ABSTRACT
Traditional entertainment, such as film and television, is currently under fire. With the rise of digital content and video games, consumers no longer look to film and TV as cultural touchstones. With audiences being fractured, in many cases, due to technology, transmedia storytelling offers a sound solution to help traditional media companies to maintain audiences. Transmedia is the telling of a single story experience across different media outlets. Ideally, one part of the story experience will be assigned to a different medium (like Act 1 will be told on film, Act 2 through a graphic novel, and Act 3 through a video game). But one cannot expect audiences to have that deep level of loyalty for a franchise. Instead, one will cast a wider net by designing a fractured experience about the same world and characters and allow for several stories to live on their own in different media. However, each is tied together through shared worlds, big events, beloved characters, and periodic crossovers. The chapter will use the 2008 Obama campaign, The Matrix, Star Wars, and The X-Files as either good or bad examples of transmedia, while also providing basic requirements of what makes a transmedia campaign successful.
The author analyzes why Halo was not only a successful video game franchise, but was also one of the most successful transmedia franchises ever. The chapter provides a visual timeline of its transmedia releases and how they successfully built interest in between each major game release.
