Time to create transmedia

On Wednesday the research company Latitude released a pretty interesting study called The Future Of Storytelling. I highly recommend it as essential reading, and I’m thoroughly looking forward to the second and last instalment in the study series.

There are a lot of good points in the study, and in my mind they all clearly point to one thing. ”Transmedia” might have been a buzzword for a while. It probably still is, in the minds of many. But the term is of infinitely lesser importance; of greater importane is the fact that the audience – anyone we wish to target with our content – is already inherently geared towards transmedia.

For us as content creators it can only mean one thing. Kicking and screaming, or willingly and eagerly, we will move into the world of content transcending media platforms, or story worlds and neverending narratives, of co-creation with users and co-distribution with others, of using technology to weave stories to evoke feelings and induce experiences. There is no turning back, and we do ourselves a severe disservice if we do not acknowledge this with open eyes and strive to make the very best we can of this fact.

At the same time, my ”old-media-developer-and-producer”-character raises its head and highlights the fact that while all of this is very nice, someone also need to pay for everything. Just developing the mythologies and / or story worlds needed comes with a cost. As does producing for different platforms, as does distributing content to different platforms. Will we just end up doing a helluva lot more work and paying a helluva lot more money for the same return?

I may be naive and I may be overoptimistic, but I am convinced that financially viable models will appear, more and more frequently. Crowdfunding is one way to go, working with sponsors another. My firm belief is that – just as with Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and other ventures no one had envisaged five years ago – we will see new financing models come to the fore that will make us all go ”oh, ok! Yeah, that’ll work! How come I didn’t think about that?!?”

In the meantime what we can all do is create. Create, create, create, and then create some more. Create magical worlds and stunning characters, create enchanting narrative arcs and riveting interactive possibilities. Create more and better (and why not harder, faster and stronger while we’re at it J ). Exciting times indeed!