Trans-medial Narratives

New Audience, New Stakeholders

Information Society

Bodies of technology in content

Form and function

Convergence Cultures

New Audience, New Stakeholders

Contextualising gender within convergence culture

New conceptions of gender

New narrative expectations

Transmedial cultures: enabling/disabling dichotomy

Are the issues different? Gamergate

 

New Audience, New Stakeholders

Tropes vs Women in Video Games​

Notions of toxicity

From Barbie to Mortal Kombat

Rise of participatory culture: User generated content

Technological imagination of cyberfeminism

Worldbuilding

Magic Circle

Designing Culture

Technological Imagination (Balsamo, 2011): mindset that enables people to think with technology, to transform what is known into what is possible. Performative imagination

 

How people engage with the materiality of the world and imagine future possibilities

 

Active engagement between human beings and technological elements, culture too is reworked through the development of new narratives, new myths, new rituals, new modes of expression, and new knowledges that make the innovations meaningful​

 

Hermeneutics of technology: Locating work and play within culture - Gamification

Transmedial Storytelling

Traditional Campaign	Transmedial Campaign
Product centric:   Promotional campaign focused on creating brand awareness	Experience centric:   Campaign shifts to creating rich customer experience
Traditional Channels	Multiple Coordinated Channels
Risk of Inefficiencies: Higher CPM, less fresh, less insight into the storyworld	Increased Effectiveness
Limited Audience Engagement	Enhanced Audience Engagement

Transmedial Storytelling

One-way vs Multi-way Interactions: Audience interaction in marketing campaigns is typically one-way and the communication is top-down.

Transmedia campaigns use multi-way interactions and audience participation. Creating a conversation around a product

Broadcasting vs Narrowcasting: Individuals vs communities. Choice to target individuals vs leveraging an impassioned fan base to create communities online. (Pop culture: Army/Tribe etc) Associating values and emotions with a brand. Connecting individual stories with the larger story

 

Transmedial Storytelling

Defined as a coordinated storytelling experience across multiple media platforms. Marketers solicit the active participation of the audience and attempt to spread the narrative with the help of viral marketing practices. Using the core fan base to share the narrative to a larger audience.

 

Henry Jenkins (2011): “A process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.”

 

Transmedial Storytelling

Persistent

Pervasive

Personalised

Participatory

Transmedial Storytelling

Toshiba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyMQIMeSCVY

Infinit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIZUUpKzFF8

Hunger Games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL9Ndsc0LKo

Bear: https://bear71vr.nfb.ca/ 

Subaru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRa94Gmx-Ms

Coca Cola: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koY5Ml9lSzY ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_JsOrH5cOM

Collider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz-NWKpWSJM&list=PLEInLPvSp6cQpNvSuQpWGzQ0R3xnV5UEX

Batman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpuC7HhCPWA&list=PLEInLPvSp6cQpNvSuQpWGzQ0R3xnV5UEX&index=8

Dexter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxpded6Wvu4&list=PLEInLPvSp6cQpNvSuQpWGzQ0R3xnV5UEX&index=13

Burberry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krQG2Hceov4&t=2s

 

Transmedial Storytelling

Work/Play in Transmedial Cultures

New stakeholders: work/play?

But what is play?

Work/Play in Transmedial Cultures

What is good game design?

All good game elements can still make a bad game!

Instead of elements, what do you want the player to feel?

What is Gamification

Gamification is bullshit?*

Repeatable approaches which prefers facility, not benefit, honour or aesthetics

This rhetorical power derives from the “-ification” rather than from the “game”. -ification involves simple, repeatable, proven techniques or devices: you can purify, beautify, falsify, terrify, and so forth. -ification is always easy and repeatable

Game developers and players have critiqued gamification on the grounds that it gets games wrong, mistaking incidental properties like points and levels for primary features like interactions with behavioral complexity.

*http://bogost.com/writing/blog/gamification_is_bullshit/

What is Gamification

But it is sticky, playful, retentive, and cuts through the noise. 

More user engagement

Millennials and Gen Z: Need to create + need to escape - Gamify

The core idea behind the commercial viability of gamification is that consumers, when interacting with game-like elements, will also display behavior that is associated with gameplay (Huotari and Hamari, 2012).

 

Agency and engagement

Stakes of the game

Play as a magic circle

Immersion

VR/AR Gamification

Play as a form of social construction

Play is closed within itself; it is an act, which stands true for itself as long as the participants are pretending that it is true.

Play requires the voluntary participation of individuals who are willing to suspend their notions of reality within a fixed time and space – it is only then that play is possible. Play exists as an interruption in our ordinary, real lives.

Applications

Apps

Health/Finance/Marketing

Advergames

(NikeFuel, Mazda, Chipotle Love Story)

https://www.gamify.com/gamified-marketing/gamification-examples-case-studies?hsLang=en-au

Insights for the Future

Accessibility

Reach

Gamification as intrinsic motivation

Better game mechanics

Gamified Narratives

Loss aversion

Level Up!

 

Gamification Techniques

Extrinsic Motivation: Badges, Leaderboards. But value of reward diminishes over time (ergo less inclined to play Candy Crush)

 

Intrinsic Motivation: Why are games fun? (Huizinga)

 

Self Determination Theory: Autonomy (Interest), Competence (Challenge), Relatedness (Narrative Transportation)

How Video Games Work

Flow and Immersion: Concentration, Control

Goal and Progress: Balancing challenge and reward

Rule Systems and Narrative Systems

Human focused design (motivation and engagement) vs Function focused design

Epic Meaning and Calling: Wiki, Subreddits (Gamestop) - Narrative focused

Development and Accomplishment: Challenge vs badge/trophy

Creativity and Feedback: System engagement

Ownership: Customisable characters

 

 

VIDEO GAMES

What happens when you play? Non-linguistic learning. A language of video games

Murray: Procedural, Participatory, Spatial, Encyclopaedic

Procedurality: computer’s “defining ability to execute a series of rules.”

Activity Theory - Horizon Zero Dawn

Ludo-hermeneutics - Witcher III

Procedurality refers to the practice of encapsulating specific real-world behaviors into programmatic representations.

Ludo-Hermeneutics

Components:

1. Heuristic spiral of gameplay

2. Heuristic spiral of narrative

3. Hermeneutic spiral

Three spirals as connected, but discretionary: only the inclusion of gameplay is necessary, while both the narrative and hermeneutic spirals are optional

" While the interpretation of a literary or filmatic [cinematic] work will require certain analytical skills, the game requires analysis practiced as performance, with direct feedback from the system. This is a dynamic, real-time hermeneutics that lacks a corresponding structure in film or literature.Reading a book or viewing a film does not provide direct feedback, in the sense that our performance is evaluated in real time." (Aarseth, 2003)

Ludo-Hermeneutics

"The interpretations a player makes during the game influence his or her actions, and subsequently, success in the game. For example, if one interprets the Koopa Troopa-turtles in Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo Creative Department 1985) as friendly and tries to hug them, it will probably result in the plumber-protagonist Mario losing his life. In this case, we can say that it is the wrong interpretation to make. This does not mean that there is only one possible correct interpretation of the game itself, but that the game supports some and opposes some interpretations." (Arjoranta, 2011, p. 6)

 

 

Ludo-Hermeneutics: Gameplay Condition

Given that I desire to play, […] the materiality of the game artefact imposes on me a freedom of choice of which I am responsible in my choices. This is what we could refer to as the gameplay condition. An account of how the gameplay condition is implemented in a particular game would be […] a list of the principles according to which the non-human agency operates in a particular game as regulating what is it possible for the player to do, and also, more importantly, defining what the player needs to do in order to retain the possibility of choosing to [sic] anything in the game. (Leino, 2010, pp. 133-34)

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Ludo-Hermeneutics: Gameplay Condition

Given that I desire to play, […] the materiality of the game artefact imposes on me a freedom of choice of which I am responsible in my choices. This is what we could refer to as the gameplay condition. An account of how the gameplay condition is implemented in a particular game would be […] a list of the principles according to which the non-human agency operates in a particular game as regulating what is it possible for the player to do, and also, more importantly, defining what the player needs to do in order to retain the possibility of choosing to [sic] anything in the game. (Leino, 2010, pp. 133-34)

 

Real time hermeneutics: Bloodborne/Uncharted

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Ludo-Hermeneutics in the Market

Notions of interpretation of a cultural artifact - what is art? Duchamp's fountain/Pac-Man MoMA

Prejudices and preconceptions - Real time hermeneutics inflecting it?

"Fusion of horizons" - method to successfully combine your prejudices with the cultural context of the object of interpretation, not allowing either to overshadow the other.

Ludo-hermeneutic framework to understand market cultures: why do some games work? 

And extending it to: what does that tell us about contemporary consumer culture?

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Ludo-Hermeneutics in the Market

Why do some games work?

Ludo-narrative dissonance: Conflict between ludic and narrative elements

Bioshock: Objectivism and Free Will: Self-interest (gameplay) vs selflessness (narrative): Creating aesthetic distance (alienation)

Mass Effect (Renegade vs Paragon: Still hero!); Uncharted; Plague's Tale; Last of Us...

Incentive vs Directive

A way to unsettle the player - 'emersion' as opposed to 'immersion'. Disruptive storytelling strategy - forcing thought in interactivity.

Ludonarrative consistency (Bloodborne, Dead Space, Persona 5)​​

Ludo-Narrative Dissonance

Gamification and Ludo-narrative dissonance?​

Balance tilted towards ludic elements - without heuristic narrative spiral

​Storytelling industry: Shifting towards Ludo-narrative

Applications: Still caught in ludic imagination

Framework for market analysis: Ludo-narrative dissonances in products (sustainability - juice box) - How does one plug it? Shock value: Guerrilla marketing?

Consumer/Prosumer: Use vs Story/Object vs Subject (Activity Theory)