Iron and Clay Don't Mix: On Media Audiences

Once upon a time, there was a dream. A dream that one could tell a story across multiple media, shifting things to take advantage of each medium's strengths in order to maximize the narrative impact, and thereby create world-dominating generation-defining properties that become cultural icons- and evergreen revenue with perennial profits.

That dream was transmedia.

"Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies, not to be confused with traditional cross-platform media franchises, sequels, or adaptations."

And, like many dreams, it did not work.

Look at that definition again. When did you follow a single story across multiple platforms? You didn't. No one did. No one wants to either, so no one will. That means that pursuing it, and not being a double-talking con-man, requires a shift in the definition, from "story" to "meta-story".

The idea is that you have a big arc that plays out over multiple installments, such as the Infinity Gauntlet arc of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and across multiple media outlets. The result, as we know now, is that the audience does not cross those lines. Hell, there are people who don't watch most other MCU films; they just do Iron Man, or Thor, etc. and skip the rest because they don't care so when they plop down for an Avengers film they get confused- and quickly become angry.

Most people who saw Age of Ultron had no idea that SHIELD provided the Helicarrier seen in the film, or the other resources the team required, because the vast majority of film-goers do not (and refuse to) watch Agents of SHIELD. On a similar note, the Chitauri artifacts that the aforementioned show focused on early in its run were callbacks to and follow-ons from a Marvel movie short: Item 47. (Same with the other One-Shots; few watched, or care to watch, so they don't have the impact intended.)

"But Walker!" you say, "What about the comics?"

Utterly fucking irrelevant. MCU fans don't read comics, and they certainly don't read the SJW-riddled crap that Marvel is now. If not for the films--and just the films--Marvel would be dead and gone by now, and the Marvel leadership knows it. So does Disney, and the Mouse is NOT happy about it; they recognize the comics side as being the IP Hothouse for future films, and thus notice that this well is dry as a bone.

And no, DC is no better. They're arguably worse off. Lucasfilm is no better. (The amount of people who gave no fucks about the Clone Wars and Rebels connections in Rogue One, or the people who will not touch tie-in books, is the overwhelming majority of the audience. Furthermore, given the SJW bullshit afflicting Lucasfilm, it's no surprise that current tie-in books and comics are routinely trash suitable only for use as emergency toilet paper.

"But Halo!"

The crossover between the books/comics and the games, in terms of audience, is appalling. There are big fans who have never even heard of the tie-in books and comics, and would not give a shit if they did. That is not what they are playing the game for!

That's what this transmedia thing revealed: the preference for the audience is to stay with the medium where the thing is, and eschew everything else. The reason is because the audience in one medium wants what that specific medium does best; they don't want what other media do, and if there is information that otherwise cannot be had without doing so they quickly come to resent what they feel (not wrong here) as an imposition upon them- and now that Wikis exist that is not an issue anymore.

Filmgoers want film. TV watchers want TV. Comics fans want comics. Videogamers want videogames. They do not cross the streams, and there isn't a way to make them do so that doesn't do more harm than good to the business that attempts it. That is why transmedia failed, and there is nothing that can be done to fix it.

Which is why the smart people moved on. The successful element of this dream was the explicit recognition of storytelling as the foundation for successful marketing, advertising, and public relations: folks who told (aspirational, often) stories to push their things succeeded wildly compared to those that did not. This is nothing new, as Edward Bernays (one of the founders of Public Relations) did just that in 1925, but it was held (more or less) secret until recent decades when this tranmedia dream put it in the open for all to see.

Thus the Revealation of the Method that is today's Narrative Warfare. Expect future refinements to take advantage of this revealed segmentation in audience preferences, for reasons both fair and foul, and a decline in tie-in merchandising as the fuckups running those campaigns get turfed out and blacklisted for being terminal tossers. (It won't go away entirely, but instead revert to very targeted campaigns focusing on what that specific medium offers: don't sell clothes to a toy audience.)

And remember that not all dreams have happy endings. Most of us end up like Porkins, not Skywalker.