Transmedia Discourse

It is not a coincidence that the title of this paper is an allusion to Gérard Genette’s work, the
Narrative Discourse.1 The aim of this study is to establish a dialogue with Genette’s “low
structuralism” 2 and reflect on his method’s transmedial aspects, so a more formal toolbox can
be created in the age of post-classical narratologies. A conversation with the structuralistic
approaches will prove to be not only a starting point for advanced media-analytical framework
but in the meantime, also be a powerful companion of contemporary narratological
perspectives.
Two further comments should be made. First of all, there should be at least some
explanation about why Genette’s work should be in the center of the focus. The Narrative
Discourse is a prime example of the genesis of a methodology. The argumentation is (mainly)
revolving around Marcel Proust’s monumental novel, the Remembrance of Things Past, and
Genette is building his approach from this (these) specific work(s) considering certain elements
of Proust’s novel universal, thus synthesizing his unique methodology from bottom to top.3 The
Narrative Discourse elegantly creates a comprehensive overview of a complex and intertwining
terminological system, and it achieves it through the colorful illustrative segments of primary
literature – this paper aims to accomplish the same while broadening the system of Genette with
important modification concerning transmedia narratives.
Second, it is indeed a must to point out the corpus of this endeavor, thus creating a
parallel structure of the Narrative Discourse. The reason of Genette’s choice was that the
criticism did not address Proust’s work as a unique entity but only to corroborate the
contemporary theory, so reduced to being an illustration and “vanish into the transcendence of
»laws of the genre.«”4 Moreover, the analyzed novel according to Genette is irreducible and it
illustrates only itself, rendering it, in a way, encyclopedic in nature.5
This paper will take the alternate reality game (ARG6) called EverymanHYBRID as its
main subject.7 This transmedia narrative actualized between 2010 and 2019 and distributed its
contents with the help of internet platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, other mediums
like e-mail or billboards, and specific play mechanics, for example, geocaching and live events.
During the ten years of narrative developments, more than 400 entries (story fragments)
emerged from this particular storyworld. It should be obvious by now that the
EverymanHYBRID (EMH in short) transmedia composition is the perfect choice if we would

1
Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1980).
2
Robert Scholes, Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction, 3. print (New Haven: Yale Univ. Pr, 1975), 157–
58.
3
Genette, Narrative Discourse, 23.
4
Genette, 22.
5
In the sense, Edward Mendelson used the term in: Edward Mendelson, “Encyclopedic Narrative: From Dante to
Pynchon,” MLN 91, no. 6 (December 1976): 1267–75.
6
More on the topic of ARGs: Adam Martin, ed., Alternate Reality Games White Paper (IGDA ARG SIG, 2006),
http://igda.org/arg; Antero Garcia and Greg Niemeyer, eds., Alternate Reality Games and the Cusp of Digital
Gameplay, Approaches to Digital Game Studies 5 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).
7
The ARG’s main YouTube channel and Twitter account can be accessed through here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/EverymanHYBRID and https://twitter.com/everymanhybrid.
like to investigate the nature of alternate reality games or transmedia narratives due to its sheer
magnitude.
However, there comes a disadvantage with this subject, too: while in the 1980s Genette
could easily make reference to the Recherche, as it was a classical, well-known piece of
modernist art, this is sadly not the case with such recent transmedia work, let alone this quite
new form of storytelling. This means that the paper will have to spend some time on explaining
the main concept of the narrative in a short paragraph, but in the meantime, it is unavoidable
that at some points there will be previously unexplained and maybe confusing references to the
story. The size of these ARG networks, and because of their method of storytelling, it is almost
impossible to describe the fictional world in a linear way.
The EverymanHYBRID universe conceived with the creation of the YouTube channel
and the submission of its first video (Introduction) on March 21st, 2010. At the same time, a
second public platform also appeared on the internet: the @EverymanHYBRID Twitter
account. These first fragments of the transmedia narrative (or entries as I would call them) are
setting up a story of a group of college friends (Vince, Evan, and Jeff) who decided to create
social media materials on healthy lifestyle and budget fitness tips. With the first two accounts
(or channels) the EMH created the diegetic simulation (or, perhaps, mimesis) of a similar trend
on social media. However, at this point, it wouldn’t be clear for any of the followers of their
material that these entries are parts of a fictional storyworld. This, the denial of the fiction’s
own fictionality is actually a well-discussed key property of alternate reality games.8
As the story develops, new videos and new status updates emerge from these accounts,
and the first plot points are starting to become clear: in almost every video they hide a little
“easter egg” for their fans and followers. This easter egg is the appearance of Slender Man,9 a
pop cultural monster from other video series10 and internet forums. The presence of this
paranormal activity was a way for the protagonists to garner views and publicity, however, they
came out with this hoax in the video called Public Service Announcement (released on May
20th, 2010). The apropos of this coming out was the showing up of a real paranormal threat, the
real Slender Man. Then, from the video called Joke’s Over (released on August 12th, 2010) the
protagonists stopped the creation of fitness content and they began their documentary on their
encounters with the paranormal.
Though Slender Man was a primary threat during 2010, it turns out, that the main
antagonist of the whole storyworld is not this well-known mythical creature but a yet unknown
demonic entity, HABIT, whose first influences on the story could be dated around the late
summer of 2010 and its first appearance in text around October 2010. On-screen first he can be
seen as late as May 11th, 2012 on the video called Box Six uploaded by TheGreenFeathers.11
From late 2010, HABIT takes over the role of the main antagonist and main paranormal threat
and it keeps being the case until the very last entry of the EMH universe (December 31st, 2018).

8
Dave Szulborski, This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming, First edition (S.l.: Lulu.com, 2005).
9
Slender Man was created on the Something Awful internet forum in a thread of a paranormal photoshop contest.
This monster is often depicted as a slender, shadowy figure with no face in a suit, growing black tentacles from its
body and it is described as a paranormal entity which kidnaps children by luring them to itself.
10
One of the most prominent series which used the Slender Man mythos is the ARG called Marble Hornets. (More
on the subject: Alex Mitchell, ed., Interactive Storytelling: 7th International Conference on Interactive Digital
Storytelling, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8832 (Cham: Springer, 2014), 148–55.)
11
It should be noted that TheGreenFeathers is not part of the core crew of the ARG but only a fan of the transmedia
storyworld.
 As for the structural aspect of EMH, it’s more complicated than the quite straightforward
story of the battle against the paranormal. Of course, the most intriguing is how its medial
components are connecting and interacting with each other, moreover, how the characters of
the EMH universe are represented through these channels, alternating between textual,
audiovisual and corporeal representations. So, we could say that while the complexity and
grandiosity of the Recherche are emerging from its textual structures, the same effect is coming
from the transmedial elaboration, thus mainly from its medial structures of EverymanHYBRID.

Transmedial narratology is not a newly invented field of literary theory, however, it is an

underresearched part of the discipline while in the meantime, the problems and questions
brought up by transmediality are getting urgent in the era of social media and post-truth
narratives. Thus, analyzing the structures of transmediality such as the EMH universe’s could
navigate us toward a better understanding of these relevant phenomena. The difficulty is, that
there is hardly any comprehensive methodological toolkit that is nearly as clear as the Narrative
Discourse. Using Genette’s work as a standard could help us create a useful basis for dialogue
around the terminological unity of transmedial narratology.
The discourse of transmedial narratology needs to be specified at this point. The main
goal of this paper is adapted from the works of Jan-Noël Thon, whose agenda is very close to
this endeavor, namely to create a terminological and methodological base for a genuinely
transmedial narratology, which is not “the same as a collection of medium-specific
narratological terms and concepts.”12
This theoretical criterion is important to note because it signals the analytical direction
of this paper and the range of transmedia phenomenon which will be discussed here: the main
focus points are those devices and phenomena that are present across multiple mediums. Thon
agreed with Ryan that the aspects of story/discourse, characters, events, and fictional worlds
are all can be considered as transmedial, however, they do not operate the same in every
medium.13 To take a look further back in time, we can also argue that the aspects Genette
thought structurally important in verbal narratives could be considered transmedial in a way:
the order, duration, mood, and voice are almost all adaptable into a transmedial discourse.
The Genettian discourse is basically revolving around the temporal and spatial
dimensions of narratives. We could say that the anachrony and anisochrony both can be
considered as a temporal aspect, while the notion of distance, perspective and the problems of
the narrator is a spatial question (in some cases in a more abstract fashion). While these
dimensions are to be kept while speaking about a transmedial discourse, we should involve a
third axis that is obvious in our case and is absent from Genette’s. It is the medial dimension
which will be the most important while discussing ARGs or other transmedia entities.
The mediality could prove to be significant, for example, when analyzing anisochronies:
the speed of narrative time and the speed of consuming will redefine itself on a whole other
level when considering the “medial gaps” between the entries and fragments of the narrative.
But the questions of focalization, distance and narratorial agency will also get the treatment of
the medial dimension. Moreover, the problem of diegesis/mimesis is exponentially more

12
Jan-Noël Thon, Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture, Frontiers of Narrative (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 15.
13
Thon, 22.
interesting when considering alternate reality game narratives. So, without further ado, let’s
delve into the closer analysis, noting, that as Genette, this paper is also not aiming to create a
watertight terminology with strict definitions, but to be a starting point for further research.

The discordance between the time of the story (fabula) and the time of the narration (syuzhet)
results in various narratological devices which were discussed in-depth by Genette. The main
aspect of the asynchronicity between the raw material of the story and its organization is called
anachrony. An anachrony can reach in the future in the form of prolepses; take the narration
into the past in the form of analepses; take a “sidestep” in the narration, omitting certain
information of the current storyline in the form of paralepses; or move the narration to a
temporally unidentifiable place in the story in the form of achronies.
It should be noted, however, that these anachronies are always relative to a specified
“first narrative.”14 This is the main temporal level from which every temporal discordance to
be defined. Genette illustrated it with Book XIX of Homer’s Odyssey, in which Ulysses evokes
how he got a certain wound.15 The idea of the discretization of story elements leads to the idea
of symbolizing these “zigzagging” of a narration’s temporality.
However, this consideration of discrete elements is exponentially relatable to the nature
of transmedia storytelling, as, in the case of these kinds of narrations, the elements are not
entirely selected subjectively but with a more empirical consideration. As it was mentioned
before, the entries can take the form of a YouTube video, a tweet, a blog post, or even a real-
world object. This brings us to state that if we are to talk about transmedia narratology from a
Genettian perspective, the anachronies can only be acknowledged between entries and not
inside the entries themselves, simply because that would be the realm of a certain media-
specific (monomedial) narratological discourse.
So, for example, if we take a look at the EMH video titled “- - -“ (June 20th, 2010)
intramedially we can isolate cinematic flashbacks and flashforwards. There are embedded clips
in the “first narrative” of the video where we can see footage (or resembling footage) from the
“A Day in the Life” (June 1st, 2010), while in the meantime there are clips edited in from a yet
unreleased video called “78of76.avi” (August 26th, 2010). Furthermore, there are clips from the
“A Day in the Life” video inserted in four more future videos.16 These instances can also be
considered as examples of transmedial ana- and prolepses, in the sense that these videos are
independent video entries in the EMH universe.
If we would like to create a coded sequence of these transmedia anachronies,
much like in the Narrative Discourse, we could do this easily with its same method. Genette
used letters and numbers to describe the anachronies in several segments of the Recherche.17
The letters signaled the place in the actual discourse (in the text) and the numbers told us the
chronological order from the perspective of the fabula. With omitting a few entries, we would
code the previously discussed series as:

“A Day in the Life” A1

14
Genette, Narrative Discourse, 48.
15
Genette, 48.
16
The referenced videos are titled „. –„, „. . . .”, „77of76.avi” and „Centralia”
17
Genette, Narrative Discourse, 38–47.
 “- - -“ B1/B2/B3
“78of76.avi” C3

In this encoding, we can see, that the middle entry (B) is both could be considered analeptic
towards A1 and proleptic towards C3, however, it can be stand alone as an autonomous
development of the narrative too.
The complications arise when we are dealing with transmedia anachronies happening
not only across different entries but different channels, or even different mediums too. This
becomes visible when the story begins to operate with the “Dr. Corenthal storyline” which hints
at the fact that the misadventures of the protagonists are an alternate iteration of a series of
similar events happened during the ‘70s. In these letters from the past both the characters and
the consumers (players/readers) are getting information on a certain Dr. James Corenthal, MD,
who works as a clinical psychiatrist dealing with homicidal and other horrifying deeds of
children.
These letters are analeptic in nature, however, they are not presented through the same
channel as, for example, most of the EMH videos. This brings us to the problem of encoding
the medial dimension as well, signaling them by Greek letters. Thus, creating the series below.

“Ashen Waste” (October 23rd, 2010) A2

“Evan’s fine. We took him to […]” (October 23rd, 2010) B2
Retrieval of “Box #3” (October 25th, 2010) C3
The first Corenthal Report (October 25th, 2010) D1
“@Fissioninferno Is this […]” (October 26th, 2010) E4
Diagram (October 26th, 2010) F4
“Centralia” (November 4th, 2010) G5

There should be a small explanation under this list: this sequence is the curated list of entries
around the retrieval of the first letter of Dr. Corenthal by a real-life consumer of the story with
the username: FlyingWarhorse. The first entry (“Ashen Waste”) is a video uploaded to the EMH
account where we can follow the protagonists on a road trip and where they happen to find a
handwritten letter with coordinates on it. The Greek letter  here represents the medium of
video. The second entry on the list is a tweet which was posted by Jeff simultaneously with the
road trip. The Greek letter  represents the medium of Twitter. The third entry is the real-life
retrieval of a box which was supposedly left by the antagonist of the EMH universe. The box
was hidden at the coordinates revealed by the “Ashen Waste” video. The letter  here symbolizes
the medium of a real-life object. Inside this box we (or FlyingWarhorse) find the report written
by Dr. Corenthal in 1971, thus chronologically this is the first in the order. What should be also
noted here is the letter  which is a picture uploaded synchronously with the tweet preceding it.
Finally, the closing element is another video, progressing the narration further.
With these observations and these supplementations to Genette’s method, we could say
that while there are the same kinds of analepses and prolepses (external-internal, heterodiegetic-
homodiegetic, and completing-repeating18), we need to add intra- and transmediality to these
types: there is an intramedial analepsis when taking into account the first curated sequence with
the video “- - -“, however, we can talk about a truly transmedial external heterodiegetic
completing analepsis when we examine the second curated sequence with the Corenthal letter
in mind.
What we also should consider is the different methods of creating or signaling these
anachronic occurrences. In monomedial narrations, these features are expressed with the help
of the medium’s specific narratological toolbox: in textual works it could be expressed verbally,
making the flashforwards and -backs explicit; in films, one can utilize the visual dimension, for
example, using different tones for different chronological segments, or could use paratextual
cues too. However, when we are dealing with transmedial anachronies, the hints are much more
implicit, materialistic and medium-conscious.
In the Corenthal sequence, the report is dated to 1971 (which signals the reach of the
analepses) and the report’s text is referencing a character named Evan (which is not exactly the
same as the protagonist Evan), thus connecting the narrative universes. An even more important
connection between the found box and the narrative of the preceding EMH video is the
coordinates written on the paper the protagonists stumbled upon during their road trip. This
geographical puzzle is an enigma which is much more literal and corporeal than the ones
Barthes’ hermeneutic code states but not unlike it:19 it constitutes a suspension which contains
the promise of a delayed resolution.
To complete the examination of the Genettian terminology of this matter, we need to
take a look at the dimensions of the specific anachronic occurrences. In the Narrative
Discourse, the author coins the terms reach and extent which are further properties of the ana-
and prolepses, and which helps the differentiation between external and internal types of
anachronies. 20 However, with the medial dimension in mind, we need to make an addition at
this point too. This terminological adjustment will be the one which will help to distinct intra-
and transmedial anachronies. So, while the reach informs us about the temporal distance (the
first Corenthal document’s reach is 39 years) and the extent about the duration of the anachrony
(a few months of events in the Corenthal case), a third property, vehicle, will inform us about
the medial nature of the occurrence (in our example, it is the letter, an object which carries out
the analeptic effect). If the vehicle of the anachrony is the same as the vehicle of the determined
first narrative, then we are talking about intramedial anachrony, if otherwise, we are dealing
with a transmedial one.
To revise Genette’s terminologies of anachrony is an important step to prove that these
phenomena of the narrative time are not only observable in the discourse of the verbal narratives

18
Though, here the paper does not goes into details regarding how these properties are happening in some
transmedia narratives, let us see a few notable examples. The Matrix franchise would be a viable choice to illustrate
these. We can talk about external heterodiegetic analepses in the case of The Animatrix (2003) anime short World
Record, in which a separate storyline can be seen dated somewhere before the first movie entry. Internal
homodiegetic repeating analepsis could be illustrated by the video game The Matrix: Path of Neo (2005), where
the player can play through the main storyline of the movie series, however, being a video game, it also gives the
player more insight, more possibilites, more freedom to roam the virtual premises, thus filling in occasional
paralepses. Finally, the case of Enter the Matrix (2003) is also worth to note, as this transmedia entry works as an
internal heterodiegetic (although it could be argued against) completing analepsis as it leads the player into a
flashback narrative of two supporting characters of the main storyline.
19
Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 28–30.
20
Genette, Narrative Discourse, 47–48.
but in the transmedia discourse too. Moreover, transmedia narratives are exponentially more
prone to utilize anachronistic devices, because of the fragmented nature of their storytelling
structure. In ARGs we have entries of videos, blog posts and objects such as a pendrive or a
book, in other transmedia franchises, we have whole movie entries (like The Matrix) interacting
with AAA video games (such as Enter The Matrix or The Matrix: The Path of Neo). This means
that ordering is one of the main strategies transmedia discourses operating with.

Anachrony in the narrative discourse is a matter of order, emerging from the discordance
between the first narrative and a temporally different part of the fabula. These can be flashbacks,
flashforwards, “sidesteps”, and chronologically undeterminable story units.
On the next level, however, we are dealing with anisochrony if we take into account the
duration of the narrating act and how it is related to the time of the story. Genette argues that
unlike in the case of anachronies, it is impossible to create a narrative without anisochronies.21
These devices are responsible for the “rhythm” of the discourse and this rhythm could be
categorized into four main categories: summary (where the duration of the story is longer than
the length of narration), pause (where the duration of the story is infinitely smaller than the
length of narration), ellipsis (where the duration of the story is infinitely greater than the length
of narration), and finally scene (where the duration of the story is relatively the same as the
length of narration).
If we turn toward transmedia storytelling, we can instantly tell that the categorization
won’t be that analogous than in the case of anachronies, simply because transmedia can only
be studied in between narrating instances to have observations in the realm “above” (or
independently of) the monomedial discourses. This means, that is we discuss the Genettian
rhythm or the discordance between the duration and the narrative (text), we are dealing with it
inside a single medium.
But, it doesn’t mean that duration in the sense of rhythm is not a factor in transmedial
narratives. More so, that it would be wise to rename these devices from the Genettian
anisochronies to actually rhythm. The change is necessary because in this sense we will not
examine the discordance between the narrative act and the length of the story but the frequency
of entries in relation to their respective length.
First, take a look at the frequency of the entries, as it consists of two other factors namely
the number of entries over a course of time. This can give us widely different results throughout
transmedia creations. Let’s see how the Matrix franchise maintained its rhythm during the
course of its (official) activity:22

The Matrix (March 31st, 1999)

Enter the Matrix (May 14th, 2003)
The Matrix Reloaded (May 15th, 2003)
The Animatrix (June 3rd, 2003)
The Matrix Comics (October 2003)

21
Genette, 88.
22
Not considering here entries created by fans or secondary literature on the official entries.
 The Matrix Revolutions (November 5th, 2003)
The Matrix Comics (Pt. 2) (February 2005)
The Matrix Online (March 22nd, 2005)
The Matrix: Path of Neo (November 7th, 2005)

This shows us that the franchise had two major waves of entries: one during the year 2003 and
the other in 2005. The rhythm is uneven, and most of the (official, canonic) information were
relayed during 2003. This, of course, primarily have a financial and industrial impact, however,
from a narratological perspective, it shows us that during the 2003 wave, the franchise had more
opportunity (in a temporal and quantitative sense) to detail its storyworld, rather than further
building its main storyline.
In contrast to the Matrix franchise, the EMH ARG is operating with a much higher
frequency. Yearly on average EMH had 47 entries, which is obviously higher than the Matrix’s
1.3 average entry per year. Of course, the difference is inherently coming from their respective
transmedia structures – EverymanHYBRID is an alternate reality game, which is creating an
immersive, almost real-time experience for its audience; the Matrix, on the other hand, is a
transmedia franchise which works with more standard formats (such as movies and comic
books in a traditional way), thus not focusing on the immersion but on the in-depth storytelling.
Another notable difference between the two franchises is how constant their ways of
storytelling. While the Matrix franchise had all in all three waves of publishing entries, and
between these waves, there were years without any submission, EMH never had a year without
entry. It doesn’t mean that there were no momentary hiatuses in content, it means that on the
yearly scale the EMH had not lost its momentum in a narratological sense, establishing a vastly
different consumer experience.
This direct us towards another property of transmedia narratives, which does not have a
parallel case in the Narrative Discourse as intramedial narratives are always constant in
storytelling. Therefore, I propose the term fluidity which describes how transmedia entries are
being distributed over the course of their actualization focusing on the duration of the hiatuses
in the distribution of their separate entries. It goes without saying, however, that when
discussing fluidity one should state the scope of the examination. For example, on a yearly
scope, EMH is more fluid than the Matrix franchise. Although, if we analyze EMH on a weekly
scope and Matrix on a yearly, we won’t get the same impression regarding fluidity. From this
perspective: ARG narratives tend to be more fluid than other transmedia franchises as stated
above.
Finally, there is another key property of the entries that should be discussed here
regarding the subject of rhythm. Besides the production value of the two, previously mentioned
transmedia instances, the entries also differ in length. So, while the Matrix franchise is operating
with movies that have averagely 134 minutes of running time, and games operating with
averagely over 8 hours of playtime,23 EMH offers 4 minutes of playtime averagely per video
entry in the first year. Separately speaking the Matrix franchise basically offers longer
engagement per entry than EMH does, thus making it visible on another level, how are these
narratives obeying to different design principles.

23
According to https://howlongtobeat.com/.
 This brings us to examine how the frequency and the length of the entries can be related
to each other, bringing into play the narrative movements of Genette,24 however, these will be
on a transmedial level. The result will bring us closer to a categorization method for transmedia
creations, forming four different theoretical forms of narrative information distribution:

Frequency of entries: low – Length of entries: low

(Some web-based ARGs such as Cat Ghost25)
Frequency of entries: high – Length of entries: high
(TV series with regular transmedia tie-ins)
Frequency of entries: high – Length of entries: low
(Most ARGs, for example, EMH)
Frequency of entries: low – Length of entries: high
(Most transmedia franchises, for example, the Matrix)

As we can see, only two of these categories have exact and more definable examples: the third
one and the fourth one. The former is mirroring the structure of most ARGs as they are operating
with short, easily consumable fragments of information. The game-based, video-based,
photographic, object-based, textual, and website-based entries are rendering the ARG
accessible for the audience, and more immersive than other transmedia narratives. EMH,
Marble Hornets, ILoveBees or The Beast are all based on this structure of distribution.
The fourth category, however, is working with the opposite design principle: the entries
are published with low frequency, however, they are much more engaging and demands more
concentrated time from its audience. The examples we could bring here are the Marvel
Cinematic Universe or the previously mentioned Matrix universe.
The other two did not have such a clear outline of what specific forms they could
describe but we can point out some examples in these categories. First, the low frequency –
moderate length can describe, for example, those ARGs, which are hardly regular in their
submissions and even when they publish a fragment of information it is following the more
consumable forms. The illustration here was another YouTube-based transmedia series Cat
Ghost, which produced roughly 15 video entries (with very low average duration), and 9
(relatively short) games tied in the narrative universe throughout its 3 years. This creates a
different kind of consumer experience: it is immersive in a way, as the games very much
immerse the player into the storyworld, but it does not create the illusion of synchronicity or
parallelity that strong as the EMH’s diary-like format. This means that transmedia creations
with this structure could perhaps be labeled as artworks with ARG elements.
The final category, which could be defined as high in frequency and long regarding the
entries length, is again difficult to outline for a single form of transmedia storytelling. This
structure could describe a hypothetical creation where there is a regular flow of narrative
fragments which are also, in the meantime, lengthy. For example, a tv series with rich
transmedial capacities, like the Norweigan-created but internationally adapted and Facebook-

24
Genette, Narrative Discourse, 94–95.
25
The video entries can be accessed through the Cat Ghost channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwdmPCVOhTW2u_fKpxRLMdA
distributed Skam. The concept of the show is to show the everyday lives of a group of teenage
students, however, the video entries are submitted irregularly on Facebook, at the same time
that the actual happenings are taking place. So, if the entry is depicting events in the night, the
actual clips will be uploaded in the night too. Besides the video entries, the protagonist’s
fictional social media accounts are also giving out more fragments of the narrative, thus
following the updates on Instagram or Facebook can give the consumer more insight on the
storyworld. The format of Skam can heavily relate to the second distribution structure on the
list as it was generating content with high frequency, and the duration of these entries was
arguably lengthier than a general ARG’s.
Frequency of entry
Low High
Length of entry Low Artworks with ARG ARGs (EverymanHYBRID)
elements
(Cat Ghost)
High Skam Transmedia Franchises
(Matrix)
1. Table - Summary of distribution structures

The temporal devices which are operating in a monomedial discourse cannot be utilized directly
when one encounters transmedial narratives. With the revision of Genettian terminology, we
could sketch up a methodological toolkit which could help to grasp the vast systems of these
kinds of narrative artworks. During this revision, we’d seen that the typology of anachronies
could be more or less adapted to the transmedia discourse with the addition of another, medial
dimension. However, when we consider anisochronic devices, the adaptation from verbal
narratives (or from monomedial) to transmedial is not as smooth: the discordance between the
duration of the story and the length of the narrative is only making sense in the discourse of a
single medium. The duration and frequency in transmedia narratives are problematic on another
level.

Stepping away from the temporal dimension of the Genettian discourse, we encounter the
spatial aspects of the narrative. These elements are the different notions of narrating situations:
the place of the person or narrator in the discourse, the mimetic distance of storytelling, the
points of view, and the narrative levels.26 The spatiality of monomedial works can be dissected
with the help of their respective narratological methodology. When considering literary texts,
we are focusing on discerning the relative level of the narrative situation – where is it located
in relation to the “first narrative,” and where can we place the person of the narrator in this
system. Identifying these factors, we position it inside Genette’s frame of reference of extra-
intra-, hetero- or homodiegesis. Besides the positioning of the narrating situation, we can also
analyze the perspective of this instance, thus moving from an external examination to an
internal one. Here, Genette determines the type of speech the instance is utilizing at certain
times: narrated, transposed (uttered transposed or inner transposed), or immediate speech; and
also describe how the narrative situation “sees,” or how the events are focalized. It could be a
nonfocalized narrative (where the narrating situation knows more than the character), internal

26
Genette only considered the problems around „voice” to be a matter of the narrating situation (Genette, Narrative
Discourse, 213–15.). Here, we will discuss the narrating situation with the addition of distance and perspective
too, and excluding the temporal dimension of the narrating act.
focalization (when the narrating situation knows approximately the same as the character), or
externally focalized narrative (when the narrator knows less than the character).
These classifications, however, could be easily contested as numerous narratologists
already did. The problem of focalization was often the focus of Genette’s critics, for example,
Mieke Bal broadened the term, as she argued that the focalizer is not a singular entity, but
instead a unit in a hierarchy which also consists the focalizing (as an act) and the focalized (as
a subject).27 This is an important point to be made, as this points out the contrast between “who
sees?” and “who speaks?” 28
The problem of focalization or point-of-view is enhanced when we consider the medium
of the film. The movies are having a multi-channel toolbox to express focalization: information
can be both visual and auditory.29 This means that the act of focalizing can not only be done
with the help of a verbal medium but with the capabilities of the camera and perhaps of the
nonverbal nature of music too. However, I won’t get into much detail regarding the vast
literature of film narratology.
The next dimension that should be explored regarding the problem of the narrating
situation is the question of interactivity and action. This extra layer is getting increasingly
relevant if one is dealing with games, or more precisely video games. The growing discipline
of game studies is paying a lot of attention recently to how games and their narratives are being
focalized and also, how player interaction can be fitted into this structure. The main approaches
to this question are the entities of avatars in computer games;30 and the effects of player actions
on the storyworld of a video game.31
Video games and its affordances in relation to the player who controls the interaction is
the basis of a new perspective on narrative focalization. This perspective is being defined in
three axes: the spatial (which includes the point-of-view and location), the actional (which tells
us, for example, where can the player interact with the interface), and the ideological (which
tells us about how the various events are being evaluated in the storyworld) axis.32 From these
three axes (or perspectives) the actional is the one what we should pay more attention to because
this is the layer which deals with interactivity – differentiating it from most literary and
cinematic works.
The spaces of video games are allowing the players to interact with them through the
interface,33 thus the elements of the narrating situation are complemented with the dimension
of action. This aspect, the “point of action” is described in detail by Britta Neitzel, who argues
27
Mieke Bal, ed., Narrative Theory, Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (London ; New York:
Routledge, 2004), 272–73.
28
Rimmon-Kenan explains it in a very illustrative way: Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction:
Contemporary Poetics, 2nd edition, first issued in paperback, The New Accent Series (London New York:
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011), 73–76.
29
Seymour Benjamin Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film, Paperback print.,
[reprint], Cornell Paperbacks (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 2000), 158–59.
30
Marcus Carter, Martin Gibbs, and Michael Arnold, “Avatars, Characters, Players and Users: Multiple Identities
at/in Play,” 2012, 4.
31
Jan-Noël Thon, “Computer Games, Fictional Worlds, and Transmedia Storytelling: A Narratological
Perspective,” 2009, 6; Fraser Allison, “Whose Mind Is the Signal? Focalization in Video Game Narratives,” 2015,
16.
32
Jan-Noël Thon, “Perspective in Contemporary Computer Games,” in Point of View, Perspective, and
Focalization: Modeling Mediation in Narrative, ed. Peter Hühn, Wolf Schmid, and Jörg Schönert, Narratologia :
Contributions to Narrative Theory 17 (Berlin ; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 279–80.
33
Thon, 287.
that we can draw three basic distinctions when talking about the relationship between the spatial
distribution of the action and the game space.34 Firstly (as Thon also points this out35), the point
of action can reside either within (intradiegetic point of action) or outside the diegesis
(extradiegetic point of action),36 which means that the action the player invoke could either be
ascribed to a certain character or object in the game’s world, or not.37
Secondly, we can identify concentric and eccentric points of action, meaning that the
invoked action can be either executed in (or on) one location only in the game space, or it could
be implemented at multiple locations.38 For example, the “jump” action in an FPS game can be
described as a concentric action, because it can only affect the player’s avatar. However, the
more universal actions in, for example, real-time strategy games are eccentric in nature: a great
example could be the Orbital Drop Shock Trooper units in Halo Wars, in which these support
game elements could be dropped anywhere on the playing field.39
And finally, the point of action can be either direct or indirect. This property is referring
to how the player is interacting and affecting the avatar or other game objects. We can talk
about direct point of action, for example, in the case of a third-person shooter in which a press
of a button instantly and directly makes the avatar move (or shoot) in a certain direction.
However, when we consider the case of real-time strategy games, the point of action is indirect
in the sense that we cannot influence that in what way our troops should make their moves or
shoot at enemy units.40

It is obvious that when we examine the narrating situation of an alternate reality game, we can
talk about it in two ways. First, we can describe the countless different situations that are
existing on the level of the narrative system’s different channels and entries. From this
perspective, we are talking about a collection of diverse narratological situations, moods, and
methods of focalizations. In these transmedia systems, the approach of literary, cinematic and
ludological narratology can be applied separately. However, this does not guide us towards a
transmedial narratological approach, instead, it would show us that ARGs are operating with
various mediums and forms of storytelling, rendering it a quite unique concept.
The truly transmedial approach would be if we consider the whole network of the ARG
as one system, or as one narrating situation. With this in mind, we can create a description from
two distinct directions: one from the standpoint of the narrative, and one from the standpoint of
the consumer. This means, that there are aspects of the narrating situation which is significant
on the level of the story or the plot, on a more passive level, on a more classical narratological
level. The other standpoint of this systemic approach would be of the consumers: how one is
interacting with the ARG network, how can one affect it, so focusing on the “game” aspects of
the alternate reality games.

34
Britta Neitzel, “Point of View und Point of Action – Eine Perspektive auf die Perspektive in Computerspielen,”
n.d.
35
Thon, “Perspective in Contemporary Computer Games,” 288.
36
Neitzel, “Point of View und Point of Action – Eine Perspektive auf die Perspektive in Computerspielen.”
37
Thon, “Perspective in Contemporary Computer Games,” 288.
38
Thon, 288.
39
Thon, 289.
40
Thon, 289.
 Let’s take a look at the viewpoint of the narrative. Obviously, it is rather hard to talk
about ARGs’ narrating situations in a unified and inclusive manner, however, we can measure
the singular situations’ impact on the whole, thus mapping the system’s collective properties.
In the case of EMH, we are dealing with mainly seven different competing narratorial
figures and five major platforms (such as YouTube, email, and Tumblr) to be utilized by these
“voices.” Throughout the narrative, the consumer encounters instances of internally and
externally focalized entries, however, there are no examples for nonfocalized ones: we never
see with “vision from behind.”
The distance is widely varying in type. We encounter with immediacy when watching
most of the video entries of the main EMH channel – with a few exceptions, the development
of the plot is represented directly in these videos. Of course, we should not forget that entries
like “No hysterics. Not yet.” are giving us opposing examples as in videos like these, the
narrating situation is providing us with more distant and transposed instances when, for
example, describing past events which are not represented in any other, more direct forms.
A more distant narratorial situation is being produced mainly with the help of textual
platforms like Twitter and Tumblr. The entries on these sites are most of the time giving to the
consumers indirect insights or reports on previous events of the diegesis, hardly creating an
intense mimetic experience.
The most mimetic and immersive experiences can be achieved with the method of
regarding the real world as the medium of the story. During the course of EMH, there were
numerous instances when the narrating situation took place in the actual real world of its
consumers. The retrieval of Box #3 was mentioned previously as a pivotal moment in the
narrative. It was an organic part of the plot, which was found by a consumer of the story with
the username “FlyingWarhorse” on 25th October 2010 at the coordinates: 40°18’05.1” N
74°52’24.8” W. The box was actually a hollowed out book which contained three defaced
pictures, a business card, a paper with a coded message on it, another folded paper, and the also
previously mentioned piece of the Corenthal Report.
These objects were not merely representations of the storyworld, they were actually bits
and pieces of it. They bore direct significance and direct connections with the plot and the
characters of the ARG. If we consider the object itself a narrating situation, then we can say
that the distance of this is closer than any literary artifact can ever be.
Taking a look at the various depicted distances of the numerous narrating situations, we
can measure the fluctuation of this factor in the ARG system. Moreover, one could also make
observations about the total number of different distances in the whole narrative, thus point out
the proportions of immediacy. However, this is a model that this research has not created yet.
On the other hand, we can examine the specific narrating situations’ voices regarding
their involvement in the narrative – rendering them hetero- or homo-, extra- or intradiegetic -,
thus describing the narrative levels, and in the meantime, we can make observations on the
actual instance who/what owns the narratorial power. While the former gives us a more
microstructural analysis, the latter can give us a macrostructural overview, as the owners of
narrating situations are existing across the different mediums in the ARG system.
The entries of an ARG can be affiliated to certain characters of the storyworld. This
analysis had been done with the 419 identified entries of EMH. With this data, we can create a
holistic overview of the narrating characters projected on the whole ARG system, so we can
make observations about the size of authority and the importance of these different narrative
agents. Specifically, if we take the example of the EMH system (1. Figure), we can tell that the
main antagonist, HABIT, has the biggest portion as the owner of narrating situations, however,
what should be also pointed out is that the category called ‘Other’ is ranking as the third biggest
“character” to own narrating situations. It should be noted that under this label we categorized
all those narratorial agents which were not part of the core fictional character pool, rather they
are agents from outside of the fictions: like FlyingWarhorse or other actants of the outside
world. This should indicate for us, that the EMH system is rendering the actual, extradiegetic,
extrafictional dimension to play out an important role as owners of narrating situations –
questioning the borders between “outside reality” and fiction.
Alex
Other 2% Damsel
16% 10%

Vince EMH
8% 15%

Evan
1%

Jeff
22%

HABIT
26%

1. Figure – Percentages of narrating situation ownership

Apart from the holistic analysis and visualization of the owners of narrating situations, it is also
worthwhile to inspect the fluctuation of them in a diachronic fashion. This way, we can create
models (2. Figure and 3. Figure) on how the system changes its focus from one voice or

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Alex Damsel EMH Evan HABIT Jeff Vince Other

2. Figure – Fluctuation of dominating voices (separately counted)

character to another. If we take a look at the first diagram of fluctuation, we can point out how
the voices were consolidated during the course of the ARG: from the more chaotic and
“polytonal” early years, the narrative resorted to using only three or four voices towards 2017
and 2018.

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Alex Damsel EMH Evan HABIT Jeff Vince Other

3. Figure – Fluctuation of dominating voices (expressed in percentages)

The second diagram of fluctuation used the same input data of the numbers of entries, however,
here it is expressed in percentages projected on the ARG narrative’s calendar years, thus telling
us about how big portions do the owners of the narrative situations represent at a certain point
of time. The consolidation of voices is even more visible from this perspective. Moreover, we
can learn from this visualization about the changes in the main protagonists: from 2010 to 2011,
Jeff was the one who dominated the transmedia discourse of the EMH core group, however, the
decrease in importance in around 2011 coincided with the growth of the voice of the “others.”
From this, we can hypothesize that the shift in narrative power was set in motion by opening
up the ARG system for more enhanced consumer interactions.

These are just a few examples of how can we think and how can we analyze alternate reality
games and transmedia storytelling instances from a systemic perspective. These could also
show you analyses from the narratorial point of view, however, we can also approach
narratological problems in ARGs from the other side, from the standpoint of the consumer with
the help of game studies.
What we need to see first is why should we talk about two different perspectives like
the two sides of the mirror. The classic problem of the ‘implied author – narrator – implied
reader’ and its variations introduce us points of liminality in the narrative discourse. 41 This
liminal nature between the various elements is gradually more important when discussing
transmedia discourse, as these entities are establishing not only one but numerous thresholds

41
These points of liminality are also becoming explicit when one is discussing the difference between extra- and
intradiegesis.
along with the narrating situations of the various mediums. And the increasing number of
thresholds are directing the attention towards the cases of crossing and interaction. It is also
needed to point out that with the huge number of mediums the transmedia discourse becomes
hyper-mediated and dispersed.
In a discourse like the ARG system, the consumer needs to interact in a more direct
manner with the network because the narrative meaning of the whole will only emerge with the
help of actions. These actions, drawing from the classification of Neitzel, can be positioned in
a three-directional taxonomic system: the point of action (PoA) can be either direct or indirect,
intra- or extradiegetic, and con- or eccentric.
Taking the example of EMH, or more specifically the retrieval of Box #3, we can
determine that FlyingWarhorse’s point of action was intradiegetic, as it can be ascribed to a
character he himself “played.” It was also a concentric point of action, as the retrieval of this
specific box could not have been done at another location of the “game space.” And finally, the
retrieval was a direct point of action, manipulating his own avatar (in this case: it coincides
with his own body) directly.
Another interesting action could be (if we extend the area of the ARG) the data mining,
puzzle-solving and wiki-creating activity of the consumers. These actions are all extradiegetic
(as, for example, the figuring out of a coded message cannot or hardly can be ascribed to an
intradiegetic character or object), eccentric (as, for example, the archiving method of a set of
events can be implemented on multiple occasions), and direct (as, for example, the process of
data mining in a source code is directly done by the consumer).
However, if we step away from alternate reality games and take a look at the Matrix’s
transmedia franchise, we encounter a different structure of actions systemwise. The player who
plays with the video game Enter the Matrix is making an action which is – from the transmedia
discourse’s point of view – extradiegetic (as playing the game itself does not affect the Matrix
universe), concentric (as the action playing with the Enter the Matrix can only be done at this
specific transmedia “location”), and direct (as the action of play is directly influenced by the
consumer itself).
All these actions can be described as a constituting element of a narrating situation
despite the fact that these are not controlled mainly by the diegesis of the fictional universe but
by the consumers who are interacting with the storyworld. This means, that to analyze a
transmedial entity’s narrating situations, we must combine the holistic observations regarding
the classical approaches (who speaks, who sees, where is the situation located) and the similarly
systemic observations of consumer actions (who is acting, where it is acting, how it is acting).

Lastly, as a final dimension, the flow of information could also provide useful knowledge on
how narrative situations are structured. First, we dissected the notions of distance and voice on
a transmedial level, then we focused on the consumer actions, but thirdly we need to take a look
at the channels which are distributing the diverse types of narrative information.
Channels, in this sense, are the uniquely defined platforms of transmedia entities
through which the entries are being published. This means, that a channel could be either a
Twitter account on the internet or Twitter itself, depending on the specific nature of the
transmedia system. For example, in the EMH network, we consider YouTube, Twitter, emails,
the real world, etc. as channels. When we take the Matrix transmedia franchise, the channels
could be comics, video games, and movies.42
This tells us that in more complex transmedia entities (like in ARGs) it would worth
take a look into how the narrative situations are distributed through the different channels, too.
It could give us more insight into the narrative network’s structure from a third perspective.

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20
0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Chat Email Mediafire Real Life

Tumblr Twitpic Twitter Unfiction
Ustream YouTube Other

4. Figure – Fluctuation of channel usage (separately counted)

16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Chat Email Mediafire Real Life

Tumblr Twitpic Twitter Unfiction
Ustream YouTube Other

5. Figure – Fluctuation of channel usage (separately counted) (2010-2011 omitted)

These diagrams about the channel fluctuation are telling us about the transmedia network’s
medial properties (4. Figure, 5. Figure). This shows us that Twitter (at the early years) and
YouTube are the two dominant channels for the entries, however, the latter becomes the primary
information distributing platform, rendering the ARG a video-heavy narrative. From the 4th and
5th figures, we can also tell, that while the Twitter’s textual channel is plunging very fast in

42
In this example the channels are almost entirely coinciding with the mediums the entries represent, however, it
is not the case in every transmedia projects.
terms of the number of entries, YouTube proved to produce a steadier flow of entry publication
during the course of the narrative.

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Chat Email Mediafire Real Life

Tumblr Twitpic Twitter Unfiction
Ustream YouTube Other

6. Figure – Fluctuation of channel usage (expressed in percentages)

If we follow the visualizing methods of the narratorial ownership of voice, we can produce the
illustrative diagram of the channel fluctuation which depicts what portions do the different
channels represent in relation to the whole at a certain point of time (6. Figure). Here, instead
of observing the absolute numbers of entries distributed by a specific medium, we can study
the changes in importance more effectively. From this perspective, YouTube’s dominance is
indisputable. But, what should also be considered is that interestingly, towards the endgame of
the storyworld, the textual channels are having a comeback, this way creating another wave of
multimodality similarly how it was at the 2010-2011 period of EMH.
These visualizations and the taxonomy of consumer actions are obviously not
exhausting every possibility in the realm of the transmedia discourses’ analysis. These methods
for the study of the spatial dimension of these narrative systems, however, can give us a valuable
toolbox for further research and discussions.

We’ve seen that Genette’s terminology created an efficient basis for developing a transmedial
approach: the notions of anachronies and anisochronies are proved to be valuable to adapt to
this postclassical environment. Moreover, certain aspects of the Genettian mood and voice were
also capable to develop them to be suitable for studying transmedia entities. However, with the
fruitful addition of game studies, we can see how important it is, to gather inspiration from
neighboring disciplines. For future researches, interdisciplinary outlooks should be one of the
main focus points: game studies can bring much more to the table regarding interactivity.
What we should absolutely take away from this lengthy discussion on a postclassical
narratological methodology, is that we should see the importance and utility of a theoretical
perspective which is not only focusing on the transmedia system’s monomedial narratologies
in a discrete manner, but, in the meantime, system-consciously producing analyses with the
help of a more holistic, truly transmedial approach.