Via: Confessions Of An Aka-Fan
Yesterday, Henry Jenkins posted a must-read article: Three Reasons Why Pottermore Matters…
Although his declaration that “all I know is what I read in the newspaper and what I can speculate about within a range of trends impacting social media, transmedia entertainment, Web 2.0, and fan culture”, his post is a masterpiece for transmedia storytelling and niche media enthusiasts.
In my view, Transmedia, as "Serious Games", creates different points of entry for different audience segments.
Here are the excerpts for Three Reasons Why Pottermore Matters:
• Pottermore as Transmedia Storytelling: this may be the most highly visible transmedia project to date.
• Harry Potter is a massive mass market success at a time when all of our conversations are focusing on the fragmentation of the media marketplace and the nichification of media production.
• The success of Harry Potter demonstrates the power of niche media. Start from the fact that this is a children's book, after all, and a fantasy, two genres which historically have attracted only niche readerships. By traditional industry talk, much of Harry Potter's success came from so-called "surplus consumers" -- that is, consumers who fall outside of its target demographic.
• No one thinks that Harry Potter fandom will go away completely -- we've seen many fandoms long outlast the production of new material -- but there is apt to be less intensity and visibility once the final film hits the theater. For these fans, Pottermore is a game changer.
• There is the promise of multimodality represented by what's been described as interactive "moments" introduced around the books, which allow fans new ways of interacting with the story.
• Those of us who are enthusiastic about transmedia see these materials as expanding our knowledge and deepening our experience of the story (at least in so far as they are done well and everything about Potter has been done well) by allowing each medium to do what it can do best.
• There's been lots of talk about whether there has been a killer demonstration of the potential of transmedia -- this may well become that killer demo, for better or for worse, and I for one am going to be watching closely to see what happens next.
Read the full article.