The Parasites Multiverse
An Open-Source Transmedia Project
by Robert Pratten, Zen Films
www.zenfilms.com

contents
• What is Transmedia? Text is Clickable
• The Parasites Multiverse
– Synopsis
– Transmedia elements
– Parallel universes
– Web-series with audience participation
– Game architecture & transmedia relationships
• Engaging The Audience Across Multiple Platforms
– Designing Parasites around social activities
– Expectations of audience participation
– Managing complexity with the Klatcher Unified Transmedia Platform
• Revenue Model
– Content goes FREE but there’s charges for utility, convenience, personalisation & merchandise
– How will a “free” revenue model work?
• Problems Anticipated
• Reasons to Anticipate Success

BACK TO CONTENTS
About “transmedia”
• Storytelling across multiple forms of media with each medium
making distinctive contributions to our understanding of the
story
• Complex fictional worlds that can sustain multiple interrelated
characters and their stories
• Allows multiple entry points through the different media
• The vast story creates gaps that encourages fans to create their
own stories to fill the gaps
• Henry Jenkins: “has so far worked best either in independent
projects where the same artist shapes the story across all of
the media involved or in projects where strong collaboration (or
co-creation) ”

Transmedia: cross-media & cross- BACK TO CONTENTS
platform

Parasites Multiverse: core Synopsis BACK TO CONTENTS
• Set in a near-future dystopia, contagious flesh-eating
parasites fatally convert human cells into metal. The slow
parasitic assimilation of the human body induces alternate
waves of pleasurable hallucinations and frightening
paranoia.
• Some, at the insistence of the Government, have chosen to
embrace the nanoscopic predator; others have rejected it
and live as anarcho-Buddhists outside the cities

The Parasites multiverse BACK TO CONTENTS

Parasites’ transmedia elements BACK TO CONTENTS
• Open-source storyworld: Creative Commons+ allowing free copying, sharing &
remixing for non-commercial use
• Feature film with live interactive screenings
– Results of live screenings impact online gameplay
– Cellphone voting on alternative endings
– Screening events are real-world meet-ups/social events for friends met online
• Online game:
– Combination of strategy, role-play, & casual games with different levels of complexity and
participation to suit the time-availability and motivation of a wide range of potential audience
– Voting at screenings affects game & player progress (screenings & voting matters!)
• Web series created by feature film team and audience using rushes and additional
digital assets provided by feature film & audience creators
• Creative community contributing content (fan fiction, audio, video, graphics) ,
feedback, discussion, locations, characters etc.
• Online marketplace: $ to incentivize participation

A Parallel Universe BACK TO CONTENTS
“Official” storyline with multiple opportunities for digression, personalisation & contribution
Benefits: Benefits:
• Audience engagement throughout project • Contribute something bigger to portfolio
“Official” • Build awareness from Day #1 • Re-purpose or create something original
Community
Feature • Lower cost, better quality input & feedback • Use of professional digital assets
Projects • Online marketplace ($ incentive)
Project
• Career builder
Core Story
World
Scripts Storyboards
Poster Designs DVD Designs Etc.
Multiple
Graphic Designs Costume Designs cross-fertilization

Audience-participated web series BACK TO CONTENTS
(1 of 2)
• Web Series is multi-threaded, multi-media
– Project produces 30 webisodes that re-purpose the feature film
content & unused media (e.g. “delete scenes”)
– Additional webisodes to explore characters, lore, backstory
– Audience free to branch off at each webisode with its own
storyline (alternative universes)
– Selected rushes (dailies) made available for re-editing and re-use
– Audience free to add their own content to webisode or modify
our “official” assets
– Branded content has potential to be based on location, device or
channel (e.g. mobile network-dependent)

Audience-participated web series BACK TO CONTENTS
(2 of 2)
“Official” Storyline Webisode 1 Webisode 2 Webisode 3 …. Webisode 30
Alt Storyline A Webisode 1.5
Alt Storyline B Webisode 2c Webisode 3c
Additional
Non-Linear Content Webisodes
-Video -Location dependent?
User-Generated Branded
- Graphics - Device dependent?
Content Content
- Audio - Operator dependent?
- Machinima

Parasites game BACK TO CONTENTS
• Draws from and contributes to the Parasites storyworld
• Provides different levels of complexity and participation to suit the time-availability and motivation of
a wide range of potential audience
• Audience falls into 3 categories:
– Gamers: those most active in the game
– Players: those recruited to play games-within-games (themed problem solvers and causal games)
– Observers: those who get pleasure (excitement) from seeing progress unfold
• Provides a strategic game that motivates players to win, explore, build relationships
• Allows socializing & collaboration among players
• Encourage viral spread of the game by offering increased points/additional webisodes etc. for
recruitment
• Game progress influences the outcome of a screening and live voting at a screening feeds back into the
game and affects game progress; influences availability of new assets (permissions)
• Allows personalization: customized assets (clips, audio, graphics) and "objects" (e.g. tools, weapons,
cars, dwellings etc.) to be created by the community
• Allows custom objects to be traded (swapped and sold).

Parasites game architecture BACK TO CONTENTS
Game
Logic/AI
• Casual (2D)
• Social RPG/Strategy (2D)
• MMORPG (3D)
GAMES

Parasites game content & signaling BACK TO CONTENTS
(1 of 2)
GAMES

Parasites game content & signaling BACK TO CONTENTS
(2 of 2)
UG video & machinima
results
recruitment
GAMES

Game story BACK TO CONTENTS
• Game story starts 500 years after end of feature film
– this allows the game to be more futuristic and the feature film to have a lower budget
(because costumes, props and locations can be more contemporary)
• Global warming has turned much of the UK into forest or is under water with only
the wealthiest cities able to afford the continual cleaning and deforestation
• The cities are gleaming wonderlands of skyscrapers that are ruthlessly ruled by a
governing dictatorship that lives in the Capital.
• Governing elite spy on the population with millions of cameras and tracking
everyone’s whereabouts and life history from cradle to grave on national
databases. People in cities live like docile animals, taught to conform and beaten
into submission
• The prison population has soared due to psychometric testing of children age 7to
identify possible criminal traits and tendencies. Many tower blocks on the edge of
the city have been turned into borstal-blocks or feral “kid cities”
• Society segmented into four basic Sects (next slide…)

Game Sects BACK TO CONTENTS
• Games is divided into four societal Sects:
– Kings - a non-elected ruling elite (government) who create the laws
(and enforce them) for those living in the cities
– Dark Dharma - anarcho-Buddhists living outside the cities. Masters of
Tai Chi, pacifist and reject modern technology and the law of the
Kings
– PME - "ParaMachinErotica" - those addicted to the hallucinations
caused by the parasitic infection. They fetishize & worship
technology. Social outcasts that live on the lower floors and on the
boarders of urban and rural living
– Extremist - thrill-seekers/adrenaline junkies hooked on sports like
rock climbing, base-jumping etc. These guys live in the tower blocks
at various levels

Gameplay goal BACK TO CONTENTS
• Goal is to achieve an enlightened, balanced life before death
• Missions (and hence conflicts) are based on Sect
• Gamers start the game with full life energy and slowly grow old and
die as the game progresses. This create a "ticking clock" for each
player. As they age they lose mental capacity and physical agility
• Progress in the game can slow or reverse the onset of death
• Gamer must decide optimal time to die but suicide is not allowed
• At death, the gamer’s character is reincarnated or sent to hell –
depending on the character’s karma
• Karma is calculated from positive and negative actions in the game:
search for truth, battles, success in missions, compassion, dedication

GamePLAY -to-media integration BACK TO CONTENTS
• Counter-Time Dependency Event Matching Machines (CTDEMM) – or
“RevKars” as they are more popularly known - are time-travel devices
that can affect the past and hence rewrite the future. People and
things can't travel back in time but these machines use nonparametric
regression analysis to identify the smallest possible event to change
which will have the desired effect in the present (think chaos theory
and the butterfly flapping its wings)
• Gamers use RevKars to affect the movie, web series, screenings &
access to assets
• Live screenings are affected by Sect members physically present and
the collective balance of their karma at time of screening
• Actions (voting) at live events impact the present and hence effects
ripple through into the future (e.g. the game progress)

Engaging the Audience BACK TO CONTENTS
• Designed to stimulate & provoke:
– social activities
– debate about role of politics, technology, art & spirituality
– feature film premise is “modern life is rubbish”
• Participation is incentivized
• Creative Commons+, Web Series, Live Screenings & Game
encourages competition, cooperation, collaboration

PARASITES IS Built Around Social BACK TO CONTENTS
Activities

Forrester's Social Technographics BACK TO CONTENTS
Ladder of Participation

Audience Participation assumptions BACK TO CONTENTS
• 90% audience will be passive and want to be led
• 9% audience seeking low-effort participation
• 1% hardcore
• Participants seek guidance, recognition & reward
• Multiple paths and non-consensus eases pain of
community management & lowers barrier to participation

Why Participate? BACK TO CONTENTS
• Kudos
– Demonstrate creative flair
– Demonstrate intellect
• Immortality
– lasting evidence of life on earth
• Belonging
• Reward
– sales and job opportunities

PARASITES MANIFESTO: GOALS BACK TO CONTENTS
#1: To create an open-source (transmedia) storyworld that belongs
to everyone
#2: To help those who contribute find what they need in life:
recognition, reward (emotional, financial), friendship
#3: To pay back the financial investors, plus an acceptable return,
then use the money that's left to have the biggest wrap
party(ies) in history with simultaneous drinking and live link-
ups in five continents
#4: To find a successful (i.e. profitable, repeatable) business model
for filmmakers and those who contribute to their work

PARASITES MANIFESTO: RULES & BACK TO CONTENTS
GUIDELINES
#1: There is no absolute truth, only the search for truth. Multiple explanations and stories can
exist within the same world. You don't have to ask permission to create a new character, a
new location or a new story and you can build on other people's ideas without permission.
There's no right answers, only answers that might take us more quickly to a version of a
truth
#2: Lurking, reading, watching is active participation and we thank you. Linking, digging,
forwarding and recommending is participating too and comes with increased good karma.
Commenting, collaborating, creating is the highest endorsement you can give us and we hope
you'll get a creative high... but we can't promise nirvana
#3: If you create something for Parasites we hope you'll give it away for free. But if you
want to sell it, it must only be sold on our marketplace where we'll take a commission to
help repay the project
#4: Less is more. Try to focus your thoughts, your words, your work and your creative energy -
you will have a bigger impact and it's respectful of other people's time
#5: Don't be a dickhead. While we'll try hard not to censor, if you post something to a website
we control that's racist or nasty in other ways, it's gonna get pulled. Only give constructive,
specific criticism if you have to - and after re-reading Rule #1 - but better is to show how you
think it should be done. Be considerate of other people's feelings - you'll find the love will be
returned to you (The Beatles: “the love you take is equal to the love you make”)

Our transmedia participation model BACK TO CONTENTS
When ATTENTION & REPUTATION matters
Increasing
engagement
Collaborators
Contributors
Critics
Multiple Advocates
Audiences
Ignorers
Referrers
Lurkers

Transmedia complexity BACK TO CONTENTS

UNIFIED Transmedia technology BACK TO CONTENTS
platform

Klatcher simplifies the complexity BACK TO CONTENTS
Multiple Multiple
Audiences Media
Multiple
Platforms

Klatcher: technology partner BACK TO CONTENTS
Unified Transmedia Platform
Publishing Collaboration Distribution
Content Mgmt Measurement Marketplace
Social Media (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Typepad)
Internet Mobile Events

Klatcher management BACK TO CONTENTS
• Johannes Bhakdi (CEO)
– 8 years professional experience in international marketing & media innovation.
– strategy director at S&F Group, CMO at eChinaCash, Executive Director at
BBDO.
– clients: Electrolux, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, McDonald’s, Sinopec, BMW,
Siemens and others.
– loves publishing, creativity, scalability, efficiency and people
• Robert Kunze (CTO)
– 4 year track record in strategic software and system design, coding (bleeding
edge web technologies)
– consultant and project manager for technology developers, co-founder of
formyband.com
– clients: Government, Mobizcorp, local e-commerce companies
– loves artificial worlds, high tech furniture, hates bugs

BACK TO CONTENTS
Revenue Model
• CONTENT is FREE but charge for utility, convenience, personalisation
& merchandise
• Movie & web series FREE to watch and play online & download
• Games FREE to play
• Content FREE to distribute, contribute & re-purpose
• REVENUE from multiple sources:
– $ sponsorship (Parasites as branded content)
– $ voluntary donations (seeking to use VODO)
– $ in-game revenues (sale of digital assets)
– $ home DVD & pay-to-view downloads
– $ rushes/dailies on DVD & external drive
– $ merchandise
– $ commission from marketplace
– $ vanity release (put yourself in the movie)
– $ commission on live event
– $ foreign-language sales of feature film to TV, DVD, OnDemand

How Can free work? (1 of 2) BACK TO CONTENTS
1ST ANSWER: It’s an imperfect market
Minority: Trade
- active experience participation for
- time-rich, cash-poor free content
Creators - influencers
$ Majority: Trade cash for
- passive experience convenience,
- cash-rich, time-poor consumption,
Potential Audience - followers impulse

How can free work? (2 of 2) BACK TO CONTENTS
2nd ANSWER: FREE and Open-Source Maximizes Spread
Audience Sees Movie or Webisode
My kind of attitude emotional
Awareness movie? towards response
movie
Consideration
love the
Preference movie
consumer funnel
Buying
intention
Purchase
Fan share/remix
Loyalty
Advocacy movie
creation

Problems Anticipated BACK TO CONTENTS
• It’s easy to say “create a transmedia story” but is anyone
listening?
– possible to create lots of media and opportunities for participation
for very little gain
• Project still needs hooks to peek audience interest; else it’s
another movie looking for an audience
– mainstream media and “old world” values still play important roll in
signaling “worthiness” of the project (cast, genre, director, sponsors)
– how many people in your social network are really interested in the
genre, the story or participating in your project?

WHY PARASITES WILL SUCCEED? BACK TO CONTENTS
• OPEN
• AUTHENTIC
• AUDACIOUS
• PROVOCATIVE
• IMPORTANT TO THE INDUSTY
• DESIGNED AROUND SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

Any Questions? BACK TO CONTENTS
Robert Pratten
Producer/Writer/Director
www.zenfilms.com
robert@zenfilms.com
www.twitter.com/ZenFilms
www.parasitesmultiverse.com
www.parasitesmultiverse.com