Introduction
This week we invite you to consider how your project might position itself within digital simulation and/or environmental narratives.
It is also now time to consider the multi-platform nature of your digital narrative, and the different distribution and marketing strategies you might consider.
Your tasks:
- Read and watch the lecture material.
- Identify which type of ‘environmental narrative’ your project most aligns with (depending on your project, this may be a bit of an arbitrary exercise, but have a go anyway in the spirit of exploration): evocative, enacting, embedded or immersive (NB: These concepts are elaborated upon below).
- Come to class having identified a concept from any of the flipped lectures so far that most closely applies to the digital narrative you are developing.
- Make notes on the multi-platform marketing and/or distribution of your project.
- Most importantly: bring to class your ideas for what you might make for your EPOC.
Pre-digital simulations
As noted earlier in the course, narrative is an ancient form of communication and has been with us for thousands of years (if not longer).
Simulation, as a form of communication, also has a long history. Here are some examples of pre-digital simulations.
| A doll that closes its eyes when it is horizontal |
A crane that lifts a bucket when you turn its wheel | An orrery that models the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons in the Solar System. |
| The diorama was a pre-cinematic form of entertainment invented by Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the photographic plate. | It consisted of huge translucent paintings of famous places and used lighting effects to create the illusion of movement and change. | Effects included changing weather conditions, atmospheric effects, shifting day to night, and making figures appear and disappear within the scene. |
The modern-day museum diorama is a descendent of this form of simulation.
Videogame simulations
Gonzalo Frasca argues in Simulation VS Narrative: Introduction to Ludology (2003) that the narrative model limits our understanding of videogames. He contends that videogames are not narratives but simulations.
Frasca’s broad definition of simulation:
- a simulation is a model of a system
- a simulation reacts to certain stimuli according to a set of conditions, rules or procedures.
A simulation is never going to be identical to the system that it is modelling – often it is a much simpler system.
| Red Dead Redemption (2010) | Grand Theft Auto V (2013) | Assassin’s Creed Unity (2014) |
For instance, the desert environment in Red Dead Redemption is far simpler than a real desert, it still retains some of its behaviours (for instance, it has a day/night cycle, and you can fall off bridges and cliffs).
Simulations as story machines
Frasca claims that a videogame is bigger than a single story. In fact, a videogame is a dynamic system that can produce many different stories, depending on the player’s actions.
In the same way that a kaleidoscope is not a collection of different images but a device that produces images, a videogame is a system that produces a variety of stories.
In Game design as narrative architecture Henry Jenkins argues that although games and stories have profound differences, game designers and critics can learn a tremendous amount through studying older storytelling media, such as films and novels. Jenkins believes that game designers should be understood less as storytellers and more as narrative architects: “Game designers don’t simply tell stories; they design worlds and sculpt spaces” (2004: 120 – 122). According to Jenkins, narrative architecture, or environmental storytelling, in games can be achieved in four different ways:
Evocative spaces
A certain place can evoke narrative associations by drawing on a pre-existing genre tradition (for instance the haunted house) or work (for instance Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865))
| American McGee’s Alice (2000) | Fearful Tales: Hansel And Gretel Game (2013) | Silent Hill: Homecoming (2008) |
Enacting stories
A series of locations can stage narrative events (here a plot is organised spatially in the form of a world full of obstacles and aids to the progression of the story)
| Red Dead Redemption (2010) | Far Cry 3 (2012) | Call of Duty: World at War (2008) |
Embedded narratives
Narrative information can be embedded in the mis-en-scene of a location (as in the classic detective story model, where the player assembles a narrative history through uncovering clues)
| L. A. Noire (2011) | L. A. Noire (2011) |
Emergent narratives
The player can use the resources provided to design their own worlds (for instance, The Sims (2000))
| Minecraft (2009) | SimCity – Cities of Tomorrow (2013) | The Sims 2 (2004) |
Machinima
Those filmmakers without 3D animation skills may be interested in creating environments within online virtual worlds such as Second Life and Kaneva. These environments can be used to create machinima. Machinima are digital films made using real-time computer graphics engines. machinima artists, sometimes called machinimators, use video games (such as The Sims) or simulated worlds (such as Second Life) to create their film clips. As derivative works, machinima could violate the copyright of the videogames used to create them. However, In 2003, Linden Lab changed their license terms to allow users to own their works created in Second Life. Electronic Arts, the makers of The Sims, encourage users to create and share their own Sims’ narratives using the in-game camera. Screenshots and video footage of The Sims games can be broadcast freely, as long as the machinimator does not attempt to make money from its broadcast.
The Sims 3 Machinima – Madness – Best Of
The Sims 3 Machinima – Fascination
Multi-platform (and transmedia) storytelling.
It used to be that most stories were told using a single medium, such as a book or a movie. At a later date, particularly if the story was a very popular one, it might have been adapted for another medium. So comics might have been adapted for television, or novels might have been adapted into films and so on. In general, when a narrative is adapted for different media channels, its basic story elements (characters and plot) are retained in the new format.
But, as leading transmedia scholar Christy Dena was already observing back in 2009:
“A television show is no-longer always just television show, it may have specially crafted books and a feature film that are all part of the storytelling, as is the case of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s early 1990s work Twin Peaks. The website for a feature film can do more than advertise the details of its screenings, it can reveal detail about the characters’ lives after the film plot ending, as with Richard Kelly’s 2001 Donnie Darko website. The arias and childhood visions from a character’s memories can be shared with the reader of a book, with specially created illustrations and a music CD, as author Laura Esquivel orchestrated in her 1996 novel The Law of Love (Crown Publishers, Inc.). The setting and ideology of an album can burst beyond the music, across fictional websites and anarchic live events, as Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor showed with his Year Zero alternate reality game (Reznor and 42 Entertainment, 2007). A computer game can bleed outside of its virtual walls, with fictional characters emailing players directly, as with Electronic Art’s 2001 alternate reality game Majestic. The canvas of a painting can stretch beyond the gallery and onto the Internet, as tonyjohanson.com (he changed his name to a URL) did with his 2005 Archibald Prize entry GoFigure.Net.au. An installation can exist in multiple locations and websites, with patrons on the Internet interacting with strangers on the street, as with Susan Collins’s In Conversation (1997-2001). And players on the Internet can be chased by people running through the streets with GPS-enabled devices, as with Blast Theory’s Can You See Me Now? (2001–2005)” (2009, p. 1- 2)
One of the first transmedia productions was The Blair Witch Project (1999) a docufiction or ‘found footage’ film. The story concerns the disappearance of three students in the Black Hills woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. The students disappear while they are making a documentary film about the legend of the Blair Witch. A year later their documentary footage is found buried under the foundations of an old house. The Blair Witch Project movie consists solely of this ‘found footage’ whilst the website presents additional material about events that happened before and after the disappearance of the filmmakers.
Transmedia storytelling is a very different approach in which a narrative is designed from the ground up to exist in multiple complementary modules across multiple channels. In other words, the narrative modules are like pieces of a puzzle that fit together to create a unified whole.
“Transmedia storytelling represents 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 it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.” (Jenkins 2011).
Ideally, as Jenkins points out, a transmedia storyteller will exploit the strengths or affordances of each medium to their best effect. For instance, a game module of the narrative might simulate one aspect of the narrative as a dynamic system, whereas a cinematic module of the narrative might represent another segment of the narrative in a visually spectacular and highly plot driven form.
Since transmedia narratives are distributed across different media and comprise a persistent universe, they can often be misconstrued as real rather than fictional. This was the case with Orson Welles War of the Worlds (1938), and also The Truth about Marika (2007), a narrative produced for Swedish television about the disappearance of a young woman. Many people believed Marika was a real person and helped search for her. Understandably, they were not happy when they found out that the story was a fiction.
The truth about Marika (participative drama)
Notable features of transmedia narratives are:
Multiple media – the narrative exists in different modules across more than one medium (usually 3+, often combining live events with traditional media).
District 9 (2009) marketing involved billboards banning non-humans – see Henry Jenkin’s discussion of District 9.
A timeline of Dexter’s transmedia elements
Narrative expansion- the different modules expand, or add to, the core narrative and its story world, past or future, points-of-view (focalisers).
The Office webisodes: The Accountants
Doctor Who – A Finding Freeflow Case Study
Narrative continuity – the modules are closely integrated and consistent with the core narrative (the canon).
The Holocron continuity database is the database used internally by Lucas Licensing to keep track of all of the fictional elements created for the Star Warsuniverse, and contains elements from nearly every officially sanctioned Star Wars product. Some statistics from the database – the database currently contains 8,742 characters and 3,419 planets.
Transmedia: Multichannel Storytelling Transcends Platforms
Narrative participation – the narrative is at least partially participatory, so that the audience can participate in the unfolding or creation of the narrative.
Game features – the narrative often contain some gaming elements and a playful sensibility.
Dexter Interactive Investigation: Start Here!
Rabbit holes – the narrative contains at least one public point of entry through which the audience find clues or pieces of the story (the rabbit hole). For instance, the film A.I. (2001) had a credit for Jeanine Salla as ‘Sentient Machine Therapist’ hidden among the credits for Spielberg and the actors, along with a phone number. These were the initial clues that lead players into the world of The Beast (2001) , an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) set in the A.I. movie universe. Here is Jay Bushman’s recollection of the game.
Cheese holes – the narrative contains spaces in which the audience is encouraged to create or contribute content.
“Cheese hole design is about recognizing the opportunities within the story … Cheese holes are the places where you would like or will actively steer an audience to create content, perhaps in the form of back story, additional characters, ancillary storylines, Rashomon-style alternative perspectives or around artifacts from the storyworld. It doesn’t necessarily mean disruption to impact the storyline.” (Alison Norrington, quoted in Miller 2014, p. 168)
Cheese holes often form on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and on blogs. A Yahoo! Group titled The Cloudmakers was created by players of The Beast. The Cloudmakers sorted out information from the game and created elaborate flowcharts of in-game activity.
Further exploration:
Transmedia Documentary Storytelling
Finally, this is all of consideration for your proposals and EPOCs, in preparation for an industry where “Other design ecology factors that influence the creation and design of transmedia projects include institutional ones, such as the rise of funding bodies, arts organizations, broadcasters, studios and the like mandating cross-platform, cross-media, 360, and multi- platform projects” (Dena 2009, p. 52).
References:
District 9 (2009)
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
The Spiral (2012)
The Truth about Marika (2007)
War of the Worlds (1938)
Dena, C 2009, Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments, PhD Thesis, University of Sydney
Frasca, G 2001, Simulation vs Representation, Ludology.org.
Frasca, G 2003, ‘Simulation vs. Narrative: Introduction to Ludology’, Wolf MJP & Perron B (eds) Video/Game/Theory. Routledge
Jenkins H. 2011, Confessions of an Aca-Fan (blog), available at http://henryjenkins.org/
Jenkins, H 2004, ‘Game Design as Narrative Architecture’, in Wardrip-Fruin, N. and Harrington, P. eds. First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004, 118-130
Miller C. H. 2014, Digital Storytelling: A Creator’s Guide to Interactive Entertainment, Focal Press, Mass. Available RMIT Library http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=806308&site=ehost-live&scope=site