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Remember “Transmedia”? At the beginning of this decade ‘transmedia’ was a buzzworthy catch-all term describing an emerging group of media formats and practices that seemed poised to become a major force within the entertainment business.
I found myself pondering the fate of transmedia after participating in three events in California that had once been hotbeds of the movement:
- StoryWorld 3.0, a scaled-down edition of an event that, as much as any, showcased the theory and practice of transmedia when it premiered in 2011;
- Digital Hollywood, now in its 24th year, a sprawling array of media, business and tech sessions that closely track buzz and trends; and
- San Francisco-based TV of Tomorrow Show that has been tracking interactive and advanced television developments for 11 years.
Transmedia became a handy and very elastic term for the kinds of content powered by the rapid adoption of mobile devices and social platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Stories and entire story worlds could be consumed across multiple media, and could invite direct audience interaction. Dozens of format experiments by producers from around the world began to coalesce into a movement that some called “transmedia.”
Even as movie studios, TV networks, game companies and brands began to underwrite projects that they eagerly labeled “transmedia” in order to catch the buzz, there was a less commercially oriented group that resisted, preferring small-scale efforts like “alternate reality games.” These folks pushed back when the Producers Guild of America designated an official credit for “transmedia producer,” igniting a war of words, as I reported at the time. Indeed, my own work as a consultant and observer was fully caught up in the movement during its heyday.
Today, we rarely hear the word “transmedia” when trying to describe the contemporary media production, distribution and consumption landscape. And so, yes, “Transmedia” per se is dead, victims of what transmedia producer and author Andrea Phillips called the transmedia diaspora. Name-brand leaders of the movement like Jeff Gomez and Lance Weiler, both of whom presented at StoryWorld 3, are still in the field, but like the movement they helped spawn, focus upon the mechanics of story, not the nomenclature and categorization of the movement.
The truth is, the principles championed by the transmedia movement can be seen everywhere today across dozens of programs, platforms, formats, entertainment experiences, and media types. The reality of our media ecosystem and audience behaviors have demanded that all media is, without much fanfare, transmedia storytelling.
Here are some features of today’s media ecosystem with roots in the short-lived transmedia era.
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