The DARPA Network Challenge

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has put out a challenge. Try to find ten 8-foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States and then report their locations. This challenge has started a bit of a buzz in the ARG community and has led a number of influential figures to call for the gathering of the kinds of collective problem solving groups that appeared during The Beast and ilovebees. Groups, like The Cloudmakers, who solved the ARG The Beast, were able to sift through clues located throughout the web, solve puzzles presented in those clues and ultimately finish the game. The ARG community has long believed that they could deal with real world problems and approach them in ways that were quicker and more innovative than traditional approaches. If this latest call to action is taken up they might finally have a chance to prove it.

The idea that ARG players could deal with real-world problems isn’t new. The things that happened during game play started to get a few people interested in what an organized and motivated group of people could do with a real world problem. The Rand Corporation was just one of many who speculated about what could happen. Their 2004 report, Out of the Ordinary: Finding Hidden Threats by Analyzing Unusual Behavior, examined how a dynamic network of information in the hands of an ARG-like group could be used to identify a threat. They believed the same behaviour used by self-organizing ARG players could be used to sift through real information. The result would be patterns and meaning that would not be readily apparent otherwise.

I’ll be watching the chatter back on forth in the community to see where this goes in the next few weeks. It would be very interesting if the community took up the challenge and were able to step out of the world of alternate and into the pure reality.

We have a winner! And it is MIT so they are the ones that end up holding a giant $40,000 cheque. It appears that a formally organized institution was the most successful in taking up the challenge. There were some smaller groups that got up to 7 balloons and even some individuals who took on the challenge by themselves. It would have been nice to see a de-brief about HOW they actually found all those balloons but perhaps they are hanging onto those secrets for next time.

Productized ARGs

Another post on types of ARGs. The categories continue to be broken up based on their business models (or lack of one).  In this one I’ve updated the information on Xi, a PS3-based ARG from Sony.

Productized ARG projects are currently quite rare. They are based on a business model where the players pay a subscription fee for the game and are promised a high quality and innovative experience. Game companies have started to explore ARG as commercial properties and are following similar kinds of business models as commercial Massive Multiplayer Online (MMOs) games. There has been no real financial success so far so most game companies seem reluctant to risk millions of dollars on experimenting in this space.

Majestic (2001)

Electronic Arts decided that they would try to build a commercial ARG called Majestic. The goal of the game was to create an audience who would be willing to pay a monthly fee for a high quality ARG. The narrative was based on a shadow government conspiracy set in the United States. The players had to uncover the conspiracy and would be rewarded with new episodes of the story. The video segments were professionally developed and used recognizable Hollywood actors to fill roles within the story.

The game was originally put on hold after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks due to considerations over the content of the game. The game was completely cancelled in 2002 after EA announced there they did not have enough paying subscribers to continue with production.

Xi (2009)

Xi is the first ARG run through a game console. This ARG is based in Sony’s Home, a virtual world that is available to owners of a Sony PS3 game console. The game began in March, 2009.  It ran for 12 weeks from that point. The ARG can be started by going to the common meeting area in the virtual world and finding the spray painted symbol for Xi on one of the walls. The general premise was that underneath Home was another virtual world that was created by the alpha testers of the virtual space. Here’s a clip of some of the teaser video that would appear in Home and signaled the beginning of the campaign.

The symbol stayed in place for a few weeks, enough to generate curiosity among the inhabitants of Home. The hatch finally opened after a few weeks and players began to solve puzzles and find clues that appeared with the start of the ARG. Unraveling those puzzles gave the players access to the narrative and secret areas within the virtual world. The entire game is revealed in this video (spoiler alert).

The Xi ARG got quite a buzz among the community in Home. Given the success of the first ARG it would seem likely that another one will be launched on the PS3 in the future. I haven’t come across anything yet but I’ll make sure I update this post if anything appears.

It is interesting that Sony took an existing component of their game console and decided to turn it into an ARG. The reason that Home was developed in the first place was to create a social space and a media store of Sony products for users of the PS3 console. Now that they have successfully engaged that social space with a narrative and an Alternate Reality Game it will be very interesting to see how creative Sony can be in the future. They have access to a huge catalogue of media and artists, there should be no limit to what they can do with that material in both the virtual and the real world.

ARGs and Independent Film

There have been several creative approaches to using ARGs and ARG-like promotions for independent film. The rational for using ARGs as a promotional tool is the high cost of conventional advertising, marketing and distribution for film. Lance Weiler, an independent filmmaker has created ARGs for both his films, The Last Broadcast (1998) and Head Trauma (2006). In both of these films he tried to take the narrative out of the film and weave it into an alternative narrative online in order to attract an audience.

The Last Broadcast (1998)

This small, independent film followed a documentary filmmaker as he investigates the murders of two cable show hosts. The film pre-dated The Blair Witch Project (1999) and is very similar in terms of the way the story was handled. The story was about some public broadcasters who disappear while investigating the paranormal. The broadcasters had planned a trip into the forests of New Jersey to look for the legendary New Jersey Devil. They had planned to connect with the real world using chat and webcams while they were on location. This left the story open to a wide range of media that could have been produced during the fictional event.

The film producers for The Last Broadcast had few resources for promoting and marketing the film. In an attempt to get some buzz about the movie, they set up a website so that it would appear that the murders were real. The media created wasn’t really a game; it was designed to engage viewers in the narrative. From that point, the website would become a jumping off point for the film.

Head Trauma (2006)

(http://www.headtraumamovie.com/)

Initial Film release

In a following project, Weiler decided to create a campaign to promote Head Trauma that went beyond a simple marketing campaign. He didn’t have a distributor for the film and had to figure out how he was going to gather audiences on his own.

He began by creating a public event where the film would be presented. He then tried to create a community vibe around the screening. He wanted to create a cinema event that was unique, rather than the same each time you viewed the film.

The event consists of three core elements:

1. A screening of Head Trauma with a live soundtrack performance by Bardo Pond, Espers, Fern Knight, Marshal Allen (Sun Ra), Steve Garvey (Buzzcocks) and others. The live music was done in conjunction with the recorded dialog and sound effects tracks from the film. It created a new alternate soundtrack.

2. To tie the film to the live event, various props and sets from the film were set on stage and certain characters from the film emerged from the audience.

3. A phone number would appear on the screen during the film. When viewers called the number, they were actually being drawn into the first rabbit hole of the ARG.

What followed the initial live event was a number of cryptic clues that the audience were asked to decipher. The ongoing interaction involved phone calls and text messages from the characters of Head Trauma that led viewers to hidden clues spread across the Internet.

Weiler’s goal was to change the cinematic experience. He wanted to take a narrative and move it across multiple devices and screens. This included podcasts, an interactive graphic novel and numerous hidden elements within the websites linked to the film. In this way, he wanted to engage the audience in new and different ways. Some viewers have given the name “Cinema ARG” to this new cluster of media. The response so far has been exceptional. In terms of mechanics, the live event show was very difficult to scale to take it to more places.

Rather than writing and creating all of these ARG elements after the film was finished, they wrote the entire time they were shooting film. They also needed to create digital content for the web at the same time. This digital content affected what and how they were shooting. They needed to have narrative elements available for both the film and the ARG and do so under a tight budget. This required them to think about how they were telling narrative strands across multiple media throughout the entire film creation projects. There was a set narrative for the ARG but the team didn’t stop once they had finished the writing and content creation. They needed to deal with the community that engaged in the ARG, seeing how they responded and shift the story in response to the audience.

Once the film was completed the producers started the traditional approach of taking the film into the film festival circuit. They did not believe they could think about traditional distribution though. The independent film market has changed. It has eroded and become congested with the sheer volume of films available. Festivals used to be a place to get a distribution deal but currently that is not the best place to strike a deal as the terms for the deals favour the buyers. This in mind, the producers went into the LA film festival thinking about self-distribution.

They looked at doing a platform release where the movie would be available in DVD five weeks after the theatrical release. This is unusual as most independent film go out onto the festival circuit for a year or so. Weiler decided to push the movie out faster. In order to do this he needed to get press coverage as a way to get some notice of the film.

The promotion continued throughout the release with promotion at film festivals where a small comic book was handed out with the words “Do you want to play a game?” written on the back with a phone number. When the number was called, the phone would be answered by the evil, antagonist character from the film. The caller’s phone number would be captured after they called in and the ARG would then call them back. The antagonist from the film would then tell them they shouldn’t have hung up because “we’re not finished yet”. From this initial point, the players were drawn into a narrative from the film, with a goal of piquing enough interest that they would actually seek out the film for viewing.

Warner Video on Demand Release “Hope is Missing” ARG

Weiler negotiated a contract with Warner to release the film on their Video on Demand (VOD) service. He decided to create a new ARG specifically to promote the film within that service. This led him to the idea of created a new ARG called Hope is Missing. The film was well beyond release so all the actors were gone and he had to come up with a new way of extending the story line. He created a new story around a character named Hope Wilcott. It was set in the same fictional universe as the original Head Trauma story. In the story, Hope is away at school and starts getting phone calls at 3:07 am every morning from her mother. The phone calls sound as if her mother is in trouble. Hope calls the Police mother has no recollection of the call being made. Hope goes home to discover that her mother has some strange nocturnal behaviours. The story continues when Hope’s fiancé gets a letter saying Hope has now disappeared. The letter comes with a package with a video and clues within the video. He puts the video up online and asks people to help him figure out where Hope has gone. Weiler released 4 short movies over 2 1/2 weeks. He had planned to stretch it out longer but interest in the story and demand for content required him to accelerate the timeline.

This ARG proved to be a successful promotion to build interest around the VOD release of Head Trauma with Warner Brothers. The impact among the audience was mixed. Some people thought it was real while others thought it was a hoax. The story of the disappearance and the way it was delivered did end up offending some of the people who viewed it.

Implications for Independent Film

Weiler fully believes in the concept of expanded cinema. It is more than just a traditional film. Once you start thinking this way and the property becomes expanded, it changes the writing, the funding options and affects distribution as well. By promoting directly to the audience of the film, it puts the property into the hands of the viewers looking for that content. For Weiler, ARGs have been the most cost effective way for him to get to that audience while maintaining creative and financial control of his creative properties.

As ARGs are a new form of narrative for most filmmakers, many of them are not familiar with it. It is unlikely that all of the current approaches to ARGs cover the full range of creative opportunities for filmmakers. Some of the current uses include the pre-selling of the film by getting an audience before the actual film release. The ARG can serve as a discovery mechanism for the narrative, characters and setting of the film. This personal level of engagement allows the filmmaker to connect with their audience before they have even seen the film.

The lack of a single distribution mechanism means that independent filmmakers are looking at a challenging mixture of broadcast options. Theatres, VOD, online download, streaming and rental venues are all potential distribution channels for a film. Each of these has a potential audience that can only be reached through the marketing channels provided by each of those broadcast option. The filmmaker faces a very fragmented audience among all of those options. This means that one film needs to stand out among all the white noise and the reduced amount of time most people have to filter through it. An ARG is one method of tying together that audience. It allows the film budget and creative team energies to be focused on one marketing campaign instead of trying to dilute the marketing among a number of different channels.

It is also possible to integrate branding and product placement into the ARG campaign in a more transparent way than usual. You aren’t required to use obvious product placement throughout your film. This will present the filmmaker with new offerings during the fundraising portion of the film production.

Independent film has always had a huge amount of creative energy in place to break down barriers to both making and distributing film. The introduction of digital film creation and distribution were explored successfully early on as an alternative to film stock. The high cost of celluloid made it almost impossible for independent filmmakers to make films affordably. Exclusive distribution through established markets made it very difficult to actually distribute the film once it was made. The drive to maintain creative and financial control of their films meant that new solutions were constantly being developed to deal with the issues. ARGs are one of the latest options and successful independent filmmakers will continue to explore their abilities to share narratives and engage their audiences. It is possible that with the cross-media approach to narrative being taken by independent film that filmmaking may not even be an appropriate term anymore.

Grassroots ARGs

Grassroots ARGs usually come in two forms. One is based on a completely original concept and story. The other is based in an existing story world. These ones are similar to fan fiction projects run by fans of a particular creative property. Anyone who has followed the rise in popular culture of the “Twilight” series of books and films can find volumes of stories written about the characters and within story universe. Once fans have  consumed all of the existing narratives in a creative property there is a strong motivation to continue creating their own version of that reality. Rather than writing a new story, a grassroots ARG group, usually an individual or a small group, decides to build and run their own ARG.  They are generally self-funded and so run on much smaller budgets than promotional ARGs, usually just a few thousand dollars. The incentive to spend money comes from a desire to increase the production quality of the ARG. Generally, the higher the production quality; the more likely the ARG is to attract players.

The number of players attracted to these types of ARGs is generally small. The team resources are limited so they are usually designed to keep the number of players at a low number. One exception was the MetaCortechs ARG that managed to attract around 12,000 players. These kinds of games rely almost completely on volunteers to run them. The demands and time span of the project can often lead to a high staff turnover.

Some of the better-known grassroots ARGs are:

Lockjaw (2002)

After the initial success of The Beast, a number of players who had organized themselves to play that game decided to start designing and running their own ARGs. The group was known as The Cloudmakers and their first attempt at running their own ARG was Lockjaw. This first attempt was a quite successful although the exact number of players is difficult to determine. The ARG was composed of mostly websites and text-based clues.

Metacortechs (Project Mu) (2003)

The Cloudmakers group decided to use the fictional universe from the film The Matrix (1999) as the background for their next ARG. It is very similar to many fan fiction sites created for The Matrix franchise. At the time, the producers of The Matrix were encouraging alternative narratives set in the Matrix universe. They had just helped produce The Animatrix (2003), a collection of short anime films based on the original film. The producers actively encouraged fans to produce their own stories based on the film and, if possible, would even facilitate the creation of a rich flow of original creative content that was based on the original franchise.

The ARG was extremely successful for an independent effort. It managed to attract 12,000 players, almost as much as some professional run promotional ARGs. The success of this ARG led the group to move into commercial ventures with ARGs as part of a business model that sold merchandise. The name of this ARG was Perplex City.

Promotional ARGs

These games are designed to promote a product or event. Some of the highest profiles ARGs of the past few years were designed to create a community of users who were transparently having a product marketed to them. The budgets for these kinds of projects are substantial as they are often used as an alternative to a full marketing/ advertising campaign.

They are carefully planned to take place in a universe that coincides with the product being promoted. The game does not require the purchase of the product and can be played independently of any actual product. The story within the ARG is carefully vetted by the original IP owners to ensure consistency with their narratives and messaging.  The level of visibility of the product varies with the campaign. In the ARG I Love Bees (2004), the final event was a large-scale social event that allowed players to actually play Halo 2 (2004) before its release. The actual product behind the ARG is usually obvious before the end of the actual game itself.

These types of ARGs are designed to attract large number of players from 10,000 to 3 million. Often their story line less flexible simply because of the difficulties in scaling changes with a large number of users. Some of the better-known promotional ARGs include:

The Beast (2001)

(http://www.42entertainment.com/beast.html)

The first know promotional ARG, The Beast was actually a sponsored by Microsoft and Dreamworks to publicize Stephen Spielberg’s A.I: Artificial Intelligence (2001). The story is set in the year 2142, 50 years after the setting for A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, the movie. It begins with a murder mystery around someone who mysteriously drowns while out on a A.I. enhanced boat. They mystery leads to a number of groups who are related to the original event and can be tied back to the film itself.

The game ended up becoming epic in proportions with over 3 million players worldwide. Players followed 150 characters across hundreds of webs sites, emails, faxes, files and puzzles for months. The level of interaction within the game play was huge. The press coverage alone ended up creating over 300 million impressions for the film through mainstream press such as Time, CNN, and USA Today. The game was so highly regarded that Internet Life magazine described it as the “Citizen Kane of online entertainment”.

I Love Bees (2004)

(http://www.ilovebees.com/)

(http://www.42entertainment.com/bees.html)

This ARG was created to promote the release of Microsoft Game Studio’s Halo 2. The game was a radio play that was segmented and hidden throughout the Internet. The story revolves around an A.I. program that was onboard a spaceship that crashes on earth. It is damaged and tries to get help by hacking websites and sending out messages through the phone system.

The mailing of several jars of honey, with letters inside, initially started the game. These were sent to recognized ARG game players who quickly mobilized groups to work on the new ARG. The website (www.ilovebees.com), was used as central location for clues. A large player base of about 750,000 active players would work through clues to located payphones where the next episode of the radio play would be broadcast. The success of the game created significant press coverage for the release of Halo 2.

ReGenesis (2004)

ReGenesis was created by Canadian company Xenophone Media to promote the television show by the same name. It worked well for promoting the television show but was unique in that it was successfully re-run when the show went into syndication. Usually an ARG goes through a single instance and is finished.

Last Call Poker (2005)

(http://www.42entertainment.com/poker.html)

Another video game promotional campaign, Last Call Poker, was released to promote the Microsoft Game Studio game, Gun (2005). The ARG was based around an online video game site where clues were provided that led players into six different narratives about the violent history surrounding a pistol. Virtual characters at the poker table served as central clues to the beginning the story. The goal of the game was to find the gun that tied all of the narratives together. The game integrated real history into its narrative as it had clues that led to real graveyards around America.

The game gathered a player base of 500,000 over an 8-week period. The addition of real graveyard locations for gathering clues would often lead to impromptu live events where online players would gather.

Perplex City (2005)

Developed by some of the original players teams from The Beast, this group went on to do some grassroots ARGs and finally created a company called Mindcandy who developed Perplex City. The game was based around a mystery of a cube that had been stolen from a city in another reality and hidden on earth. The player who located the cube was rewarded with a $200,000 cash prize. The game made extensive use of puzzle cards to help the players solve the numerous challenges in the game. The cards were released for purchase throughout the two-year length of the game.

Perplex city was developed using a unique business model. The game was supported through the sale of packs of puzzles cards. The cards introduced characters, story elements and provided puzzles for the players. The clues provided by the puzzle card directed the players towards different website, blogs, emails, phone calls and SMS messages. The physical product that went along with the fictional game supported the entire production.

The Lost Experience (2006)

(Fan site: http://www.thelostexperience.com/)

The writers and producers of the television series Lost designed this ARG. It was created to keep fans of the show engaged in the property between Season 2 and 3 of the series. The considerable depth of the storylines in the television series provided a number of back-stories and parallel story lines that could be explored without affecting the flow of the series during the next season.

Year Zero (2007)

(http://www.42entertainment.com/yearzero/)

Trent Reznor, of the band Nine Inch Nails, commissioned an ARG for the release of his album Year Zero. The project was meant to be as much an art project for Reznor as a marketing campaign for his album. He designed to ARG to reflect his perspective on the political situation in the United States and what he saw as alarming trends towards a repressive, militaristic state.

The designers describe it as a cross-media artform that is distributed across several different websites, phone calls, murals and live events.

Art of the Heist (2008)

(http://audiworld.com/news/05/060805/content.shtml)

This ARG was sponsored by Audi to promote the release of the new Audi A3. The game involves tracking down a criminal gang who are planning a large art heist. The players start the game with some video footage that shows one of the gang members hiding information inside of six different Audi A3 cars. The game began with a staged car theft at a New York City Audi dealership. This was followed with handbills that were handed out at the New York International Auto Show.

The game had a number of live events that involved tracking down the cars, breaking into them and finding the stashed information. Only when all the information is put together does the entire plot become obvious.

Types of ARGs

Categorizing an emerging genre is difficult. There have been a few attempts to place them into sub-genres as a way of comparing and contrasting their various expressions. These categories exist for the purposes of discussion but the semantics of the boundaries that divide them are far from clear. Many of them intentionally try to make it difficult to place them in any category.

The five main sub-genres are:

• Promotional
  • Independent film
• Grassroots
• Productized/ Commercial
• Publicly funded/ Art ARGs