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.

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.