Fans of ‘Game of Thrones’ are taking to social media in outrage over a rape scene in the recent episode “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”. Some viewers think the show has gone too far and unnecessarily made Sansa just another female victim. Brooke Williams explores the use of sexual assault in narrative features.
What is the purpose of your story? A basic question, but one that should rest at the foundation of every piece of content created for consumer consumption. A question whose answer is very very important when looking at how to spread your story purpose. The digital age and creation of multiple forms of technology has changed the way people create content and the way people consume story. Creators were limited to how they could push their story (print, radio, television/movies). Digital changed the game. There are many ways to deliver story and trying to find the right one is not easy. Viral marketing campaigns are one form that work well with the digital platform.
If you've read my posts on the MFM facebook page, you know I've introduced the concept of an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) very briefly awhile back when talking about the crossplatform project DIG by USA Network. ARGs are just one way to deliver content and story to a consumer (AKA the audience).
Due to the power of these sort of “meta-concepts,” the draw of incredible, tense movies like The Game, Inside Man, and Ocean's Eleven, and the popularity of things like LARPing, some companies, like Lexington, Kentucky’s The Breakout Games, have decided to see about bringing the metagames found in complex board games and video games and the scenarios reserved to for edge of your seat thriller...
When video games grew popular, it was assumed that people would play these animated games when they were children (when children already play a lot of games) and then grow out of them. But we began to learn that people didn’t grow out of them, but instead craved more complex mysteries and stories as they aged. This led to pivotal games like Myst and Rivven, which started the modern video game...
It’s hard to be a modern creative person without having been exposed to conversations about the “meta-game” or the “meta-content” that’s behind modern creative works. This is made all the more confusing due to the fact that the concept behind how it’s now use in New Media is a hybrid of the noun version of this word, the adjective version, and something else. The French have a phrase called...