Myths and Misconceptions

Myths and Misconceptions

The Dark Side of Alternate Reality Games? – Part 2

Dave Szulborski

“I don’t think ARG is a dark conspiracy enacted by our masonic reptilian overlords — I actually think they’re much, much worse: a bunch of artists messing with people’s heads with corporate money.”

In continuing on with this “expose” about the Dark Side of Alternate Reality Games, let’s begin by addressing that little gem of wisdom quoted above. It’s full of enough misconceptions to easily fill up another column. So let’s look at some of the stated and implied meanings about ARGs in the quote, and see how they hold up to a few facts and exposure to the truth.

1) ARGs are primarily corporate-funded marketing campaigns.

Sorry to burst your bubble but that assumption is just downright false. Although the largest and most famous campaigns have indeed been part of corporate marketing campaigns, the overwhelming majority of ARGs that have been created in the last six years or so (pretty much covering the entire history of ARGs as a recognized storytelling or communications genre) have been independently funded grassroots efforts, with absolutely no corporate money or message behind them. Sure, large scale big budget games like The Art of the Heist or I Love Bees have gotten the most press and are the examples most people who’ve heard of ARGs will know, but they are in the overwhelming minority when it comes to the field of ARGs as a whole. Nowadays, for each corporate sponsored game that is created, there are usually 4 or 5 grassroots games running around the same time.

Take a look at the image embedded here; it’s a partial list of current games running, courtesy of the main source for news about the ARG world, ARGN.com. A majority of games on this list are grassroots games, made and paid for by individuals who just have a story to tell and are using this new form of digital storytelling to do it.

These indie games are made by people who do it for the love of the genre itself, folks like myself who are so fascinated by the potential of this new form of storytelling that they devote their own funds and creative energies to making these experiences for others to enjoy free of charge. I have been involved in a full dozen ARG campaigns since 2001, and over half of them have been games that I personally conceived and paid for myself. Yes, there have been a handful of corporate sponsored games mixed in there in that same time frame, which have garnered me a fair amount of money and attention, but they are the exception, not the rule. And I’m certainly not alone.

Many of the people working professionally making ARGs for corporate campaigns got their start and early experience exactly like I did – making their own games purely for the enjoyment of others, with no guarantees or thoughts of them ever being rewarded with anything other than the appreciation of the players. I honestly never thought I’d have the opportunity to get paid for making these things when I first started experimenting with this storytelling form and the fact that I have is something I consider myself incredibly lucky for. It’s wonderful to be able to make a living doing something you truly love and enjoy.

You’d be wrong to assume that marketing companies are the only people intrigued by ARGs, though. The academic world has grown increasingly more interested and involved in ARGs over the last few years, with ARGs being recognized in many books and in many university programs as a new and legitimate form of digital storytelling. ARGs have been featured topics at academic conferences around the world, where their potential for interactive cross-media narrative has many experts and enthusiasts excited.

Even in the fields of entertainment and gaming, ARGs are being intensely studied right now as a way of enhancing more traditional entertainment and communiucation mediums, and as a means of adding true and meaningful interaction to narrative-based digital games.

2) ARGs “mess with people’s heads”.

Again, this is by and large completely false, as well. Yes, there’s no denying that ARGs are fictional narratives, presented in cross media formats that are designed to evoke a feeling of realism for and engagement with the fictional world in within they are set. But this is no different than any other form of storytelling or art. Each strives to tell a story that feels real within the limitations of the media. If the simple act of writing a fictional story and presenting it to the world is “messing with people’s heads”, all forms of storytelling would have to be considered guilty, not just ARGs. So, if you are someone inclined to agree with the sentiments expressed in the quote that started this piece, you’d better stop reading books, watching TV, and going to the movies if you don’t want your head messed with.

3) ARGs are hoaxes or deliberate attempts to deceive the public.

Admittedly the argument given above about ARGs being the same as any other fictional story, doesn’t address what some people consider the “hoax” aspect of ARGs, meaning that people who come across an ARG’s creative content and aren’t aware that it’s part of a fictional narrative could believe it is real. The same could be said, however, for any form of storytelling when you take one small bit of it and present it out of the context it was meant to be experienced in. Any passage from a novel or scene from a film could be excerpted from the entire work and delivered in such a way as to look real rather than fictional. That’s certainly a realistic danger with Alternate Reality Games, when the various elements of the story are deliberately broken up and spread around the Internet and the real world, with each being made to look as realistic and believable as possible.

I have some rather humorous personal experience with this very thing happening, from an independent game I created in 2003 called Chasing The Wish. For that game I created a website for a fictional town in New Jersey, which I named Aglaura. I thought the site was fairly well done, in that I modeled it after several real small town websites that I researched, but it still certainly was lacking the depth of content and history one would expect from a real site of such a nature.

Nevertheless, about two thirds of the way into the game’s six month live run the site began receiving emails from the state of New Jersey, asking Aglaura to provide directions to their municipal offices so that the town could be added to the official state tax roles and records. It seems they had been trying to find the town for about a month or so, presumably by actually sending people out to look for it in the wilds of the New Jersey Pine Barrens where I had set the fictional community.

I realize that the people who believe there may be some “dark side” to ARGs are jumping out of their chairs at that example, saying that it proves that ARGs do indeed deceive and mislead people. But that doesn’t recognize the bigger picture that’s in question here, which has to do with intent. The statement that ARGs mess with people’s heads implies a deliberate intent to deceive or fool the participants, which was certainly never my goal for making the faux town website in Chasing The Wish. In the naiveté of my inexperience at the time, I honestly never even considered the fact that anyone would be fooled by the website in that manner and to that degree, so there was never any intent to try and do that at any point. Instead, my goal was to make a site that looked and felt real to the people who were enjoying the Chasing The Wish story. The authenticity and believability of the site were a means of enhancing the immersive story experience, not tools to deceive the unaware. And again I would argue that it’s no different than what artists in other media do all the time, to the limitations inherent within each particular storytelling genre.

There’s no denying or avoiding the critical role intent plays in ARGs, especially in the cases the quote above seems so worried about – corporate funded ARG campaigns. In my experience, games sponsored by large corporate clients are often extremely more worried about the possibility of being perceived as a hoax and about blurring the lines of reality and fiction than many grassroots games are. The goal is not entertain people and you don’t do that by leaving the participants feeling deceived or fooled in any way. While ARGs may be particularly effective in changing people’s perceptions of a brand or company, it’s never done in a subliminal or fraudulent way, and I’d defy anyone to present an example where it has. In every single large scale ARG the corporate sponsor and the product they are promoting (if any) has been known to the players at some point, more often early in the campaign than not.

The bottom line is this. Almost without exception, the participants in an ARG know they are playing a game. That’s actually one of the things that make Alternate Reality Games so potentially exciting to marketing firms and their clients, the fact that the audience actively and willingly seek out and engages in content they know is part of a marketing campaign. If you think about it, that’s the exact opposite reaction that most people have to advertising content. But there’s nothing tricky or deceptive about it at all. It’s simply good and effective marketing.

Now if your complaint is with companies doing marketing in general, that’s a whole different issue and discussion.

There’s another great explanation of why ARGs aren’t hoaxes here if you need further convincing.

Next – The Hidden Elements: The Dark Side of ARGs – Part 3

Tagged as: Alternate Reality Game, Alternate Reality Games, ARG, Dark Side, Dave Szulborski, dreamsend, dreamsend333, jeremy blake, New Jersey, theresa duncan, ty brown