“More Interaction, More Story, More Lore”: Motivations Related to Game-centric Transmedia

Abstract

Transmedia research has in the past been mainly interested in defining transmedia and examining transmedia franchises that have their starting point in movies and TV- series. However, there are multiple transmedia constellations that have a game as their starting point and this paper concentrates on two of those, Defiance (Trion Worlds, 2013) and Quantum Break (Remedy Entertainment, 2016). The survey data from these two examples was analyzed by using constructivist grounded theory- informed approach in order to find out what motivates audiences to consume or avoid game-centric transmedia. Ten categories related to consuming game-centric transmedia and five categories related to avoiding it emerged from the data. The motivations to consume game- centric transmedia had a strong focus on narrative aspects. The results differ from earlier transmedia audience studies and suggest the need for more game-centric transmedia audience studies, where the core text is a game instead of a television show.