ARG Design
A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling
Andrea Phillips 2012 13 references
Andrea Phillips's practitioner guide to building transmedia experiences across multiple platforms -- use when designing multi-platform narratives, interactive storytelling, or audience engagement strategies.
transmedia storytelling multi-platform audience-engagement interactive-narrative media-production content-strategy
Overview
The Core Framework
- Transmedia = integral story elements dispersed across multiple platforms where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
- Every element must serve a creative purpose: worldbuilding, characterization, backstory/exposition, or native transmedia
- Choose depth or scale, not both: 80% passive viewers / 15% engaged / 5% superfans (the Engagement Pyramid)
- Multiplatform payoffs are the mechanism: set up in one medium, pay off in another
- Characters, not worlds, drive engagement -- compelling characters are the engine across all transmedia forms
Quick Lookup
| Situation | Do This | Avoid This |
|---|---|---|
| Adding a new platform/medium | Ensure it serves one of the four creative purposes | Bolting on content without narrative justification |
| Balancing audience accessibility | Design for the engagement pyramid tier you're targeting | Trying to serve all tiers equally |
| Integrating a brand/sponsor | Use light-touch integration; story comes first | Brandcuffing -- centering the product in narrative |
| Seeding narrative threads | Sprinkle guns -- seed more than you currently need | Following Chekhov's gun (fire every gun you place) |
| Designing interactive elements | Maintain illusion of interaction; protect load-bearing plot points | Giving real agency over critical story moments |
| Managing audience expectations | Be transparent when things go wrong | Sock puppetry or spinning failures |
| Blurring fiction and reality | Apply the delight-not-betrayal test | Ignoring bystanders who encounter content out of context |
The Key Insight
"Creators are learning how to spin these platforms together into complex, integrated works in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts -- that's transmedia." -- Andrea Phillips, Preface
References
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