Richard's Online Journal
[14/05/08] Of Alternate Realities
Writing an article on Alternate Reality Gaming for one of my magazines, I’m sorely tempted to invent a time machine, go back, and apply for the Funcom ARG manager gig on The Secret World - not least because you don’t see enough creative jobs that cite a love of my beloved mythology as a bonus. Ah, well. Back to reading Brewer’s...
Still, it’s an exciting genre to watch. There’s so much potential for these games, especially the ones that can break free of the ultra hardcore market, currently so untapped. Tying one of these games to a major MMO launch? Absolutely fantastic idea. Especially if the plan is to have the two games running concurrently.The possibilities are pretty much endless with that kind of project.
Shared plot elements and characters, out-of-the-game content that can deal with narrative on its own timescale, rather than having to wrap round the loot and levelling… whichever game does it first is in for a really good time. Fight a mid-level boss? Fine. Get an angry phonecall from him after stealing his stuff? Now we’re talking…
(I know that Majestic tried and failed to do this kind of thing years ago, but I think the earlier ARGs like I Love Bees have laid enough groundwork for some really cool media-bending. I’d stop somewhere short of the game automatically taking out a Yakuza contract on a player for repeated ganking under the guise of some kind of Assassin’s Guild. But I wouldn’t entirely rule it out. I’ve spent enough time in Stranglethorn Vale to have developed Views, especially where Horde rogues are concerned. Grr. At least have the decency to face me, worm! And be much, much weaker!)
As far as designs go, if I was making a new ARG from scratch, I’d be looking more at TV forms than individual games - episodic, volume-based, with lots of entry points to the madness, and as much direct player interaction/contribution as possible. Especially at the expense of ultra-ultra hardcore ‘copy the encrypted file from the BMP and crack it then rename the result as a WAV and look at the soundwave in a mirror’ type puzzles, which strike me as the psychotic cousin of early interactive movies like The 7th Guest and its sequel, I Paid How Much For This? Fine in their place, but their place shouldn’t be front-and-center to the point that abstraction clambers into the echo chamber and screams itself to a confusing, overwrought, painful death.
It’s the narrative element that attracts me, and on so many levels. As a writer, I love the concept of the internet as a stage, with a whole virtual universe of toys to play with. As a gamer, the chance to influence that kind of machine is equally compelling. As a social experiment, anyone who doesn’t shiver at the possibilities has no soul. I’m shivering right now, which is pretty impressive, given the incredible burning heat.
Three words. Massively. Multiplayer. Assassination.
Of course, since the odds of anyone asking me to do any of this are pretty much exactly zero, none of this matters doesn’t matter. Still, it’s a fascinating genre, and I can’t wait to see what comes next. I’d go so far as to say that a good ARG is one of the few ways I can see an MMO challenging the mindshare of games like World of Warcraft, especially outside the high fantasy genre. It’s so much easier to get people to buy into the likes of semi-real world demon hunters or secret agent types a la Sony’s The Agency than the likes of Gaarglewaarg, 8th Level Mage of the Cerulean Order, who still uses a Hotmail account and sounds disturbingly like Cam Clarke’s impression of Cam Clarke.
I remain, as ever, mostly ambivalent to bees.
Comments on this story
Majestic didn’t do well, even before 9/11. It had some wonderful ideas, but there wasn’t much of a game in there. It was put on hiatus, but EA specifically pointed to the player count for why it was cancelled. It was a monthly subscription for very, very little game.
The best attempt at doing that kind of thing as a standalone game was a French game called In Memoriam (Missing, in the US), which used the wrapper story that a serial killer had encoded clues to the whereabouts of his prisoners on a disc of puzzles, which had to be combined with web pages and online characters to solve.
The trouble there was obvious - within a couple of weeks, every search for in-game content flagged up pages about the game rather than the specially written sites. There’s no way around that in a commercial product though, except cheating (for instance, having a browser in the game which intercepts certain addresses and serves them up locally).
Most ARG’s i’ve seen though have either been to complicated, or to easy.
That’s my concern too. They need to have stuff to do, and disguised puzzles are by far the easiest for that, but the more the dedicated players play, the more they’ll get bored of ‘easy’ puzzles. The target market for any tie-in can’t be the guy who can spot an edited picture at a glance, or read Morse code in Braille by playing a file backwards and printing out its soundwave on a 3D printer. Those puzzles have their place, sure, but they should never be allowed to become the genre itself.
Hanso Foundation for Lost was nice, but it was easy to crack and small.
Agreed. But would that matter if it was running throughout the show, rather than designed to run for a couple of months? In a gaming context, it’s another way of interacting with the world, and more importantly, being able to influence it in a way that general MMO players really can’t, particularly if the designers take an episode/chapter approach with sufficient entry points for players who missed the kick-off.
If i understand it, wasn’t the winner loaded with cash anyway
Not really. Although Perplex City did remind me of the time I dug up a treasure-map and small chest full of cash on a beach in Portugal. It had clearly been intended for some group to find later on as part of an activity. I felt almost guilty about pocketing it.
Almost.
Posted by Richard on Wednesday 14th May
I seem to remember The Nokia Game doing the pan-media thing, phonecalls, bits in newspapers and TV, the whole shebang.
The only problem being that everything had to be highlighted with big “THIS ADVERT IS PART OF THE NOKIA GAME AND NOT A REAL ADVERT FEATURING ONLY A FICTICIOUS COMPANY MADE UP FOR THE NOKIA GAME, WHICH THIS ADVERT IS FOR, AND NOT A REAL COMPANY. ALSO, NOKIA GAME” banners and warnings, either because the concept of looking for this sort of thing was a new one or, as I expect, for regulatory reasons, which might scupper any real attempt at such an ARG.
Posted by beemoh on Wednesday 14th May
Warner Bros is doing the same thing with its “Why So Serious” campaign. Indeed, Warner, why? The description of the site on Google reads:
Part of the official Warner Bros. Online marketing strategy for “The Dark Knight”
You smell that? That’s immersion!
On the actual page, supposedly created by the Joker, there’s a stern warning not to go exploring at night. Because that would be dangerous. Oh, and he follows the Warner Bros privacy policy too.
Yet oddly, Harvey Dent doesn’t...
Posted by Richard on Wednesday 14th May
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As far i understand Majestic didn’t fail; it was just to ambitious for its time and eventually it got killed by 9/11. I only ever got a demo taster of it once. Basically signed up with rubbish stuff and they sent me an email saying “Welcome” and go to a website to start. Tried to go to the website and it kept 404’ing.
Eventually i tried it on a friends computer. Switched his computer onto DOS and started doing weird things before finally churning out the details i gave it. At the time i was quite impressed.
Most ARG’s i’ve seen though have either been to complicated, or to easy. Hanso Foundation for Lost was nice, but it was easy to crack and small. Perplex City self sustained itself well, but it eventually got swallowed up by its own success, and the end result winner was a bit crap as well (If i understand it, wasn’t the winner loaded with cash anyway?). Notporn was nice, but far to complex. Tron 2.0’s ARG was good as well, but it was never completed.
I’m waiting for a really good ARG. Maybe i should develop one…
Posted by William Main on Wednesday 14th May