Transmedia strategies in TV series: the transformation of a tie-in website in the beginning of an ARG (case Discover Westworld)

Abstract

The implementation of transmedia strategies for the promotion of TV series has changed the use of web pages, thus transforming them into spaces capable of creating stories which expand the fictional universes. These websites, mainly known as tie-in websites, may also be part of a more ambitious transmedia strategy: an alternate reality game (ARG). For the purpose of exploring this strategy, it has been undertaken a semiopragmatic analysis of Discover Westworld, a tie-in website linked to the TV series Westworld which, subsequently, has resulted in the beginning of a promotional ARG. The analysis explores the nature of the communicative spaces where this strategy is implemented, the involvement and the participation of users in creating meanings of the communicative proposals and the links established by these proposals with the different parts of this TV series. The results show that this strategy is entirely developed in digital communicative spaces in order to enable users to fully experience and become part of the story. Likewise, the communicative proposals of these digital spaces allow users to both interact and customize some content, and variously participate in constructing the story. Finally, within these communicative spaces there are paratexts, that provide direct promotional links with the first season; and hypertexts, that promote the series by expanding its fictional universe, which, once the first season has finished, in turn, might be considered as hypotexts that serve as textsbridge for promoting a future production of this series.