Halo: A Case of Evolved Digital Transmedia
In his essay titled "Interactive Audiences?" Henry Jenkins, among other digital media aspects, explores modern digital media as "horizontally integrated media conglomerates" which favor cross-media promotion and participation, which "demand[s] more active modes of spectatorship" (157). Some may ask where the genesis of this era of transmedia-capable digital media artifacts exists. One need not look farther than the Halo video game series in order to find evidence for how a digital media artifact drastically changed the course of video games and helped digital media evolve to a more complex state. Halo (hereafter representing the original Halo: Combat Evolved as well as its many sequels and related media properties), while not necessarily the first to do so, became definitive proof of digital artifacts' ability, namely video games, through their digital channels, to evolve beyond the digital, or rather, expand the boundaries of their influence and operation into primarily non-digital media creating what shall be termed a digital transmedia.
The phenomenon of Halo started as a digital media artifact. The video game Halo: Combat Evolved was a FPS (first person shooter) developed by Bungie and released in November 2001 that challenged the many of the definitions of a FPS while also wholeheartedly embracing local multi-player action. It's narrative was rich with complexity without overshadowing the traditional FPS action between cut-scenes. Though not the first video game to contain such a creative and immersive narrative and environment (the Final Fantasy series or the Legend of Zelda series, for example), it was one of the first FPS (apart from, among some other landmark FPS titles, Nintendo's GoldenEye 007, which was based on the James Bond film GoldenEye) to draw in its audience to the extent that it did; it's influence, structurally and psychologically, specifically on FPS games that followed is unquestionable (see the Call of Duty series, the Gears of War series or Mass Effect series, for example). The game earned multiple award nods from the video gaming community, as did it's soundtrack which features, to this day, one of the most recognizable video game themes in all of gaming. Until the release of the game's sequel in 2004, Halo remained one of the best selling games for the Xbox console. All of these notes are necessary to understand that the Halo brand name, Halo as a digital media artifact, began as a successful product of the digital media environment of video gaming and programming. What followed Halo's original success stands as a testament to Halo's impact on the evolution digital media, specifically video gaming into a transmedia that employs non-digital artifacts to expand the universes created in the digital realm outwards to draw potential users and fans inwards.
The true turning point in Halo's influence on video gaming as a digital medium was the franchise's second incarnation aptly titled Halo 2. While many remember this game as the edition that introduced duel wielding and the ability to play as a Covenant Elite, it was the first Halo game to offer online multi-player action on Xbox-Live. For several years, the game remained the most popular game on Xbox-Live, as well as the benchmark for online console multi-player video gaming (see Call of Duty 2, and the subsequent explosion of Call of Duty titles released on the consoles after the original game began on the PC). Never before had online FPS gaming been so popular or so widely played; while there is no official statistic to prove this, those that experienced the explosion of Xbox-Live after Halo 2's release can attest to this fact.
As important as Halo 2's thrusting of video gaming forward into the online realm more than any previous game had was its fandom. While, admitedly, the fandom of the Halo series owed a lot to timing (YouTube was founded in 2005, less than a year after the release of Halo 2, allowing the Halo series and YouTube to, in essence, grow up together), the Halo series propelled video gaming's popularity forward by expanding its fandom wing into online channels as other media had at the time of the computer's genesis years earlier (Jenkins, "Interactive" 160-163). Online players could now flaunt their dominance outside the video game media and instead in online video media, a prime example of which is below (a viral video of the reputed "Halo God").
The phenomenon of Halo started as a digital media artifact. The video game Halo: Combat Evolved was a FPS (first person shooter) developed by Bungie and released in November 2001 that challenged the many of the definitions of a FPS while also wholeheartedly embracing local multi-player action. It's narrative was rich with complexity without overshadowing the traditional FPS action between cut-scenes. Though not the first video game to contain such a creative and immersive narrative and environment (the Final Fantasy series or the Legend of Zelda series, for example), it was one of the first FPS (apart from, among some other landmark FPS titles, Nintendo's GoldenEye 007, which was based on the James Bond film GoldenEye) to draw in its audience to the extent that it did; it's influence, structurally and psychologically, specifically on FPS games that followed is unquestionable (see the Call of Duty series, the Gears of War series or Mass Effect series, for example). The game earned multiple award nods from the video gaming community, as did it's soundtrack which features, to this day, one of the most recognizable video game themes in all of gaming. Until the release of the game's sequel in 2004, Halo remained one of the best selling games for the Xbox console. All of these notes are necessary to understand that the Halo brand name, Halo as a digital media artifact, began as a successful product of the digital media environment of video gaming and programming. What followed Halo's original success stands as a testament to Halo's impact on the evolution digital media, specifically video gaming into a transmedia that employs non-digital artifacts to expand the universes created in the digital realm outwards to draw potential users and fans inwards.
The true turning point in Halo's influence on video gaming as a digital medium was the franchise's second incarnation aptly titled Halo 2. While many remember this game as the edition that introduced duel wielding and the ability to play as a Covenant Elite, it was the first Halo game to offer online multi-player action on Xbox-Live. For several years, the game remained the most popular game on Xbox-Live, as well as the benchmark for online console multi-player video gaming (see Call of Duty 2, and the subsequent explosion of Call of Duty titles released on the consoles after the original game began on the PC). Never before had online FPS gaming been so popular or so widely played; while there is no official statistic to prove this, those that experienced the explosion of Xbox-Live after Halo 2's release can attest to this fact.
As important as Halo 2's thrusting of video gaming forward into the online realm more than any previous game had was its fandom. While, admitedly, the fandom of the Halo series owed a lot to timing (YouTube was founded in 2005, less than a year after the release of Halo 2, allowing the Halo series and YouTube to, in essence, grow up together), the Halo series propelled video gaming's popularity forward by expanding its fandom wing into online channels as other media had at the time of the computer's genesis years earlier (Jenkins, "Interactive" 160-163). Online players could now flaunt their dominance outside the video game media and instead in online video media, a prime example of which is below (a viral video of the reputed "Halo God").
Countless examples exist online of people, with undoubtedly too much time on their hands, showcasing their mastery of the game. Whether they sought Youtube fame, or merely desired to flash their skilled achievements, such boasting would have been impossible without the digital media environment that grew significantly after the launch of Halo 2.
This type of showcasing is an example of a larger trend that Halo may very well have started itself. Though, as with countless games that came before it, Halo was very much driven by its narrative (except for the series' earlier games' multi-player, arena style gaming), the games themselves cannot be, as Jenkins discusses in another essay titled "Game Design as Narrative Architecture," "simply reduced to the experience of the story" (3). The environment, which can be taken to mean the digital space designed by the game's creators, could also include, loosely, the sonic environment of the game. Not only are players encouraged to take the game beyond its traditional FPS boundaries through online gaming and personal achievement sharing (Halo God, etc; later, Microsoft would create achievements for players to reach in order to increase their online Gamerscore, and video gaming prowess) in the tradition of older media (Jenkins discusses literature as a possible ancestor to this spectatorship), but they are also encouraged to bring their fandom outside the video gaming world and into non-digital environments utilizing music and other assimilated media (Jenkins, "Game Design" 6). Halo was a jumping off point, rather than the end-all, be-all point of interaction for users.
In tandem with the expansion into online modes of spectatorship, Halo's soundtracks and related music artifacts, united as a watershed moment of video-game-influenced music (Pac-Man fever notwithstanding), further expanded video gaming's influence and control outside the digital realm into new media. As a point of history, Westwood was one of the first, if not the first, company to begin incorporating their soundtracks directly into their games' code. From this point on, video game soundtracks became marketable to a greater extent than they had been before. Less than a decade later, Halo was pushing the digital boundary with its own soundtrack. The soundtrack for Halo 2 broke into music media when it featured several popular bands including Breaking Benjamin and Incubus. The music media, and the media that would follow, that Halo acquired and utilized the expectation individuals gained after games like Halo, namely that of an expanded narrative that transcended the written single player narrative. It was Halo, as well as other video game series, that expanded video games, and digital media itself, into a wider, transmedia community. At the time of the first "emergent narratives," which allowed players and users the possibility of expanding the universe in their own way, but still within the confines of the video game itself, for the most part, video gaming was already showing new life, which would then translate to other digital media (Jenkins, "Game Design" 11-12)
At this point, video game media began to expand, evolve more rapidly to utilize other media to increase their influence. The Halo franchise led the way by assimilating (this unsourced history lesson has gone on for far too long, so this rapid-fire list will suffice to show how Halo grew from video game media artifact to become a multifaceted example of an evolved digital transmedia artifact) printed media (graphic novels, comics, and novels that both expanded the Halo universe and prefigured future video games to entice readers to purchase them), cinema (Red vs. Blue, short films, cinematic live-action television commercials, a miniseries, and endless rumors about a feature length Halo film which eventually became District 9), tablet applications (in essence, another video game on a different platform, but I contest apps cross the threshold into a different medium apart from video games altogether, or at least traditional video games), and even soft drinks (another medium that one must trust in this essay to define as such; regardless, the first Mountain Dew Game Fuel variety was available to promote the release of Halo 3). All of these represent the birth of the "horizontally integrated" media that Jenkins discusses (157). This multiple media controlling transmedia operated its subsidiary media with the intent to expand its control even further via-cross promotion.
More than simply using these adjacent media, the digital affordances of video games allowed Halo to subsume these media, ushering in a new era of media evolution. A rapid process, this evolution swept to other video games, other consoles, other digital media and social media objects. A precedent had been set by the collective change in the wind that Halo helped to bring about. The interactive audience that Jenkins studies, more than any time previously, was taking control of digital media artifacts and spreading their influence to other, traditionally non-digital media (namely, Mountain Dew's Game Fuel); players of Halo's online multi-player modes constantly create their own content, though Halo has managed to keep most of this creation within the boundaries of the game itself, unlike other digital media fandom. History repeats itself, of course, and even Jenkins notes this as he traces the evolution of this transmedia with interactive audiences from jammers and other early digital media users(/abusers?) (166-168). Therefore, while Halo certainly did not create the movement towards the evolved digital media we see today, it was certainly a major player that excelled in cross-platform expansion and narrative-defying digital media artifacts.
To fully summarize, the Halo brand name, founded in the digital realm, gave digital media the teeth to break out of traditional media barriers and expand into realms previously uninhabited by digital artifacts, thus powering digital media's evolution into a transmedia, one that runs the gambit from video game platform to soundtrack fueled fan fiction paradise to comic book tale. The video game series remains the platform from which all the other media offshoots draw their influence, fandom, and methods.
Works Cited
Jenkins, Henry. "Game Design as Narrative Architecture." Web. January 2011.
Jenkins, Henry. "Interactive Audiences?" The New Media Book. Ed. Dan Harries. Suffolk, England: St Edmundsburry Press, 2002. 157-170.
This type of showcasing is an example of a larger trend that Halo may very well have started itself. Though, as with countless games that came before it, Halo was very much driven by its narrative (except for the series' earlier games' multi-player, arena style gaming), the games themselves cannot be, as Jenkins discusses in another essay titled "Game Design as Narrative Architecture," "simply reduced to the experience of the story" (3). The environment, which can be taken to mean the digital space designed by the game's creators, could also include, loosely, the sonic environment of the game. Not only are players encouraged to take the game beyond its traditional FPS boundaries through online gaming and personal achievement sharing (Halo God, etc; later, Microsoft would create achievements for players to reach in order to increase their online Gamerscore, and video gaming prowess) in the tradition of older media (Jenkins discusses literature as a possible ancestor to this spectatorship), but they are also encouraged to bring their fandom outside the video gaming world and into non-digital environments utilizing music and other assimilated media (Jenkins, "Game Design" 6). Halo was a jumping off point, rather than the end-all, be-all point of interaction for users.
In tandem with the expansion into online modes of spectatorship, Halo's soundtracks and related music artifacts, united as a watershed moment of video-game-influenced music (Pac-Man fever notwithstanding), further expanded video gaming's influence and control outside the digital realm into new media. As a point of history, Westwood was one of the first, if not the first, company to begin incorporating their soundtracks directly into their games' code. From this point on, video game soundtracks became marketable to a greater extent than they had been before. Less than a decade later, Halo was pushing the digital boundary with its own soundtrack. The soundtrack for Halo 2 broke into music media when it featured several popular bands including Breaking Benjamin and Incubus. The music media, and the media that would follow, that Halo acquired and utilized the expectation individuals gained after games like Halo, namely that of an expanded narrative that transcended the written single player narrative. It was Halo, as well as other video game series, that expanded video games, and digital media itself, into a wider, transmedia community. At the time of the first "emergent narratives," which allowed players and users the possibility of expanding the universe in their own way, but still within the confines of the video game itself, for the most part, video gaming was already showing new life, which would then translate to other digital media (Jenkins, "Game Design" 11-12)
At this point, video game media began to expand, evolve more rapidly to utilize other media to increase their influence. The Halo franchise led the way by assimilating (this unsourced history lesson has gone on for far too long, so this rapid-fire list will suffice to show how Halo grew from video game media artifact to become a multifaceted example of an evolved digital transmedia artifact) printed media (graphic novels, comics, and novels that both expanded the Halo universe and prefigured future video games to entice readers to purchase them), cinema (Red vs. Blue, short films, cinematic live-action television commercials, a miniseries, and endless rumors about a feature length Halo film which eventually became District 9), tablet applications (in essence, another video game on a different platform, but I contest apps cross the threshold into a different medium apart from video games altogether, or at least traditional video games), and even soft drinks (another medium that one must trust in this essay to define as such; regardless, the first Mountain Dew Game Fuel variety was available to promote the release of Halo 3). All of these represent the birth of the "horizontally integrated" media that Jenkins discusses (157). This multiple media controlling transmedia operated its subsidiary media with the intent to expand its control even further via-cross promotion.
More than simply using these adjacent media, the digital affordances of video games allowed Halo to subsume these media, ushering in a new era of media evolution. A rapid process, this evolution swept to other video games, other consoles, other digital media and social media objects. A precedent had been set by the collective change in the wind that Halo helped to bring about. The interactive audience that Jenkins studies, more than any time previously, was taking control of digital media artifacts and spreading their influence to other, traditionally non-digital media (namely, Mountain Dew's Game Fuel); players of Halo's online multi-player modes constantly create their own content, though Halo has managed to keep most of this creation within the boundaries of the game itself, unlike other digital media fandom. History repeats itself, of course, and even Jenkins notes this as he traces the evolution of this transmedia with interactive audiences from jammers and other early digital media users(/abusers?) (166-168). Therefore, while Halo certainly did not create the movement towards the evolved digital media we see today, it was certainly a major player that excelled in cross-platform expansion and narrative-defying digital media artifacts.
To fully summarize, the Halo brand name, founded in the digital realm, gave digital media the teeth to break out of traditional media barriers and expand into realms previously uninhabited by digital artifacts, thus powering digital media's evolution into a transmedia, one that runs the gambit from video game platform to soundtrack fueled fan fiction paradise to comic book tale. The video game series remains the platform from which all the other media offshoots draw their influence, fandom, and methods.
Works Cited
Jenkins, Henry. "Game Design as Narrative Architecture." Web. January 2011.
Jenkins, Henry. "Interactive Audiences?" The New Media Book. Ed. Dan Harries. Suffolk, England: St Edmundsburry Press, 2002. 157-170.