Andrea Phillips's Blog, page 9

Circus of Mirrors is Here!

It's been a long journey, but I am absolutely delighted to say that Circus of Mirrors, the interactive children's book I've created with Stitch Media, is now available for sale. I couldn't be happier about it!

Circus of Mirrors is basically a parent-run alternate reality game for kids. That means the story isn't just something the child reads; they get to be a part of it! Each adventure kit includes eight separately bound chapters, and in between each chapter the child is given an activity that puts them at the center of the story. Mazes, riddles, crafts, letters and phone calls all play a part. Oh, and the illustrations? Why yes, that is Mike Holmes of Adventure Time fame!

I'm going to have more to say about Circus in the coming weeks—I especially want to tell you how incredible it was to see my own daughter go through this experience. In my shoes, it's easy to forget how magical it is when the story world first reaches out and touches you. But it really, truly is... magic.

Oh, and I'm still incredibly proud of the Bearded Man. I giggle like a fool thinking about him, even now!

You'll be hearing a lot more about Circus of Mirrors in the weeks to come. But for now I thought I'd send up a flare and let you know this is a real thing that you can buy right now with your own money! And the holidays are coming up real fast. If you know what I mean.

And what I mean is, buy Circus of Mirrors for the chapter book readers in your life for the winter holiday of your choice. I pinky swear you won't regret it!

Pros Hit Their Deadlines (Unless They Don't)

Last Friday at about 10:30pm, I hit a deadline to turn in a fairly lengthy piece of writing. And I felt mighty. The cards had been stacked against me. This was a week with a major religious holiday and so two days where my kids weren't in school. A week where I was sick with some viral nonsense that left me headachey, congested, exhausted, and sore. A week where I had a mammogram scheduled. A week where I lost my major client and started hustling my tailfeathers looking for new work. (Still hustling, BTW!) This was a week where one of my children sprained her second foot in two weeks.

And despite all of the avalanche of life happening to me, I hit the deadline. So I wanted to take to Twitter to crow that it was because I was a professional, and this is what distinguishes a pro: come what may, you turn your shit in on time. But that's... not exactly true. And in fact, that kind of thinking can be actively harmful.

Using "a pro turns everything in on time always" as a bright-line standard is reductive and fundamentally unhealthy because there are genuinely circumstances where it is one hundred percent not possible to make your deadlines, and it's not something you could've fixed by starting earlier or managing your time better. Honest! I've missed due dates my own self by varying degrees for reasons ranging from "hurricane" to "pneumonia" to a simple "this was a lot harder than we all thought it was going to be." 

There's a certain machismo to writing culture that I find deeply uncomfortable at times. It includes a sort of laissez-faire attitude toward substance abuse and mental health issues—like drinking too much and suffering from anxiety or depression make you more valid, somehow. Like Hemingway and Balzac are something to aspire to, that their success came because of their excessive habits and not despite them. Like caring about your well-being is a dealbreaker.

This macho writing culture also includes a lot of subtext about working to the very limits of your capacity, all the time, no matter what personal cost it exacts. I've been in this game for, what, eleven years now? And it turns out driving yourself flat-out is an unsustainable practice for more than a few months, or perhaps a few years. So you have to ask yourself: Do you want to be a writer just for right now, or do you want to be a writer forever?

Ten years ago, I could put in a full day of work and then do an additional night shift of three or four hours of work after my kids were in bed. I can't do that anymore. My brain needs fallow time to produce more and better work. (It probably did then, too.) And I've finally recognized that the work that I do when I have, say, the actual swine flu isn't going to be worth turning in. 

So what distinguishes a professional? It's not that you see through space and time and block out the week your beloved great-aunt passes away so you can attend her funeral in peace, no. And it's not typing away perched at the graveside, either. It's not never getting sick, never having a power or internet outage, never missing the plane or getting into a fender-bender. It's not never taking a week off of writing to gaze at a crisp autumn sky and grow closer to the people you care about.

It's what happens after and around that. It's talking to your clients, editors, or colleagues when you need to, and saying, "Hey, is it OK if I take a little longer with this?" Sometimes there's a reason to burn your candle at both ends. Usually there's not. Being a professional means knowing the difference.

Pokémon Go and the Strange Horizons Fundraiser

My latest Metagames column is up at Strange Horizons! It's about Pokémon Go, and how that game was pretty well designed from the start to be extremely quittable.

And yet I maintain that the game is basically over already—Pokémon Go has already lost 79% of its paying players compared to its July 15 peak, and those numbers are going to keep going down. And down. And down. Winter is coming.

It's all in the design; Pokémon Go has no staying power. It's a game that practically begs you to quit.

Strange Horizons is a nonprofit entity, and they're doing their annual fundraiser right now. They're hoping to get at least $15,000 to run their magazine for a whole year. But $20,000 or even $25,000 would be better—not just for them, but for the overall health of the short story ecosystem, and for readers, too. The editors don't make money out of this; every cent goes to operations and paying writers. They've already raised $9,000... but there's a long way to go in just six days.

It's a good time to chip in, folks. Strange Horizons does great work, above and beyond just my column. They do original short fiction, reviews, and columns, poetry, special issues. They're actively trying to address the inequities revealed by the Fireside #BlackSpecFic Report. And if you're in the USA, your donation is tax-deductible.

Go on, chip into their Patreon. Just $4 a month is a complete subscription to each weekly issue. Or if you're cautious about a long-term commitment, you can make a one-time donation through Network for Good or through Paypal. All the deets are at their site.

This year has been bad enough. Let's try to keep all the good things going that we can, OK?

End of an Era

No, no, not Deus Ex Machinatio; just another milestone in the career of a freelancer. Not a happy one, but without the valleys, the peaks would not be such a victory, would they?

For the last two years and more, I've been working on a long-term project with a private client dedicated to making an immersive narrative-driven Airsoft environment. Think of it as live-action steampunk Call of Duty, and you'd be in the right general ballpark. Alas, this project has run out of funding without ever getting its legs under it.

It's been a wild two years. In that time I created models for a game economy, trying to calculate how much physical currency to create and in what denominations. I fine-tuned rules for basic Airsoft play governing how to handle injuries, hospitals, vehicles, and more. I designed play scenarios that could adapt to fluctuating numbers of players and multiple factions, and with a variety of goals to keep play fresh. I created history and storylines for the world this took place in; actually I did that a few times, as our vision gradually shifted. I storyboarded and scripted and wrote fictional news articles; I even collaborated on the design of some room escape games conceived as part of a side business.

It was a really interesting project, and I'm sad that some of those ideas will never get their tires kicked hard enough to know how solidly I built them. It's not the first time I've done work that will never see an audience, and I'm sure not the last time, either. That's business, I suppose.

But alas, having your most reliable long-term client run out of funding puts quite a hole in your budget, it turns out. So this is me putting up the Bat-signal: I'm looking for new projects, and I'd appreciate it if you'd pass on my name should you hear of anything I could help to make better. I'm a big believer that 90% of being lucky is keeping your mind open, so I'm willing to consider all kinds of possibilities. Let me know?

A Patreon ARG?

No, this isn't an announcement... yet. So far this is just a thing I've been turning over in my brain every so often for probably a year now.

I have a Patreon, but I haven't used it in ages now. I'd initially set it up as a short-story-of-the-month club, but to be honest, it seemed like a weird way to run things; I was limiting my possible audience to only the people who already knew my work. I tried posting short stories on my site after a time delay, but that felt both like I was cheating my Patreon subscribers AND nobody was actually reading 'em. In the end, I got busy doing more lucrative things (not to mention projects where I could see immediate growth) and the Patreon fell by the wayside.

But I keep thinking about ARGs and about Patreon, and wondering if the time isn't right for a Patreon-funded game. Here's how it would work: backers would be charged monthly. If it's not a lot of backers, it would be a fairly simple thing: a few characters who are only lightly responsive, maybe one central website that gets updated once a week with story and puzzles to solve. People who went in at higher levels could get tangible ephemera; that's your postcards, letters, etc.

If the amount of funding ramped up, I'd be able to justify spending more time on more elaborate storylines and more intensive interaction. Patreon supports that model pretty well by allowing you to define specific income goals and what you'd add to an experience (or project) when you reach that level.

The story structure is the kicker here. In order to make it constantly accessible to newcomers, it would need to be absolutely episodic, with each episode playing out over the course of 4 to 8 weeks, tops, and only gradual change in characters over time. In order to keep overhead costs down, it should always be roughly the same storyworld, so I don't need to build out a whole new web presence every few weeks. And in order to keep me sane, it should probably be something rompy and fun in tone, along the lines of Lucy Smokeheart.

So what I'm thinking is... maybe... Lucy Smokeheart ARG, anyone? Is there an audience for something like that? Would you want to give me all of your moneys...? Or is there some other kind of thing you'd much rather see? I'd really, really treasure your feedback if you have any for me. I am all ears.

Anne of Green Gables Book Club

For the record, this all happened because Kate Lechler was watching Anne of Green Gables on TV on Friday. And I was all "Hey I've never read those books, should I read them?" And Adam Rakunas was all, "I never read them either, should we read them together?" and like ten minutes later there was this whole big... plan.

Here's that plan: starting today, we are going to read Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. As we go, we're going to talk about our immediate reactions on the Twitter hashtag #AoGG. If we finish the first book and we can tolerate it, we're gonna keep going with the series.

On Oct. 17 we're going to check in and talk about our progress in a deeper and more reflective conversation. Then on Oct. 31 we're going to have a final chat about what we're taking away from the books, what we read (or didn't read), and how we feel about the series as a whole.

We'd really love to get some others to read along and chat about it with us! If it helps, the books are available for free in ebook format on Project Gutenberg (and very likely in paper at your local library.) And if there are any L.M. Montgomery fans or scholars, we'd love for you to fill us in on context we're missing—or just chuckle at what we make of it as we go!

This is going to be SUPER FUN. Now if you'll excuse me... I have some reading to do!

Art and Beginner's Mind

I've been making art lately. And not writing; I mean visual art. Mostly watercolor. Now, though, I have a new and improved camera, and I'm trying to do some artful photography, as well.

This might be a little surprising to many of you. I make games and stories, surely that's enough artistic expression for anyone?

Well, it is and it isn't. Here's the problem: It's increasingly difficult for me to make goofy little weekend projects like I used to without feeling some obligation to make it a commercial transaction. I can make pictures because I think they'll be fun or to experiment. I don't need to be worried about honing my craft or marketability, I don't need to worry about deadlines, I don't need to worry about whether I'm going to disappoint my publishers, backers, or audience. It's relaxing in a way that writing rarely is for me.

Though to be honest, I've haven't been a write-as-a-hobby kind of writer since middle school anyway. In 8th grade it was all ElfQuest fanfiction, but ever since then my writing has been for a grade, or a contest, or a submission.

Visual art, though...when I was a kid, and even up until college, I drew much more than I wrote. Much more. Given what I love and how I used to spend my free time, it's kind of surprising that I've never started a webcomic of any stripe.

There's another angle, too. See, I'm not actually an especially talented or skilled artist or photographer. I'm just screwing around. Do I want to get better? Yeah! But there's nothing at stake, so making something kinda terrible is fine.  

That's beginner's mind, to me, and it's priceless. A beginner is open to being wrong and doing bad work. A beginner is open to learning and growing. A beginner is ready to throw away preconceived notions and paradigms if they aren't working, starting fresh instead of patching the old one. And this experimental, stakes-lowering mindset relaxes me enough that I can take that feeling into the rest of my life, and even my paying work.

There is enormous value in giving yourself permission to do things simply because you like to do them, regardless of skill or outcome.

Anyway, if you want to follow along on my adventures in visual art, I post 'em up on Instagram from time to time. Probably I'll be posting the odd selfie and book cover there, too but mostly it's watercolor and still life photography for now. Probably none of it will be super amazing? And that is, for once, A-OK.

ReMade Season 1

I'm a little late to the announcement here, but I promise you this one's worth the wait. A while back I talked about one of the serials I was working on, Bookburners. I joined that one in the second season as a pitch hitter, so while I love it madly, I wasn't nervous about sending it into the wild. The concept had already had its road test and we knew it could go fast.

But I was at the very first ReMade story summit, and had a part in shaping it from the very skeleton. It's a very different emotional dynamic. And it's a very different story.

Every minute, 108 people die. This fall, in one of those minutes, twenty-three of those deaths will be teenagers. Now they are humanity’s last hope for survival. Awakened in a post-apocalyptic world and hunted by mechanical horrors, these teens search for answers amidst the ruins of civilization. Fate, love, and loyalty face off in this adrenaline-pumping YA adventure.

Written By: Matthew Cody, Kiersten White, E.C. Myers, Andrea Phillips, Carrie Harris, and Gwenda Bond

I've done some of the best writing of my life for this serial, hands down, and these characters are so richly textured and diverse that I could just die from pride. I love every one of them. This season I'm primarily writing a character named May, an overachiever with a plan for every occasion and a serious food allergy, and representing food allergies is pretty important to me. But the rest of the cast are every bit is fascinating, and I can't wait for you to get to know them all.

Listen, this is going to be a wild ride, and you're not going to want to miss a second of it. Pinky promise. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. 

If you're not sold yet, you can read the first episode to get a taste—but trust me when I say it gets better and better every second until the end. As of this week, we're three episodes in and absolutely off to the races. There's a new episode every Wednesday from now until December 21. Go on, subscribe to the season now. I promise you'll love it.

What's Happened to Transmedia?

I got an email in my inbox a week or two ago asking the titular question. It's been haunting me ever since. 

The underlying premise to the question is that transmedia reached a peak in or around the year 2012, and ever since then, new conversations, resources, and works have been increasingly hard to come by. It's hard to dispute that. ARGfest as a professional conference isn't a going concern anymore, nor is StoryWorld. TEDx Transmedia has pivoted to dealing with a variety of topics involving futurism and philosophy. 

"Transmedia" as I once knew it was, as Brian Clark would have said, an art scene encompassing a particular group of creators doing some things in common, largely springing up around the space that used to be alternate reality games: Clark himself, of course, but also the folks at Campfire and Stitch Media; the crew of FortyTwo Entertainment, later turned Fourth Wall Studios; the filmmaker Lance Weiler and his myriad projects; Steve Peters and No Mimes Media. Transmedia has included documentarians, experimental theater designers, web video creators, musicians, authors, and more.

And it still does... kinda.

It's true you don't hear a lot about transmedia as such anymore, in the same way that you rarely heard about hot new alternate reality games as such after about 2008. So did we move on to a shiny new buzzword? Nah. Did we all cut our hair and get real day jobs? Not all of us, no. So what happened, exactly?

Basically that indie art scene that started with alternate reality games is... well, it's over. We had our fun, and now we've more or less gone our separate ways.

Diaspora

This by no means is equivalent to "transmedia is dead," so let me just stop you. There are still strong standard-bearers talking about transmedia in so many words. A quick look at the Twitter hashtag right now shows me participation from long-time experts like Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner, Simon Staffans, and Gary Hayes. 

For a lot of the rest of us, we've spread our transmedia-like tentacles into a lot of distinct and separate industries and arts in the interest of building longer-term careers and businesses.

A lot of the air and energy that used to be invested in transmedia has moved to virtual reality, with Campfire Media making award-winning experiences for the likes of Westworld. Fourth Wall's Sean Stewart works with Magic Leap, now, a Florida company that my money is on to be the next big thing. (And if you're from Magic Leap... email me. Seriously. I want to work with you so bad it's like acid running through my veins.)

There's also a thriving if small web film subgenre, continuing through companies like Astronauts Wanted. Experiential theater is going strong; Third Rail and Punchdrunk are making intense, transformative pieces. And locational theatrical experiences like Accomplice are still running, too.

In fact, the short but high-touch experience is where most of the action is these days. It's no accident that the room escape game began to boom right around the time transmedia-the-buzzword began its decline. Now room escapes are just about as widespread as the family restaurant chain of your choice. It's easy to see why: they use a lot of the same compelling ARG formula of experience + narrative + puzzles, and you can charge admission. I've done a little room escape work myself, and I'd enjoy doing a lot more—it's a very rewarding format.

And finally, some of us have taken our know-how in-house at places like, say, Disney Imagineering. Some of us are dedicated indie game developers now, or writers, or authors. And some of us have kinda dropped out of sight entirely. I don't want to name and shame, not least because I'm sure I look like one of 'em. 

Not to say that there's nothing left of that community—because of course there is, though the nature and tone of it has shifted along with the media landscape. 

The primo sources of conversation and information right now are the StoryForward podcasts and meetups. ARGN is still a going concern. The Future of Storytelling conference is a brilliant way to explore the intersection of narrative and technology... if you can afford the ticket price (and I wish I could). The core of creators that coalesced around that word "transmedia," though, has gradually decentralized. There's not one place you can go to find out what's happening in transmedia, or if anything is happening at all.

The Business Model Problem

At the end of the day it's not down to any one cause, but a lot of them working in conjunction: artists need to eat, transmedia as such lost its novelty, social media turned into a raging river where once it was a mere firehose, and media companies have become a lot more parsimonious than in our heyday about digital. These factors all contributed to making the ground transmedia grew in less and less fertile. 

But really, it's mostly down to money. We never really cracked a business model for social media storytelling where the social media bits paid their own way in terms of ROI. That meant a lot of transmedia creators like me were reliant on sponsors and marketing work to pay the rent. But as social media has transformed, it's become harder to grab attention in the flood of free content out there, much harder to get press coverage for methods of storytelling that we've maybe seen before, and old funding sources are shyer about spending money on stuff when they're not sure if it'll work. "It's on the web" doesn't sound like an automatic Cannes Lion anymore. Innovative things don't stay innovative for very long.

Outside of the marketing arena, more than one company has sought investment to try to build out original content on a transmedia-driven philosophy. Those companies have by and large folded, often due to an internal lack of clarity about whether they were primarily trying to build platforms or content.

In a way, though, room escape games are the ultimate answer to what happened to transmedia. So are mystery box services. So are single-user VR experiences. They don't just solve the business model problem; they also solve the real-time problem, the friction problem, and the late-joiner problem. It turns out that if you want to tell stories embedded in the real world, the best technology is no technology. A real key and a real lock you can hold in your hands (or the illusions of them) are a billion times more immersive than any old character on Twitter.

The Future

So does this mean transmedia is over? Nah. The genie is out of the bottle and can never be returned to it. Techniques for social storytelling, immersive narrative, and interaction have all come a long way; we can't forget what we've learned, and we apply that knowledge everywhere we go. Even ARGs still happen, and they can still be amazing, artful, and new.

And the future is always being born. There are probably a dozen other things going on right now that I don't even know about, because they're taking place in communities and under names that aren't "transmedia." I am dead sure a new, vivid, incredible art scene is happening right now with a group of starry-eyed creators who just want to make amazing things. I can't wait to see what they have in store for us, whether I'm invited to the party or not.

Is This Thing On?

WELL HELLO THERE, GOOD LOOKIN'.

I don't call anymore, I don't write... things have been kind of crickets around here unless I have something to sell you. And that's not cool. I'm not just saying that because I have some things to sell you. Let's leave that until later. Future posts, even!

I've let this place fall by the wayside over the last year or two for a lot of reasons. One is that I don't have a lot to say about transmedia specifically, and that's why I started this place up back in 2005. Hence my : deus ex machinatio. It means divinity from a plan, and so the art that makes my heart pound and fills me with gladness.

Why does that mean haven't I been posting? Partly because I stepped back from the conference circuit. Partly because even beyond transmedia, I say a lot of the same things I would otherwise be blogging about on Twitter or on my podcast The Cultures. (Did you even know I have a podcast, with Naomi Alderman and Adrian Hon?) I've been pretty busy! And I won't lie, the chilling effect of Gamergate is real; I'm reluctant to engage in some of the social issues that used to be one of my hallmarks.

There's also a bit of uncertainty about how to engage in thoughtful conversation via online media anymore. Should I be posting on Medium instead? It would probably be good for "exposure," but I'm not a fan. Should I be posting things on Facebook instead, where it would be more highly shareable? Or posting here and linking to Facebook? Should I be cross-posting to my Imzy community, or or or?

This stuff used to be easy when I was just a freelancer and my audience consisted almost exclusively of colleagues digging in the same salt mine as me. But now I have a mixture of colleagues from games, marketing, film, and academia mixed together with students learning from A Creator's Guide, friends who are non-transmedia authors, just friends with no work-related relationship, and even a few fans who don't know me except as a person who has made some stuff they like.

This used to be almost all talk shop, but it's slowly shifted into being a vehicle almost entirely for announcements of launches and conferences.

I don't like that very much. It feels kinda gross and manipulative. I like to be human on the internet, not a marketing bot.

So let's give this a whirl: I can't promise this is going to be the start of a bold new era, but I do have a whole slew of posts I want to make for now: some launch announcements, yes, but I also want to talk about the state of transmedia (no, really), some things I've been doing in my personal life, and some serious writing-craft challenges I'm mulling over, but have not yet solved. Maybe some politics?

And if you have things you'd like for me to talk about here, I'd love a comment. Should I be reviewing media I'm excited about? (OMG K-dramas.) Do you want an accounting of how much work I get done in a week? I dunno. You tell me.

Mostly I just want to feel like I have a home and a voice in the internet again—a place that belongs to me, where I'm not just sprinkling words into the ephemeral stream. So let's see how this goes.