Alternate Reality

Notes from videogaming’s borders

- ADRIAN HON

Back when ‘transmedia’ was an innovative new term rather than a way to describe everything Marvel or Sony or Harry Potter does across movies, games and comics – ie, about 15 years ago – there was a brief craze of ‘second screen’ experiences for TV dramas. As viewers watched the show, they’d browse a website for extra bits of story, such as text messages between characters, or news articles reporting on whatever had just happened on screen. The idea was essentially: why watch one screen when you can watch two for twice the entertainment?

In 2008, I designed one such experience for the BBC’s Spooks: Code 9 spinoff. Sadly, our Liberty News website wasn’t nearly enough to rescue a decidedly uneven drama that had been overdesigned for the ‘youths’. In any case, the second-screen fad was quickly forgotten amid the oncoming tide of smartphones and social media apps, which were far more interesting and distracting than any transmedia made for TV shows.

The story wasn’t over, though. As soon as smartphones and tablets became ubiquitous, a flurry of second-screen experiences arrived, this time to accompany video games. Anyone playing