5 most insane Alternate Reality Games

[RotavatoR]

So I just found an article on Cracked about The 5 Most Insane Alternate Reality Games. Might be an interesting read for some of you

[JRPictures]

Ah goota love Cracked

[The Wild West Pyro]

Ah yes, CRACKED is awesome.

About the ARGs, Bees started of intriguing but turned out to be funny, the Presence was weird, Cloverfield's was very well constructed, the Beast was creepy but the ARG was well constructed too, and the Dark Knight ARG was crazy.

Anyway, I found something hilarious about the Presence. The Giant Hand appears to have 4 FINGERS. Which means, it's not God's (his hand is much bigger and more badass looking.) but maybe Sailor Moon/Vanellope von Schweetz/some schoolgirl with magical powers grew to giant size.

[narrativedilettante]

It really bothers me that all of those are just glorified commercials. TWWF was a work in and of itself, though it was about TvTropes and Echo Chamber. The only other ARG I've done anything with, the Jejune Institute, was unconnected to anything else from what I could tell. If they'd been direct promotions I wouldn't have been nearly as eager to participate.

This is a new medium with SO MUCH POTENTIAL and I can't help but thinking that that potential is going to be hampered if it's always tied down to promotional concerns.

Not that those ARGs didn't do some AMAZING things, but I really think this medium can't come into its own unless it becomes something people consider for its own sake, not for advertising purposes.

[RotavatoR]

I noticed as well that those 5 ARGs are all promoting something. But hey, at least people are being introduced to the concept of an ARG. It's a young medium, but people may notice that they can create an ARG without needing it to promote something. Just like animation, ARGs may be produced for fun instead of for profit in the future.

[Pixelmage]

The issue there is the cost of implementation, I suppose.

You can't sell an ARG like you sell a game. "Here's an ARG, but first, wire us $20 over PayPal to become an eligible player!"
Then they need to find the money somewhere, and more often than not, that somewhere is corporations, thus, advertising.

If you apply that in a different perspective... Why would I, movie publisher with a ton of cash, spend the money in doing an ARG that has nothing to do with my franchises when I could instead use the same money and still do an ARG that also raises awareness to my franchises?

Sadly, independent ARGs don't seem find a lot of support.

[Scarab]

The issue there is the cost of implementation, I suppose.

You can't sell an ARG like you sell a game. "Here's an ARG, but first, wire us $20 over PayPal to become an eligible player!"
Then they need to find the money somewhere, and more often than not, that somewhere is corporations, thus, advertising.

If you apply that in a different perspective... Why would I, movie publisher with a ton of cash, spend the money in doing an ARG that has nothing to do with my franchises when I could instead use the same money and still do an ARG that also raises awareness to my franchises?

Sadly, independent ARGs don't seem find a lot of support.

Then again, you could say the same thing for a great many fledging medias back in the days when the costs outweighed the apparent benefits.

[Pixelmage]

Which is actually a good thing.
Just means we can look forward to having more and better independent efforts coming up in the future and as the area grows, more support will be found for the original content. We're not quite there yet, but hey, we're on our way. ^_^

[RotavatoR]

Which is actually a good thing.
Just means we can look forward to having more and better independent efforts coming up in the future and as the area grows, more support will be found for the original content. We're not quite there yet, but hey, we're on our way. ^_^

...that's kind of what I said in my previous post >_>

[Rick Healey]

I've got to add a few things here.

First, lets have no illusions. Part of the purpose behind The Wall Will Fall was to promote TV Tropes (admittedly a non-profit) and Layar (which is a business). We weren't a major media company in any way, but let's be up front and note that we were promoting something.

Second, there's no fault in producing art for the sake of making money. Shakespeare was firmly in his patron's pocket, and he defined fiction and literature for hundreds of years. A good artist works within their restrictions.

Finally, while it's still in the planning stages, I have been talking with another puppetmaster on a way to actually monetize an ARG on its own. If/when that comes together, we'll let folks know how it goes.

[Eric Kays]

History is rampant with examples of new mediums being created, but not seeing their real potential until they pulled money through advertisements. Radio is a prime example of this. Everything requires money, and I think there is no shame in advertising a product through any form of medium.

ARGs are in a unique position especially for that very reason. Advertisements for the last 100 years have mostly consisted of "Hey, my product is named XXXXXX and you should buy it because it does YYYYYYYY." More recently due to product placement, it's become even worse. The thing that those games have in common is the fact that they advertise for a product, but analyze the products they're advertising for, specifically Year Zero, Why so Serious and The Beast. I'm going to add one that is not in that list because of it's personal connection for me: Flynn Lives.

In the case of the movies, The Dark Knight, A.I. and Tron: Legacy, the games did something that we've only been able to sort of do in the last twenty years: Expand the universe of the story. Now, while it can be argued that universes are expanded in literature, video games and even food products (Star Wars and Star Trek examples), the difference with the games is that they expanded the universe in a way that truly brings the audience into the world. What's wrong with a commercial that literally entertains you proper? I guarantee you that the written materials of the ARG's listed above all had as much if not more story material than what the actual films and things they advertised for. I have a strong respect for original stories in ARGs, but to tell a new story that is involved in a loved world like Batman or Tron is something I'll do in a heart beat... actually... I'm doing that right now.

Flynn Lives was my rabbit hole into ARGs. I heard about it just in time to miss out on the awesome bits that people were sent. But I got in soon enough to see how the advertising campaign was more than just an ad. It was a story involving the audience in discovering what the universe held. No longer did I rely on the film Tron Legacy to tell me about Kevin Flynn's disappearance or about his son Sam, I now had a slightly more personal connection to Sam and a deeper connection to where Kevin Flynn went. In honesty, if I had not participated in the game, I think I would have been more disappointed with the film because the game gave me the exposure to the characters and their struggles that I felt were missing in the film.

So... slight exposure of the project I'm working on because I love you all: I'm making a campaign for a science fiction web series. I'll avoid going into detail about it so that you can play it proper when it's released (And you will know when that happens). My goal in creating the campaign is definitely to advertise for the web series and to get you guys to watch it. But my goals go beyond that. I want you to be involved and entertained through the product I'm creating. Commercials are good, but providing you with 5 or 10 minutes of daily storyline, in-universe information, and even a recipe for a new food you haven't tried is something that I think helps change the idea of a commercial into a legitimate storytelling art.

I'd love to hear more thoughts on this subject, both in criticism to what I've said and expansion on what you all have already said. I'm wanting to work in this field professionally and attempt to make some money off of it, so your thoughts (as the audience) is EXTREMELY useful to me.

[narrativedilettante]

Flynn Lives was my rabbit hole into ARGs. I heard about it just in time to miss out on the awesome bits that people were sent. But I got in soon enough to see how the advertising campaign was more than just an ad. It was a story involving the audience in discovering what the universe held. No longer did I rely on the film Tron Legacy to tell me about Kevin Flynn's disappearance or about his son Sam, I now had a slightly more personal connection to Sam and a deeper connection to where Kevin Flynn went. In honesty, if I had not participated in the game, I think I would have been more disappointed with the film because the game gave me the exposure to the characters and their struggles that I felt were missing in the film.

Now you've made me sad. I was very disappointed in that film and now I feel like I've missed out on something that, due to the nature of ARGs, I can never really go back and experience.

Which is actually something that concerns me with ARGs. I'm very much an archive-binger. I don't care if a serialized work is on-going or not, when I get into it I go back to the beginning and start watching/reading/whatever until I'm all caught up. I like being able to go back and experience a work at any point in time, and there's a feeling of... pressure... when you have to be doing the right thing at the right time in order to engage with the media.

And now I'm thinking about the difference between "engaging" and "consuming," and I'm realizing that I'm much more of a consumer than an engager. When people were complaining about feeling railroaded, I was thinking "oh god if what if they don't railroad us what if we really are changing things that would be so terrifying." As it turns out, our ability to change things wasn't much of a problem for me, but it really wasn't something I was looking for. I wanted stability in the narrative. I didn't want to be a part of the story, I wanted to be an active observer. I became much more than that, but I'm still wary of having to participate in a story to get the whole view of it.

It's possible that if I'd actually participated in those ARGs I wouldn't consider them glorified commercials, because I would have experienced what else they brought to the table. But there's no way, now, for me to go back and be a part of them.

Also, my introduction to the concept of ARGs was The Jejune Institute, which was kind of like a giant interactive art installation. I only got to experience a small part of it, but it was AMAZING and I fell in love with the whole idea. Then I looked for others, and the only examples I found were all selling something. It might be a bit like if your first TV show was, say, Arrested Development, and you were like "What is this extraordinary, experimental form of storytelling?" and afterward you looked for more and the only other TV shows you could find were things like My Little Pony. It's a good show, but... it doesn't feel like it has the same claim of being True Art.

So, I don't mean to be dismissive, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed.

[Scarab]

Also, my introduction to the concept of ARGs was The Jejune Institute, which was kind of like a giant interactive art installation. I only got to experience a small part of it, but it was AMAZING and I fell in love with the whole idea. Then I looked for others, and the only examples I found were all selling something. It might be a bit like if your first TV show was, say, Arrested Development, and you were like "What is this extraordinary, experimental form of storytelling?" and afterward you looked for more and the only other TV shows you could find were things like My Little Pony. It's a good show, but... it doesn't feel like it has the same claim of being True Art.
So, I don't mean to be dismissive, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed.

I think my experiences with media are rather similar to yours, Dilly. I'm the sort of person who will wait until the end of something and experience it all at once: a book series, a TV show, a webcomic, and I think you've just gotten something over to me that I've been trying to figure out for a while: the difference between simply reading the story, and actively involving yourself with that story.

I got into Doctor Who, Serial Experiments Lain, Hack://Sign, all through DVD boxsets. I didn't start reading Harry Potter until around about when book six was published, etc... Like you, Narra, I've been more of a consumer: everyone has. We can become deeply involved in a fictional world , but still, the role we play in that story is different, and I still remember the occasional glimmer of frustration that was trying to keep up with a story that kept going whether or not I was watching. That is a single problem with ARGS: involvement is so intrinsic that perhaps it's difficult to get into after a certain point, and that seems a shame.

I could never help comparing ARGS to "play pretend" games. Sure each ARG needs to explain itself and it's rules to the player as Rick's talk suggested, but ARGS also involve something people actually learn to do very early on: to make up stories as they go. Using that for ARGS is not so much learning as relearning habits we already knew, and some of us need to do this more than others. Yet these days many children's involvement with their media is primarily as a consumer. Even of you're playing a videogame, where you're progressing the narrative and it literally can't go on without you, you're still consuming a pathway that's been planned out ahead for you, rather than personally 'making it up as you go'. Not that I'm saying people are less imaginative than they used to be, but I wonder if the changing face of entertainment isn't having SOME affect on our future generations of storytellers...

When I was a kid I didn't simply go out and look for more media about the fictionsI loved: I created that media myself, through games and play. We say that "we write fanfic at a young age" most likely in part, because of this tendency towards play, but perhaps that's not exactly what it was. Playing with our My Little Pony toys or pretending we were all Power Rangers, or Batman wasn't fanfiction: it was our early years attempts to engage with the media we love. People seem to grow out of this and become more passively involved consumers as they get older. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does explain why it's generally more creative people who get involved in ARGS: because they're closer to the original habits and traits that make ARGS fun for people.

And I've sort of forgotten where I was going with this...

[Rick Healey]

Now you've made me sad. I was very disappointed in that film and now I feel like I've missed out on something that, due to the nature of ARGs, I can never really go back and experience.

...

And now I'm thinking about the difference between "engaging" and "consuming," and I'm realizing that I'm much more of a consumer than an engager.

First, let me point out that there's nothing wrong with that.

One of the things we now realize is that both binging after-the-fact and taking in a work as it develops are completely different experiences. There are some people who prefer the experience of the "as it happens" entertainment, and some who prefer just taking it all in at once as a whole story (I like to mix up the two myself - sometimes I want one; sometimes the other). I actually get resentful of cases where I'm told by a creator how I "should" take in their work (looking at you, Arrested Development, regarding season 4); let me make that decision on my own.

Admittedly, alternate reality games favor the "engaging" aspect of entertainment consumption, but I honestly feel that demonstrates a bit of a failure on the part of myself and others who make ARGs. The game part, where folks actively get to go through and play, admittedly can only be preserved so much (sure, you could read the blogs so that you could solve the Sherlock mysteries on your own, but the echo hunt is impossible to do today). But you should be able to archive material such that it's possible to go back and read the whole story unfold - this is the value of good content curation (which is part of what got cut off from my Q&A session; not coincidentally, it's also one of the specialties of my wife).

To that point, I want to applaud all of you for the work you did on the recap page on TV Tropes for The Wall Will Fall (in fact, it was in reference to said recap page that I discussed the players as being part of the team for TWWF; this was picked up in a tweet by the head of ARGNet). You might not be able to replay The Wall Will Fall, but you can still at least get the story, and feel much of the craziness and immediacy of it all.

That is a single problem with ARGS: involvement is so intrinsic that perhaps it's difficult to get into after a certain point, and that seems a shame.

I've always been frustrated by this overall; it's a pretty accepted truism that 90% of your audience for an ARG comes from the first two weeks. Another 9% from the second two weeks. It's something that I've been pondering heavily since ARGfest, and I still don't have a good answer.

I could never help comparing ARGS to "play pretend" games. Sure each ARG needs to explain itself and it's rules to the player as Rick's talk suggested, but ARGS also involve something people actually learn to do very early on: to make up stories as they go. Using that for ARGS is not so much learning as relearning habits we already knew, and some of us need to do this more than others. Yet these days many children's involvement with their media is primarily as a consumer. Even of you're playing a videogame, where you're progressing the narrative and it literally can't go on without you, you're still consuming a pathway that's been planned out ahead for you, rather than personally 'making it up as you go'. Not that I'm saying people are less imaginative than they used to be, but I wonder if the changing face of entertainment isn't having SOME affect on our future generations of storytellers...

Maybe it helps that I have a strong background in tabletop role-playing games and collaborative fiction - it's inherently a medium that demands much more player interaction. And it's probably no coincidence that Jordan Weisman, who helped create The Beast, was one of the backbones of the role-playing industry (heck, the dude picked up his copy of Dungeons & Dragons from Gygax and Arneson directly!).

That said, I think you're trailing off the point. For one thing, the idea of "these days" being the issue is *completely wrong*. The creator has always been more limited than the consumer. There is always more audience than bards to entertain the audience. Always more people at the theater than actors performing for them. Always more readers than writers. Always more people counted by Nielsen than SAG members. Always more controller jockeys than programmers. Such as it always was; such as it always shall be.

Yes, we've all played at pretending we're something else (please, someone, I'm dying to tell you how awesome my half-black dragon level 6 fighter Szilard is in my D&D game), but for the vast majority of people, it's something we mostly leave behind and only keep doing half-heartedly. This has been true for ages; in fact, due to the fact that the resources for various things have become much more readily available, it was more true even 25 years ago than it is today (and even more true than that 50 years ago, and so on). For all the death knell of "imagination-based play" that I've heard over the years, I actually find that it's less and less true. In fact, I'm already downright envious of the kinds of things that Zoe will get to do and play with when she gets older.

Society at large has always said that playing pretend (or make-believe, or role-playing) was for little kids. Still is true to this day, admittedly. But the difference between now and years ago is twofold. One, the number of avenues for us to engage in this has dramatically increased. Two, while society at large still tends to look down on it, it's slowly but surely growing to be more acceptable.

[Scarab]

I've always been frustrated by this overall; it's a pretty accepted truism that 90% of your audience for an ARG comes from the first two weeks. Another 9% from the second two weeks. It's something that I've been pondering heavily since ARGfest, and I still don't have a good answer.

Are there any ARGS which have managed to avoid that problem, though? Long running things, which continue to call in new players? Isn't there some slenderman game or another that's been running or years at this point, and is bringing in new players all the time? I do not have this knowledge.

That said, I think you're trailing off the point. For one thing, the idea of "these days" being the issue is *completely wrong*. The creator has always been more limited than the consumer. There is always more audience than bards to entertain the audience. Always more people at the theater than actors performing for them. Always more readers than writers. Always more people counted by Nielsen than SAG members. Always more controller jockeys than programmers. Such as it always was; such as it always shall be.

So does that mean my statement is irrelevant, and I'm drawing attention to a difference between then and now which does not, in fact exist? I wouldn't be surprised if I was, in which case I stand corrected.

I think I might actually be being a bit prejudiced in my thinking here re: creativity. When I mentioned this to my dad, he pointed out that almost everyone we know watches soap operas: which I don't, so perhaps I mentally refused to consider those things as 'creative'. This is a completely erroneous and silly train of thought, on my part. The guy who wrote Doctor Who season five wrote several soap operas before he started and there's no reason I should assume they're less creative than, say, a mighty quest for epic loot (with dragons).

...Tangenting, sorry.

Yes, we've all played at pretending we're something else (please, someone, I'm dying to tell you how awesome my half-black dragon level 6 fighter Szilard is in my D&D game), but for the vast majority of people, it's something we mostly leave behind and only keep doing half-heartedly. This has been true for ages; in fact, due to the fact that the resources for various things have become much more readily available, it was more true even 25 years ago than it is today (and even more true than that 50 years ago, and so on). For all the death knell of "imagination-based play" that I've heard over the years, I actually find that it's less and less true. In fact, I'm already downright envious of the kinds of things that Zoe will get to do and play with when she gets older.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't think there's any kind of "death knell" sounding and I share your envy of todays kids toy availability.I watched my young niece who decided to teach me how to play a Pepper Pig game on her mother's Ipad (after she'd spent hours showing me perfectly high quality films of said niece at a playground, and taken photographs, oh god she is so cute I could eat her up) and it struck me that Hannah would grow up in an environment where these things were second nature. She would never know a world where you couldn't touch a screen to make something happen. It's a strangely mind boggling feeling...

The idea that that kind of imaginative play can be quenched out is pretty much obviously not true, and I don't mean to imply that it is. I'm just saying that the nature of play might be changing somehow. I haven't studied it, so I don't know for sure. Probably, as you say, because resources are much more readily available, be if the software and games that allow you to create your own games and stories, such as Minecraft, or even simple things in day to day life like touchscreens.

At the same time, would you agree with me when I say that that ARGs represent a kind of involving play that is, at least in part, connected to that kind of play pretend that most people chose not to pursue as they grow older? Those who did pursue it, those D&D geniuses you mention (and yes we want to see this character of yours please and thank you), videogame developers, artists, are the people who are most creative in the world today, the kind of people from whom an ARG might originate: the few bards to entertain the audiences, as you put it. People never stop playing like that. But maybe lots of us just get out of the habit, and maybe that's where Dilly's Consumer/Engager argument came from? Maybe?

Sorry I'm not sure I'm making sense here, my point REALLY god lost in the quagmire of my brain today.

[eli_gone_crazy]

Are there any ARGS which have managed to avoid that problem, though? Long running things, which continue to call in new players? Isn't there some slenderman game or another that's been running or years at this point, and is bringing in new players all the time? I do not have this knowledge.

I think you're talking about Everyman HYBRID, which has been posting for ages. The main separation is in two areas, timing and content. EMH updates every few months with total radio silence from the main "characters" of the ARG for long stretches of time.

This is offset, however, by the updates normally contributing to the story at large, and most of the time satisfying the playerbase. The number of people playing is proportional to the date of the latest post. there are only a few hundred to a few thousand that actively keep up with it.

[narrativedilettante]

I'll make one note here: The consumer/engager dichotomy has started being associated with the difference between people who only take in media vs. people who create media.

And I think there's a parallel there, but at least for ME (and I can't say for certain about anyone else), I am a writer. Though I prefer to sit back and let stories unfold if they are someone else's, I also like to create my own stories. I just usually don't want to jump into an already-existing story and add to it.

So be careful not to make associations between dissimilar things.

[RotavatoR]

I should link to Cracked more often...
Holy crap you guys >3>