Transmedia Worlds

Pokemon Cards

Discussed by Schell and coined by Henry Jenkins, refers to a world that can be "entered" through many different types of media Schell (2015) (pg. 336-337).

Pokemon and Star Wars are examples of this.

Schell describes 6 traits that make for a successful transmedia world:

  • has a strong original media (ie Pokemon started out as a Gameboy game)
  • is intuitive
  • has a single creator or small team at its core
  • can tell many stories
  • makes sense through any gateway (Pokemon works as PC game, card game etc).

References

Jesse Schell. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. CRC Press, Boca Raton, second edition edition, 2015. ISBN 978-1-4665-9864-5.