Transmedia Storytelling

Transmedia. The future of media and gaming? Or rather, is the future now? Henry Jenkins writes that "transmedia storytelling...depends less on each individual work being self-sufficient than on each work contributing to a larger narrative economy." (124) He includes books, film, television, comics, and other media, "each doing what it does best, each a relatively autonomous experience, but the richest understanding of the story world comes to those who follow the narrative across the various channels." (124)

I've asked some friends who like gaming whether they feel this is true, and they seem to think that the best games are those that don't belong to some "narrative economy." Stand-alone games that don't seem to have a narrative arch like CS and Diablo are, as we all know, really popular and it doesn't matter that there's no background story. Video games that involve Harry Potter and other non-computer-media based characters don't do as well, in terms of sales. Why is this? Is the fun of the game lost in the attempt to make a videogame an accurate representation of the particular book or film? Do the constraints of the characters' book world or film world limit what the videogame player can do? Maybe I was asking an audience that just happens to not like such "transmedia" works, and I'm making too rash of a generalization? Still though, it seems that the most successful--and I'm defining success by sales and sheer number of players worldwide--games have not been the "transmedia stories" but instead stand-alone videogames.

This also transitions into something else that I've been thinking about in relation to all this: the economy. After all, we are talking about narrative "economy." If a lot of the books and films that were made into video games turned out to be really bad according to most gamers, then why make it? This transmedia franchising business seems like a must once any piece of art, film, literature, media becomes popular. A best-selling book will predictably turn into a movie, and if possible, a video-game. A popular film spawns other media offspring, etc. I feel like in most cases of branding a movie or book and turning it into a franchise, the quality of the spinoff products suffer. But hey, if it makes money, then might as well keep churning out those videogames.