ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore a particular example of transmedia storytelling, the games created for the BBC series Spooks, to examine how audiences responded to the extension of a televisual storyworld into a more ‘interactive’ form. Of all the moments of transmediality discussed in this book, games are perhaps, on the surface, the most explicitly different from television drama episodes and involve a radical shift in viewer expectations and experience; they must go from watching a television episode to having to have direct input in a game. However, by being constructed as part of a transmedia drama they are also positioned as part of an integrated, coherent narrative experience. How, then, do viewers respond to the shift from viewing to playing? What can this shift tell us about engagement with gaming texts and about engagement with television drama? In considering these questions, this chapter will explore how theories of immersion and agency can illuminate both the differences between engagement with the same ‘text’ via a television and a gaming platform, and what audiences particularly value about both forms of engagement.
