EDIT 2019-11-11: I wrote this for a university subject, BCM216 - Transmedia Storytelling, as one of my first if not the first assessment task.
Transmedia narratives are stories that Marsha Kinder, Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Southern California (USC, 2019), described as “multi-platform and multi-modal expansion of media content…” (eds Freeman & Gambarato, 2019). This means that a single story, rather that remaining on a single platform, transcends the typical structure that a traditional narrative has - and instead allows for interactive components, and the "systematic dispersal" (eds Freeman & Gambarato, 2019) of a text across several mediums. An example of this, and the focus of this essay, is the commercially and critically successful 2015 video game made by Polish developer CD Projekt (sic) RED, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, whose core purpose as a video game is to entertain and is an example of transmedia storytelling - which it accomplishes through its player interactivity, the modding community and the screenshotting community.
The storyline of The Witcher 3 is centred around the character which the player controls known as Geralt of Rivia, a learned and battle-hardened monster hunter who travels the lands in search of monsters to kill in exchange for money. At the outset of The Witcher 3, the world is in turmoil. One and a half millennia before the beginning of the first game in the series, an event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres occurred, a cataclysm that "trapped many “unnatural” creatures" (The Official Witcher Wikia, 2019) such as ghouls, werewolves and vampires, in the unnamed planet or world that The Witcher series takes place in. These creatures wreaked havoc across the European-medieval-like landscape and, as a result, gave rise to the monster slayers for hire known as the Witchers (one of which the player character is). The backdrop of The Witcher 3’s narrative also contains a prolonged series of wars known as the Northern Wars that are between several different kingdoms.
But instead of actually participating in these wars directly, Geralt’s story in The Witcher 3 begins with him trying to find his lost love, Yennefer, and leads to him attempting to track down the ghostly ‘Wild Hunt’, a group of "spectres galloping in the night sky…" (The Official Witcher Wikia, 2019), who plague the common folk of the land. However, the story unfolds in a less linear fashion than the summary of The Witcher 3’s narrative may imply, and for a good portion of the game’s runtime or ‘playtime’, the Wild Hunt doesn’t appear very frequently. Instead, the player spends more time exploring the lands and talking with NPC (non-player character) quest givers, who provide side missions and tasks to complete - such as slaying a Griffin, or investigating a mysterious island. This interactivity and non-linearity of The Witcher 3 is one of the key aspects of transmedia storytelling that it embodies. In other words, much of the world-building is made through player interaction, whether that be through finding a book that contains the history of a certain event in the game’s world, or talking to an NPC to find out their particular story or plight. The player can also overhear NPCs talking about particular events and characters as well. Much of this dialogue doesn’t contribute to the main narrative, but it does help to make the player feel like they are traveling around a living and breathing world with thinking and feeling residents. However, although the player can go where they desire and travel a non-linear path as much as they like, the player is also bound by the game's rules, deterring them from entering areas or starting quests which contain monsters and enemies that they are not yet strong enough to defeat. However, much more so than other kinds of media, a video game’s rules can be bent or broken through glitches or ‘tricks’ that the developers (in this case, CD Projekt RED) might have not accounted for or foreseen.
The game’s menus also contain viewable snippets of lore for different characters and events - written by an in-universe character known as Dandelion. This allows newcomers to pick up the story in the third game rather than being forced to play through the previous two to understand everything, and also rewards long-time fans of the series by providing them with new story elements and lore. These optional interactions further flesh out the storyworld of The Witcher 3 as its story is developed through “multiple delivery channels…” (eds Freeman & Gambarato, 2019), which are created and revealed through the ways in which each individual player chooses to interact with the game’s UI (user interface) and environment. The story can also be told non-verbally through the design of the environment itself. Examples include a toppled cart surrounded by broken crates and spilt blood, crows circling in the night sky above, or an old abandoned village with strange voices echoing in the mist. This building of atmosphere in the environment can cause the player to become even more invested in the story and its surroundings, as their interactivity within the game’s world allows them to experience this atmosphere directly through gameplay. These components of open world game design allow the player to immerse themselves in a richly decorated medieval fantasy by relying on the player’s navigation of The Witcher 3’s storyworld.
However, being a video game, The Witcher 3 further transcends being a typical narrative through the relation with its fanbase. More specifically, through the game’s fan-creations. Modifications or ‘mods’, as they’re more typically known, are fan-created additions to a video game that can be extremely complex or very minimal. In fact, moddable games frequently have built-in “scripting languages that allow users to modify their behaviours, create new worlds for exploration, or even modify existing games into completely new ones…” (El-Nasr & Smith, 2006) (complete overhauls like this are commonly referred to, by the modding community, as ‘total conversions’). Furthermore, modding has been a major part of computer gaming for as long as computer gaming has existed. One of the largest and ongoing modding communities is for DOOM, a first-person shooter released in 1993 that still has fan creations and mods being released for it to this day. Websites for the easy access of uploading and downloading of mods have also existed for decades. Some of the most prominent modding websites include Nexus Mods which was created in 2006, Mod DB which was launched in June 2002 and Doomworld, which was founded in 1998. For The Witcher 3, on Nexus Mods alone, almost 3000 individual mods have been released. These mods range from being graphical enhancements, such as more realistic rain or fire particles, to gameplay-oriented QoL (Quality of Life) improvements, like giving players the ability to ‘fast-travel’ from anywhere in the game rather than having to manually move to a specific location. These mods allow players to tweak the game to their liking whether it be by changing how something looks, making the game easier or harder, fixing ‘bugs’ or glitches, or changing elements of the story completely. Video game mods, therefore, are an distinct example of how video games and by extension, The Witcher 3, transcend the typical narrative "in terms of [its] operations [and] consumption…" (eds Freeman & Gambarato, 2019) as the game can be optionally ‘consumed’ with additional mods that can be added one on the top of the other, and can radically change how the game plays and looks as much or as little as the player desires.
Finally, the screenshotting community is also significant to The Witcher 3’s transmediality - albeit, arguably, to a lesser extent than modding. Screenshotting in video games, particularly in games like The Witcher 3, are usually created by using third-party tools that allow the screenshotter to remove the Heads-Up Display (or HUD) for cinematic effect and allow them to orient the view or camera at the exact angle and position that they desire. For The Witcher 3, players can utilise NVIDIA’s “fancy new Ansel screenshot technology…” which allows for high resolution screenshots as well as “panoramic 360-degree shots of gameplay as well…” (Plunkett, 2016). After taking them, players then post these screenshots to websites such as Reddit where other like-minded screenshotters can appraise and comment on them. Much like mods, these screenshots vary significantly and can be professional-looking, cinematic, simple, silly or even memetic and referential. Video game screenshots and even mods, in relation to transmediality, can also be viewed through a commercial lens as websites that host these screenshots and modifications allow for "numerous sites of engagement…[and] brand development…" (eds Freeman & Gambarato, 2019), as people who might not be aware of The Witcher 3 become invested and interested in these screenshots and mods and might purchase the game as a result.
To conclude, from these aspects of player interactivity, fan mods and screenshots, it’s clear that The Witcher 3 is an exemplary model of transmedia storytelling and transmediality in general. The way the storytelling is accomplished through the game design in both the gameplay and the UI demonstrates how the elements of the narrative are dispersed throughout the game in order to immerse the player in the storyworld. The vast modding scene for The Witcher 3 and for gaming as a whole shows that the game can expand beyond the original developer’s intentions and instead become shaped by the community and fandom, further blurring the lines between the narrative and fan interaction as well as increasing the longevity of the game. And finally, the vast amount of Witcher 3 screenshots uploaded across the internet indicates not only a passion for the game - but also allows for the promotion and development of CD Projekt RED’s brand through interested newcomers to The Witcher franchise, and perhaps lead to continued sales of the game. In other words, The Witcher 3, through these elements, defines the word "transmedia".
References:
All things related to The Witcher, Reddit, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://old.reddit.com/r/witcher/>.
Conjunction of the Spheres 2019, The Official Witcher Wikia, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Conjunction_of_the_Spheres>.
El-Nasr, MS & Smith, BK 2006, ‘Learning through game modding’, Computers in entertainment, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1-7.
Forums - Doomworld 2019, Doomworld, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://www.doomworld.com/>.
Freeman, M & Gambarato, R (eds) 2019, The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, Routledge, New York, pp. 1-12.
Games and mods development for Windows, Linux and Mac - Mod DB 2019, Mod DB, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://www.moddb.com/>.
Marsha Kinder - USC Cinematic Arts | School of Cinematic Arts Directory Profile 2019, University of Southern California, viewed 12th March 2019, <https://cinema.usc.edu/directories/profile.cfm?id=6560>.
Peckham, M 2015, ‘This Is the Insane Number of Copies The Witcher 3 Sold’, TIME, viewed 16th March 2019, <http://time.com/3914342/witcher-3-sales/>.
Plunkett, L 2016, ‘The Witcher 3's New Screenshot Tools Are So Good’, Kotaku, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/08/the-witcher-3s-new-screenshot-tools-are-so-good/>.
The Witcher 3 Nexus - Mods and community 2019, Nexus Mods, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3>.
Wild Hunt 2019, The Official Witcher Wikia, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_Hunt>.
Witcher 2019, The Official Witcher Wikia, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Witcher>.
Transmedia narratives are stories that Marsha Kinder, Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Southern California (USC, 2019), described as “multi-platform and multi-modal expansion of media content…” (eds Freeman & Gambarato, 2019). This means that a single story, rather that remaining on a single platform, transcends the typical structure that a traditional narrative has - and instead allows for interactive components, and the "systematic dispersal" (eds Freeman & Gambarato, 2019) of a text across several mediums. An example of this, and the focus of this essay, is the commercially and critically successful 2015 video game made by Polish developer CD Projekt (sic) RED, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, whose core purpose as a video game is to entertain and is an example of transmedia storytelling - which it accomplishes through its player interactivity, the modding community and the screenshotting community.
The storyline of The Witcher 3 is centred around the character which the player controls known as Geralt of Rivia, a learned and battle-hardened monster hunter who travels the lands in search of monsters to kill in exchange for money. At the outset of The Witcher 3, the world is in turmoil. One and a half millennia before the beginning of the first game in the series, an event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres occurred, a cataclysm that "trapped many “unnatural” creatures" (The Official Witcher Wikia, 2019) such as ghouls, werewolves and vampires, in the unnamed planet or world that The Witcher series takes place in. These creatures wreaked havoc across the European-medieval-like landscape and, as a result, gave rise to the monster slayers for hire known as the Witchers (one of which the player character is). The backdrop of The Witcher 3’s narrative also contains a prolonged series of wars known as the Northern Wars that are between several different kingdoms.
But instead of actually participating in these wars directly, Geralt’s story in The Witcher 3 begins with him trying to find his lost love, Yennefer, and leads to him attempting to track down the ghostly ‘Wild Hunt’, a group of "spectres galloping in the night sky…" (The Official Witcher Wikia, 2019), who plague the common folk of the land. However, the story unfolds in a less linear fashion than the summary of The Witcher 3’s narrative may imply, and for a good portion of the game’s runtime or ‘playtime’, the Wild Hunt doesn’t appear very frequently. Instead, the player spends more time exploring the lands and talking with NPC (non-player character) quest givers, who provide side missions and tasks to complete - such as slaying a Griffin, or investigating a mysterious island. This interactivity and non-linearity of The Witcher 3 is one of the key aspects of transmedia storytelling that it embodies. In other words, much of the world-building is made through player interaction, whether that be through finding a book that contains the history of a certain event in the game’s world, or talking to an NPC to find out their particular story or plight. The player can also overhear NPCs talking about particular events and characters as well. Much of this dialogue doesn’t contribute to the main narrative, but it does help to make the player feel like they are traveling around a living and breathing world with thinking and feeling residents. However, although the player can go where they desire and travel a non-linear path as much as they like, the player is also bound by the game's rules, deterring them from entering areas or starting quests which contain monsters and enemies that they are not yet strong enough to defeat. However, much more so than other kinds of media, a video game’s rules can be bent or broken through glitches or ‘tricks’ that the developers (in this case, CD Projekt RED) might have not accounted for or foreseen.
The game’s menus also contain viewable snippets of lore for different characters and events - written by an in-universe character known as Dandelion. This allows newcomers to pick up the story in the third game rather than being forced to play through the previous two to understand everything, and also rewards long-time fans of the series by providing them with new story elements and lore. These optional interactions further flesh out the storyworld of The Witcher 3 as its story is developed through “multiple delivery channels…” (eds Freeman & Gambarato, 2019), which are created and revealed through the ways in which each individual player chooses to interact with the game’s UI (user interface) and environment. The story can also be told non-verbally through the design of the environment itself. Examples include a toppled cart surrounded by broken crates and spilt blood, crows circling in the night sky above, or an old abandoned village with strange voices echoing in the mist. This building of atmosphere in the environment can cause the player to become even more invested in the story and its surroundings, as their interactivity within the game’s world allows them to experience this atmosphere directly through gameplay. These components of open world game design allow the player to immerse themselves in a richly decorated medieval fantasy by relying on the player’s navigation of The Witcher 3’s storyworld.
However, being a video game, The Witcher 3 further transcends being a typical narrative through the relation with its fanbase. More specifically, through the game’s fan-creations. Modifications or ‘mods’, as they’re more typically known, are fan-created additions to a video game that can be extremely complex or very minimal. In fact, moddable games frequently have built-in “scripting languages that allow users to modify their behaviours, create new worlds for exploration, or even modify existing games into completely new ones…” (El-Nasr & Smith, 2006) (complete overhauls like this are commonly referred to, by the modding community, as ‘total conversions’). Furthermore, modding has been a major part of computer gaming for as long as computer gaming has existed. One of the largest and ongoing modding communities is for DOOM, a first-person shooter released in 1993 that still has fan creations and mods being released for it to this day. Websites for the easy access of uploading and downloading of mods have also existed for decades. Some of the most prominent modding websites include Nexus Mods which was created in 2006, Mod DB which was launched in June 2002 and Doomworld, which was founded in 1998. For The Witcher 3, on Nexus Mods alone, almost 3000 individual mods have been released. These mods range from being graphical enhancements, such as more realistic rain or fire particles, to gameplay-oriented QoL (Quality of Life) improvements, like giving players the ability to ‘fast-travel’ from anywhere in the game rather than having to manually move to a specific location. These mods allow players to tweak the game to their liking whether it be by changing how something looks, making the game easier or harder, fixing ‘bugs’ or glitches, or changing elements of the story completely. Video game mods, therefore, are an distinct example of how video games and by extension, The Witcher 3, transcend the typical narrative "in terms of [its] operations [and] consumption…" (eds Freeman & Gambarato, 2019) as the game can be optionally ‘consumed’ with additional mods that can be added one on the top of the other, and can radically change how the game plays and looks as much or as little as the player desires.
Finally, the screenshotting community is also significant to The Witcher 3’s transmediality - albeit, arguably, to a lesser extent than modding. Screenshotting in video games, particularly in games like The Witcher 3, are usually created by using third-party tools that allow the screenshotter to remove the Heads-Up Display (or HUD) for cinematic effect and allow them to orient the view or camera at the exact angle and position that they desire. For The Witcher 3, players can utilise NVIDIA’s “fancy new Ansel screenshot technology…” which allows for high resolution screenshots as well as “panoramic 360-degree shots of gameplay as well…” (Plunkett, 2016). After taking them, players then post these screenshots to websites such as Reddit where other like-minded screenshotters can appraise and comment on them. Much like mods, these screenshots vary significantly and can be professional-looking, cinematic, simple, silly or even memetic and referential. Video game screenshots and even mods, in relation to transmediality, can also be viewed through a commercial lens as websites that host these screenshots and modifications allow for "numerous sites of engagement…[and] brand development…" (eds Freeman & Gambarato, 2019), as people who might not be aware of The Witcher 3 become invested and interested in these screenshots and mods and might purchase the game as a result.
To conclude, from these aspects of player interactivity, fan mods and screenshots, it’s clear that The Witcher 3 is an exemplary model of transmedia storytelling and transmediality in general. The way the storytelling is accomplished through the game design in both the gameplay and the UI demonstrates how the elements of the narrative are dispersed throughout the game in order to immerse the player in the storyworld. The vast modding scene for The Witcher 3 and for gaming as a whole shows that the game can expand beyond the original developer’s intentions and instead become shaped by the community and fandom, further blurring the lines between the narrative and fan interaction as well as increasing the longevity of the game. And finally, the vast amount of Witcher 3 screenshots uploaded across the internet indicates not only a passion for the game - but also allows for the promotion and development of CD Projekt RED’s brand through interested newcomers to The Witcher franchise, and perhaps lead to continued sales of the game. In other words, The Witcher 3, through these elements, defines the word "transmedia".
References:
All things related to The Witcher, Reddit, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://old.reddit.com/r/witcher/>.
Conjunction of the Spheres 2019, The Official Witcher Wikia, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Conjunction_of_the_Spheres>.
El-Nasr, MS & Smith, BK 2006, ‘Learning through game modding’, Computers in entertainment, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1-7.
Forums - Doomworld 2019, Doomworld, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://www.doomworld.com/>.
Freeman, M & Gambarato, R (eds) 2019, The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, Routledge, New York, pp. 1-12.
Games and mods development for Windows, Linux and Mac - Mod DB 2019, Mod DB, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://www.moddb.com/>.
Marsha Kinder - USC Cinematic Arts | School of Cinematic Arts Directory Profile 2019, University of Southern California, viewed 12th March 2019, <https://cinema.usc.edu/directories/profile.cfm?id=6560>.
Peckham, M 2015, ‘This Is the Insane Number of Copies The Witcher 3 Sold’, TIME, viewed 16th March 2019, <http://time.com/3914342/witcher-3-sales/>.
Plunkett, L 2016, ‘The Witcher 3's New Screenshot Tools Are So Good’, Kotaku, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/08/the-witcher-3s-new-screenshot-tools-are-so-good/>.
The Witcher 3 Nexus - Mods and community 2019, Nexus Mods, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3>.
Wild Hunt 2019, The Official Witcher Wikia, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_Hunt>.
Witcher 2019, The Official Witcher Wikia, viewed 16th March 2019, <https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Witcher>.
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