New thoughts

Games and Films,
Between the cross branding of different texts of Media in all of it's forms games and films are the closest in appearence and stylistic conventions. It is not surprising transnational media corporations (TNMCs) such as Sony, Time Warner, or Disney are having more film and games interlinked in their mass market sales pitches.

Looking back over the last decade famous titles like The Lord of the Rings, Matrix and such have all taken part in these companies mass bombardment of a idea. By releasing a concept through multiple venues in a attempt to maximise profits.

However this comes in two forms

Trans-media and Cross Media branding,

the prior is a fictional world and different stories from that are told through different formats, and only by combining the different products do you get the full story.

THe latter is just the one idea replicated on those different avenues.



Recently the one that stands above all of these is Final Fantasy, being a manga, game, films, anime, and books. The problem with final fantasy is that it is so hard to define in either of the two above. It exhibits traits of both

It is part trans media for example way final fantasy seven was done as a game and had a film loosely tieing in with it but crossbranding in that most of final fantasies have no relevence to each other and are set in different worlds. Minus a few of the repeated creatures but these have no prior knowledge of any of other events.

The other film spirits within bares even less resemblance and just ties in with the name alone. Which caused heated debate with the much loved FF7 Advent children film. I can see Oksana's point people with no prior knowledge of Final Fantasy may view it differently but at the same time it comes back to the question is it a companies responcibility to be lotal to fans of brand or tell stories and make money.

Spirits Within was a standalone product. Open to a much bigger audience than FF7 advent children which required some understanding of Final Fantasy.