ABSTRACT
What kind of thread can hold together several millennia of galactic history? In Star Wars, the only thread expansive enough is the Force, which unifies the numerous depicted characters, governments, and worlds into a single history, a galactic saga of lightsabers and levitation. But is this thread strong enough also to hold together a transmedia universe spanning hundreds of texts in different media? It certainly does its best to promote continuity by tying together even overtly contradictory stories—for instance, allowing The Force Awakens to reboot the Star Wars EU while remaining distinctively and canonically Star Wars. Yet, even the fabric of a fictional universe can promote such continuity only by the grace of its fans, who ultimately determine to what extent a transmedia story is perceived as a whole. The wisdom of the Jedi suggests that “many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view” (Return of the Jedi) and that “your focus determines your reality” (The Phantom Menace). Similarly, one might say that storyworlds depend greatly on how they are mediated; in other words, mediation determines fictional realities. While this is characteristic of transmedia storytelling more generally, this chapter focuses on a single case: how the digital game mechanics of Decipher’s Star Wars Customizable Card Game (hereafter the SWCCG) struggle to adapt four notions of the Force. In focusing on this popular yet doubly marginalized medium—CCGs are typically overlooked within both Star Wars canon formation 1 and transmedia storytelling scholarship—this chapter also sheds some light on how medium-specific tensions introduce continuity and discontinuity in transmedia storytelling.
