doxa.comunicación | nº 29, pp. 97-111 | 105
July-December of 2019
Víctor Álvarez Rodríguez
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
time, they worked in parallel with the narration of the series. Thus, The Lost Experience became another narrative vehicle for the plot. It completed it, and made the most loyal fans give more value to every detail. The fictional universe was expanded, and concepts such as the Dharma Initiative, the Hanso Foundation, or Oceanic Airlines were more defined for the viewer. Overall, two-way communication networks were promoted between the audience and the main product.
The Lost Experience became Lost’s first deliberate transmedia product. The first to include the reality of viewers within the narrative, and the first to be (almost) simultaneously launched internationally (Menéndez, 2011: 725).
With this strategy, the Lost fan community responded in a participative way to the transmedia construction of the story in the digital context of the ARG. Many of the trials or mysteries that players had to solve were extremely difficult and required a high degree of specialization, such as “advanced searches on the Internet, computer language programming, trigonometry, Photoshop, cryptology, Morse, mythology, and languages” (Menéndez, 2011: 726). Nevertheless, this really translated into a challenge that reinforced the verisimilitude of the action and the story. The success and participation in this experience is a great example of how to establish and communicate a transmedia narrative in these alternative reality games. It is an increasingly common type of project and is the result of “the proliferation of transmedia narratives that bet on the direct participation of the user in the content” (Ruiz and Alcalá, 2016: 97). Today, “Lost’s narrative engineering still works. Transmedia narrative teaches us what producers do not want, do not know, or cannot generate” (Scolari, 2013b: 416). At this point, the creative and distributive behaviour of the prosumers becomes essential. This is a globalised audience accessing specific virtual content on a voluntary basis. They get involved with the development, resolution and communication to extend and appreciate more details of a story.
3.3. The video game as a narrative supplement
In February 2008, the Canadian company Ubisoft launched the adaptation of the series to the world of video games with Lost: Via Domus. This product is made for computers, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 consoles. This is an increasingly frequent strategy. “The connection between fiction television series and video games is growing. The television screen and the game console are increasingly nourished by products that run from one medium to another” (Martínez, 2016: 289). In fact, this was not the only interpretation of Lost for a video game. In 2007, Gameloft also released its own version: Lost: Mobile Game. It was a game starring the characters of the series, which “collected the plot of the first two seasons and the first six episodes of the third season to offer an action game and puzzles” (Perez and Alba, 2010: 428). However, in order to develop this analysis, it is much more interesting to approach the creation made by Ubisoft due to its significance and narrative contribution within the transmedia construction of the plot.
The video game designed by this company in Montreal is composed of seven episodes that talk about “the first seventy days after the accident. Being in the first person, the user plays Elliott Maslow, a survivor of the Oceanic 815 flight never seen on the television screen” (Scolari, 2013a: 162). Its own plot is intertwined with the mysteries and key moments of the series making the player feel immersed in the original story. The game gives the viewer of the series the chance to control an anonymous survivor who is not one of the protagonists of the series. In addition, he can interact with them and go through the scenarios and plots until the third season. It is a new story parallel to the dramatic lines of the series that seeks to answer questions raised but not resolved in the original series in order to expand and revive the story. Some