To understand this, he says, look at two recent examples on either side of the spectrum -- the revolt over the ending of the video game "Mass Effect 3" and the viral marketing campaign for would-be summer blockbuster "Prometheus.
Gomez has no investment in either the game or the movie. (He worked on the movie "Avatar" with 20th Century Fox, the studio behind "Prometheus.") But as one of the important architects of transmedia --defined as the extension of stories across multiple platforms -- he has been watching both properties relate to their audiences in very different ways.
Transmedia can be fan fiction, alternate reality gaming, interactive marketing, social communities and second-screen TV story augmentations. It is becoming a powerful, and inevitable, accelerant of a story's brand. But the quickening can work both ways.
Lose control of it and you will feel the wrath, like BioWare did with its 'Mass Effect 3' ending. The trilogy has been lauded as a highly interactive game, but that creates a level of investment that can backfire.
"So when the storytellers, in order to finish the game quickly, killed off most of the cast of the trilogy," Gomez says, "and took most of the final decision-making process out of the hands of the player, the player was made to feel ineffective at the end. The entire universe was changed. So it led to this deep dissatisfaction and the first instinct of the video game company was to behave defensively. 'We're not going to mess with our artistic integrity.' Tens of thousands of YouTube videos, Twitter posts, and Facebook posts overwhelmed the maker."
They have heard the message, says BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka, and are "working hard to maintain the right balance between the artistic integrity of the original story while addressing the fan feedback we’ve received."
But harness that audience power from the beginning, with a wickedly tricky mixture of command and release, and you have gold. That is the alchemy that director Ridley Scott and co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof have perfected in the build-up to "Prometheus," a prequel of the 1979 sci-fi classic "Alien." There are several transmedia elements to the project thus far, including a clue-hunting website called Project Prometheus.
"They are feeding bits of information to fans," says Gomez, "who are picking up on it, crowdsourcing to solve relatively simple puzzles and the solution unleashes a piece of content that is highly accessible to a mass audience."
According to the Prometheus blog, there are three "secrets" left.
The crown jewel of content, so far, is a "TEDTalk" from 2023, performed by 'Prometheus' star Guy Pearce playing the role of Peter Weyland, released a month ago.
"Prometheus takes place in the future," explained Lindelof to the TED Blog, "but it’s a movie about ideas, and I just felt like it would be really cool to have one of the characters from the movie give a TEDTalk. ... I said, 'l’ll write this thing, and we’ll put it in front of you guys, and if you think it’s cool, we would love to platform it at TED...'"
All the while, Gomez points out, the integrity of the storyline is kept pure and thus the core power-fans are not alienated, but the virtues do not stop there.
"When we watch that TEDTalk, anybody can relate to that," Gomez says, "and it gives us plenty to talk about. And there's no disguising the fact that it's tied to the movie, 'Prometheus.' There's transparency there. It's not some attempt to trick us."
The result of this approach, says Gomez, is satisfaction on all levels.
"On the torch-bearer fan level, they have done some work and unhatched this egg," Gomez says. "They got to do something by assembling bits and pieces of information and the results of their labor can be enjoyed by everyone."
This is all happening months before the movie comes out.
"And here's the perfect storm for why this is working," Gomez says. "Ridley Scott has wisely chosen to revisit a story world that is engrained into the global popular culture. So Scott has been wise to cede the images and concepts that are related to the movie franchise for the purpose of extending the story. And it makes sense to fans. It threatens to answer questions that we always had about those aliens."
In the end, Gomez asserts, it allows a community to collaborate with the franchise and thus transcend the traditional notion of audience.
But letting go can be tricky, even Gomez admits. A decade ago, he started Starlight Runner because no one in the entertainment industry was willing to take transmedia as far as he believed it needed to go. That is changing now and transmedia has become larger than Gomez or his company. I was curious if he's had difficulty adjusting to that, much the way a storyteller might struggle adjusting to sharing control of a plot.
"The most exciting moments for me in my career are when people write articles about transmedia and these techniques," Gomez says, "but where it gets a little bit rocky for me and for us, is the 'goldrush' mentality. There are people who are reading the website and taking the seminars I've been giving and then fashion themselves as experts. So for years I was teaching the techniques of transmedia very liberally, but now you're seeing a change where I spend more time pointing out wonderful executions of it. And 'Prometheus' is a very good example of that."
