Category Archives: Transmedia

I Hate Picking Headlines

I’ve talked to you guys a little about Chrono Cross’ soundtrack before. For Kirk Hamilton’s weekly music block over at Kotaku (Kotaku has “programming” now, if you hadn’t heard), he asked me to kick in some thoughts, and I elaborated some on why it’s absolutely my favorite soundtrack in games. I’ve been replaying Chrono Cross lately and it only serves to emphasize for me how massively overlooked and underrated the game is. Chrono Trigger was a tough act to follow. More on that soon — promise.

For everyone asking me “should I buy a PlayStation Vita,” I’m like, “well, do you want it? Are those games you want to play, and can you afford it?” I mean, if the answer to all three questions are yes, you should get it.
Me, I really like the thing. Of course, the great delusion of game journalists is that their likes and dislikes have anything to do with the market and what consumers will actually buy. I’ve written my impressions and thoughts on the device and its tough-to-call role in the complicated portable landscape over at Gamasutra, if you’d like to check it out and weigh in.
In other cool ideas that depend on complicated marketplaces, I’ve written an editorial about transmedia gaming and entertainment. Where’s that glorious transmedia future we were promised?
Speaking of the future, I’m part of this classy quarterly futurist magazine called Arc. If you look at the other contributors you might see why I’m wondering if someone just put me in there by mistake. It’s super awesome, and you can check it out on digital platforms or in print.
That’s about it for now, aside from a very important music recommendation. For my birthday last year I threw an enormous loft party with many of our friends’ bands, and Ava Luna, one of my favorite locals, was awesome enough to play. They continue to get bigger and more awesome, and now they have a new record out and the famously difficult-to-please Chris Weingarten likes them enough to put their record on Spin so that you can stream it, so you should. They’re really good.

Future Storytelling


Does the phrase “platform-agnostic IP” mean anything to you? Well, what it is is when a fictional concept — a universe, a story, and the characters within it — are conceived not for any one particular medium, but for several of them. In other words, it’s an idea that can work simultaneously as a video game, a movie or television show, and a set of books or comic books, for example. You get it.

The idea’s loosely called transmedia, and it’s what the Syfy channel is hoping to do by working with video game companies: Trion, with an upcoming MMO, and THQ. As for the latter, Syfy wants to start by creating more traditional extensions (film and television series) of de Blob and Red Faction, and then they hope to co-create projects together.
It’s interesting stuff. On one hand, it’s traditional media finally seeing the value in persistence and interactivity in creating additional engagement for users. It has unbelievable potential to make gaming more mainstream, and to help it become a core component of the way people conceive of and experience entertainment. It’s also not without its challenges — generally, TV people don’t know a lot about games, and vice versa.
So to build a property that can bridge two media worlds that historically have had only the most cursory relationship with one another is no small feat, but I interviewed the president of Syfy and he explained to me that that’s exactly what they’re hoping to do:

“What’s fantastic about this strategy is, if we get it right, we’ll figure out ways for people to consume those characters and stories across multiple platforms whenever and however they choose to,” says Howe. “It’s an always-on world we’re living in, and that’s exciting to us. Dynamic, immersive experience is critical to future storytelling.”

Check out the interview!

[By the way, I think I’m going to start linking to my fave music blogs to share current tracks I like on a regular basis. Nothing to do with video games, I know, but it’s nice to share my interests in more than one medium, ya dig? And I’ll make it tiny so you can ignore it if you don’t care. Here’s The Love Language’s ‘Heart to Tell’, via Pasta Primavera.]