Today, we have another new author joining our ranks at Fantasy Matters--John Murray, a computer science PhD student who is interested in video games and digital narrative. His essay today talks about Henry Jenkin's concept of "transmedia"--that is, blending multiple platforms or media types to tell a story or convey an idea. He looks at several video games that employ this concept in creative and exciting ways, as well as several that fall short in their attempt.
In 2007, the video game industry surpassed the movie industry in gross revenue. Another recent trend is that almost every successful fantasy or science fiction movie worth its salt has released an accompanying game, usually one that follows closely the storyline of the original movie. Such forgettable games as Enter the Matrix, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone point to one result of this trend: mediocre tie-ins and adaptations.
The reviews and feel of these games reveal how closely tied they are to the movies themselves and how the effort put into them is completely abstracted compared to the original material. They often feature voice talent from the original movies and use key scenes, detailed props, or settings. Unfortunately, in many of these games the aspiration toward "transmedia," a concept that Henry Jenkins observes and named, falls short of its promise. But they are participating in the same process, the same blending of contexts that makes a “transmedia property.” How do these games contribute to this emerging genre, marketing strategy, and approach to media creation?
I recently moved to Berkeley from abroad, and my father, in his desire to free up some space in the cellar, sent me over 20 boxes of childhood gadgets and memories. While sorting through such goodies as my radio-controlled windsurfer/car and my Tolkien encyclopedia, I stumbled upon a diamond in the rough: Stories of Life on the Frontier, a companion book to the 1993 Gametek/Konami computer game Frontier: Elite II. 
Many single player games like first person shooters happily allow you to devastate the terrain with any number of weapons of varying precision. A number of versions of the 
The video game The Witcher, released in 2007, is based on a short story
and subsequent series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. This is fortunate for two reasons. First, the lore is well-developed and doesn’t have consistency problems, and second, the game had a following before it was released, giving it a leg up on the vast majority of other videogame RPG’s. Unfortunately, these benefits are not unmitigated. I suspect that the story is faithful to the story(I can’t say for sure without reading the books) but I got the impression that they tried to fit the entire series into the game, since it felt fairly tedious after the second chapter (there are 5 chapters plus an “epilogue” in the game).
