Let me say at the outset that I do appreciate that in an ideal world of transmedia storytelling, no media is of lesser importance than the other. However, right now I’m working with people who have an existing property – usually a movie script – and want to make that their priority. Hence you’ll often find me referring to comic books and games as though they’re subservient to the feature film. I know that they needn’t be but that’s the situation I’m dealing with most often.

Purpose

The purpose of this blog posting is to show how I’ve been using transmedia for audience building and to welcome comments from others who can suggest points for improvement. You might also like to check-out what’s been implemented and give it a whirl!

I’ve also mentioned a few cool sites that you might use to implement your own projects.

Digging for Oil

The diagram below illustrates my usual analogy for growing a fan base. The principle is that you have to start by reaching out to people who are most receptive to your idea. Others might say to go fishing where the fish are.

The oil analogy is a good one because the early stages are quite tough. It takes a concerted effort to get that initial traction. It’s a bit like developing your feature film: it feels like an uphill struggle in the beginning – you’re trying to get either finance or cast to fall into line when they’re both dependent on each other. But then when finally someone gives you a break everything starts to fall into place and all the barriers start to melt away.

So it is with audience building, it takes time and hard work to get those early followers but once you do the project starts to get traction and everything gets easier little by little.

Background

Vauxhall Crossed is a family, action-adventure feature film about an MI6 agent called Daisy Scarlett (think female James Bond).

If you pop over to my site at http://zenfilms.typepad.com you’ll find the full report that was presented to the producers. It describes the state of play as of December 2009 and details my advice.

What I’d like to focus on here is the transmedia extension I suggested and then later implemented.

Implementation

Working from the Vauxhall Crossed script, I proposed the idea of establishing a fake Chinese take-away (take-out restaurant) and using this as an “unofficial” or rather secret home of Daisy Scarlett fans.  Given that our target audience is fans of spy movies I thought the opportunity to become involved in some subterfuge would appeal to them. It also creates audience “insiders” and “outsiders” which would reward early adopters and strengthen the bond among the most enthusiastic fans.

I reasoned that the audience would fall into three camps:

• Those who really like to play spy games (hardcores)
• Those who just think it’s fun to fool their friends
• Those who think this is all a cute idea but don’t have the time or can’t be bothered to play along (casuals).

I also wanted to allow the hardcore spy enthusiasts to directly contribute to the experience. This would be fun for them and alleviate some of the work from the producers.

Hence there will effectively be two-types of game. The first is based on the premise is that it’s fun to trick your friends. In this case, it’s fun to trick them into believing that this is the best Chinese food ever and they really must place an order. Of course, the food never arrives.

The second game will be more involved and based on a stronger role-play of pretending to be a spy. This has yet to worked through fully because it’s more demanding on the producers’ resources.

The diagram below shows a four-tier website trail:

• The main movie webpage promotes the movie in the usual way, providing information about cast and crew etc. But there’s also a small advert for our Chinese take-away.
• The Chinese take-away looks like a real restaurant website except for a few tell-tale clues that this can’t really be real. For example, I made the service delivery times and the concept rather eccentric!
• If someone is brave or mad enough to become a fan of the take-away then they’re rewarded with a secret page! This members-only area reveals the secrets of the scam and tells people how to take part in the fun. Part of that fun is keeping the Facebook page alive – writing fake reviews and uploading photos of friends eating the take-away food.
• For those that really want to dig deep, there’s a hardcore site at Ning where the members can create their own spy games for the others to play.

Facebook is also important because that’s where everyone’s friends are: It’s easy to upload reviews, video and photos and of course everything is visible to your social network.

A Twitter channel is used to convey game updates, missions and clues to members.

Both Facebook and Twitter are explained further in the report at my site.

The Story So Far

At the time of writing the basic building blocks are in place so it’s easy to see how the concept should work.

I implemented the restaurant using www.moonfruit.com because it’s very quick and easy, it’s free and allows members-only pages. It’s especially cool because it’s possible to use Facebook Connect. The screenshot below shows the website but I encourage you to check it out at http://wingtip.moonfruit.com

You’ll notice that there are five tabs on the website. If you become a member then a sixth tab becomes visible, marked “Confidential”! The image below shows the message you receive.

And finally, this last image shows the Ning hardcore members page.

At this time there’s no mention of the Vauxhall Crossed movie but we hope to add that at a later date.

I should also mention that to manage all the Twitter streams, we’re using HootSuite – a great application that allows us to track spy news, see who’s into James Bond and Jason Bourne etc. as well as message and retweet information we think might be interesting to our audience. In this way we hope that the movie communications form a valuable, useful part of the target audience conversation: we’re not constantly tweeting about how the movie is progressing (which would be tantamount to spam).

Next Steps

The most difficult next step will be trying to get traction among the potential fan base. Without encouragement I suspect that the sites will stay dormant – a potentially good idea drowned in a sea of web sites. It might also be likely that we’ll need to better structure the fun so that there’s a clearer link between participation and reward. Right now the reward is just “fun” but it’s likely that we’ll have to offer some kind of prize which would mean determining the basis for measuring and awarding the prize.

We also need to make available for download the restaurant graphics so that members can download, print locally and use to fake the take-out boxes. Right now we only have the menu available for download.

For further details, please check out the full report and please do leave questions and comments below.

Here’s what we already know:  pulling in an audience is tough but pulling in finance is tougher.

The Old Days

In the “old days” – as shown in Figure 1 – raising finance was what you did first. You needed that money to make the movie and then you’d sell the movie to a distributor whose job it was to sell it to the audience. Hell, you might even get presales in which case you’d killed two birds with one stone.

The important point from this is that as the filmmaker you only had to convince a limited number of people (investors) that you had a movie worth making (because it would make money). You didn’t have to convince them it was worth watching.

One reason you didn’t have to prove you had an audience waiting to see your movie was because it couldn’t be proven. Instead, one might use (often bogus) comparisons with other movies and of course, whenever possible, outliers like The Blair Witch Project or Fahrenheit 911 or Sideways etc.

When the finished movie failed to find an audience it was the distributor’s fault. They didn’t know how to position the movie correctly. They didn’t spend enough money on P&A. The box art was crap.

Figure 1

"Old" Filmmaking Model

Having worked with our distributors in some markets and selling directly at some horror conventions, it’s very sobering to get a firsthand experience of audience expectations.

Me: It’s about love and sacrifice and how you don’t notice you’re onto something good until it’s gone.

Horror fan: Great. How much T&A is there?

The New Model

When MySpace, Facebook, YouTube etc. arrived it became possible to raise awareness of the movie and start building an audience before the movie was released. But still it felt like something peripheral to the marketing of the movie. The audience building was an industry-side activity that you could take to the distributor with your one-sheet and your reviews: look we have several thousand fans. Most of whom in all likelihood were other independents flogging a movie or a book.

Today, most filmmakers – maybe not Culture Hacker readers – but most filmmakers still have the mindset towards social media that it’s a new spam tool. Look, now I can pester people to be my “fan” and I can get them to pester their friends to be my “fan”. Please Digg me up. Please Stumble on me. It’s the worst kind of networking: “please help me” they bleat.

Worst still are the crowdfunders: “please give me money”.  I’m not against audiences paying upfront – as with the Kickstarter model – so it’s not the principle, it’s typically execution I have a problem with. And I totally believe in the power of social media but I don’t like it when it’s so often used in an unproductive, disappointing way.

So enter the new model of filmmaking as shown in Figure 2:

• there’s a genuine affection… nay, anticipation… between the audience and the movie
• the affection is leveraged to pre-sell to the audience while still raising finance in the traditional way
• when the movie is available for viewing, it might be that only a subset of the audience will pay for it. So they’ll be simultaneous free exhibition and sales.

At this time it’s hard to believe that serious money is going to be raised to finance a movie through crowdsourcing. Some money? Maybe. Millions? I doubt it. And so for expensive feature films there’s still a place for large-ticket or savvy investors.  Please forget about Obama’s fundraising blah blah blah. It’s an outlier. And where’s his socially networked audience when he needs them to fight for healthcare? They’ve gone missing. Maybe Obama’s massive email list isn’t really his personal fan base? Maybe the people on that email database were fans of his first movie but don’t like his second?

What this says as to us as filmmakers is that we’re going to be only as good as our next movie. Don’t expect your 1000 mythical spending fans to follow you from movie to movie regardless of what you propose to make.

Figure 2

"New" Filmmaking Model

My point is that independents are going to have to start audience building early and prove that there’s an appetite for their movie. And so this brings me to my final model.

The Transmedia Model

Raising awareness and audience building is tough. It’s tough enough when you have a finished movie but try doing it for a movie that’s yet to be made.

And that’s why I think we’ll move to a transmedia model for filmmaking in which the filmmaker uses his own money to make some (low-cost) content to build an audience ahead of doing anything else.

There’s long been a school of thought that says to get finance for your feature you should shoot the trailer or shoot a short film based on the feature. I know this can work but I’ve never been a fan of this approach if only because I know finance is most often raised without it. Amazingly though this week, as I write, this short film Panic Attack secured a movie deal.

What transmedia storytelling offers however is not the  Cinderella story of “big investor swoops to finance movie” but a genuine, low-cost, grass-roots audience building.

Right now, (online) comic books seem to be the order of the day – offering an excellent way to engage audiences in the story and show some visual flare or at worst nice eye candy to grab attention. But there’s lots of untapped potential for simple social games utilizing Twitter and social networks without the need for coding:  we just don’t have enough reference cases to illustrate all the possibilities yet.

A small word of warning: the content has to have value. It can’t be a trailer or marketing fluff – you have to produce the real McCoy if you’re going to capture audiences.

Transmedia Filmmaking Business Model

In the transmedia filmmaking model, the financing, exhibition and fundraising work together in tandem with the potential for the feature film to become self-funding. Remember that it’s not all for free! Free is your loss-leader to generate the money. Even if it’s “real content” you might still effectively look at it as a marketing cost – it can help to position it in this way to investors. And note that what’s free and what’s paid will be in flux – maybe changing over time and from media to media.

So in the ideal scenario the filmmaker bootstraps the movie with the low-cost media, the website, presumably some merchandise but then it’s up to the audience to decide what happens next.  The filmmaker will use a basket of financing initiatives: free, pre-paid, paid, paid+, investment and sponsorship (including brand integration/product placement) to finance the movie.  [Paid+ is where buyers can opt to pay more than the base price – usually via a drop-down menu of price points.]

This model has several implications:

• If you do it right they’ll be demand for more content… which maybe you can’t afford to make in the early days. Or at least can’t afford to make alone. And that’s why collaboration of all kinds is important to the indie – with audiences and with other filmmakers.  Collaboration platforms like Wreakamovie are going to save the indie.
• Sponsorship in the form of cash (rather than products for free) from brands won’t solely go to properties with big audiences. If your story reaches the audiences that other marketing finds hard to reach then that’s going to work too. The one significant problem I can see is that few brands want to be associated with edgy content… unless it’s “edgy” in the Green Day plastic-punk, manufactured sense rather than the raw, authentic Poison Girls/Flux of Pink Indians edgy. Counterbalancing this is fans who may appreciate that you’ve rejected the brands… maybe
• Filmmakers are going to become familiar with audience needs and they’ll learn how to captivate them. It won’t be anyone else’s fault that you don’t have an audience. There’s no opportunity to finish the movie and then throw it over the wall to someone else to find the audience for it
• Free media is a feeler gauge: collect comments, listen to feedback, evolve the feature to meet the audience expectations
• It’s going to be a long commitment to the audience so be sure you pick a story you really want to tell.  Indies that follow this transmedia model will be offering an evolving service rather than a one-off product and that means audiences become customers that need to be listened to, responded to, cared for and managed
• If you perfect this evolving transmedia ecosystem you may ask yourself if you still want to make a feature after all.

A final sobering thought: I know we’d all like to believe that story is king but audiences will only discover the story if you hook them in. Don’t expect anyone to delve deeply into your storyworld looking for brilliance. You have to provide “satellite media” that orbits the core: it’s easy to digest and looks cool or fun. Celebrity cast or crew and genre are going to get attention and convey credibility – just as they always have.

I’ve illustrated this in the figure below where I’ve taken the sales funnel model and used it to illustrate how you want to pull in audiences, turning casual interest to hardcore repeat purchases.

Matching Content to Audience Commitment

To summarize then, filmmakers will move to transmedia storytelling because it’s going to be the way you build audiences. And building an audience will unlock the financing – either from fans, sponsors or investors. But it’s going to demand new skills.

Rob

Right now entertainment has been devalued when you can rent a new film or TV show for 99 cents at a Red Box kiosk at 19,000 different locations, can download unlimited films through Netflix, and a rent/buy a film through iTtunes. I didn’t forget about Amazon’s unBox that is connected through TiVo, Vudu, Real.com, Hulu.com, Cinemanow.com, Youtube.com, and a plethora of different ways to consume content. At a certain point all these different companies’ services will be offering relatively similar services at distributing content to your phone/TV/computer.

Then there will become an arms race for these companies acquire exclusive content to have a competitive advantage against the countless rivals in this space-to attract new customers and keep them. Also, when we get out of this recession advertising revenue will grow dramatically to further increase the demand for high quality content. Small to mid sized distributors who just focused on DVDs will go out business; these platforms will now be at the film festival having bidding wars for the best projects. This source of revenue will drive the production of new movies.

A battle for exclusive content will also apply to digital book readers, since there are plenty of different devices on the market.

To be honest, I’m in the latter group, but have been making a concerted effort to suss out the service and figure out what it’s good for. Recently there was an article on Ars Technica about people who are using Wave to play role-playing games and that, my friends, is something that’s totally feasible.

Ever since Online was invented, there have been gamers taking advantage of it to play RPGs with geographically-dispersed groups, from BBS door games in the mid 80s and the rise of MUDs in the 90s to dedicated IRC channels for the purpose. But what’s lacking in these various media is a sense of organization – they can be very good for living in the now, but trying to go back and make sense of what happened in the past can be quite a task. Wave’s automatic threading is excellent for that, providing both instant communication as well as ways to format it and keep it sane and pretty. Not only that, but new players can look back on what’s already happened and catch up easily just by reading the existing Wave, something that’s impossible to do in a MUD or IRC.

Of course this is a new technology and has drawbacks – the article mentions a lack of moderation capabilities and dice rolling widgets, to name two – but it certainly seems like the potential is there and has gamers quite excited for the future.

Have you tried Wave and put it to good use? Still trying to score an invitation? Drop a line in the comments and let us know.

Here are some particularly culture hackerly gifts, old and new, hand picked by the culture hacker elf. (Yes, they call me that because I’m short. Thanks a lot, guys.)

Missing: Since January and Evidence: The Last Ritual
Dreamcatcher Interactive, $19.99 and $29.99
These two games are actually on my Christmas list this year, because in spite of a ringing endorsement from Penny Arcade, I never got around to playing them. Released in 2004 and 2006, respectively, these games come as close as you can get to being an Alternate Reality Game in a box. Characters contact you through e-mail and solicit your help to catch a serial killer. (I haven’t played yet, but I hear serial killers have email, too! Eep!)

Uplink
Introversion Software, £10.00 – £5.00
When talking to friends about Rushkoff’s Exoriare ARG, I made plenty of mention of how much it reminds me of Uplink, only to find very few people have played this cyberpunk indie classic. If you love feeling 1337 and jamming out to fantastic electronic music, this is a must-play.

The Hidden Park
James Kane, $7.99
Granted, Bulpadok’s geocaching/augmented reality mashup game isn’t everywhere…yet. But if you have an iPhone and live near one of these parks, the game should not be missed. Unfortunately, there’s no way to gift a single iPhone app, so I suggest wrapping an iTunes gift card in a printout of one of these sweet wallpapers.

Cathy’s Book, Cathy’s Ring and Cathy’s Key
by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman, $17.95
Cathy’s Book has been listed in the ARGNet gift guide, and covered by just about every extended storytelling outlet in existence, but if you haven’t actually read it, or it’s sequels, then you’re missing something special. These three young adult novels, written by veterans of 42 Entertainment, follow the amateur sleuthing and increasingly preposterous intrigues of one Cathy Vickers – a girl who has a habit of meticulously compiling all the evidence on a case, and then leaving her entire notebook, full of notes, mementos and personal phone numbers, behind in book stores.

Personal Effects: Dark Art
by J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman, $24.95
Personal Effects is the adult fiction answer to the overwhelmingly teenage setting of Cathy’s Book. Set in a mental asylum improbably buried beneath New York, Dark Art takes a much darker and more sinister tone and has been known to deeply creep even seasoned CF players out.

Masquerade
by Kit Williams, $8.99 – $230, depending on condition
The original armchair adventure, and arguably the origin of interactive publishing. Masquerade contained a puzzle distributed through 15 paintings, intended to lead the solver to a buried cache containing a jeweled gold hare. Though the contest was hijacked by a small group of people close to the author, leaving the treasure hunt mired in scandal and the treasure gone, the book still presents a challenge, and is a valuable piece of history for puzzle lovers. (For a Williams book that presents an even bigger challenge – both to solve, and to find a copy of, see Untitled, a.k.a. “The Bee Book”)

Fandango – The Key to the Wind
by Pel and Jeff Stockwell, $22.50
Fandango takes many of its cues from Masquerade, down to the book’s plot, but it’s treasure, hidden in 2007, has yet to be found. Some reviewers describe the hunt as “impossible,” but there is still a community devoted to the solve at Tweleve.org.

This is Not a Game
by Dave Szulborski, $24.99
Used as a go-to instructional text, and credited as the inspiration for this year’s viral video comedy Must Love Robots, this is the biggest and most in-depth guide to Alternate Reality Gaming as an art form, and as a business model.

How to Cheat at Everything
by Simon Lovell, $18.95
In the transmedia world, we try our best to keep a wall between enabling the audience’s own escapist tendencies and out-and-out deception; but sometimes the best way to do that, is to cheat anyway. This book will exercise your cheating muscles, as well as inspire ways to interact with your audience – because cheats are good at that, too.

So Yesterday
by Scott Westerfeld, $8.99
Any book that begins, “Can I take a picture of your shoe?” is bound to be interesting, right? So Yesterday is a kabuki battle between big media and culture jamming, as told through the eyes of the teenage son of an epidemiologist. A great introduction to the interplay between media and culture for teens and up.

House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski, $19.95
Often referred to as “an ARG in a book” even though it lacks interaction, House of Leaves is a classic of dead-tree chaotic fiction, full of realities within realities that will leave your head spinning.

The Big Book of Hoaxes
by Carl Sifakis
If Lovell will teach you how to cheat, Sifakis, with the help of 75 other award winning comic artists, will teach you how to lie. With stories as diverse as the pranks of Joey Skaggs, the plan to saw Manhattan in half, and the hoax of Hitler’s diary, this will acquaint you with some of the greatest hoaxsters of the modern era and their methods.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, $6.95 – $39.99
With the upcoming movie and its ongoing two-person CF campaign, Holmes is about to be the order of the day. Doyle’s stories represent the origin of the modern mystery genre, and good reading to boot. There are many editions out there, which vary in price, age, and fancy-pantsedness.

Handheld GPS
Garmin, Magellan, Pioneer, and others, $69 – $499
Whether you’re seeking out a piece of a larger puzzle, or just plain geocaching, a good GPS is essential for the well-equipped alternate reality explorer. While I use the GPS on my phone for these kind of things, and thus can’t give a top recommendation, this page looks like the place to start your search. Remember: If you can’t search by coordinates, it’s not worth it.

Smartphone
$99 – $599
Of course, a good smartphone obviates the need for a GPS completely. There are robust GPS-enabled applications on the iPhone, Palm, Windows OS and Android, but there are also applications like Layar, Scanlife, Shazam, and the newly-revealed Google Goggles that take your phone one step closer to the corneally-implanted HUDs we all dream about having someday. As these technologies spread, new types of storytelling are bound to emerge that take advantage of them.

Radio Nonchalance Broadcast Transcript
Elsewhere Public Works Agency, $6.99
The “transcript” of Nonchalance’s localized radio broadcast that can be heard at Dolores Park in San Francisco as part of the Jejune Institute’s urban adventure, is actually a beautifully illustrated map of the story world, with puzzle elements woven into the design. The map can be purchased here by typing “&_support”. (They also have CDs of vintage cult recordings, and stylish t-shirts.)

InactiveWare
Awkward Hug, $16.99 – $17.99
The clever t-shirt company started by the main characters in Must Love Robots is still around, which means you can still get a Mac and Cheese shirt. What were you waiting for? All proceeds go to One Laptop Per Child.

A Day in the Elsewhere, An Evening at Alcatraz
The Jejune Institute and Alcatraz, $34.10
I’m not the only transmedia fan planning a trip to San Francisco just to visit The Jejune Institute. Spend a day traversing a bizarre and rich game world interwoven with the streets of the city. Top the day off with the Alcatraz Island Night Tour, which Nick Braccia reviewed for CH as “informative and, at night, quite scary.”

A Part in a Zombie Movie
you and your friends, free (ish)
Lost Zombies is a community-generated zombie mockumentary that’s being put together online as we speak. Film a short with your lucky loved one as the star (breather or shambler – their choice) and add it to the mix.

The element of mystery has grown to become just as powerful to cross-media storytelling as the force to the Jedi and Sith. And just as the force, there exists a dark-side to the element.

While the techniques and tools of cross-media storytelling vary from those used to tell a story for the page or screen, the methods of telling compelling story remains the same — regardless of the genre.

So while the storysith often default to the crime-mystery genre simply to tell a story in the exciting new platform of cross-media, there’s an entire library of other choices to explore … that’s where you’ll most likely find the storyjedi. For example, could a science fiction drama be told for the cross-media platform? An epic romance? A horrific adventure? What about a mysterious bio-story about a real person?

The answer is yes. Not only that, but storytellers have already explored, or started exploring, these genres!

So how can storytellers venture into strange new genres and still capture the attention of audiences?

“You must unlearn what you have learned,” and trust in the element of mystery when telling a story of any genre. While mystery is commonly accepted as its own genre, it’s actually an element found in just about every story.

Why not create a love story, similar to Atonement, in which the audience must participate to reunite the characters? Or if you choose to participate as an antagonist, keep them apart? Will they find each other? Remain in love? Get married? Kill each other? The possibilities are limitless.

The element of mystery. Without it, the cross-media story doesn’t compel audiences to learn more or participate. So in a space-pod, I’d say that the cross-media form of storytelling requires a great deal of mystery regardless of the genre, and that it’s up to the storytellers out there to break the mold and explore new genres.

While a crime-based mystery will always draw a powerful crowd as its one of the most popular genres in print, there are those who want to participate in different worlds, different characters, and go beyond the norm.

What do you feel about the mystery genre and cross-media storytelling? What cross-media projects have you come across that have gone beyond the expected and explored different genres?

IMAGE – adoceric

Surely, someone out there has to be looking into Layar as a way to expand an ARG experience. While not as ubiquitous as phone or email, Layar is free to Android and iPhone users. The API is straightforward, and getting signed up to develop content for the system is as easy as submitting a good idea.

In its basic form, Layar uses GPS data to create a map over your camera view of the real world, with markers denoting points of interest, which can in turn be used to deliver content through the web. On Tuesday, Layar rolled out a host of new features for Android users, including the ability to view 3D text and other objects on points of interest, and will be adding 3D animation and audio soon. This particularly attractive video shows just how involved the immersion can get with these new updates.

Layar has been a great concept, in terms of starting me thinking about game design ideas. What better way to create a physically distributed experience than to drop virtual geocaches in every Android and iPhone market worldwide? When I imagine what we could have done with the Chasing the Wish universe in particular, given a platform that can literally show you another world layered over this one, I get chills.

Here are ten basic immersive story concepts, from my little black book of Layar ideas.

1. Virtual Dead Drop
Everyone wants to incorporate geocaches into their game, but there’s only so far you can feasibly go to hide a tupperware container. The newest version of Layar, which was released Tuesday, natively supports “geofenced” points of interest – ones that, like a physical cache, only become visible and can only be interfaced with when the user is physically in range. You can have players retrieve virtual items from virtual caches, and even deliver them to other caches, without ever actually sending a game developer to the site.

2. Breadcrumbs
A rogue agent (escaped shadow government test subject, news reporter in too deep – you decide) is on the run from the Bad Guys, and is leaving a trail for truth seekers like you to follow. Visit the places he has, to see what he has seen.

3. Alien Landing Sites
A Phenomenon is building around the world – aliens are landing! And they’re about to touch down in your city! Choose to help the otherworldly visitors on your block, or destroy them.

4. Alternate History View
Well, you’ve done it. You sent a man back in time. And now the whole of history is coming untangled, getting turned completely upside down. View the damage through this layer.

5. Reality Defense
One of the handy things that Layar developers have cooked up is a method for allowing users to drop points of interest themselves. Have players drop “defender drones” in their area to protect their city against dark forces. Give the playerbase a map on the main game site, showing where drones have been dropped, and where they are needed to repel the invaders.

6. Ghost Clones
Another POI-dropping concept – players need to create “ghost clones” of themselves in several different areas to unlock a piece of content. (Anyone remember the Elegy of Emptiness from Majora’s Mask? This is basically the same idea, without the creepy dolls.)

7. Jumpers
Like the Breadcrumbs concept and the Alien Landing concept mixed together. A character has discovered the ability to supernaturally teleport across the globe (for reasons of playability, let’s say he will randomly jump every day.) Every “landing site” spawns POIs that progress the story.

8. Alternadude
One character exists in a hundred different realities. With our timeline tracing technology, we’ve managed to lock on to him, and follow him through the choices that scattered him to all corners of a hundred different Earths.

9. Satellite Reception
We don’t know why, but the alien signals have been pointed at exact locations on Earth. We need field people to retrieve the data.

10. Rabbitholes
With the addition of geofencing, its possible to create a single layer with tons of content that is unavailable until the player reaches a starting point. In other words, you could go to a certain place and “fall into” a specific adventure, invisible to Layar users who haven’t entered the game yet.

Of course, these are all very simple ideas. A robust Layar-enhanced game would incorporate several of these to create a deep and varied experience. With the expansion to the iPhone and more U.S. devices being released for Layar’s native Android system, it’s inevitable that someone will use this technology in an ARG. The only questions are who – and when?

Interview with Aaron Vanderbeek, a game and interaction designer based in San Francisco, CA. He is currently enrolled in the Masters of Entertainment Technology program at Carnegie Mellon University, where his current project is iiii design (www.iiiidesign.com): a design collective looking to bring unique entertainment experiences to the iPhone. Other academic projects include an interactive theatre adaptation of Rashomon and a board game based on Long Distance Relationships.

Interview with Hill Ferguson. He is responsible for product strategy and marketing at Zong. A payments veteran, Hill spent the last decade developing and managing new payment services in Silicon Valley. As General Manager for Yodlee’s Personal Finance Products, Hill led the development and distribution efforts for several new and innovative payments products currently being used by top banks and web portals. At Yahoo! Hill produced and managed several consumer products, including a consumer bill payment product and a peer-to-peer payment service. In his spare time he manages LoanBack, a “friends and family” loan management service he co-founded in 2005. Hill earned a BS and an MBA, both from Vanderbilt University.

Sue Bohle speaks about her successful career in game public relations. She has been providing hands on, senior level counsel to game and other interactive entertainment companies since 1983. She has been the lead speaker on PR for the game industry at the The Game Developers Conference (GDC) five times and wrote the marketing chapter for a major textbook on getting into the video game industry. The Bohle Company has worked in the game industry since the mid 80s, serving hardware, software, tools, conference producers and online game sites and launching titles in all genres and for all platforms.

Game designer Dev Jana discusses the evolution of a Control Freak: How Human/Computer Interaction is changing how we Design and Play Games by following the development of how humans have communicated with data (from the abacus to punch cards to mice to analog sticks to touch screen and motion sensor), it becomes apparent that the data held within computing devices started as physical and tactile, the moved into virutal and abstracted, and is now “faux-physical” through new technologies such as multi-touch and motion sensors.

This alternate reality game takes itself just seriously enough to be amusing, but not so seriously as to be pretentious. Take a look at the video if you get a minute.

Smoking Gun Interactive is taking its new ARG very seriously.

Just because the game is intimately tied to the release of a new graphic novel and a planned console game, they aren’t about to treat it like an advertising campaign.  In fact, they’ve been sending out press releases, writing stories for BoingBoing, and talking to The Guardian in anticipation of the ARG, rather than waiting to cover it in triumphant retrospect.

Just from looking at Exoriare, you can tell that this game is meant to be the center of an experience.

Your first interaction with the game is breaking your personal computer out of the conventional network (through an adventure game that takes its first line from Zork) and into the Darknet, a staging ground for the game’s rebel alliance of hackers.  As in portions of other ARGs – recent examples include Jejune and Project Abraham – the flash components of the game represent a computer terminal in an alternate world, with an alternate set of rules.

If you manage to break into the Darknet, you’ll be given a universal username for the Exoriare forums that will also track your progress in the game, and grant you access to a slew of programs for working through the story.  There’s a space-age radio tuner that delivers audio snippets, a remote server hacking widget reminiscent of Uplink, and a punishingly hard DNA game that’s used to hack your computers biometric systems.  For the moment, the experience culminates in a cooperative puzzle game called Global Forager, whose ultimate goal is to pull computers into the Darknet.

The greater storyline is a mashup of ARG staples, involving the Knights of Malta, ancient temples, government cover-ups, obelisks, and a looming alien invasion.

Smoking Gun says that the ARG is just the first element of a new property that will eventually encompass a graphic novel, codenamed X and scripted by author and old-school cyberpunk Douglas Rushkoff, as well as a traditional console game.  (If you aren’t familiar with Rushkoff, you should be.  We have him to thank for the term “viral media.”)  The three narratives will intersect and interact to create a single pervasive story.  According to Rushkoff, this has led to a fluid method of writing collaboration inside the Smoking Gun team.

I build a character, and then they stick her into one of their squads in the game; or they build a weapon that I then steal for the climax of one of the scenes in my comic. If we were trying to figure out whose IP was whose, we’d be sunk before we began – which is why we’ve developed a more “communal” model of creative control and ownership.

In other words, the connection between the three will be more than skin deep.  The design of the ARG’s puzzle games, which are both original and challenging, already seems to signal a strong connection between the ARG design team and Smoking Gun’s traditional game designers.

For interactive story developers, the main question is, will it take?  Will we see more ARGs and other pervasive media moving to the center of large extended experiences with other, commercial branches (such as this comic)?  Will that mean a final end to the “curtain” of anonymity that separated ARG creators from their players in the games that defined the medium?  Will more of our work get this kind of top billing?

MySpace and Ustream teamed up to livestream the premiere of Twilight Saga: New Moon. It had almost 3 million total viewers. Once everyone has a TV that is internet enabled fans can have Twilight parties together and pay for this live footage as a subscription or pay-per-view revenue model. Exclusive merchandise could be sold to these fans with micro payment and gift cards if they don’t have access to a credit card. With this captive audience the studio can advertise upcoming Twilight live events and social games where these fans can purchase digital goods e.g. Facebook’s popular Mafia Wars.

How can indie films make more money too?

Filmmakers should use websites where fans can demand a movie to their town, so there isn’t a risk of booking a theater and not selling it out. Social networks can help create a cult following where certain super fans can be designated as the local community managers to keep everyone excited about the movie,  talk to local press, create user generated content, film/photograph the screenings for the web, and sell merchandise for a commission. They will receive a high status on the film’s site and have video conference calls with the filmmakers and other community managers based in different states to plan the spread and sustainability of the movie in theaters. The work force will be structured where fans who sell the most tickets, merch, and DVD will receive a higher rank and more responsibilities.

It’s worth noting up front that getting an audience to post a comment or a review on a blog is tough enough so know that the audience that creates content is in short supply.  To be successful, you will need to align your goals to your crowd and set their reward mindfully.

Crowdsourcing vs Collaboration?

Crowdsourcing as implemented in commercial sites like www.99designs.com, www.brickfish.com, www.ideabounty.com or www.filmaka.com tend primarily to be a client pitching a problem in the form of a winner-takes-all competition with the winner receiving a prize, usually a small cash payment. I’d argue that there’s not much conversation going on here. Sure, the client asks a question and the crowd shouts back its answers but the crowd doesn’t get to influence the requirements or bend the goals towards their needs.

Collaboration to me is more of a free-flowing exchange of ideas wherein the collaborator is able to influence the requirements; which for creative people importantly means a greater opportunity for self-expression. It’s the reason why experienced crew might work for less on an independent production: a collaborator feels more like a creative partner than a work-for-hire.

The problem with “collaboration” is that it’s more time-consuming to manage and there are issues of maintaining editorial control while still motivating collaborators. It’s like directing actors: you have to know what you want without dictating how you get it. Collaboration is not for micro-managers.

But the fact that collaboration is more time-consuming actually works to the advantage of the independent filmmaker who is usually time-rich and cash-poor. Hollywood pays big bucks and they get to decide what happens when and how. Independents should be thinking laterally and using collaboration to leverage what little cash they have rather than struggle to find bigger budgets.

In the UK, the filmmaking community at Shooting People understands this. Filmmakers shout out for unpaid or low paid help and the community responds. In the US it doesn’t work so well and I have my own suspicions about this but I won’t go into them here.

However, using a community like Shooting People doesn’t really represent audience participation. And this post is about involving the audience… using crowdsourcing.

Why Bother?

Here are the reasons I hear most for involving the audience (“the crowd”) in the creative process:

• the crowd will spread awareness for you by word-of-mouth (i.e. social media) or through the “viral” nature of the task (i.e. getting their friends to vote or comment on uploaded videos, images, mashups etc.) [NB: always much easier said than done and the worst offenders are so disingenuous that they're nothing more that distributed spam generators]
• the crowd (i.e. many people) will produce better or comparable results for less money
• crowdsourcing is still sexy enough that simply using the approach will generate traditional publicity
• the crowd will produce new insights and being allowed to share their insights will increase their loyalty.

Opinions are divided on whether any or all of this is true; or whether it’s ethical; or worth the investment;  or worth the risk (perceived or real) of giving the crowd tools to participate only to have them used against you. Plus “professional” creative people argue that amateurs can’t be expected to do what they do.

Those for and against can both present evidence in their defence but it seems to me that realising the potential of crowdsourcing or fan participation is all about framing the participation correctly. And this depends on your objectives and on the crowd: both have to be aligned.

Right Crowd, Right Goal, Right Mind

The diagram below presents a framework for structuring your thoughts about what you might ask the crowd to do, what’s in it for them and where you might find them.

The axes I’ve chosen are:

• Experience. How skilled or knowledgeable does someone have to be to contribute something of value to you?
• Reward. What’s the incentive or motivation for someone to take part?

If you think of this as “your requirements” vs “their requirements” then success ought to be where the requirements meet.

In the diagram, experience ranges from “novice” to “expert”. What exactly constitutes a novice or an expert depends on the task and on your crowd. If you ask an established fan community to tell you which character ought to be killed off then it’s probably safe to assume that they’ll all be experts. But if you have no fan base to speak of, then even though you’re asking the same question you need to assume they’re novices.

As a participant, thinking of yourself as a “novice” or an “expert” is important because it determines how you perceive the complexity of the task you’re being asked to do. Asking someone with no knowledge of After Effects to blur out a car licence plate is a big ask. To someone with even a rudimentary knowledge of AE, it’s child’s play. Hence it’s important to know your crowd.

Here’s another example. What if you ask the same fan community to design a new logo for a starship? It’s likely that within the crowd there’s going to be a spread of abilities and some submissions are sure to be disappointing.  Does it matter that some of the crowd will submit amateurish or poor logos? I guess not if you get one usable logo you like – it only matters if no logos are useable and if you promised to use one of their designs!

With this logo design example, for audience involvement (crowdsourcing) to work you have two options:

• include as part of the prize the prospect of having the fan’s logo realized by a professional graphic designer. This would mean that you’re more concerned with the process of engagement rather than the actual quality of submissions. It’ll make more people feel like experts and hence more are able to contribute
• invite a different crowd – like the one at 99designs – where there’s a higher probability of getting a usable design. But don’t expect to see significant audience building and retention.

My point here is what’s your objective? Is it to get a new logo? Or is it to engage or build a fan base?

Determining the reward

The second axis in the diagram is the reward. You might think that this ranges from “paid” to “unpaid” but that would be a little too simplistic.

Many people take part in crowdsourcing for higher motivational reasons such getting the bragging rights to say they won, getting a kick from others appreciating their work or maybe because they’re building a portfolio or a resume. Perhaps it’s just the fun of creating or taking part in something.  Hence the upper range on the reward axis recognizes that the motivation to participate is more than the prospect of being paid: there are ancillary or intangible benefits to be gained. They might also be incentivized by the prospect of winning a cash prize but the motivation to spend a rainy weekend making a video comes not from the prize itself but from other intangible rewards.

The effect of increasing the cash or making the prize bigger is almost certain to result in more submissions. But increasing the ancillary or intangible rewards will also increase the submissions. If the prize is to have your video shown during the Super Bowl or on Saturday Night Live, then the kudos that bestows is more than having it air on an unknown small business website. Or having a commercial for Sony or Verizon in your portfolio is worth more in terms of enhanced reputation than… a commercial for an unknown small business.

You’ll also get more submissions if you’re asking the crowd to do less: because now there’s a lower bar to clear and more of the crowd will feel capable enough to take part.  It makes more of the crowd feel like an expert. But note that what you ask of the crowd is more than just to perform the task itself. It’s also how much they are expected to read or agree to before they can contribute and what rights they give up with their submission.

Note too that it’s important to balance what you ask of the crowd with the size of the possible reward. Ask too much for too little and not only is it unlikely to produce the desired results but it’ll also look like exploitation.

A Comparison of Two Sites

I’d like to finish by comparing two sites that seek to harness the power of the crowd:  Brickfish and Filmaka.

Brickfish asks people with indeterminate skills to do very easy tasks – often as simple as uploading a photo. But they also make the process seem fun and that’s because, it seems to me at least, that it’s the process of engagement with consumers that’s important here and not necessarily the end result. I wonder if Brickfish even considers itself to be a crowdsourcing site? Most campaigns are clearly geared more towards empowering advocates or generating views than delivering usable assets. Check out this competition to design a shoe for Steve Madden and you decide.

Filmaka on the other hand sets the bar much higher. In this Snickers competition, members are being asked to… well… we’re told it’s not a commercial but it’s a HD (viral) video suitable for TV. I’m sure lots of Filmaka members do eat Snickers bars but the crowd here is an expert one, not the average sweet-toothed convenience store crowd. So here it’s the end result that’s important, not so much the engagement. This looks more like a route to making cheaper adverts than empowering advocates.

Conclusion

To come back to my “crowdsourcing matrix” as given in the diagram above, maybe the best pitch to the crowd is one that scores in all four quadrants? After all, how homogenous is any crowd? Among a crowd of graphic designers there’s a range of abilities so a “novice” on 99designs could well be an “expert” among a film fan crowd.

To score in all quadrants would take a pitch that offered a cash incentive with additional ancillary benefits for both the novice and expert.

However, always remember that payment alone might not be enough to motivate the best. If the best – the experts – make a day-to-day living without crowdsourcing then attention has to be given to what will motivate these people to take part. Maybe the people you want to take part are those who aren’t motivated by money and perhaps offering payment will distort the crowd and hence the bias the submissions?

Use the diagram as a tool to structure your thoughts before throwing yourself to the crowd. Use it to design your pitch, refine your objectives and identify the crowd you need.

Rob

1. A thick skin. There will be criticism, and it will likely come from both within your design group as well as from the players. They are two separate types of criticism to deal with and require separate coping techniques.

   Hopefully the internal criticism is all constructive and only inspires you to do better things, although in a time crunch sometimes the “praise sandwich” and other niceties tend to get discarded in favor of bluntness for the deadline’s sake. If you’re starting to feel needled, honesty is always the best policy – don’t let small annoyances build up until you suddenly explode over what may seem minor to others. If you need clarification on motives, ask for it as soon as possible in order to prevent bent or hurt feelings and dysfunctional groups down the road.

   External criticism in another animal altogether, and affects people in totally different ways. You may end up taking it very personally or may not. What you need to keep in mind is that when players complain about something, it is likely because they don’t have the whole picture or because something in the game play is broken. Sometimes there is a ringleader who sets off a wave of complaints. Honestly examine your game mechanics and story and see if anything needs to be tweaked. If everything is good, let the players blow off steam. Maybe have a character drop a line to one of the complainers and try to build a relationship. In very extreme cases, such as when game play is completely broken but in the process of being repaired, a designer might quietly contact an invested player out-of-game to let them know the team is addressing the issues.

2. Pick a talent, any talent. Especially on a grassroots game, there is room on a design team for many different kinds of talent. Of course writers are appreciated, but so are copy editors, researchers, puzzle testers, blog software installers, graphics people, security specialists, public relations experts, community moderators, organizers, schedulers, producers, and so on. Combinations of the above skills are even better. Professional teams tend to be a little more rigid in their job descriptions.
3. Trust in your team. If you’re not the lead, you probably don’t know the big picture. Sometimes you might even be asked to do something that seems counterintuitive. That’s fine if you trust your lead, but what if you have never worked with that person before? How do you build trust?

   First, don’t stop doing work simply because you think someone else is wrong. That might cause a domino effect down the line with others waiting on your work to do their own. It’s okay to ask where it fits in, though. Even better, if possible (and it’s not always!) is to have place to chat with your team both asynchronously and real-time. Staying in regular contact via Base Camp, message boards, and email, and then having meetings or quick questions via IRC, instant messenger, phone, or Skype really helps to build team trust and relationships as well as helps everyone meet their expectations.

So there’s a starting point for those looking to venture to the other side of the curtain. Those of you who have designed or puppetmastered games – have anything to add? Please speak up in the comments. We would love to hear from you.

Mise en scene

Though there is a vast array of various definitions as to what this phrase actually means to stage and film pros, the gist of it is “to place in scene.”

To the audience, the story of a play or film unfolds to reveal character, plot, and theme, which hopefully includes a hero they can side with, a conflicting plot they can experience from a safe distance, and a moral commentary they can interpret and either agree or disagree with. But for the film and theatre pros, the story unfolds using various elements, such as an actor, framing, lighting, props, and other props, effects, and players involved in brining a scene to life. In essence, mise en scene is a phrase that expresses all of the elements coming together and working together to create the story as it appears on stage or film.

For those interested in cross-media storytelling, mise en scene is an important phrase to become familiar with; not only do you have to worry about the mise en scene aspects involved with the film behind your story, but you need to be sure the mise en scene of your music, game, and web experience is there as well.

On top of that, you need to be sure the mise en scene for your overall cross-media story is there. If you’re not sure how or where to start, start with the four corners of cross-media storytelling.

1. Video

As a visual medium, this platform of storytelling will require attention to lighting, camera direction, acting, props, effects, audio, and anything else that contributes to the production of a moving image. The key here is to make sure everything in the frame should be, and furthermore, that it all fits within the overall style of your project.

2. Music

This too should fit within the family of your overall style you’re bringing to the cross-media story. Ask yourself if it sets the right mood, if your target audience will connect with the music, how it effects the emotions of your audience, and whether or not it feels like it fits naturally.

3. Gaming

Much like video, gaming will require a to of attention to the visual details involved with mise en scene. In addition, however, gaming will require your attention regarding the style and depth of how your audience participates with your game. Does the overall experience fit in with the overall story?

4. Web

Here’s where you tie it all together. Use the web to spread the mise en scene you’ve created for your overall cross-media story, while abiding by the style you’ve created. In other words, don’t sell out and purchase several flashy advertisements across the web in order to get your project out there … unless that’s the style of your project. Keep it in the family.

In the end, ask yourself whether you’ve created a style that successfully stretches across the four corners of cross-media storytelling. To create a sense of mise en scene for your cross-media project, you’ll need to step back and approach the project from the audience’s point of view.

Does your music feel organic with the genre and tone of your film elements? Does the web experience tie everything together seamlessly? Will the experience of your gaming aspects gel with everything else you’ve created thus far?

If you’re touching upon these four corners with your own cross-media project, do you find it difficult to create a sense of mise in scene?

My inaugural post on CH was an interview with the indomitable Andrew Hussie, writer and artist for an interactive comic called Problem Sleuth.  The comic was part of a larger project called MSPaint Adventures, which started as a simple forum interaction and has gotten progressively more intricate with each new story.

Problem Sleuth has since come to a close, and in April, Hussie started work on a new adventure called Homestuck.  It follows the adventures of four far-flung kids on a quest to save the world.  (Home stuck = Earth bound?  Or maybe that’s just me.)  The new comic incorporates a lot of flash elements – minigames, battles and music video sequences that set the mood.

The game is taking advantage of the fan connection on MSPA’s Facebook fan page to take suggestions on certain plot points, on top of its usual command prompt.  There’s also a subcomic, written by one of Homestuck’s secondary characters, and an ever-evolving FAQ that chronicles the characters’ progress in the “game.”

Throughout, the comic subverts the concept of gameplay in the same way that made Problem Sleuth so great.  It even takes the dual nature of the comic/game to some absurd and deeply enjoyable extremes.

But saying more would be spoiling, at this point.  Homestuck is already 800 pages strong, and growing daily.

With a budget of $15,000, and revenues of over $60 million so far, comparisons to 1999’s The Blair Witch Project are inevitable. Indeed, some of the marketing techniques seen for Paranormal have been similar: chiefly, showing the movie to film festival audiences and building a massive word of mouth campaign on the internet. In addition, Paranormal’s campaign gave the potential audience a feeling of agency – the main hook in each spot was that, in order to see the film, you had to demand it. Requests were counted on Eventful.com with the promise that once demands reached one million, the film would be put into wide release nationwide.

Smart move. Now Paranormal was the forbidden fruit, the meme of the day on the internet, the talk of Twitter, and everyone was wondering what it was all about. Those who had been lucky enough to see it at a film festival had written generally favorable reviews, which fueled the fire even more. Television spots showed people inside the theater being so freaked out by the movie that they covered their faces and screamed. Stories circulated online about people getting frightened and leaving showings early. Hype was building to Hitchcockian proportions. The “Demand It!” button was getting worn down. People wanted to see this movie, and they were making their wishes known.

How delightfully democratic this process was. How American! To be able to vote for a movie! The site tallied clicks and displayed how many came from your area, so you knew if you were in a red state or a blue state. Despite rumors of counter shenanigans, the sense of agency granted to the audience by giving them a stake in the film’s release allowed the buzz to reach a state of critical mass. The goal of one million demands was reached, and Paranormal went into wide distribution on October 16th (and even wider distribution on the 23rd).

Now of course, all the buzz in the world would be wasted on a crappy movie which, happily, Paranormal isn’t. A slow burner of a film, it explores the haunting of a college student through the camera lens of her boyfriend. (Be warned – the shaky cam in parts of the film might trigger motion sickness in some.) While rather short on plot, the movie is plenty long on chills, relying on insinuation and imagination rather than shock value for its scares – scares which will stay with the viewer for quite some time after the movie is over.

Paranormal Activity is the horror movie with a tiny budget that terrified one of Hollywood’s elite and was voted into theaters at Halloween-time – this year’s ghoulish Homecoming Queen, elected demon-cratically by all the kids in school. It’s a classic American fairy tale come to life.

It’s a scene that any gamer kid born post 1970 can relate to, but I think it’s particularly memorable because it was a truly accurate depiction of a period game’s assets, user interface and general experience. Although CotEW was created specifically for the movie, it was clearly made with a familiarity of Sierra and Mindscape published games of the  mid to late 80s.

This is a superior interpretation compared to how interactive entertainment is usually conveyed in dramatic mediums (TV, movies). Traditionally, console, PC, and sometimes even real life games are mimicked and reproduced poorly. Here’s a list of bad examples.

Grievous Offenders

• The Columbine kids playing FPS games in Gus Van Sant’s Elephant.
• Multiple Episodes of Law & Order mimicking EverQuest, Second Life and other flavors of the day.
• Tron, eXistenZ, The Lawnmower Man and most attempts to “suck players into the game” usually ends up playing to dramatic conventions while employing a gamey aesthetic, but it’s really just a style choice, and has nothing to do with how people actually play.
• Sundry examples that depict actors violently button mashing, convulsing and gyrating–something gamers never do. Ok, rarely do.

On the other hand, there are good examples. South Park, not surprisingly, always gets it right. Veronica Mars showcases Fable effectively, without actually pimping the game by name, and Zombieland’s WoW references are spot on. In the LARPing world, Even Role Models gets it pretty good, way better than, say The Game, or even Tag: The Assassination Game.

Thoughts on other good or bad examples of interactive entertainment depicted in a non-interactive, dramatic medium? Why do director always misrepresent “play”? My guess is, they aren’t gamers and/or are worried they’ll alienate the massive non-gaming audience if they’re faithful. The art house directors like Cronenberg and Van Sant probably don’t care, happy to convey abstract notions instead of accurate representations.

The presentation identifies some key requirements for transmedia documentation:

• indicate  which part of the story is told by which media
• indicate the timing of each element
• indicate  how the audience traverses the media (what’s the call to action?)
• indicate what the audience actually sees and does
• take account of the possibility for “non-linear traversal” through the story
• provide continuity across developers (who may be working on different media assets)

Christy also references music notation and says that it would be nice to present a transmedia project in this way so that someone could see the beauty of it at a glance.

I’ve been looking at this approach myself and I’m not the first. I knew that Mike Figgis (who is a composer as well as a director) when working on Timecode used a kind of music notation to present and explain his ideas for four stories would be told simultaneously in real-time. And in fact I was delighted to see that he’s put his notes online!

So here’s my proposed solution. The breakthrough that came while watching Chrisy’s presentation was to separate the actual story narrative from the experience of it. Hence at the highest level we have two timelines: one for story and one for the experience

Taking this idea further, it’s possible to break the media  into separate timelines so that it’s possible to see which media is being used where.

Hence, at a very high level, it’s possible to see in the example above that the audience first encounters the story through an online game which actually reveals the end of the narrative. During the game it looks like there are several mobile media used and some internet video.

At a glance this does meet many of the documentation criteria although it doesn’t reveal the detail of course or say how the media is traversed.

Experiencing the Media

I took the approach that progression of the experience (and hence unlocking or revealing of  media that tells another piece of the story) is via two controls:

• Triggers
• Dependencies

Hence, each stage or “state” of the experience is represented by a media asset that is unlocked by a trigger and made available to the audience participant if he/she meets the dependencies (age, location, time, network etc.).

Example triggers and dependencies might be:

• Time –  media released  to a calendar schedule or lock/unlock it by time of day (e.g. only available between 3pm & 4pm)
• Location – media released only to those in a certain geographical area or changed/modified based on location
• Device/Platform – media only available on mobile or only on project sponsor’s network or only on TV
• Knowledge – media released  only if participant has experienced some other content first
• User action – media released when person clicks a button or link
• Audience numbers – media released when enough people are playing game or is switched off if more than six people are in the room
• Age – must be over 15?

Each media asset that’s unlocked must be described in terms of:

• The type of media ( e.g. audio, video, image, text, interactive)
• Device implementations and dependencies (e.g. audio only available via mobile)
• The story knowledge revealed (info, characters, plot points, props, locations)

So now, at a high level, and without lots of messy lines criss-crossing an A3 sheet of paper, it’s possible to present very clearly each media asset and it’s relationships:

• to the story
• to the experience
• to the audience
• to other media.

Of course additional documentation is needed for each asset but at least there’s now a simple overview.

This is still a work in progress and I’ll develop it further but I’d be interested to hear thoughts from others or find other approaches.

Rob

Hi there, Culture Hacker.  I’m really sorry I’ve been gone so long.  I have a good excuse – I mean, reason! – I swear!  I’ve been delving deep into a viral art community, using publicly available tools to create free toys on the Internet.

The source of my new found joy (obsession?) is Cubeecraft, one of the many sites that offer free papercraft patterns to download and build.  I’m not a very skilled paper crafter, but as soon as I saw that they were offering a paper toy of Purple Tentacle, I had to make it.   Hey, and there’s Max, and the dog from Duck Hunt!  It was immediately obvious that my free time would soon be consumed creating little free figurines of my favorite characters.

Then I discovered that Cubeecraft also offers a blank template for artists to make their own, which isn’t too unusual for papercraft sites.  In the blink of an eye, I had gone from building the toys to designing one, based on my friend John Kantz’s comics.  Then, I thought the one I designed looked lonely, so I might as well make a whole set.  The next thing I knew, I was designing a cubee of 011iver from Must Love Robots, and I had a whole list of characters to do next.  Also, I was at a Pilot station in Oklahoma.  And three days had passed.  What just happened?

Cubeecraft is massively viral.  For artists of any stripe, the opportunity to design something in 3-D and release it on an unsuspecting populace is too good to pass up.  The transition from creating cubees to designing them is also completely intuitive.  Designing a cubee is easy, and scales to artist skill.  It can be as minimalist or as detailed as the subject calls for.  The toys also go together without glue or tape, which seems to have a magical quality to it.

I am not the first artist to succumb to its siren song, either.  There are so many third-party cubeecraft patterns out there, I couldn’t even get a reliable count.  DeviantART, which plays host to most third party designers’ cubees, shows around 4,000 results for the terms “cubee” and “cubeecraft,” and the lineup of patterns is a blur of pop culture icons.  On one page I see everything from Hello Kitty, to Jareth the Goblin King, to Jamie Hyneman and a even an anthropomorphic iPod.

In the two days since I posted my set of toys, I’ve also seen people start working on their own variations of my project. One artist contacted me about building them out of metal; another is planning to build a giant cubee head that can be worn as a helmet.

The viral effect is no mere coincidence. Chris Beaumont, the creator of Cubeecraft and the artist who designed most of the over 200 toys on the main site, designed the entire phenomenon as distributed, community-based art installation.  In answer to the question, “Is Cubeecraft Art?” on the Cubeecraft.com FAQ, he explains:

Download-able and easy to assemble, the Cubees are an internationally shared project. Popular in Brazil, sold (without permission or commission) on the streets in Thailand, used in classrooms in Japan and in American Ikea displays, “Cubeecraft” appeals to a visceral need to build, and a cultural need to represent our ideas in abbreviated fashion.

Like any good viral artist, Beaumont has managed to turn his free, public art project into a personal source of income – he creates official cubees for commercial franchises like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Resident Evil, and Penny Arcade.

P.S. Did I mention there’s a Cubeecraft Ning for designers?  Of course there’s a Ning.  There’s always a Ning.