SESSION 13. THE AUDIENCE EXPERIENCE: DESIGNING ACROSS MULTIPLE PLATFORMS

Telling a story across multiple media platforms creates a different kind of experience for the audience.  It’s an experience that needs to balance the active (finding phone numbers, teasing out email addresses, searching for clues, solving puzzles, live events) with the pleasures of experiencing story in more traditional ways (watching video, reading text).

Participants in the workshop will try their hand at developing a storyline across multiple platforms.  They will be given a base story on which to construct a design that involves elements including, but not limited to, mobile phone calls, web pages, blogs, social networking, text messages and audio. Award-winning experience designer Steve Peters and award-winning writer Maureen McHugh of No Mimes Media will walk participants through building a cross-media narrative whilst discussing the strategies of making sure an audience has an engaging experience that invests them in the story.

Along the way, Steve and Maureen will talk about their successes and the pitfalls: countdowns, hackers and why it’s a mistake to make your audience think things are too real.   They’ll review participants’ designs using real-world examples of varying audiences.  The workshop is especially aimed at anyone who is considering designing a multi-platform experience, but does not require that participants be working on a project at this time.  By the end of this fully interactive workshop, participants will walk away with a working knowledge and a simple example of a cross-media project.  Bring laptops, mobile devices, cameras or any other tool you might have that you think would be fun to use.

MAUREEN McHUGH, Writer & Partner, No Mimes Media

Maureen is a Hugo award-winning short story writer and novelist.  She has published four novels including China Mountain Zhang, and over two dozen short stories including The Lincoln Train and the story collection Mothers and Other Monsters (available as a free download under the Creative Commons license). Maureen has also taught fiction writing at universities and at workshops like the Clarion Workshops and Viable Paradise in Martha’s Vineyard.

She became involved with interactive entertainment in 2001. In 2003 she was a writer and managing editor for the groundbreaking I Love Bees ARG for Halo 2.  Prior to founding No Mimes Media, she worked on the Cannes Grand Prix winning Why So Serious for The Dark Knight, and Year Zero for the Nine Inch Nails album of the same name, Watchmen (6minutestomindnight.com) among others.

STEVE PETERS, Experience Designer & Partner, No Mimes Media

A pioneering force in the Alternate Reality Game/Full-Media Entertainment genre, Steve has worked on some of the biggest and most successful interactive experiences to date, including Six Minutes to Midnight (for the feature film Watchmen); Why So Serious (for the feature film The Dark Knight); Year Zero (for the Nine Inch Nail album of the same name); The Vanishing Point and Dead Man’s Tale (for Pirates of the Caribbean II: Dead Man’s Chest).

He founded the Alternate Reality Gaming Network in 2002, has spoken and contributed to books and articles on the subject, and has been interviewed by everyone from G4-TV to WIRED to the Los Angeles Times. Past projects have won multiple awards including a Cannes Lions Grand Prix Award, One Show Entertainment Awards and Webby Awards.

Prior to co-founding No Mimes Media, Steve was Director of Experience Design at 42 Entertainment and Founder of Vital Interactive Media, a multimedia production company that developed music and audio content for television, theatre and computer games/applications.