THQ-CORE SVP Danny Bilson on Creating Transmedia Stories

Danny-Bilson-NDE

Danny Bilson - Executive Vice President of THQ Core Games

In this most recent interview with The NDN's Narrative Design Exploratorium THQ Core Games SVP Danny Bilson joins us to talk about his work and thoughts on the burgeoning craft of transmedia storytelling.  The NDE series, Creators of Transmedia™, sets out to explore what visionaries in the field are now creating, and what they believe tomorrow will bring.

With THQ's recent restructuring, the "Core Games" unit is looking to create deeper experiences, ones that engage and immerse players for years in exciting worlds.

As Executive Vice President (EVP) of THQ Core Games he has helped refocus the juggernaut that is THQ to create "a rich offering of content distributed across digital platforms based both on all of [THQ's] major core brands as well as new intellectual properties." 

What does that mean? In Bilson's own words "It means giving people who love a property, more of it. It means extending a narrative or world into multi medias to communicate and engage with the property from many different, uniquely entertaining access points."

Why is that exciting? As entertainers it give us more opportunities to do what we do best, entertain and hopefully profit from it. Bilson goes on to elaborate on why it's important for THQ-CORE "Our objective is to introduce new game worlds and characters in a more important way than has been done traditionally through advertising. We want to invite people to our worlds and have them adventure and explore there for years to come. When we launch a new property, my hope is that it will be seeded in different medias to create a larger canvas."

A larger canvas, or more "good" as Bilson puts it: "If story elements designed for many medias and centered in a consistent world get us more good. I’m in." 

From a man that worked on games, film, TV serials, comic books and more his words carry more weight than a simple SVP title might imply. Danny is not just another MBA corporate bot, he is a creator, and author, and an aritist. One whom seeks to make today's stories manifest in all their possibilities. The time when games stories only existed on the console and online is coming to an end. In the trenches of game development movers and shakers, like Bilson, are empowering authors and visionaries to craft storyworlds that extend across the spectrum of possibilities in today's hyper-mediated world. 

In this concise but in-depth interview, Bilson speaks on his storytelling strategies, transmedia, and lessons learned from a life working with storytelling in all it's forms.  

Read the full interview @

http://narrativedesign.org/2010/04/creators-of-transmedia-stories-5-danny-bilson/