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8 - Platform Producer Meets Game Master: On the Conditions for the Media Mix

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2021

By
Marc Steinberg
Edited by
Marta Boni
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Summary

Abstract

This chapter examines the necessary conditions for the creation of a transmedia franchise. Despite transmedia storytelling manuals’ optimistic repetition of the refrain that all you need is your imagination, transmedia development requires specific, often precise conditions to occur. This chapter focuses on two of these necessary conditions in particular: conditions or media a priori that have been essential to the development of the Japanese media mix from the 1980s onwards. Exploring Kadokawa Tsuguhiko and his associates’ creation of transmedia worlds within the Japanese publisher Kadokawa Books during the 1980s and 1990s, this chapter suggests that one of these a priori is the development of magazines. A second, strategic or conceptual a priori for the media mix during the 1980s is the development of the figure of the creator as game master or producer—something that closely resembles what in Hollywood has more recently be called the transmedia producer. In focusing on these two developments and their industry context in the Japan of the 1980s and 1990s, we arrive at the two the necessary conditions for the contemporary form of the media mix and its creation of transmedia worlds.

Keywords: Media mix; Platform producer; Transmedia in Japan; Kadokawa Books; Otsuka Eiji

What are the necessary conditions for transmedia development? What are the medial conditions that support the creation and prolonging of storyworlds? Transmedia storytelling manuals often repeat what they present as a truism: that anyone with an active imagination can create a storyworld. Yet, the conditions under which storyworlds are developed into transmedia or media mix franchises, and are capitalized on as such, are quite specific (for the sake of economy, we may consider what in Japan is called media mix as roughly equivalent to the North American term, transmedia storytelling, with the significant caveat that the media mix is not tied to stories, as it is often developed around characters). This article sets out to explore the media a priori for the creation of transmedia worlds through a close examination of a specific case study: Kadokawa Tsuguhiko and his associates’ activities within a section of Japanese publisher Kadokawa Books during the 1980s and 1990s.

Type
Chapter
Information
World Building Transmedia Fans Industries , pp. 143 - 163
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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