A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms

15 Challenging the Audience to Act

There are lots of reasons to incorporate puzzles and other more gamelike mechanics into a transmedia project. I call anything requiring player activity to move the story forward (above and beyond just consuming the media) a challenge. You might use a challenge as a sort of throttle for content, slowing the pace of the audience’s movement through your narrative. You might use it to create a feeling of involvement in the story, giving the players a personal stake in the plot and its outcome. And maybe you want to create the illusion (or even the reality) of choice, to make the whole story feel less predetermined.

But no matter what your goal is, you’re going to have to ask yourself a few questions during the design ...