Colin Foran is CCO at Shrapnel. With 15 years of publishing experience in bringing rich narratives to platforms ranging from mobile, to indie, to AAA flagship products, Colin has worked on such titles as Ryse: Son of Rome, Sunset Overdrive, and the Emmy-winning Westworld VR: A Delos Experience. Prior to joining Shrapnel, he served as Creative Lead at HBO and as an Art Director at Microsoft.
With the evolution of the gaming landscape, why is merely creating a game no longer sufficient, and why is there a growing emphasis on building expansive universes and transmedia lore?
People have an overwhelming number of entertainment options competing for their time, and if they don’t feel like they have a world in which they can invest in and explore, you’ll never get them through the door. I think it’s worth saying that a transmedia approach isn’t necessary or ideal for every game – sometimes a simple and direct interaction with your audience is all you want or need. But studios that are striving for rich, long lasting stories should understand the strengths and weaknesses of different media and explore them where it makes sense.
At Shrapnel, we’ve been exploring comics, live action shorts, CGI pieces, and frankly anything that sounds interesting to us as a way to help explore our characters and world. Each medium conveys a story differently, and if you’re willing to take chances here and there, you can find yourself in interesting territory. One of the nice things about founding a studio is that there’s no one to tell you not to experiment with a narrative, which gets really exciting when you start inviting the community to contribute. Our hope and belief is that as the universe starts to solidify, our community will contribute to the lore just as much as we are at the studio.
