Universe Creation 101

 ep004_TimWright: Download

Another podcast! Yay! At this rate I might even crack three podcasts a year. hehe. Joking aside, I’m excited about our guest today. UK digital writer Tim Wright shares his vast experience with over a decade with online interactive drama and more recently multiplatform storytelling. Below is a time guide showing you topics Tim touches on a certain points. Everything Tim (and I) refer to is in the show notes.

00.00: Online Caroline
11.10: Lonely Girl 15
13.18: closure
15.58: Balancing world creation and fan fiction
19.56: Mount Kristos
25.33: The Search of Oldton
39.32: Multiplatform storytelling
52.09: Scaling
Happiness…

Show notes:

• Jill Walker-Rettberg’s essay: ‘How I was played by Online Caroline’
• Rob Bevan
• MindGym
• Jenny Cam
• Online Caroline
• XPT (fictional company)
• Richardson’s Pamela
• Lonely Girl 15
• Mount Kristos
• Kate Modern
• You Sucjk at Photoshop
• In Search of Oldton
• Writers for the Future
• trAce Online Writing Centre
• Sue Thomas
• Multiplatform Storytelling for Screenwriters @ 01ZERO-ONE
• Ted
• The Lost Ring ‘Running of the Labyrinth’ instructions
• Jane McGonigal’s SXSW presentation: Alternate Realities (PPT at SlideShare)

More info about Tim:

• Tim Wright’s blog
• XPT (Wright & Bevan’s company)

Other interviews conducted at UC101:

• Lance Weiler (video)
• Evan Jones (audio and text transcript)

Postscript:
Sorry about the technical difficulties with the podcast. The video editing software I use doesn’t let me do edits to the second, and I’m still trying to figure out how to get both myself and the interviewer at the same sound level. Tim teases me about being in a black room (it was midnight for me!), and being close to the screen with bad lighting. What can I say, I’m an interactive drama cliche. I’ll have to increase the drama with a call to save the world or something.

Well, not quite ‘death’ but an indefinite hiatus. I’m powering down this blog for a few reasons, one of which is my desire to finish my PhD. I’ve tried for the last year and a half to do PhD writing and work and this blog, but found the mindsets are somewhat incompatable. I’ve decided therefore to close this blog down. I don’t know if I’ll bring it up again and if I do when, or whether I’ll start another one. But I do know that I have thoroughly enjoyed blogging here these past few years. I have especially enjoyed meeting many of you because of the blog, and seeing ‘cross-media’ (etc) projects become ubiquitous. Thankfully, the area has alot more people looking at it now, from alot of different perspectives. Here are some blogs that will keep you informed:

• Networked Performance: research blog that posts about emerging network-enabled practice;
• You can read and listen to news about alternate reality games and just about any online extension of a film, TV or book property on the ARGNet blog and ARG Netcast (podcast);
• Henry Jenkins personal blog and the Convergence Culture Consortium blog has lots of goodies from a media studies perspective about ‘transmedia storytelling’ and ‘convergence culture’ in general;
• DeMontfort University share their investigations into what they term ’Transliteracy’ at their PART blog;
• Jeff Gomez, the CEO of Starlight Runner and longtime practitioner of ‘trans-media’ projects, is now blogging regularly about his insights and experience over at the Producers Guild of America blog;
• Monique de Haas blogs about ‘crossmedia communication’ occasionally;
• Tony Walsh posts semi-regularly on alternate reality games;
• Valentina Rao blogs about crossmedia games and anything related to that at Games Across Media, and will hopefully be starting her PhD on the subject soon;
• Johnathan Gray, Derek Johnson and Ivan Askwith are blogging about everything around TV and film at The Extratextuals;
• Crossmedia Dialog is a group blog that post regularly on crossmedia in Amsterdam and worldwide;
• Faris Yakob, Adam Crowe blog about ‘transmedia planning’ and other changes to the marketing industry;
• Jak Boumans posts every single day about stuff happening in the Netherlands and worldwide at Buziaulane; 
• Max Giovognoli runs everything to do with cross-media in Italy;
• MobileCrossMedia is a blog that looks at the different ways mobile phones can network with different devices and the real world;
• If you don’t already get it, the Convergence Newsletter has regular interesting newsletters about convergence in journalism and has been my favourite newsletter for the past few years;

I don’t plan to be blogging here about events or publications I’m involved in, instead I’ll pop them on my bio site. But for now, here are some events I’m involved with, in the not-too-distant-future:

• I’ll be on the ‘expert panel’ with Mark McCrindle and Tim Flattery at Mitchell Communications Group ’s launch of ‘While You Weren’t Watching’, a documentary on changes to branded entertainment etc in which I was interviewed. The launch is private but the documentary will be put online I believe in Nov; 
• I have my own panel on ‘Designing, Experiencing and Analysing Games in the Age of Integration’, and I am a panelist in Darren Toft’s panel on ‘What Happened to New Media Art?’ at the Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment in Dec;
• I’ll be on the panel on ‘Cyber-Born Film’ at Megan Spencer’s Destination Festival (or DestFest) in Dec;
• In Jan 08, I’ll be a guest lecturer again for Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger’s Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media, De Montfort University, UK;
• In Feb 08, my essay on ‘Tiering in Alternate Reality Games’ will be published in the special issue of Convergence edited by Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze.

For now though, I will continue to be online in a different way. I’ve started a podcast, a podcast where I’ll interview talented people working in this area. My ‘birth’ podcast is a bit awkward, but the second is a great one: an interview with Stitch Media’s Evan Jones. At the site, I also provide sneak preview information about Stitch Media’s latest project.

That is it for me here, thankyou all for sharing this time with me. I’ll see you on the other side of my PhD.

Check it out: www.ChristyDena.com  

Check it out: www.UniverseCreation101.com

Dynamic Logic have just released their latest study:

Dynamic Logic, a Millward Brown company, releases new analysis of 32 cross-media campaigns across ten categories showing that media work best when used together. All three media platforms – television, magazines, and online – contribute incrementally to brand metrics, but at different levels, bringing various strengths at different points along the purchase funnel. TV and online’s contributions were more apparent during the awareness stages while magazines were stronger at building brand favorability and purchase intent.

Check it out: http://www.dynamiclogic.com/na/research/WhatsInTheMix/Oct2007.html

I kept forgeting to post about this but just in case there are some of you that not aware of what Radiohead are doing, here it is. Radiohead’s latest album, In Rainbows, will be released in December but you can preorder at their website. Rather than just offer the CDs for buying, Radiohead have undertaken four very important strategies:

1. Cross-media bundling: When you purchase the album on their website, you get the box set which includes the music on CDs, the music on vinyl and as a digital file. They use the method common in the online pornography industry: order the tangible product, it’ll get posted to you, but while you wait you can download the file immediately. Considering the subject matter of the pornos, I can understand the desire for immediacy. :/ The point about cross-media bunding, however, is that it acknowledges the affordances and in the case of the vinyl, the sentimental and connisseur value of certain media. It also acknowledges the reality of use: people use lots of different media platforms to experience a product. A CD on the stereo for instance, digital files on the iPod and so on. The content is not bound to a particular medium.
2. Staggered release: The digital download is available as of 10th October, about two months before the boxset. This helps build awareness and familiarity with the product, which should translate to sales of the boxset with its added value.
3. Enhanced material: Like the pervasive method of the feature film DVD industry, the product provides extra materials such as new songs on top of the album, photos and artwork (which, I note, has also been used in the music industry as well). The digital download and obviously any pirated files, will not have this added value.
4. Consumer-defined price: The price of the digital download is not pre-defined, instead, the consumer (person!) can name any price they want to pay for the download. They can even put in nothing. Amazing. Obviously this is not something that most bands or creators in general can do. Radiohead are in a financial position to take such giant leaps. But gee it is great. I personally cannot stand the tactic producers use to combat pirating by locking their material and so this free-will counter-balance is endearing to me.

There is so much I could say but no need to delay you any longer.

Check it out: http://www.radiohead.com

A couple of years ago Scott Donaton, the editor of Advertising Age, published a book called Madison & Vine: Why the Entertainment and Marketing Industries Must Converge to Survive. Scott revisited ‘branded entertainment’ in a talk he gave recently, which has been published at the Madison & Vine section of Advertising Age. In the article he quickly explains what Madison & Vine is:

At its simplest, there were two primary factors that drove the entertainment and marketing businesses reluctantly into each other’s arms. For marketers, as I mentioned earlier, there was fear. New devices such as digital video recorders were giving audiences the ability to bypass traditional forms of media advertising. These devices let consumers decide when, how and whether they were going to interact with all forms of content. So some in the ad community decided that if they were going to avoid commercials, one valid reaction to that would be to embed products, logos and commercial messages into those entertainment vehicles viewers were choosing to spend time with.

Across the continent from Madison Avenue, those in Hollywood found their own business models and bottom lines under enormous pressure, partly from the same factors. There were other pressures felt all over Hollywood. For film studios, the costs of producing and marketing films became a huge burden just as some traditional sources of funding dried up. And the movie-business, too, was threatened by the same technologies disrupting the TV and music industries.

The result was that these two sides, the ad business and the entertainment business, which decades ago established outposts on separate coasts of the U.S. and mostly operated independently of each other since then were suddenly compelled towards each other. They realized that they had the potential to help each other out. If nothing else, the advertisers had the money and the entertainment companies had the creativity and the attention of audiences.

And covers some notable examples:

• Paramount Pictures, Hasbro and General Motors: Transformers feature film
• BMW: The Hire film series, comics and game
• Virgin America: Virgin Americans animated series
• Dove: Evolution video, part of Campaign for Real Beauty
• Sundance Channel and Grey Goose Vodka: Iconoclasts interview series
• Burger King: games
• Volvo and MSN: Mr Robinson’s Driving School
• Axe and MTV: The Game Killers

Check it out: http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article.php?article_id=121042

UK-based Hi-ReS! (Handsome information - Radical entertainment Systems), founded in 1999 by Alexandra Jugovic and Florian Schmitt, have been creating amazing award-winning websites for the film, TV, music and marketing industries for a few years now. Some of their sites, like Requiem for a Dream and Donnie Darko, I mention in my article about ‘Filmmakers That Think Outside the Film‘ over at Lance Weiler’s WorkBookProject. Here is a listing of some of the sites they’ve worked on:

• Soulbath (1999)
• DJ Vadim (1999)
• Requiem for a Dream (2000)
• Donnie Darko (2001)
• The Center of the World (2001)
• Business of Strangers (2001)
• Modjo Music (2001)
• Diesel Stylelab (2002)
• The Lexus Minority Report Experience (2002)
• The Third Place (for Sony’s PlayStation 2) (2002)
• The Dreamers (2003)
• Massive Attack (2003)
• Six Feet Under (2003)
• The Punisher (2004)
• Miles Aldridge (2004)
• BMW Carparc1 (2004)
• …
• The Lost Experience websites (2006)
• The Fountain (2006)
• Beck’s website

Any day now a book (with DVD), Hi-res!: Amantes sunt Amentes, detailing their projects will be published. You can preorder at: Amazon UK and Amazon US. Great stuff!

That got your attention. Playwright and screenwriter Jason Grote’s new play, 1001, is set to premiere in New York on October 22nd. Jason has done what not many playwrights have done (that I know of — tell me if not!) and created a fictional newspaper for the play, with links to a diegetic blog and a wiki. Although it isn’t an ARG, it certainly plays with the idea of creating a fictional universe as a precurser to the live experience.

Check it out: http://1001nyc.com/

Those who have attended one of my presentations over the last few years will recall Peter Greenaway’s multi-platform project: The Tulse Luper Suitcases. One part of this massive work is the online game Tulse Luper Journey. Here is some info about the TLS and the TLJ from the game’s site:

Tulse Luper is the lead character in an ambitious series of projects initiated by film director Peter Greenaway.
So far, the project includes three feature films, a series of DVD’s, travelling exhibitions, books, publications and this online game produced by Submarine.

These are all part of a growing universe of stories, facts, fiction, history and drama based on the adventures of a man who spent most of his live as a prisoner - mistaken for someone important, a spy, a lover, an artist, a writer and an observer. 

Greenaways statement that “cinema is dead” calls for new ways of communicating ideas. This game is part of the search for a crossover format that breaks the boundaries and rules that have been imposed by film, theatre, books, games and other traditional media.

Created by developers, artists and students from around Europe, The Tulse Luper Journey explores new boundaries of online interactive media.

The online game finishes on October 15, so all those “researchers” out there are prompted to hand in their findings pronto.

Check it out: http://www.tulseluperjourney.com/

New Line Cinema CEOs Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne were interviewed on the Charlie Rose show. They talk about the importance of franchise sequels being equal to or better each time; online fans and Snakes on a Plane; digital on-demand cinemas; simultaneous release across media; audience testing; gambling on Lord of the Rings; merging with Ted Turner and then TimeWarner; the importance of passion…

• Charlie Rose interview

After my post about Danah Boyd’s exploration of the history of social network sites, Trebor Scholz has developed his own. It is pretty comprehensive:

This is a cross-cultural, critical history of social life on the Internet. It captures technical, cultural, and political events that influenced the evolution of computer-assisted person-to-person communication via the net. Acknowledging the role of grassroots movements, this history does not solely focus on mainstream culture with all its mergers, acquisitions, sales and markets, and the (mostly male) geeks, engineers, scientists, and garage entrepreneurs who implemented their dreams in hardware and software. It does trace the changing nature of labor and typologies of those who create value online as much as it searches for changing approaches toward control, privacy, and intellectual property. This history shows strategies for direct social change based on the technologies and practices, which already exist.

Emphasizing the role of women whenever possible, this history shows that the interests of those who used the Net as social platform shaped it in the interplay of military, scientific, entrepreneurial, activist, artistic, and altruistic agendas. The evolution of the Social Web was driven by fear, desire (to be with others), and fandom. By no means exclusively an American story, it shows instances in which users succeeded when striving for open access, jointly negotiating with corporate platform-providers.

Check it out: http://www.collectivate.net/journalisms/2007/9/26/a-history-of-the-social-web.html