Updates, Interviews and More - J.C. Hutchins

Hey everyone! You’re really gonna like this episode a lot, trust us! In it, Steve chats with Christian Fonnesbech, the Transmedia Director for the upcoming project Cloud Chamber. We talk about story, challenges and more.

It’s our special Mailbag episode! Steve and J.C. answer your questions, and boy were there some doozies!

This week’s guests are the creative team behind The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Bernie Su, Margaret Dunlap, Jenni Powell, and Jay Bushman.

Professor Henry Jenkins is our guest in this episode! He and J.C. sit down and talk about our current culture of shareable, spreadable media in this epic podcast.

In this episode, we welcome Jeff Gomez (Starlight Runner), as J.C. talks with him about his unique brand of world-building in the transmedia space.

It’s listener mail time! Steve and J.C. answer your questions, sent in via all the social networks and wonders of technology. Also: We talk about J.C.’s inability to pronounce tall pale British actors’ names correctly.

Our guest is Mike Selinker (Lone Shark Games Dot Com). Mike, whose puzzles appear regularly in GAMES magazine, The Chicago Tribune and The New York Times, talks with Steve and J.C. about his time at Wizards of the Coast, building ARGs like the one he did for Universal’s Repo Men, and his new book Maze of Games. Plus, if you pay attention, you just might hear a mysterious message!

Steve and J.C. spend a little time with Lina Srivastava, as they talk about using transmedia techniques for activism, raising awareness and change.

We celebrate the Indie-ARG in this episode! Guests Ryan Omark, Steve Omark (We Are Earthborne), Dana Shaw and Tom Pike (The Wall Will Fall) discuss their Alternate Reality Game projects from inception through execution and completion, along with the challenges they faced and lessons they learned.

Special guest Michael Andersen (ARGNet) joins Steve and J.C. as they look back at the year 2012. Projects, platforms, ARGs and more, you won’t want to miss this year-in-review episode.

Today, J.C. chats with longtime friend and social media maven & author C.C. Chapman about C.C.'s new nonfiction book, Amazing Things Will Happen.

Today, J.C. chats with authors and entrepreneurs Collin Earl and Chris Snelgrove. These two ultracreatives are the brilliant minds behind The House Of Gray audio and serialized ebook experience, and the YA series Harmonics.

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Today, J.C. chats with author, musician and new media entertainer Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff. J.C. and Mark are longtime pals and collaborators … and as this conversation illustrates, both are big fans of the timeless Pink Floyd 1979 album, The Wall.

Today, J.C. chats with Haley Moore, an incredibly talented transmedia storyteller who specializes in creating artifacts — physical items — from fictional worlds. Haley is presently promoting “Laser Lace Letters,” a Kickstarter project.

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Michelle Senderhauf (Dogtale Media) and Dave Walker (Synth-Bio Productions) join Steve and J.C. this week to talk about emergent, boutique transmedia companies, the challenges they face, and the solutions they deliver.

In this special episode, co-host J.C. Hutchins chats with narrative designer Chris Dahlen about video game writing, transmedia storytelling and “Mark of the Ninja,” an XBox Live game that Dahlen recently wrote. If you’ve ever wanted to learn about the unique narrative opportunities and challenges found in creating video games, this interview is a great primer.

In this episode, we talk with Eric Huang of Penguin Books about the opportunities for transmedia storytelling in the book publishing world … and beyond. Also joining us is Michael Andersen of ARGNet.

In this special episode, co-host J.C. Hutchins chats with actor, writer, producer and entrepreneur Felicia Day. Day has starred in acclaimed TV series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Eureka, but is perhaps best known as the creator of the groundbreaking, award-winning comedy web series The Guild. She also co-founded the Geek & Sundry YouTube channel, which debuted in April.

Something cool is in the transmedia waters, my friends. Just last week, I received an incredible mystery package in the mail … and on Monday, another cool package arrived. This one is from another sender, for another transmedia experience! Swamped with work, I wasn't able to examine its contents until today. But man, cool stuff awaited inside.The envelope appeared innocuous enough, but inside, were three very intriguing items: A cover letter (featuring a handwritten note), what appeared to be a comic book, and a CD-ROM.I'll provide detailed shots of all this stuff in a moment, but first want to share some observations on this crazy comic book. As I flipped through the book, I realized this wasn't like any comic I'd ever seen. It was "shattered." There were no full pages of art or dialogue; merely shards of content on the white pages.Here's what I mean. (I cut the pages to easily place them on my desk, in order.) View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize I then examined the contents of the CD-ROM and found these files: I opened the "WE ARE VERY DISAPPOINTED" movie file. This is what I watched:The mysterious fellow talks about "cracks" in the foundations of the "fourth wall," a membrane that separates fiction from reality. These disturbances may threaten all worlds -- real and imagined.A multiverse extinction event? That's pretty uncool in my book. Curious, I then examined the image files stored on the CD-ROM. They were scans of the "shattered" comic book pages. Each had a peculiar file name.I'm including those images, and their file names -- and the cover letter with handwritten message -- in this PDF. If you want to head down the rabbit hole of this intriguing worlds-rending Alternate Reality Game, I suggest you download the PDF and look closely at its contents.I also recommend checking out the YouTube page for the above video. There, you'll see links to a Twitter account, a story timeline, and more.Can you help solve the mystery of the "shattered" comic book? Are there hints in the cover letter? Will your pursuit for the truth lead to the source of these destructive cracks between our world and fictional realms?Download the PDF, let your curiosity be your guide, and good luck.--J.C.Note: The last page of the PDF is missing the file name information. The file name for the image is "22-15-9-4.png". The PDF has been updated with the file name, and will soon be available with that information.

Hosts Steve Peters and J.C. Hutchins are joined by veteran game designer Ken Eklund, perhaps best known for designing the renowned serious ARG, World Without Oil in 2007. He talks with us about his current project, Ed Zed Omega. If you’re at all interested in ARGs in Education, you won’t want want to miss this in-depth discussion.

Yesterday, I received a mysterious packet in the mail from the Interplanetary Union, an organization based in a location called "New Lyon City," on the planet Centauri. I've received some very strange packages in the past, but none with such a cool return address!I filmed my experience of opening the envelope, and sharing some of its contents. That video is above; low resolution scans of some -- but not all -- of the documents are below. If you'd like to get as close to the experience as possible, DOWNLOAD THIS PDF, which features high resolution scans of the packet's complete contents.You'll notice that I chronically mispronounce the words "logistics" and "Koatoa" in the video. My apologies. If you knew how nervous I become when talking on video, you'd be shocked that I could properly pronounce anything at all. :)Enjoy the video, and a few low-res images below. Learn more about the Yimmu Logistics alternate reality game "We Are Earthborne" at the Unfiction forum thread. Also check out the "Oceanus" wiki for more info.And remember: If you want high resolution scans of the complete collection of transmedia artifacts, download the PDF FOUND HERE. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize Remember: If you want high resolution scans of the complete collection of transmedia artifacts, download the PDF FOUND HERE. Enjoy!--J.C.

In this episode, hosts Steve & J.C. talk with the organizers of two of the largest transmedia conferences of the year, both coming up in October: The StoryWorld Conferencein Los Angeles and Power to the Pixel in London.

This week, StoryForward also speaks with David G. Wilson, Vice President of Global Business Strategy at EON Productions (the production company behind the James Bond film & entertainment franchise) and co-founder of SEAM, a new website designed to foster creator collaboration. In our chat, David shares his passion for storytelling, and discusses some of the practical advice presented in SEAM’s new ebook, Story Design.

Our good friend Jonathan Waite joins us to talk about ARGFest-o-Con 2012, happening July 26-28 in Toronto. We talk about all the great reasons to attend, including all the great speakers, events and parties. You can find information and register at the link below.

Transmedia Designer Andrea Phillips joins Steve and JC to talk about her just-released book A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms. They talk about the need for open conversation, the various descriptions of transmedia and the four creative purposes for transmedia storytelling.

In this special interview, Stitch Media’s Creative Director and Founder Evan Jones joins Steve and J.C. as they discuss the denial of two projects to qualify for an important Digital Tax Credit based on a seemingly defective definition of what interactivity actually is. The serious ramifications of this decision, along with the importance of practitioner input into the very definition of what they do, make this a very important episode that you can’t afford to miss.

We celebrate the 10th anniversary of ARG websites Unfiction and ARGNet in this history-packed episode. Guests Sean C. Stacey (Unfiction), Jonathan Waite and Michael Andersen (ARGNet) join Steve and J.C. and look back at the early days of Alternate Reality Games.

Steve and J.C. welcome transmedia writer and producerDavid Varela (davidvarela.com). Their discussion includes a history of his past ARG/transmedia work and his current project, a transmedia live theater event, The Seed.

New media expert Gunther Sonnenfeld has a meaty discussion with Steve and J.C. about the obstacles that have been preventing transmedia entertainment from going mainstream and what can and should be done to push through them.

In this conversation, J.C. chats with Karen Wehner and Lucas Johnson, co-founders of The Time Tribe, a transmedia experience designed to teach youngsters about world history. Combining video games, comics, real-world artifacts and more, the project aims to create an accessible, educational narrative that engages players in the media they love.

Veteran transmedia producer Jackie Turnure (Fourth Wall Studios) joins J.C. and Steve in this jam-packed episode. Their discussion spans her past Alternate Reality Game projects for LOST, Flash Forward, Salt and more, and leads up to an in-depth conversation about Fourth Wall Studios’ just-released project, Dirty Work and their new transmedia platform, RIDES.

In this bonus episode, Brian Clark (GMD studios) defends his controversial assertion that “transmedia” has outlived its usefulness as a descriptive term for storytelling … and how refining the definition of this emerging breed of narrative will contribute to its long-term viability.

In a special roundtable discussion, Mur Lafferty, Adrian Hon (Six to Start) and Jim Babb (Awkward Hug) join hosts J.C. Hutchins and Steve Peters as they talk about their recent Kickstarter campaigns.

In this jumbo-sized episode, hosts J.C Hutchins and Steve Peters spend some quality time with Jay Ferguson, the creator of the interactive thriller Guidestones, and Kate Sullivan of Candlemark & Gleam.

Today, J.C. brings you an exclusive interview with legendary transmedia creator and game designer Jordan Weisman. In his first audio interview on the topic, Jordan shares the news about a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development and release of Shadowrun Returns, a videogame that will bring players back to the ultra-imaginative RPG world of Shadowrun.

Hosts Steve Peters and J.C. Hutchins talk with Tom Salamon, the co-creator and writer of Accomplice, an ongoing live action/transmedia show with performances in New York, Los Angeles and London.

Today, J.C. chats with Kate Sullivan, the mastermind of indie digital publisher Candlemark & Gleam. The company, which has been publishing books since 2010, pioneers the emerging digital publishing space, and often experiments with promotion and distribution.

Hosts Steve Peters and J.C. Hutchins have a fascinating chat with Michel Reilhac, who is the Executive Director of Arte France Cinéma and Director of Film Acquisitions for ARTE France. A passionate evangelist of Transmedia Storytelling, Michel shares his experiences pitching and producing projects in Europe, and talks about the changing transmedia landscape there.

In this special episode of StoryForward, co-host Steve Peters talks with Joe Lidster, a television writer best known for his work on Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures and most recently, the online story content for the BBC series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

J.C. chats with his friend Josh Viola, writer and creator of The Bane of Yoto, a compelling science-fiction / fantasy mashup narrative that’s currently unfolding on mobile devices as a free downloadable app.

I've been keen to contribute my storytelling skills to the video game industry for more than a year now, and during that time, I've met some incredibly talented folks in the business. One of them is narrative designer Jonathon Myers. Jonathon hails from a play- and screenwriting background, and presently works for Zynga Boston, as a Game Writer for its Indiana Jones Adventure World Facebook game.I recently learned that Jonathon had participated in this year's Global Game Jam, a worldwide celebration of video game creation. There, participants are given only a weekend to make a working video game based on a specific theme. It's truly inspiring stuff, as is Jonathon's co-creation (called Sleepwalking Backward), which you'll soon learn about in this Creator Spotlight.If you're interested in video games or storytelling, consider this conversation with Jonathon Myers a must-read. A special thanks to Jonathon for making the time to chat!--J.C.~ ~ ~J.C. HUTCHINS: Before we dig into Sleepwalking Backward, let's talk about your love of video games and game writing. What games, or game narratives, have made an impact on you over the years?JONATHON MYERS: When I was young I loved the Zelda games and other titles that enabled me to feel like I was the hero of my own adventure story. And yet, something about those early NES games and RPGs like Final Fantasy were different in their story delivery when compared to novels or comics or movies. The interactivity and immersion better enabled me to pretend I was a participating character in a fictional world. As the story unfolded, I became an agent of action that had an effect on the world and a control over the outcomes.Much later, I began to encounter games that focused directly on the power and possibilities of an interactive narrative experience. I played Passage by Jason Rohrer. In less than five minutes, I had a profound emotional experience from a very simple game. It enabled me to exist inside a simple sequence of events while my imagination pieced together a story during structured play.While playing BioShock, I experienced a recognition and reversal as the protagonist of a classical story arc. I discovered that basic storytelling techniques could be applied to video game storytelling in refreshing, innovative ways.HUTCHINS: What lessons from those experiences have you brought to your writing at Zynga and the Global Game Jam?MYERS: Good interactive narrative is about the player's experience of the story during gameplay. Good game stories seldom come from a writer or a designer first developing and then narrating a story to the player. It's about the player having agency within the constraints and conventions of a gameplay system. Events are not told, or even shown. Events are available for player experience and events are accomplished by the player. Story is what happens inside the player when those events are encountered during gameplay. That is the challenge of being an interactive narrative designer and writing for games. Not only are you working with at team to implement stories, but the system will often determine a large portion of the experience before you write one word. You must come to understand the gameplay system and ensure that any narrative elements are not at odds with the experience of that system.For example, my writing at Zynga Boston on Indiana Jones Adventure World is episodic, and even inside those episodes it usually displays in strings of 123 characters or less. Story nuggets and events are encountered by the player in bits and pieces for a few minutes here, a few minutes there, some today, some tomorrow, some next week. For a piecemeal experience like that, if you attempt a big story in which one moment is dependent on the previous moment for a long string of events -- well, it just won't work. The attention span isn't there, because if someone plays a little bit every day or every other day for a couple weeks, there's not much potential for that player to remember what started the story or what happened that long ago.We (the design team and I) now try to think of very simple and non-subtle information delivery opportunities that fit this system. We try to use repetitive elements in short term episodes that release weekly or bi-weekly, like serialized content. We embrace our adventure genre roots and the system of our platform. I study the old Flash Gordon Sunday comic strips and the characterization in daily comic strips because their efficiency in keeping simple and to the point is an ideal parallel.When I'm fortunate enough to be part of something in which the narrative matters or in which people care about quality writing, then I must always recognize that I am only one part in a larger whole that is developing a player experience. I look back to the games and interactive story experiences I loved. I recall that the most exciting aspect of player story experience is portrayal of an agent of action in a fictional universe of gameplay. Many of the writing basics still apply, re: character, conflict, goals, obstacles, etc. However, you're in trouble as a game writer the moment you forget that the end goal is an experience over which you have only indirect control.There is a fine line, though. Does this mean we need to always tell hero stories that feed an inner fantasy? Do we always need a narrative experience to be uplifting, enjoyable, and triumphant? I don't think so, and that's where we enter the lesser explored territory. I often like to explore that territory whenever I get an opportunity to work on something as a non-commercial side project.HUTCHINS: On to Sleepwalking Backward. Tell us what it's about, and what experience you and your Global Game Jam team were trying to create with the game.MYERS: We wanted to make a game for the Commodore 64 in one weekend and that was our start. We all liked the idea of using constraints in order to push ourselves creatively. As we began, it was clear that we wanted to provide an emotional experience in the simplest way possible.The simplicity of the narrative came out of the simplicity of our mechanics. It would take too long to have gameplay that was more than controlling a player character to push squares and move from room to room. We envisioned that each room would include an image that the player would piece together. We were slightly bound by the Global Game Jam theme and interpreted it as a backwards yet ever-present cycle, like walking up the down escalator. As designer/writer, I drew initial inspiration from a haunting song I had heard several times, Somebody That I Used to Know by Goyte. It was apparent by that point that our game would have a narrative focus and we were all interested in exploring something dark and moody. We explored our own processes while constantly checking in as a team to retain a unified vision. This guaranteed that the text, display, music, art, and mechanics would work in harmony.A framework emerged that focused on a male player character moving backwards through the memories of a past relationship. The memories became naturally related to the images in the rooms. The gameplay exertion of into putting pieces back together led to the deeper narrative exploration. Given that narrative starting point, the system of action seemed to denote a denial and a need to fix something that had broken at some point in the past.I won't go beyond that because I don't want to spoil the experience or provide a specific interpretation of events. The story is only in the player experience and ultimately it's up to them to decide exactly what has occurred and what it means to them.HUTCHINS: Tell us about the creative challenges the Global Game Jam presents to participants, and how you and your team overcame them. Left to right: Arshan Gailus (Music), Elliott Mitchell (Art), Ethan Fenn (Programming), Gregory Kinneman (Programming), Jonathon Myers (Design and Writing), and (not pictured) Courtney Stanton (Producer). MYERS: From meeting up and pitching ideas, to forming a team and completing a game, participants have less than 48 hours to accomplish their goals. So time is the biggest challenge. You can't really think too much about decisions, you just have to stay focused and trust your instincts.Good team communication also became a major factor while working within the time constraint. We used Google Docs and regular check-ins to gauge our progress. We had the good fortune of working with site producer Courtney Stanton, who consistently kept us on track and reflected back to us our scope and the consequences of our decision-making. If we suddenly recognized we didn't have time for a feature or idea, we immediately readjusted and scaled back.It would take another full blog post to explain the obstacles we specifically faced in making a Commodore 64 game! Two of my teammates have already written and posted on that, as you can see below.HUTCHINS: If we wanted to learn more about the game and your work, where should we go online?MYERS: You can see our Global Game Jam page to get some immediate information, a Commodore 64 disk image and a link to the playable game. The game itself is hosted and playable here on the site of our musician, Arshan Gailus. It only takes about 2-3 minutes to play. If you're interested in our process and the constraints of making a C64 game, check out these postmortem blog posts by our programmer Ethan Fenn and our artist Elliott Mitchell. While I'm at it, I'd like to give a shout-out to teammate Greg Kinneman. His programming, QA, and feedback on the narrative were crucial to the success of the project.If folks want to know more about what I do, they can check out my portfolio site here.

In this episode, Campfire partner and Chief Creative Officer Mike Monello gives us a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into the Blair Witch mythology and how to navigate the fine line between creative storytelling, marketing and clients. He also discusses “Dark Score Stories,” Campfire’s transmedia campaign that supported the release of Stephen King’s Bag of Bones.

In this special episode of StoryForward, co-host J.C. Hutchins chats with transmedia storyteller Jan Libby about her creative career, and her latest project, Snow Town.