ARG

For my final project, I decided to further explore ARGs (more specifically lonelygirl15) and the “actors” within them, to help shape and support my theories about the switch that turns our worlds on and off. I used an MTV article about lonelygirl15 to help.

Whether created or pre-existing, a world is reality.

ARGs are thought of and created. To the creators, players, and puppets, it is a reality to them for some time. The creators put real time and effort into the lift-off of the game. Players invest time and energy into solving the puzzles. The puppets, or actors, are really being filmed and really doing their job. In one way, or another, it is reality to everyone. The story itself may be made up, but it is itself a part of reality. Are lies not a part of our daily life—our real life? New Media has basically forced me to take another look at what I consider reality, what I consider truth.  read more »

I decided to go with the traditional essay for my final essay in explaining what ARG's have in common and the possibilities of what individuals could do with ARG's.

So I realized I forgot to write my own blog about our ARG we created for class...

The basic storyline that we created for our game was one that University of Mary Washington students would be able to connect with. We made our story set in Fredericksburg, mostly on the Mary Washington campus. The puzzles and clues we created dealt with things college students could understand, such as having an outside job, and the use of Facebook. The storyline is not necessarily the most believable, it has elements of fantasy and mythology, but it is interesting to follow.  read more »

When I first approached this project, I was really tempted to send Dr. Whalen a Wal-mart bag full of random things with puzzles on them to be like, "There's an ARG in there somewhere that says something about what we covered in class in there." Instead, I decided to make a sort of self-contained ARG in Word.

So I flipped through my notes, since the prompt was about the connections made between what we covered this whole semester and I basically took bits and pieces of my notes to make an ARG. I thought they could all go off the idea that it’s another world and few people understand it. Plus, you always have to have the trademark ARG plot where someone is dead and someone is missing—but here is there secret video diary—solve the mystery. So that’s what I basically did.  read more »

Our group Flotsam and Jetsam, was obviously heavily influenced by the ARG that we watched for a week. Kidnapping and YouTube videos (with questionable acting) are two similarities. We went with Disney to go along with our group name, but boy did we go crazy with Disney (Tink as well). The Myspace pages were created with our own accounts originally, but were switched over for more realistic purposes. And overall, in order for us to successfully pull off this ARG, we had to resort to tapping into the mind of a 14 year old girl. For some, more than others.

Alternate Reality, as a concept and for me, is lived every day. We all put ourselves in what is not really reality when we spread a rumor/tell a lie, and truly believe it. We believe that is the reality, when it's the opposite of really. But does the fact that we truly convince ourselves that that's the truth, mean it isn't reality? Is their really another reality, or is the alternate reality just a ring inside reality?  read more »

I can now only imagine the work that goes into the creation of a real ARG. This has been an overwhelming, but interesting experience. Our ARG stemmed from the idea of somehow using Disney lyrics or references as the basis of a puzzle or some other aspect of the ARG. While this didn’t necessarily happen it definitely did lead us in our final direction. Our group's ARG has a plot that most people have heard of: young girl falls in love with dreamy guy she met on the internet only to find out he's not who she thinks he is. In fact, the man she thinks is her very own knight-in-shining-armor Disney Prince is actually a serial killer who kidnaps (“collects”) young teenagers, dresses them as Disney princesses and kills them. The idea is that our character is the last of his victims and the player must find her before she meets her fate.  read more »

Creating an ARG was interesting to say the least. I was in the group ninja turtles (+1) and in our ARG we decided to tie in the past with present issues that a high school boy is facing. Our group decided to make the game based in Fredericksburg. The main character is a troubled boy named Bear and his worried teacher Ms. Hampton. The student Bear is ultimately changes his disposition after finding an artifact. Once Bear finds this artifact he became very excited about the date December 13th. Hopefully the gamer would become interested enough to explore the sites Ms. Hampton provides to bring clarity Bear’s behavioral issues. During Ms. Hampton’s blogs she discovers for herself what might be the major problem strangely enough trailing back to the battle of Fredericksburg. Each site the group uses leaves clues to the next. I felt the clues were very subtle but not impossible by any means. It was incredible how much our group agreed on certain ideas over the game. I never quite understood the seriousness of the ARG. The gamers and puppermasters treat these games as though they are not games at all. It fascinated me the interaction between puppetmasters and gamers.  read more »

As wonderfully explained underneath this blog entry, our ARG project is about a man that wakes up in what appears to be a hospital and has to go through the process of figuring out where he is. As things move along, we finds a means of communication with the ARG players and he has to discover the meaning behind his being there. Our ARG really began as a brainstorm of ideas, just trying to come up with an intriguing story that would draw in players and keep them interested. Since the idea of waking up somewhere and not remembering what happened is a theme that can be found in all forms of media, we thought it would be a good basic concept to go with. After we had this idea down we just built upon it until a story formed.  read more »

There are some very interesting/obvious connections between ARGs and "Tloen, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." Here are some of the sections that really made me think about ARGs and the effect they wish to achieve, in terms of puzzles, immersion, and interaction:

1. Borges describes the literature of Uqbar "a literature of fantasy" whose "epics and legends never referred to reality but rather to the two imaginary realms of Mle'khnsas and Tloen" (70). Similarly, ARGs exist in imaginary realms that so closely resemble real ones that they are believable but, nevertheless, fake.

2. "I now held in my hands a vast and systematic fragment of the entire history of an unknown planet, with its architecture and its playing cards, the horror of its mythologies and the murmur of its tongues, its emperors and its seas, its minerals and its birds and fishes, its algebra and its fire, its theological and metaphysical controversie-- all joined, articulated, coherent, and with no visible doctrinal purpose of hint or parody" (71-2).  read more »

I had no idea so much was involved in creating an ARG. I knew that a lot of work had to go into it, but the thought process that the puppetmasters must go through in order to make a game where the flaws was minimal is tremendous. Working on the ARG with my group has been quite a time because once you have an opening idea, thousands of thoughts and directions arise for things to happen. Deciding which route to go is very difficult and you need to make sure people are going to be interested in the concept. Since so many ARGs fail, finding that key to success is not easy.
I find this project to be very difficult. Creating webpages is definitely not my forte, but it only makes sense that everyone in the group in involved in the process. I think the way the project was assigned limits the possibilities of involvement because people have to work on things that they may not know a lot about.

So before following an ARG, and hearing the group presentations, I always thought that alternate reality games were weird, and so were the people who followed them. However, now that I've understand them better, I kind of think that they are pretty cool and the same with the people who follow them. A lot of the more intense games have really difficult puzzles and challenges that require a lot of work and skill. Same with the puppetmasters of the games. They have to be extremely creative and bright people in order to come up with the puzzles as well as a believable and follow-able story line.

I can also now see why people are so enraptured with these games. They seem easily addicting. Once I hear about the puzzles or games, I definitely want to see how it ends. I think this project has kind of opened my eyes to see that ARGs aren't as strange and weird as they first seemed.  read more »

The ARG that my group (Flotsam and Jetsam) and I have been following is The Home Office. It is loosely based off of Lonelygirl15, a girl who posted videos on Youtube and was believed to be real until people found out that she wasn't and that it was all a "hoax". The online character, Lonelygirl15, whose real name is Bree, was trait-positive, meaning that a secret organization headed by a group of 12 Elders known as The Order of Denderah/Hymn of One wanted her dead for many reasons. The most important of these reasons is that her blood given to them in a transfusion would make them live 40 to 50 years longer. Bree was killed off at the end of Season 1 back in August 2007 and many events have passed since then (spin off shows, etc.). And that's where we come in.

The trailhead for this ARG was a short video with the Home Office logo that had a lot of static, an equation that the lovely folks at unfiction.com said meant something along the lines that "all equals none"-which relates back to the Hymn of One because their enemy is the Hymn of None. The video also flashed a date, 11/07/08. You could then go to a website for The Home Office and sign up to be an agent for them.  read more »

I, like Jacqui, am following Lif3. Firstly I was amazed at how fast the trailhead moved. There were new posts on the forum every ten minutes, or even more frequently than that. A few of the players commented how they were currently at work, and therefore couldn't interact with a character via instant messaging because the boss was lurking around. It's just really interesting to see how it affects players' lives seemingly 24/7. Although I am a firm defender that the good old novel is entirely immersive and in one sense creates an alternate reality, there comes a point where you can always put it down, and although you'll certainly be thinking about its plot and characters and themes, you can still be productive in another area of your life. But with this game, it seems that the players can't put it down. I haven't followed enough ARGs to make a general statement about this complete immersion, but I read on the forum the playerbase for Lif3 ranges from about 18-32, meaning adults who have jobs and responsibilities that affect their own livelihood and the livelihood of their families. Yet still, they're constantly monitoring the forum, updating posts every ten minutes.  read more »

So I have been following an ARG called Lif3 for the projects we're doing and I have to say it is definitely interesting. When we first began discussing ARGs I could not really see a good reason why people would become so involved and why they would want to get 'immersed' in it. However, after watching/reading this particular ARG I can definitely see the appeal to their potential greatness. Lif3 has recently gotten more complicated because it is actually connecting some of its aspects to earlier ARGs and it just amazes me how much time and effort is obviously put into this. Of course that is also very daunting since we're going to be trying to put something similar together and I can just imagine that the creators of these ARGs are dedicating their lives to creating them like its a full-time job. On Monday my group will be giving a presentation on Lif3 and my goal is to make sure that it conveys the awesome-ness level that it is because I think it is a great example of an ARG.

This occurred to me between class and my apartment just now or I would've brought it up during our discussion, but, accepting the idea that it would be beneficial to give ARG a (different) name, why not "collective fiction"? I admit, I still don't like the acronym as much (it's still CF, which you can't really pronounce like you can 'ARG', and doesn't produce handy puns like ARGument and ARG, matey!).

In any case, I feel like the word "collective" describes this genre very well. ARGs (as I still insist on referring to them for now) are built around the idea of a large group of players working together to complete the game, sometimes with a large group of people "behind the curtain", depending on the game. This "collective" of all the players and PMs craft the story and its progression; authoring duties are, to some degree, shared between the two groups.  read more »

I have so many words swirling around in my head. And for what? To define ARG.

Honestly, I didn't know they existed until this class. I had never noticed that there were websites that were part of puzzles, part of ARGs that tons of people are adamant to solve. I had never played an interactive fiction before, but now I have the experience. What is there to do with that experience? It seems like the goal is to define an ARG and whether or not it's truly a false world, or not.

While reading TINAG, towards the beginning of the book, I read my favorite paragraph. It was talking about how the goal of an ARG is to take the game and immerse it in the player's world, not the other way around. This struck me. Can this truly be achieved? I have experienced immersion from films, books, video games, but I never thought they were actually a part of my world. And who's to judge what a true ARG is anyway? I think it's evident by the varying opinions of our class that we each have a different experience with a text we're reading or playing. Just because one person's reality collides with that of a game, doesn't mean the person next to them will have the same experience.  read more »

ARGs in my opinion, are a revolutionary idea. Just the concept of bringing games and puzzles into the real world is astounding to say the least. It's like those little train murder mystery games wanna-be actors and people with nothing else to do with their time put on minus really bad fake accents plus REAL mystery and limitless possibilities. Or like a Zelda game without the really cool animations.  read more »

I really enjoyed our short discussion of the Matrix during yesterday's class. In terms of ARGs, I'm beginning to think that the Matrix is one. Not necessarily the movie, but IN the movie. As long as you were aware of the fact that you used to be plugged in. when being plugged into the Matrix, you can do what you want, break the rules and try to survive. Sounds like an interesting way to experience an alternative reality.

Do you think that a movie can contain an ARG without even knowing it? To what extent the the Wochowki(sp?) Brothers have been trying to build an ARG in the actual movie.

The most influential item I have discovered in my research into ARGs is just how time sensitive they are. Not only for those in play, but also in those who are attempting to just follow the storyline for their own entertainment or research purposes without our necessary assignment to play them. I really don't have enough time to peer through all of the little bits of information various players have presented to try to solve the various puzzles within the game, especially in conjunction with our own ARG assignment as well as other assignments for other classes.

The reason for this seems to be the participation that both goes into and is illustrated by the information presented for these games. One could spend as much time in a regular job in the time investment players have put into these games, so much that I do wonder what these people do for a living and how their lives are affected by the game play. I am aware of the wide demographic of people who may participate in these stories, but at what point does the alternate reality aspect becomes the reality of the participants?

Before reading parts of This Is Not a Game and doing other parts of our ARG project, like monitoring forums and such, I had no idea how enthralling the ARG community is. When I first head about the concept, I thought it would have a light following. I thought puzzles would be small and self contained (like Sudoku, I guess) and be relatively non-intimidating. And I suppose that there are ARGSs that our less serious, or easier than others. But seriously, wow!  read more »