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Deep Dive: Total Immersion Entertainment

Gaming > Latest news > Deep Dive: Total Immersion Entertainment

A new breed of trans-media has emerged allowing us to explore entertainment worlds in compelling new ways...

A new breed of trans-media has emerged allowing us to explore entertainment worlds in compelling new ways. We may have suffered a shaky past, but can now gaze wide-eyed at the very near future.

Pretty much every kind of entertainment is now available On Demand, accessed via multiple screens. We carry our favourites with us, wherever we go; engaging via TV, smart phone or PC. Consequently, if we’re honest, many of us can remain lost-in-universe throughout our working day – checking in on new episodes, exploring companion apps or valiantly contributing to official forums.

With games, the quest has always been to take this kind of commitment one step further. Not just to feel a part of, but to play a meaningful part within the Next Big Thing. As usual, it’s kind of hilarious how the first experiments in so-called connected media took shape.

In the early 1980s, the ZX Spectrum adaptation of The Hobbit came with Tolkien’s classic novel, suggesting that by reading the magnificent story this would help solve puzzles while filling in the gaps of the ragged lines depicting Middle Earth on the screen. Who knows how many hours folks spent “in a clearing with two stone trolls” before stumbling on the command to escape.

Almost a decade later, some editions of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker for SEGA Mega Drive sold with a VHS Tape of the movie. Again, somehow completing the picture, but no matter how many times you sat through it you wouldn’t know where kids were hiding on the spooky Cavern level.

For the longest time, videogame adaptations of anything from the TV or cinema were on the whole extraordinarily dreadful. However, things became to look up in 2007 when movie director James Cameron shared his vision for Avatar. Speaking of his collaboration with Ubisoft, who would develop the game, Cameron said: “For the movie Avatar we are creating a world rich in character, detail, conflict and cultural depth. It has the raw material for a game that the more demanding gamers of today will want to get their hands on -- one that is rich in visuals and ideas, and challenging in play. I told the Ubisoft team I wanted them to be free to do their very best work, and not think of this as a movie-based game. They responded with a fully realized presentation which captured the soul of the world and the characters, while promising to be a knockout game on its own terms. Their passion inspired my confidence that they are going to do something transcendental.”

While it wasn’t quite the life-changing experience as promised, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game proved that tie-ins on such a scale were possible, and Cameron’s digital-interactive ambitions did not end there, as you shall read further down.

Meanwhile, the most successful and genuinely enjoyable blurred-lines experience has been the Syfy channel TV drama Defiance, in partnership with online persistent-world experts Trion. According to its producers, studio executives from both the TV and game would meet each week to discuss how the collaboration would work. Its tagline “Watch the Show, Play the Game, Change the World” has meant that the two have genuinely influenced each other in ways that are believable, i.e. players discovering an ancient artefact that helps to advance the story. On top of that, both the show and the ‘shooter MMO’ have proven compelling in their own right. Sadly, Season Three just ended.

Videogame adaptations of popular TV, books and movies are proving to be every bit as engrossing and emotionally involving. Telltale Games’ episodic treatments of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones are extremely well received. The latter benefits from having author George R. R. Martin’s personal assistant, Ty Corey Franck, working with Telltale Games as story consultant. The game also shares the voice talents of Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister) and Kit Harington (Jon Snow) among others.

The Telltale line-up is successfully stylised in Graphic Novel fashion, but an upcoming Xbox One game from Remedy Entertainment (Max Payne, Alan Wake) is aiming for a closer association with actual TV production sets. In Quantum Break a time manipulation theme links the game to a live-action series. Similar to Syfy and Trion’s Defiance, player choice within the game world impacts the drama of the show while each new episode informs player choice. The live-action cast includes Shawn Ashmore (X-Men), Aiden Gillen (Game of Thrones) and Courtney Hope (Prowl). Quantum Break is currently planned for an April 2016 release.

But we close by going back to Avatar, and James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment. In June, the studio signed a five-year agreement with 20th Century Fox and Hewlett-Packard to “create a new paradigm for fan interaction in the digital space.” Speaking to media news portal Deadline, Jon Landau, Avatar producer and COO of Lightstorm Entertainment, said “Our demographics are so broad that people will seek different experiences, and we want to provide them with that. It will not be the traditional click and point experience. The plan is to have fans really engage with our world and its themes and, if they want, become part of the story. They more they interact, the more they will get a more tailored entertainment experience.” Variety also quoted Landau as saying, “Through our partnership with HP, we will create an entirely new paradigm for how you expand and grow a story world.” The three movie sequels are planned for December 2017, 2018 and 2019.

You may have noticed how movie executives rarely, if ever, use the word ‘play’ when referring to anything gaming related. However, we sincerely look forward to ‘engaging’ with whichever ‘experiences’ are just around the corner. Trion, Telltale and Remedy have made us believe.

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