En fallstudie i transmedialt berättande genom Mass Effect

Sammanfattning: In this essay I have studied the video game Mass Effect franchise as an intermedia and transmedia phenomena. For the analysis of the empirical material I have adopted media scholar Henry Jenkins’ concept of transmedia storytelling. The purpose of this paper is to show how transmedia storytelling can appear around the 2010th century. To do so I have mapped out the different Mass Effect products in both their chronological order and order of release. I have also studied all the products with a narrative and analysed their relations with each other, in order to exemplify how transmedia storytelling works in the Mass Effect franchise. I also discuss the upsides and downsides of transmedia storytelling in relations to the cultural industries. The results of my study indicates that most of the Mass Effect products are centered around the video game trilogy. This result is based on the fact that most of the products was released around the same time as Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, and that their narratives is closely linked with the events of the video games.