Transmedia story telling - possible landminds and boogietraps?

Ok - As I create my More Info pages and use the transmedia necessity rating I am developing, I am starting to ask some questions that have me a little worried about certain aspects of transmedia story-telling.

I am finishing up my page on the Series/story - "Valemont" (check my page here for more info).

It is a great example of a transmedia (they call it multi-platform) story. Here is a little excerpt from an article - http://news.tubefilter.tv/2009/09/28/mtvs-valemont-a-transmedia-experience-murder-mystery-style/

"It (the ARG website) began as a simple ‘missing student’ story at Valemont with various characters starting a discussion on Twitter, along with a police investigator conducting interviews on the series characters,” Friedman added. “Then, when the student’s body was found, the case was called a homicide and the victim’s next of kin was sought. Intrepid fans dug up clues buried online and presented them to the investigator… which is where the series actually begins, with the student’s sister asked to identify the body. On top of this, through the VU site, Twitter and FB, we have encouraged fans to apply for enrollment at Valemont — acceptance letters went out last week. What the show will offer fans is a chance to have a ‘replicate experience’ to our main character, Sophie, as she enrolls at Valemont in search of the truth behind her brother’s presumed murder.”

Ok - so a very cool story (I love supernatural and girl heroines :P ) and wow look at all it uses - TV (MTV at that), web shows, a mock web site with ARG puzzles and clues, and social media and real time interaction galore - twitter, facebook, blogs, the mobile phone content and tie ins and............. and that last is where I begin to worry and also where the story may lose/gain people.

Some forms of transmedia require archiving or somehow allowing access to the entire story for those who enter the story at different times and different points of entry. I did not follow Valemont from the start - I just now am catching it.... am I missing some of the core story content? Or is it just experience lost? It is awesome with any story when core content and experience intermingle but scary when the prospect of losing content exists.

There are definite pieces of the "real-time" experience lost in the transmedia platform, an example is Professor Blunt's blogs found on the ValemontU web site. During the initial broadcast, they were rolled out each week and it was easy to read the blog, view the current, linked episode and make the story connections. however, not, as you go through the archive, you either read all the blogs at once, see all the episodes, or try to bounce back and forth, but how do you know which blog entry goes with which episode?

I think, if a writer creates a transmedia story, they may need to plan and consider a roadmap, a guidebook, and an archive. If you wanna use twitter cool - but is it going to ruin the story?

I am just now renting movies and TV shows on Netflix from the 1970s - I can watch those now and get the story. With a transmedia experience, will the same be true? I have done some research on Homicide: second shift - those web sites no longer exist and finding the webisodes and that whole story is not easy - so a large piece of story is gone....

The Doctor Who Tardisodes are another example, of course they are not as integral to the story as the Valemont or Homicide: Second Shift transmedia, but, they are lost to many as they are not on the DVD and are hard to find online and then again, I, the user, have to know enough to know which Tardisode to watch before which episode and so on......

Add to this, general web series content and transmedia content.... WHO IS ARCHIVING THIS and how will it be made available to the user in the future? how do you preserve a Facebook page?

And ok, so, the creator steps back and says, it is a real-time thing and just for enhancing the experience... alright, then make sure when telling the story, not to link too much core content to the sources... but then this makes all transmedia stories adaptational more than extensional (see my transmedia page for more on thoe two words) ....

HMMMMMM

More thoughts on this later - and are others talking about the real time transmedia experiences vs archiving and how to experience transmedia down the road without getting lost??????