.
stry8993
Oh, and if you asked Rooster Teeth Productions or Machinema.com what a "game-movie-game hybrid" was... I'm sure they'd called it a... wait for it... Machinema :P.
stry8993
The flipside of this, is that some may argue it dilutes the brand, story, or reason the particular property caught on in the first place. If you take the Super Mario Bros. for instance, like the Mario Kraft Dinner, McDonald's Toys, a Great Game, a huge, broad appeal. It being featured in movies for god sakes... and then... making a movie. And people were like, "What the hell is this?" Most wondered how they could do it, and after watching it, wished they'd never seen it. Being a little dude at the time, I thought it was neat, but, didn't really get what the heck I was watching, save for Yoshi, and the Mushrooms and Mario and Luigi. Bowser didn't look like Bowser, the Goomba's and Koopa's didn't look like either of them. It really wasn't an easy thing to make a movie about, and didn't need to be done.
I mean, say what you want, and do as you will, but Transmedia, or Cross-Platform Integration is a huge risk. Its either golden pavement, or yellow-feco-matter-covered paint. It can make, or break your particular property's demand and or relevance in it's particular market. Its all on the delivery. A bomb can't blow up the target, if it can't reach it.
For me, the Halo Legends Anime Series, Books in the Halo Series, Controllers, T-Shirts, this' and thats' are something I like. I find them a contribution to the games because nothing ever comes close to the experiences I've shared with the Chief and his sexy little AI Sidekick. But others would say that they're taking a property and 'milking' it, like taking a Hero who saved the world, and making him make cakes for an old folks home. Like community service for a crime he didn't commit... or she if it was a she, sorry lady's.
But to close, I think Red Faction never needed to be GTA on Mars, it never needed to be Dead Space underground, it never needed to find it's place. It already had it. I could dig holes into the enemy base, and run the flag back to mine, 'nuff said.
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