Are Alternate Reality Games the Future?
In this feature, we look at the rise of alternate reality games and measure their potential in video game advertising and across other art forms.
In the summer of 2004, unsuspecting moviegoers in theaters across America witnessed the beginnings of a new form of interactive storytelling hidden inside the debut trailer for Bungie's Halo 2. Standing in place of the customary Xbox logo at the trailer's end were three little words, responsible for stirring the imaginations of more than 2.5 million people around the world: "I Love Bees."
The I Love Bees marketing campaign for Halo 2 was one of the earliest and most successful examples of alternate reality gaming, objective-based experiences that bring together treasure hunting, puzzle-solving, and interactive storytelling in one single, ambitious human experiment. Although alternate reality games (ARGs) began life as mere experiments testing the idea of using gameplay fundamentals in the real world, their ability to engage public imagination and target the innate human desire to play together has proved them to be a highly innovative method of interactive storytelling that is finding both commercial and artistic success. ARGs are the perfect distraction for an audience ready to embrace a new kind of social interaction, shaped by social networks and the popularity of mass casual gaming and driven by technological convergence. So what are ARGs exactly? And how do they work? Does their potential lie exclusively in the world of video game advertising? Or does it stretch across other media? And will pushing immersion to this kind of level only serve to highlight the limitations of video games as a medium?
In this feature, GameSpot AU looks at the beginnings of ARGs and analyzes their potential impact on the future of the video game industry and their adoption in wider art forms.
I Love Bees
In 2003, a small group of creative types got together to form a company that would help them meet their vision for a new kind of storytelling. Some had shared offices at Disney Imagineering, working to create innovative theme park attractions; others had backgrounds in gaming and entertainment. But all of them wanted the same thing: the creation of experiences that required the participation of a mass audience and infiltrated everyday life in one way or another.
"The goal wasn't to become a marketing company; it just evolved that way as the philosophy behind alternate reality games began to show real results," says Susan Bonds, the president and CEO of that company, 42 Entertainment. "Our aim was to extend stories and worlds through gameplay, mystery, surprise, and innovative delivery mechanisms. Carefully choreographed, these experiences gained traction in popular culture by placing the audience in the driver's seat and letting them be the fuel for bringing the product to life. By providing original content, organically discovered through gameplay, players become invested. Ownership gets transferred to them and they want to share with others; it fit the basic tenants of the Web: find cool stuff, talk about it, and share it."
Bonds knows the score. Prior to her role at 42 Entertainment, the savvy entrepreneur was responsible for the multiplayer online interactive game URU: Ages Beyond Myst, where she led the design, production, technology integration, marketing, publishing, music development, and project management for the title at Cyan Worlds. Before that, she worked at the aforementioned Disney Imagineering for 10 years directing the design and development of theme park architecture, attractions, and projects, including the Indiana Jones Adventure for Disneyland, Alien Encounters for Walt Disney World, and the ABC Times Square Studios exterior in New York.
42 Entertainment's first foray into the world of ARGs came with the 2001 game titled The Beast, created to promote Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Considered now to be one of the best and most influential examples of early ARGs, The Beast drew in more than 3 million people around the world through websites, online communities, phone and fax clues, email accounts, and live events. The campaign's narrative was designed to draw participants into the world of the film before its release, set 16 years after the events chronicled in A.I. with three overlapping entry points (or "rabbit holes," as they are known in ARG-speak). The Beast was chronicled in mainstream press and won a New York Times Year in Ideas award. (The project was initially conceived by Elan Lee, Jordan Weisman, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Sean Stewart).
But it wasn't until 2004's I Love Bees that something quite extraordinary happened. Microsoft approached 42 Entertainment with a fairly simple goal: Expose the general public to the world of Halo by getting the national press involved. At first, the team--consisting of Bonds as producer, concept creator Elan Lee, and Sean Stewart among others--conceived the campaign as a radio drama, similar to Orson Welles' War of the Worlds. The key difference would be the incorporation of extensive player excursions into the real world through the use of pay phones, engaging players through puzzle-solving and global positioning system coordinates.
After the Halo 2 trailer debuted, those intrigued enough by the final few frames logged on to ilovebees.com only to find what appeared to be a website dedicated to honey sales and beekeeping. Those who kept coming back to the site were soon introduced to the weblog of Dana the webmistress, who began posting intriguing rants about her site being hacked. This is how the story of the campaign developed; it was a story that was unrelated to the Halo universe, but it moved along similar lines. About 250,000 people viewed the site during its launch in August 2004, and another 250,000 more started turning up every time it was updated. (42 Entertainment estimates that during the four months leading up to Halo 2's release, more than 2.5 million people participated in I Love Bees.) During that time, Dana's story was slowly revealed through a series of audio logs, puzzles, and fragments of stories posted to the site. They eventually built up into a countdown, 210 pairs of GPS coordinates and time codes, and instructions for passwords. Players learned that Dana's site had been hacked by Melissa, a lost A.I. suffering from a case of amnesia after crash-landing on present-day earth. After coming across Dana's bee enthusiast site on a San Francisco server, Melissa attempted to send distress signals, leading the two women to finally cross paths.
As time wore on, the campaign became more complex. People eventually worked out that the coordinates referred to pay phones, the time codes referred to when the phones would ring, and the passwords had to be used to unlock pieces of the radio drama before it was played down the phone. Players who had signed up began receiving emails and text messages. They also attended coordinated meetings with other players and I Love Bees characters, eventually culminating in an invitation to play Halo 2 before its release.
"There are great stories of individuals and groups working together to unlock these messages and piece together the story that couldn't be scripted or made up," Bonds says. "People networking to get someone in Alaska to ask a business owner to open early so that they could answer the pay phone there; someone answering a pay phone in a hurricane; groups of people aged between 17 and 55 years waiting patiently in Georgia while they let one person answer the pay phone and then share the message with everyone there.
"The greatest feedback we had on I Love Bees came from those who participated. People went to great lengths to thank us for the memorable experiences--people showing up at our offices to thank us in person, mail, phone calls, and even one person who made custom I Love Bees chocolates for us. Whatever the medium or platform, what people want really hasn't changed. They want great stories and fun experiences."
sirkel28 posted Sep 27, 2011 6:56 am GMT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)
solitarycow posted Sep 27, 2011 1:34 am GMT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)