We consume entertainment across more platforms than ever before. We want to read the book and watch the movie; play the video game as well as download the mobile app. 
Take for example George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, whose adored books have recently spawned a new series by HBO, PC game A Game of Thrones: Genesis (from TriplePoint client Focus Home Interactive), board-, card-, and role-playing games.
It doesn’t matter if we’ve completed the 80-hour video game plus all the side quests or read the seven-novel series in addition to the subsidiary works; we’re still compelled to watch the movie or TV show when it comes out. But what no one wants is to walk into a film adaptation of a beloved game, comic, or book and leaving thinking, “the original was better.”
Content creators and publishers are realizing that there is enormous potential in reaching audiences across multiple platforms to maximize their brand. The key, however, is to avoid the above, and to not offer a poor quality port from one medium to another just for the sake of it. The ideal transmedia strategy would result in what THQ’s director of Creative and Business Development, Lenny Brown, calls the Holy Grail: “a book that sells well, with us ultimately investing $35 million in a triple-A console game backed by a $12 million marketing campaign that draws a commitment from Hollywood for a movie or television event” for a single intellectual property (IP).
And THQ is leading the charge with the hopes of achieving this trifecta. They’ve recently announced a partnership with Random House Publishing Group to jointly develop original IPs for both books and video games, having already achieved a level of success with the Homefront franchise. They’re also coordinating with the SyFy network to simultaneously launch the Red Faction video game and film on the TV channel in May.
THQ’s efforts are likely prescient of how transmedia will continue to develop in the near future. According to VentureBeat, the game publisher and SyFy planned the timing of the movie and game over the course of a few years to ensure that they would be released simultaneously. And with Random House, their goal is to work from the ground up to create original IPs that are cohesive and integral to the universe.
Danny Bilson of THQ knows that they need to be judicious in their transmedia strategies: “What I care about on transmedia is whether it’s going to be good, since that is the risk. It’s bad if it cheapens the brand or content.”
RockStar Games’ Dan Houser made a similar statement on transmedia as well: “…with an ever more discerning audience, the goals of taking something from film-to-games or game-to-film have to be more than financial. If you feel the property has something about it that is universal or could work in another medium, and it is not simply about making easy money, then that is something worthwhile.”
Creating a transmedia universe is a major investment, and going forward we can expect to see more of these partnerships between publishers coming together in order to maximize return and to offer rich, complex worlds for their users to explore.
