Bungie Studios are famous for there creation of the halo universe. Their first game Halo: Combat Evolved was released on 15th November 2001 released for Xbox and PC. This game told the story of humans in a war against an alliance of alien races that wish to dominate the galaxy. Based in the future humans had been fighting the covenant for a while and you begin the game just after a large battle in which you appear to be losing. You awake in-game and play as a advanced solider called a Spartan. You play as John 117 know better as Master Chief. You end up fighting in a battle on a ancient weapon created by a alien race before humans and The Covenant. This game sold 1 million units at the end of april 2002 a great achievement. This great success lead to another game. Halo 2 carried on from the story from the first game keeping within the timespand and universe. Halo 2 did even better and sparked a huge online interest on Xbox live. The Universe grew with once again with another halo game Halo 3. $170 million in its first week and broke the sales record.
What i want to focus on is the expansion of the Halo Universe Bungie had created with the story and shear size of affected universe in the game. Along side the games a 6 book series had been published and released that would tell the story of before the game and story of the games and more of the halo universe like what happened between the games. This was still only a stepping stone to there use of transmedia with them branching out with 3 more games. The first was Halo Wars created by Ensemble Studios a real time strategy based on a story before Halo: Combat Evolved. Ensemble Studios have now kept the story going with the popular website for the Halo Wars fans http://www.halowars.com/ with in-depth detail and building on the universe and the game is still going.
2 more FPS games were created for the still huge fans Halo: ODST and Halo: Reach the last game of the series but the beginning of the halo story. Halo: ODST was based around a orbital drop squad team which was a military force in the game Halo: 3 this game follows of from what you missed during the story in halo 3 interlinking the games and keeping in perfect line with the universe. Halo: Reach was the final game to be created around the halo universe has Bungie studios had final finished telling what they needed and wanted to start a new. They are currently now in partnership with Activision for a ten year contract to create a new universe of gaming.
During all the games and books explaining the world and universe through transmedia they used many forms of transmedia to promote and build the halo franchise. 6 Graphic novels and 7 animated shorts build and expanded the universe even larger. This doesn't even account for the Fan Fiction created by fans in which bungie has taken in and helped these fans. Looking at the popular Red vs Blue series, Rooster Teeth created a machinma series on the halo games which during the time was new and it took of big time with thousands of halo fans watching there series. This build upon the universe and promotion of the game. Microsoft and Bungie even asked them to create certain eps to promote the games. The series even made it to dvd.
There popularity spred with many projects relating to halo and companies promoting the games. Halo Lego, Mountain Dew halo bottles and more have come from this perfectly created universe and the use of transmedia has been ever so important to telling the story and keeping fans addicted and involved. Its even said they used Viral marketing with information about the halo universe to lead and promote Halo 3. I find this as a perfect example of how a game world needs to be coherent and when it is the use of transmedia can built and build the game and reach its maximum potential. Without having a strong coherent story and backstory i believe the fan base would have slowly died down and not of made as much impact as it has.
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Halo_media
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(series)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_vs._Blue
http://www.bungie.net
http://redvsblue.com/home.php
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