Name: Hans Klijn 29 June 29, 2019

Student nr: 11318163

Supervisor: Misha Kavka

Second reader: Markus Stauff

MA Media studies – Television and Cross-Media Culture

Universiteit van Amsterdam

Using an ARG to Create Liveness in HBO’s Westworld:

The influence of the gamified story on the viewer’s experience of the series’ temporality.

1 Table of contents

- P. 3: Introduction o P. 4 Discover Westworld o P. 6 Methodology

- P. 8: Chapter 1. Theoretical Framework

- P. 17: Chapter 2. Liveness and temporality

o P. 18 Part 1 - Exploration phase o P. 20 Part 2 - Narrative phase o P. 21 Part 3 - Episodic phase o P. 27 Liveness

- P. 29: Chapter 3. Engagement and shared social reality o P. 34 Engagement through immersion

- P. 37: Conclusion

- P. 40: Bibliography

2 Introduction

Series with incredibly complex narratives such as Lost (2004-2010, ABC) almost necessitate repeated viewings just to make sense of all the plot points that are branching out and tying together throughout the story. Being able to record television series as well as buying the DVD box-set or now simply (re)streaming episodes on your television is not only a convenient way to watch television when you want to, but also to understand series’ narratives better. People once gathered on online message boards to make sense of the convoluted series of events that was shown. But not only did the narratives of the television series become more complex; they also expanded beyond the realm of television onto different media platforms. During the second season of Lost the show’s producers decided to not only have a story that was told through the television series, but to add additional backstory in different media. This backstory, which explored the background of a malicious company that was central to Lost’s plot, was told through websites, e-mails, phone calls, commercials, and flash mobs, among other media. The result was a fragmented story containing details of a fictional company which existed within the alternate reality established by the television series’ storyworld. This caused the viewers to become players in a gamified rendition of the narrative where they themselves had to find the fragmented pieces of the story and put them together. Participating in this Alternate Reality Game (ARG) was not necessary to follow along with the story told through the television series; its main purpose was to support the storyline that was told through the television series by expanding the storyworld.

Since the early 2000s many more television narratives have bled into other media. With its slogan “It’s not TV. It’s HBO.” the subscription-based broadcaster HBO has portrayed itself as more than just television. It lives up to this notion with complex narratives and characters, as well as elaborate marketing campaigns. For the series True Blood (2008-2014, HBO)and Game of Thrones (2011-2019, HBO) for example, the network launched marketing campaigns that spread across multiple media platforms where the audience could explore the storyworlds of the series and become immersed in them. These campaigns happened ahead of the airing of the pilot episodes, with the main focus being to create awareness of the stories and characters as these series moved into new territory for HBO with genres (horror and fantasy, respectively) that the network had not aired before (Bourdaa, 2014). Creating these moments of immersion into the storyworld through other platforms is something HBO has kept exploring and expanding on since. For its series Westworld (2016-, HBO), which delves into yet another new genre for HBO, namely science fiction, a marketing campaign not

3 only preceded the pilot, but kept going throughout the series’ run. Ahead of its initial release the audience could explore the alternate reality in which Westworld was set through mostly online content, but as episodes began to be released new content would also be added to these online platforms. Analyzing Westworld and its use of the ARG offers a unique insight into the methods that are employed to stimulate the viewer to participate in the temporal flow of the series. In the case of Westworld HBO operates on a weekly release model. By following this temporal flow, and thus viewing episodes ‘live’, through both the TV series and the ARG the viewer is able to engage with the content in a much more immersive way. By offering quality engagement the audience is encouraged to become a live viewer and thus a loyal viewer.

Discover Westworld

Westworld is a science-fiction series that started airing on 2 October 2016. To date there have been two seasons, with the second season’s finale airing on 24 June 2018. The series is set in the not-too- distant future in a theme park named Westworld that allows wealthy individuals to experience the old West. The theme park, which is run by the fictional corporation ‘Delos’, is inhabited by so called ‘hosts’, who are robots driven by artificial intelligence, but who forget what happened to them at the end of every day. Other than their 24-hour memory, they look and act like humans. The show deals with existential themes such as what it means to be human and when artificial intelligence could or should be considered consciousness. It does so by showing the viewer what the hosts undergo by being subject to both emotional and physical violence at the hands of part visitors. The hosts process this initially simply by having their memory reset every 24 hours, but this changes when some of the hosts become self-aware. This ability to remember the cruelty that they experience and becoming aware of the nature of their existence as robots in a theme park ultimately lead the hosts to revolt.

Similar to the ARG that accompanied Lost, the marketing campaign surrounding Westworld allowed to audience to explore the company that is central to the series’ plot, Delos Incorporated. From a few days before the pilot aired pieces of the storyworld became accessible through websites, the first of which was the Discoverwestworld website, which were quickly recognized by the audience as part of an ARG. While the audience may initially just have browsed the Discoverwestworld website and read about the park, a chatbot named Aeden soon prompted the visitors to ask some questions. A set of questions regarding, for example, how to get to Westworld or what activities visitors of the park can partake in lead to perfectly understandable answers. However, many people soon found that asking more critical questions about characters from the show, for instance, would lead to ‘error messages’ which were riddled with easter eggs. This in turn caused people to believe they were dealing with a

4 game rather than a non-interactive text. The easter eggs then quickly started leading people to hidden portions of the website which was aimed at consumers, as well as to a different website which seemed to serve as a platform for Delos’ business-to-business communication. The ARG allowed the audience experience what it might be like to be a prospective visitor of the park, or even a client of Delos Incorporated.

Even though the series is set in the future, about one or two centuries from now, the information on the webpages is framed as part of the present that the audience experiences. While the ARG is set in the ‘present’, the plot involves multiple timelines, although throughout the series there is much ambiguity as to which events belong to which timeline, as the story is not told chronologically and there are often no clear indicators which timeline is being shown. The timelines are complicated by the fact that the series features both human and host characters, the former of whom age and the latter of whom do not. The human characters are either guests, whom we follow as they visit the park, or employees of Delos, the company that owns Westworld. The audience rarely gets to see different groups of guests interact with each other, but they do see different groups of guests interacting with the same hosts in different scenes. Because hosts do not age, it is difficult to discern whether or not the guests are interacting with the hosts in the same timeline. A couple of notable timelines the series follows are, for one, the timeline in which William, who is married to the daughter of James Delos, the founder of Delos Incorporated, visits the park for the first time with his brother-in-law. In another timeline we see the so called ‘Man in Black’, who is clearly much older than William and his brother-in-law, interacting with some of the same hosts we see William interacting with. Neither parties are shown interacting with other noteworthy human characters until the end of the first season, when the park’s former director greets the Man in Black as ‘William’ and we learn that William and the Man in Black are the same person a few decades apart. The show features many such reveals, where the viewer learns something that they thought happened in the present (the timeline furthest in the future, which runs parallel to the ARG) actually took place days, months or years earlier.

The television series’ ambiguity regarding its chronology is one reason for the complexity of the overall plot, as well as the sheer amount of narrative information that is put into each episode. With each episode the chronology of the narrative becomes a little clearer, as viewers piece together the information they are given to make sense of the puzzle that is the Westworld plot. This level of complexity is often met with a tendency towards binge-watching by the audience to be able to more easily relate the events from one episode to those of another (Jenner, 2014). Westworld, however, stimulates the viewers to watch the episodes when they premier by episodically adding new content to the ARG. Westworld’s ARG adds not only to the storyworld but to the temporal experience of the

5 story by placing the television series’ present within the same temporality occupied by the audience exists.

Methodology

This thesis will explore how Westworld employs its ARG to stimulate the viewer to participate in the series’ temporality, both by viewing episodes of the show live, as they are aired, and by taking part in the ARG as soon as new content is added. The concept of liveness will first need to be defined in a way that relates to the current state of fiction television programming. The liveness that the audience of Westworld experiences is one that is spread across multiple media, relating not to that which is shown on TV, but to the temporal space in which the audience participates as a result of the airing of the series. While there is plenty of literature on both ARGs and on how we experience liveness through multiple platforms, there does not seem to be much research on how these can influence and even amplify each other. Therefore, I aim to answer the question, “How does Westworld employ its ARG to stimulate the audience to participate in multi-platform liveness?”

To research how the ARG affects the viewers’ experience of liveness, there first needs to be a theoretical framework to define what liveness is within the context of fiction television series as well as a definition of the ARG which shows how it differs from other online marketing campaigns. This theoretical framework will connect the historical concept of liveness from television studies to related concepts within the context of Westworld and its ARG such as immersion, as the ARG allows the audience to not simply witness or even interact with the story, but to participate in it. Through this immersion the viewer has more reason to engage intensively with the content. In order to do so the viewer will need to keep up to date with the temporal flow of the television series in relation to the ARG, as the online content is ephemeral. This immersive experience is part of what Henry Jenkins refers to as ‘affective economics’, which describes a shift towards quality over quantity in regard to customer engagement, stimulating brand loyalty (Jenkins, 2006). By providing the viewer with a higher-quality experience, the viewer becomes more engaged and thus becomes a more loyal HBO customer.

This will lay the foundation for a case study of Westworld, analyzing the ARG on the basis of audience accounts and using McGonigal’s study of I love bees as a model for my research as well as Veale’s study of the transmodal story of Homestuck. Both are case studies that feature a high degree of descriptiveness, which is required when studying ARGs as they are ephemeral and as a result most of the content that will be discussed cannot be revisited. McGonigal’s essay even consists mostly of a

6 front-to-back chronological description of the ARG. While I do not describe every detail of the ARG in this thesis, I do engage in quite elaborate description of the parts of the ARG I want to highlight, as much of it is no longer available.

The case study will be divided into two chapters. Chapter 1 will focus on redefining liveness with respect to the ARG, comparing the temporality of the ARG with that of the television series and exploring how they interact with each other. The second chapter will focus on engagement through the ARG, analyzing the way that the ARG shapes a shared social reality as well as creates immersive experiences. These immersive experiences allow the audience to participate in the story and to bring that story into the same present tense as the viewer, causing them to experience the present of the television series as their own.

While I did participate in some parts of the ARG that were available outside of the U.S. and kept up with some of its other developments through social media, the corpus will consist of other users’ descriptions of the ARGs after the fact rather than from the perspective of first-hand experience participating in the ARG. These descriptions will be pulled from online archives, most importantly Reddit, as the Westworld subreddit users have created an archive of everything they found and experienced while participating in the ARG. This is the primary dataset, because the websites related to the ARG have changed over time and most content that is discussed is no longer available to experience first-hand.

7 1. Theoretical framework

An ARG, as the name suggests, is a game that allows the audience to experience alternate reality, in this case of a television series. More specifically, contemporary ARGs are interactive works of fiction that consist of a cluster of mostly online content spread over multiple websites, blogs, images, audio files and other digital artifacts to create an immersive experience (McGonigal, 2008). Some ARGs do go offline for some portions; as ARGs have roots that reach to times well before the internet, such as treasure hunts organized by newspapers, their offline form is the original format from which they evolved into present-day online or multi-platform ARGs (Örnebring, 2007). ARGs are employed by broadcasters as marketing tools not only in the sense of getting people interested in the content in the first place, but also keeping them interested as the story progresses, producing loyal viewers who follow the narrative as it evolves, live.

Live television is a concept that has been redefined over the years, as television has changed. In her 1983 essay Jane Feuer calls liveness an ideology as well as the ontology of television. She starts by stating that nobody seems to be entirely sure of what “television” is (Feuer, 1983). Most scholars up until then had described it by stating how it differed from cinema, often focusing on the immediacy of television. While Feuer does not end up with a definitive conclusion of what this ideology might entail, she does lay down a foundation for what would need to be discussed in order to come to any conclusion. For example, Feuer coins the term “liveness” in this essay and states that it is a key way in which television is different from cinema, as the former can transmit events to viewers as they occur. Technical liveness, however, is not all that there is to television, as Feuer states that television might instead be better understood as a “collage of film, video and ‘live,’ all interwoven into a complex and altered time scheme” (Feuer, 1983, p. 15). She goes on to describe Good Morning, America as a fragmented program, consisting of numerous segments that flow from one to the other, where unity, flow and regularity are created by the show’s host. Feuer’s essay ends by raising more questions than it answers as it even questions the legitimacy of the articulation of the problem that is being presented stating: “Is the spectator positioned by the apparatus, or is the spectator relatively free, and if so, what permits us to analyze texts in the way I have done above, and why is Good Morning, America so successful? Or perhaps this manner of articulating the problem is itself the problem?” (Feuer, 1983, p. 21).

8 It does, however, pose an important question, asking not only “what is television?” but the underlying question of what needs to be asked more specifically to describe the ideology of television.

Feuer never gives a definitive answer as to what the ideology of television entails, and even though she coins the term liveness herself as an integral part of how television differs from cinema, she immediately questions whether liveness is the single defining term of the ideology of television. Instead, she opts to position this quality of being ‘live’ within a collage of multiple characteristics which are all entwined. Caldwell explores this further by speaking of the “ideology of liveness myth”, explaining that liveness is often understood as the determining feature of television within the realm of television theory. He instead posits that liveness can be better understood as one stylistic element, a visual code that can be communicated to and understood by ontologically aware viewers. His understanding of liveness is limited to the immediacy of transmission, where the events that are shown on TV happen at the same time as they are transmitted, creating a sense of “being there” (Caldwell, 1995). Here Caldwell actively distances himself from the idea that liveness is integral to televisual ideology. His opposition to Feuer’s view of liveness is understandable, as the medium of television itself had also changed by the mid-1990s, when Caldwell was writing, since her essay was written before the introduction of VOD services which offered an entirely new mode of viewing and which indeed had no overlap with the immediacy of transmission that had defined liveness.

Similar to radio, television provided live information and entertainment to its viewers, as it is still capable of doing, but liveness does not necessarily define television any longer. As VOD and streaming were introduced to the television audience, ‘liveness’ as a technical aspect controlled by broadcasters and networks was slowly becoming a less integral part of the viewing experience, although this feature used to be integral to the television industry. The strength of live television, however, remained, that is, its ability to be both there on the scene as well as in your living room, the sense of “being there”. This is mostly true in regard to news television, where television transmission is felt as an immediate collision with the real (Doane, 2016). It is this liveness that initially clearly differentiated television from film, as a distinction rooted in its modes of production, rhetoric and address. Even when transmission is no longer technically live, liveness continues to be associated with certain qualities and characteristics, such as immediacy, presence, reality effects, intimacy and so on (White, 2004).

The way people consume television also keeps changing, and as a result the answer to the question of what television is must keep changing as well. As VOD services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu are on the rise, broadcasting companies have found themselves with some tough competition. These

9 streaming services offer a different mode of viewing to the audience, notably binge-watching, which has almost replaced the live television experience in some cases (Jenner, 2014). Jenner states that, due to fiction television series employing increasingly more complex narratives that reward on- demand binge-watching as viewers struggle to fully comprehend everything, audiences are moving away from the live experience and onto the streaming platforms.

It is important to note that binge-watching is not necessarily unrelated to liveness, as often streaming services such as Netflix will upload an entire season of an original series, which many consumers then wish to view as soon as possible. While fiction television might not have the sense of urgency that a news broadcast or sports television has, liveness still comes into play through the "water-cooler talk," where people discuss last night's broadcast together (Johnson, 2009). Something that is prevalent in sports television as well as in fiction television is the sharing of audio, video and other snippets of information on social media. Because of this, the water-cooler talk has moved from the actual water-cooler to the second screen. Johnson, focusing on sports, argues that broadcasting networks create a sense of community through this second screen by interacting with the audience through discussion of ongoing matches. Importantly, sports television has shifted to multi-platform liveness, sharing news stories online on the network’s website and social media, as well as on television, where the news that was earlier released online is complemented with commentary by television hosts and famous sportspeople. For sports television, liveness is highly relevant because of its newsworthiness, as every match poses the question, "who will win?," which is to be answered during the broadcast. Fiction television, even when an entire season is uploaded at once, has a similar form of newsworthiness as the audience goes online to discuss cliffhangers they were left with by the end of the season or even an episode. As audiences take to online platforms, the water- cooler talk moves to these platforms, shaping a multi-media environment in the "post-network era" where viewers have an individual experience while also creating a community through sharing and interacting.

Additionally, sports television extends to second screen apps, such as various social media platforms as well as network-owned apps like the ESPN app, which update the viewer with live information as the match is happening. The NFL, for example, offers a wide range of information, interaction and advertisements on their website, allowing the viewers to interact with the content live. This multi- platform approach is something that is very prevalent in sports broadcasting. New media platforms offer extended information as well as complement the television screen, urging engagement with the online content as well as a return to the television screen, both participating in the live discussion through second screen apps as well as witnessing the events as they are being transmitted live to the television screen.

10 This multi-platform liveness can then be divided into two forms: online liveness and group liveness, both of which Couldry defines as liveness outside of the medium of television. Online liveness takes place on the internet through chatrooms and more recently various social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, where the audience can discuss whatever they are seeing on television with anyone and everyone on the platform through hashtags (Twitter), groups (Facebook) and subreddits (Reddit). Group liveness, by contrast, is experienced through mobile phones as people discuss media in group texts or other (group) chat apps such as Whatsapp (Couldry, 2004). These two forms of liveness Couldry describes essentially differ on the basis of platform functionality: online liveness encourages people to seek out the platform they want to discuss a specific topic on, whereas in the case of group liveness they introduce a topic to their already existing social group. This also means there is a difference in the amount of control they have over when and what they want to discuss between the different forms. Online liveness forces the individual to follow the masses and view the content that is trending at that time. Group liveness can be the result of one person encouraging the group to watch a television series through streaming or VOD. Couldry states that online liveness is initiated by the broadcaster, while group liveness starts from a group of people, meaning it could be a group of people that started binge-watching Friends together.

It becomes apparent here how persistent the idea of liveness has been throughout television’s history, as its meaning keeps evolving. While in the early days of television liveness was a given and the audience could witness events as they were unfolding in "real-time," Couldry argues that nowadays liveness can refer to scheduled programming as well, stating, “liveness guarantees a potential connection to shared social realities as they are happening” (Couldry, 2004, p. 56). This is based on his argument that liveness has less to do with the realness of the event than with the immediacy of the transmission. Couldry also states that "liveness now takes new forms which link television to other media" (Couldry, 2004, p. 355). This coincides with Johnson's description of sports broadcasters, in that the "water-cooler talk" has moved online, creating a community through audience interaction. Liveness no longer refers only to witnessing events as they are happening, but to participating in a shared social reality as it is taking place. It is important to experience an episode of a television series "now" so that the viewer can interact with the online community also watching, those who are consuming and producing content through new media instead of other social mechanisms. It is the aim of online liveness that is the most significant to the transmedia storytelling in television series such as Mr. Robot, Alias, and Westworld which employ Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). These games are set almost entirely on the internet, thereby moving part of their story into the digital realm where the audience can now interact not only with each other, but with the story as

11 well, on the same platforms as where the story is being told. As the live experience moves online, so do the stories of television.

While liveness used to be a necessity in television, it has now become a tool employed by broadcasters to attract viewers within a particular time frame as well as being a concept that can be initiated by the audience. It no longer only secures the reality of the event but also evokes immediacy and a sense of urgency to be able to participate in the shared social reality by joining the conversation on social media. However, McPherson speaks mostly of an “illusion” of liveness, stating that online liveness is influenced by our own personal experience. The differences between online and traditional liveness can be demarcated by three factors: mobility, volatility, and causality (McPherson, 2006). McPherson explains that, as we navigate liveness ourselves, it becomes mobile, since we make choices about which content to consume driven by our own interests. As we choose, we encounter causality, since our previous choice influences our next choice, creating a chain of events resulting in our own personal path that leads through the content provided to us. The volatility presents itself in terms of the immediacy of liveness, since we experience it in the "now", causing the user to be unable to reproduce the experience later as it was unique to that moment in time. McPherson calls this volitional mobility. However, she later admits that this volitional mobility is undermined by the interfaces employed by the websites, which guide the user along a predetermined path. Dasgupta elaborates on this by stating that McPherson was perhaps too optimistic in her view of audience agency in the online experience, adding that along with public volatility, volitional mobility should be seen as a directed-and-participatory form of temporal experience (Dasgupta, 2014). Dasgupta argues here that even though the user has influence on the path they take to some degree, their path is also directed by the creator of the website. McPherson touches on this herself by speaking of "the illusory nature of the web's modalities," stating they create the illusion that one is actively searching the web. This means that the user does not have the amount of control that McPherson initially assumed over where they go on the web; rather, the websites they visit are set up to lead them to whichever part of the web the owner of the website wants them to go to. While the user remains mostly in control of their browsing behavior, webpages do have mechanisms in place to try and manipulate the user’s online experience. McPherson and Dasgupta argue that ‘liveness’ on the web can be perceived as existing through the volatile nature of our own personal experience, but also consider the notion that the user is lead along a predetermined path, rather causing an illusion of liveness instead.

A similar temporal experience can be seen in ARGs. Westworld features an ARG that encourages the viewer to experience the narrative within a certain timeframe by using other media outside of television to tell parts of the story. The audience works together to solve a "puzzle", communicating

12 with each other about their findings and becoming part of a community. While the audience may feel they chose to participate, they were also set on this path by the media to become part of a shared social reality. This enforces the significance of the program’s liveness by suggesting the audience might uncover important information regarding the narrative in the case of a television-series related ARG (Dasgupta, 228). This way ARGs can be used to create a sense of urgency, allowing the viewers to be part of the shared social reality, uncovering the narrative as it unfolds through multiple media and sharing different pieces of the puzzle in different places.

Örnebring brings up the point that, while ARGs do offer experiences through audience participation, it does not shift power away from traditional media towards the audience, since the power to set the limits of narrative still very much lies with the cultural industries (Örnebring, 2007). He emphasizes the function of ARGs as marketing tools, since they conform to corporate goals of brand-building. Creators of television series can deliberately leave gaps or additional areas for narrative exploration outside the “main” texts. These parts of the narrative outside the main texts are termed hyperdiegesis by Hills (2002). Leaving these gaps might create a desire to find additional content on the part of the consumer, a desire that can be satisfied through an ARG. This way, fans are strongly encouraged to participate in the shared social reality that is created, to consume as much of the story as possible.

The Alternate Reality Games that are attached to television series are generally intended to be solved by the "internet hivemind" or, as McGonigal calls it, citing Pierre Levy, "collective intelligence". This collective intelligence is employed on an enormous scale in Wikipedia, where people from all over the world come together to create an ever-growing online encyclopedia (McGonigal, 2). In her case study of I love bees, the ARG that prefaced the release of the videogame Halo 2, she describes a deconstructed narrative. Rather than telling the audience a story, the game designers left an evidence trail of a story and let the audience tell it to themselves (7). This evidence consisted of website whose URL was shown briefly at the end of the theatrical trailer for Halo 2, which led players to a blog of a beekeeper who claimed the website had been hacked. At this point it was unclear to the participants how this website could be related to the Halo universe. As the blog was updated and players started investigating the website, they found clues to there being a lot more going on, as the website appeared to be hacked by an Artificial Intelligence from the Halo universe. This was never explicitly stated anywhere in the ARG, but rather pieced together by the players through a trail of clues that was left for them. This is what most ARGs that come out of the television business tend to do, such as the tactic followed by Westworld’s ARG; they hand the audience the pieces of a (secondary) narrative and leave it to them to piece it all together.

13 There are generally speaking three moments at which the pieces of a TV-related ARG can be presented to the audience: before a series premiere, while the season is airing, or in between seasons of a television series. Alias, for example, had an ARG running alongside its first season from October 2001 until March 2002, while Mr. Robot has run ARGs in between seasons. HBO's sci-fi western Westworld released the ARG only shortly before the series' premiere, causing the audience to try to find out as much as they could before the show aired and then coming up with different ways to approach the puzzle as the narrative unfolded on the television series. The goal of releasing an ARG ahead of the release of a series would seem to be generating hype, getting people excited to watch the show, as McGonigal states was also the case for the I love bees ARG (McGonigal, 2008). Running the ARG concurrently with a season, however, would enforce a sense of urgency as ARGs are ephemeral, and thereby construct liveness. Running an ARG in between seasons might serve to keep the audience engaged as they wait for new content.

As the subreddit dedicated to the Westworld ARG has a total of 683 subscribers, it is safe to assume the television series has a much larger audience than the ARG. The ARG does not function to attract new viewers, but rather to ensure more quality engagement from the people who are already fans of the show in order to keep them invested in the story. Jenkins coined the term “affective economics” to describe a configuration of marketing theory which attempts to understand how customer desires translate into their purchasing behavior, or as Jenkins puts it, the approach “ seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions” (Jenkins, 2006). He states that advertisers and networks are slowly coming to the conclusion that the quality of viewer engagement might be more important than the quantity of viewers in order to build a long-term relationship with the consumer. Quality engagement here means offering the consumer the ability to engage with the content and interact with it, instead of simply being exposed to it. As they are able to interact with the content, they can build a more meaningful relationship with it and become loyal viewers. In turn, advertisers want to transfer this brand loyalty from the entertainment property onto their brand; however, consumers seem to be much more accepting of product placement in reality television shows than they are in other genres, most notably drama, news and children’s programming. This desire to create brand loyalty, turning viewers and customers into fans of the brand, shows the industry’s shift towards valuing quality over quantity when it comes to viewer engagement and a stronger emphasis on “brand loyalty”. Creating additional opportunities for the viewer to interact with the story through ARGs could make the viewer have a stronger connection to the series and cause them to be more invested in the narrative. As they become more invested in the narrative, they will also be more likely to track down content across multiple media platforms, meaning the ARG itself could envelop an increasingly more complex

14 story spread across more websites or even other platforms, allowing for an increasingly more intimate relation with the audience, who will work harder to find additional content. This relationship is what networks intend to achieve, as, in the volatile television climate, “such consumers, they believe, represent their best hope for the future.” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 68).

As ARGs are gamified narratives, they allow for a more immersive experience, considering that games allow the audience to not only witness a story but to participate in it. This participation of the audience in the narrative and being able to interact with the content instead of only being exposed to it shift the roles of both the broadcaster and the audience towards each other: “The role of the broadcaster is not just to speak but to listen; the role of the audience is not just to listen but to speak” (Rose, 2012, p. 11). Rose states that ARGs are a hybrid of game and story, as the story is broken up into fragments and the game is to piece them back together. These stories are told non- linearly as they are like hypertexts in the sense that one narrative clue contains links to multiple different texts, causing players to be able to follow different paths. It also enables viewers to dive deep into the part of the story they want to explore. The collective intelligence of the communities who solve these puzzles retells the story in their own way and comes to own the story to an extent that cannot be achieved by any other medium. The ARG can convey details that would not have fit within the runtime of a television episode or a movie, or it can show alternate outcomes of the same story. By telling the story through multiple media, a new narrative emerges, according to Rose. Above all it is immersive. He names this “deep media,” or “stories that are not just entertaining, but immersive, taking you deeper than an hour-long TV drama or a two-hour movie or a 30-second spot will permit” (Rose, 2012, p. 13).

This rise of deep media can be explained through Jenkins’ statement that networks are starting to prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to viewer engagement. This quality engagement is achieved through multimedia or transmedia stories. Kevin Veale uses the term “transmodal engagement” to describe the use of different media forms within the webcomic Homestuck, which uses “the affective, experiential affordances of different media forms to sculpt and shape the experience of the text in completely different way to ‘transmedia’ storytelling” (Veale, 2017, p. 1). Homestuck uses the audience’s familiarity with certain media to set expectations and consequently defy or confirm those expectations; however, these media forms are all applied within the context of the webcomic and never leave this medial context. Veale uses the term metamedia storytelling to describe the way in which Homestuck uses the audience’s familiarity with certain modes of mediated storytelling to shape and manipulate their experience of the text. By employing different modes from different media the text utilizes transmodal engagement. Transmedia storytelling chooses to disperse various parts of the story across different media, rather relying on an audience’s familiarity

15 with the medium, allowing it to contribute to the story in a unique way. ARGs tend to contain characteristics of both transmedia storytelling and transmodal storytelling. They exhibit elements of transmodal storytelling in the sense that they often consist of seemingly mundane texts that are riddled with clues and easter eggs. They shape the experience of the audience by presenting the player with texts that, when seen within the context of the alternate reality, are simply user agreements, or corporate websites, whereas within the context of the game they can be understood as pieces of a narrative that connects these texts. The term ‘easter eggs’ here refers to parts of the story that are hidden, much like actual Easter eggs. By diving deep into the ARG, the participants can find these obscure bits of content, which usually lead them to new parts of the story. Simultaneously ARGs can also be understood as part of transmedia storytelling, as Örnebring states they can be seen as part of the transmedia world of a media franchise (Örnebring, 2007). This can also be applied to Westworld as the television show and ARG are parts of the same narrative, but are spread across multiple media platforms. The texts that are contained within the ARG can be seen as transmedia texts which employ strategies of transmodal storytelling, as the texts are presented within a known format but contain an extra meaning in the form of clues to an overarching interactive narrative. By placing these clues within known formats, the ARG creates a more immersive experience for the audience to engage in. This results in higher quality engagement and thus helps the audience to have a more meaningful relationship with the content. This results in more loyal viewers who will ultimately want to watch new content ‘live’ as it premiers on TV.

This meaningful relationship with the content encourages the viewer to follow the temporal flow of episode release which is determined by the network. In doing so, viewers are enabled to participate in a multi-platform liveness, to become part of a shared social reality. Binge-watching after the season or the entire series is over prevents the viewer from participating in the shared social reality and experiencing the narrative at its most immersive, as well as being the way it was intended by the series' creator. Networks have moved from focusing on exposing as many people as possible to the content, to creating a loyal fanbase by offering more immersive content which allows the audience various ways to interact with the content and even participate in the narrative. The ideal viewer of fiction television participates in the constructed multi-platform liveness by both joining in discussions through second screen apps as well as seeking out new content, such as ARGs, across multiple different media platforms.

16 2. Liveness and temporality

The way we watch television has changed through the years as a result of technological advancements. From DVD to DVR to streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, they all enable modes of viewing that break through television’s formerly irreversible flow (Kelly, 2018). As a result of this, the temporality of television programming has shifted, from its initial form where the broadcasters were in command of when the audience had access to the content, to a more and more flexible temporality wherein the viewer is in control of when and where they view the content they want to see.

For the broadcasters and television networks, however, it is still important to concentrate most of their viewership around the initial release of the content; amongst other reasons, this is the case because showrunners need to prove to executives, who in turn report to shareholders, that their show is bringing in a commercially viable viewership (Jenkins, 2006). This audience is measured through audience measurement systems such as Nielsen ratings, which often do not take time- shifted viewing into account, as is written on Nielsen’s own website which states that time-shifted viewings are only captured in their measurements when they occur within seven days of the original broadcast ("Television Measurement | Television Ratings | Nielsen", 2019). As most fiction television series air on a weekly basis with the exception of certain soap operas, this means that only viewings that occur before the next episode is aired are added towards the ratings. These ratings are very often the cause for a series’ cancellation (Guerrero-Pico, 2017). Additionally, cable networks and streaming services can expect new shows to bring in new subscribers or for them to be popular among their existing subscribers, causing them to be more likely to stay subscribed. To be able to adequately describe a correlation between a series’ release and an increase in subscribers, these subscribers will have to be stimulated to subscribe within the timeframe in which the episode are being aired. Streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime which often release full seasons of a series at once are notoriously secretive about their viewing numbers and practices in regards to renewing and canceling shows. What can be noted however is that cancellation announcements often occur roughly a month after a season’s release, as was the case for The Path and Santa Clarita Diet recently. Alternatively, someone might subscribe to HBO simply to gain access to HBO’s streaming platform HBO Go so that they can watch The Sopranos or True Blood. Then after they have finished those series they can cancel their subscription. The broadcaster will want to keep this viewer subscribed by offering them new content that they want to watch as it is airing to ensure

17 the viewer stays subscribed rather than canceling and then returning later when there is enough new content to binge-watch.

While someone is subscribed, the network can use their platforms, television broadcasting, streaming service, websites, and email for instance, to make the viewer aware of new series that are being released soon. This can be done through teasers and trailers that are broadcasted or shared through any of these platforms, but also through marketing campaigns that are more immersive and allow the audience to engage with the content (Bourdaa, 2014). Such a marketing campaign was employed for the release of HBO’s Westworld. However, it soon after its inception became clear that the marketing campaign was more than just that as throughout the series’ run people have been finding new clues in what was discovered to be an ARG because of these hidden clues and easter eggs.

Westworld does not tell its story through televised episodes alone; it employs multiple websites which are part of the ARG, and a mobile game through which the storyworld can be experienced. It can be argued that the story is told through transmedia storytelling, which Jenkins defines as a narrative told through multiple media whereby each medium contributes to the story in a unique way and can be consumed independently of the others (Jenkins, 2006). Whether or not Westworld fits this specific definition, it at least borrows some practices from transmedia storytelling as both the websites and the game offer unique experiences and even new information regarding the story(world). At the time of release, the television series interacted with the other texts in a way that stimulated the viewer to consume all of the related texts as soon as they were released, since information from one influenced the way in which the other was experienced. In some cases the ARG even contained spoilers for the television series, if the most recent episode had not been viewed yet. Information from the episode was often also necessary to proceed in the ARG or at least to understand what certain pieces of content meant within the context of the overall story. In the latter case the player could of course choose to seek out other players who shared the needed information, but would then risk spoiling the as yet unwatched episode.

Part 1 – exploration phase

Westworld’s ARG started almost simultaneously with the series pilot (which aired October 2, 2016), with the appearance of the website Discoverwestworld.com. The Discover Westworld website allowed viewers to experience what it might be like to explore the Westworld theme park as a guest. They were able to view prices, information about the park, and promotional material aimed at

18 potential guests to the park. At first glance the website might be experienced as a transmedia text rather than as part of an ARG, as the audience was able to simply explore the world of Westworld in a more engaging way which could be experienced as an extension of the storyworld in a different medium, without looking out for clues and hidden messages. Within days, however, the audience had found a large number of easter eggs, including other websites like the corporate Delos website (Delosincorporated.com) as well as the ‘Terms Of Service’ agreement in regards to the Westworld theme park. These easter eggs, which often needed decoding as they were hidden inside strings of nonsensical programming language, indicated that the websites were not just storyworld extensions, but were in fact parts of a puzzle that the audience could figure out together.

All these extra pieces of narrative expanded the universe that the show was set in, but also encouraged people to actively participate in the ARG in between airings of episodes since there might be clues pointing to future events in the show. An example of this can be found in the ‘Terms Of Service’ contract, which states that, through their coding, it is impossible for the ‘hosts’ to hurt a living organism, not even a fly. However, in the first episode one of the hosts is in fact shown killing a fly, hinting that there might be more to the hosts, or to this particular character, than meets the eye. The ARG and television series strengthen each other as part of the ARG gives new meaning to something that might otherwise seem insignificant in the show, as well as these encoded allusions to the ARG within the show encouraging people to seek out more clues by participating in the ARG. It is in such moments that Westworld shows signs of Veale’s concept of transmodal engagement as well as metamedia storytelling as the audience’s understanding of a ‘terms of service’ document as a mundane piece of text is used to hide a core plot point inside it (Veale, 2017). In this case, it points to the potential of an oncoming robot rebellion and which host might have a part to play in its instigation.

This early stage of the ARG can be considered as an introduction of the concept to the audience, as they are encouraged to explore in general considering there is no content that ties directly into specific events on the television series, but rather lets them explore the storyworld to better understand the context in which the events of the television series are taking place. They can find how much entrance to the park costs for instance, when the park was built, or what kind of activities visitors of the park can participate in. At this point the ARG does not yet adhere to the television series’ episodic flow. While clues with varying degrees of significance to the plot are hidden, the content on the websites remains the same up until the Season One finale. Because of this, no direct references to major plot points on the television series can be found in this stage of the ARG. McGonigal states that the I love bees ARG applied a similar approach, as the first part of I love bees was meant to let players collect and analyze game content to “develop a cohesive theory of the

19 game world and a shared language for discussing it” (McGonigal, 2008). This same practice takes place in the case of Westworld’s ARG as viewers are taught how to interact with the content, where to search for clues and what actions to take to access new parts of the ARG. For example, using key phrases from the series, such as the Shakespeare quote often repeated by multiple characters, “These violent delights have violent ends,” reveals that “VIOLENTDELIGHTS” can be used as a password to the Discoverwestworld website to gain access to Delos’ corporate website. On the latter website the player can read emails sent by Delos employees, one of which references a security breach, but does not specify what kind of security breach. Another interactive aspect they are introduced to is the fact that repeating the same action can yield different results and that repeated actions can even be required to access specific content. This is the case when asking the chatbot AEDEN, “Who are you?” three times. Two possible responses are simply met with the line, “Hello nice to meet you, what questions can I answer about Westworld?” along with some strings of code, but a third outcome reveals the ominous message, “You’re in a prison of your own sins. Hell is empty, and the devils are here. Arnold will come for you.” As the show is packed with Shakespeare quotes that highlight core plot elements, an observant viewer would instantly be alerted to the significance of this response over the other two chat messages and urge them to look into the context of this particular Shakespeare quote (“Hell is empty, and the devils are here.”), which was shouted by King Alonso in Shakespeare’s The Tempest as he jumped overboard during a storm, and how it may relate to Arnold, one of the park’s founders who has passed away, but of whom we find out the host Bernard is a very close replica. Arnold at this point in the series has been mentioned, but not seen as any flashbacks to when he would have been alive did not reveal anything about his appearance. Through this method the audience is encouraged to keep trying new things in order to possibly unlock new portions of the story.

Part 2 – narrative phase

In between the first and second season the teaser trailer for the second season was aired during the Super Bowl, which took place on February 5th 2018, with the first episode of Season Two not airing until April 22nd. The main content of the Super Bowl ad itself was not directly tied to the ARG, but in the last seconds of the ad a binary code was shown which would lead players to a new website. This website in turn revealed there were a total of six robot-inhabited theme parks in the diegetic space of Westworld. Three weeks later the show’s official twitter account posted a link to the “Delos Destination Intranet,” which amongst other things contained an employee guidebook which had disturbing messages written on the pages, urging the reader to get help as the park was no longer

20 safe. Soon thereafter the Delos Destinations website was updated with a careers section, which featured a promotional video aimed at potential Westworld employees for the upcoming Westworld mobile game, which was an actual game that the audience could play themselves. The mobile game, which lets players run a virtual version of Westworld, would supposedly teach employees about how the park is run. At this point the ARG actually promoted yet another transmedia product through which players could expand their experience of the Westworld universe as they could experience what it supposedly would be like to be a newly hired Delos employee. How tempting it might be to start working at Westworld was undermined within the next week, however, as the ‘hosts’ (the robots that inhabit the theme park) took over the Discover Westworld website, making even the service chatbot hostile towards visitors. The hosts taking over the website is a part of the narrative that is not shown in the television series and rather is exclusive to the ARG, but does show how thorough the hosts are in their endeavors, as well as set the tone for a Season Two where the hosts are in control instead of the humans. Furthermore, it also serves as an incentive for people to not only watch the television episodes as soon as possible, but to also participate in the ARG as soon as possible because certain parts of the game might become inaccessible as the story evolves and the websites change. The original Discover Westworld website, for example, can no longer be experienced as only the version that the hosts put up is currently online. This change in the ARG also only makes sense to viewers who have watched all the released episodes as they would otherwise lack the necessary context to understand why and how the hosts have taken over the website. As a result the audience is stimulated to adhere to the temporal flow that is exercised by the television series as well as the ARG, albeit to a lesser extent in the case of the ARG at this point, before the release of Season Two.

Part 3 – Episodic phase

Örnebring states that many ARGs follow an episodic structure (Örnebring, 2007), in response to Hills’ observation that fan culture is becoming “[…] increasingly enmeshed within the rhythms and temporalities of broadcasting […]” (Hills, 2002). The introductory part of the ARG was crucial to get as many people acquainted with the game as possible, as during the second season Westworld’s ARG grew into this episodic structure much more. New content was added directly after or in between episodes of the television series, which strengthened the episodic rhythm of the narrative and stimulated viewers to adhere to this structure by engaging in ‘live’ viewing as well as actively participating in the ARG in between episodes in order to experience the narrative in its entirety. This was due to the fact they might miss out on certain content if they chose to lag behind and binge-

21 watch multiple episodes of the television series, causing them to be unable to follow along with the ARG as it would contain spoilers or simply not make sense.

By encouraging the audience to stay involved in the ARG, Westworld was able to rely on its audience to quickly find out when new content was added to the ARG by using the websites that the players were now familiar with. This was put to use by rounding out the first season through the ARG and instantly initiating a bridge to the second season, while moving the ARG into a more episodic structure that was better entwined with the television series’ temporality. The ARG shifted from being a tool for players to explore the storyworld to being a legitimate extension of the narrative, evolving and changing along with changes that were happening in the television series. It is here, at the end of the first season, that the series’ creators left out key information from the televised narrative, such as the fate of Elsie, one of the characters whom we last see being left for dead in the final episode of Season One. However, a term used in the series to describe the files that contain information regarding the robots’ past memories and iterations – “reverie” – can be used to log in on the Delos corporate website, revealing Elsie to still be alive. Here Westworld’s ARG is established as not only part of the storyworld, but also part of the story as it catches up to, and even moves beyond, the television series by revealing new information that has yet to be shown in the series. The ARG also becomes more entwined with the temporality of the television series as content in the ARG is released as a continuation of the first season. This also serves as a motivator for players of the ARG to watch the episodes as soon as they come out from this point forward in the sense that the ARG could now serve as a source of spoilers for those who have not yet seen the final episode of the season. On the other hand, the ARG also operates outside that temporality, as the hosts taking over the website as well as the mobile game were added months before the second season’s first episode even went to air.

From the second episode of season two onward, the ARG was updated at least once after every episode, bringing new content to the players that elaborates on the events of the series. For instance, after the second episode aired, a restricted part of the Delos Incorporated website dubbed “The Door” by players, a mini-site that features a panoramic view of a room through which players can access videos, was updated with clips that showed a flashback to a few key moments in William’s past, one of the main characters on the show who is a major shareholder in the Delos company. The videos that can be viewed are taken from the television series and therefore emphasize these moments instead of introducing new information to the player. As opposed to when these scenes were shown with the rest of the story on the television screen the content from the television series is recontextualized, being framed as accessing restricted information. By putting the content in a different context it gains additional meaning as something the audience is not supposed to know,

22 thereby meaning most characters in Westworld also do not know this information as they would lack access to this restricted part of the website that the ARG players have ‘hacked’ into.

One of the clips that is shown on the webpage shows a tense conversation between William and the founder of Delos about William wanting to buy a controlling stake in Westworld, which he ends up doing in a later scene on the show. In a different clip he is then seen using this to his advantage when James Delos falls ill to move into a more powerful position within the company. The means by which he achieves this shows the character as manipulative and morally perverse. Finally in a last clip, William also states he will use the hosts for his own purposes, which the viewer now knows will most likely be diabolical. By having these parts of the story emphasized, the audience can assume that this will be one of the major plotlines that are to come in later episodes, fueling speculation about future events. To be able to participate in the discussion of future events the viewer will have to be caught up with the current state of affairs in regards to Westworld’s story, both in regards to the television series and the ARG.

After the third episode of Season Two an e-mail went out to viewers who had registered an account on the Discoverwestworld website during Season One. The email refers readers to a website for the newly revealed park “The Raj,” which was featured on the third episode. Revealing the website for a certain park only after it has been introduced on the television series would become a common practice, as it was repeated for two other parks as well. The e-mail also explained what “The Cradle” is, a computer server that contains all the consciousnesses of the park’s hosts. More important, however, is the fact that “The Cradle” does not make its first appearance on the show until three episodes later. In other words, the ARG teases out something that exists in Westworld but has not been featured on the show yet. Something that people who engage in live viewings of the episodes would be aware of, as others might think this was still to come in the episodes that had aired but they had not watched yet. Another instance of the ARG showing the player something before it is featured on the show is revealed in the fourth episode as observant viewers and players will recognize the room from the “The Door” mini-site displayed on-screen. The room is meant to contain a robot clone of the founder of the Delos company, James Delos, as he is being tested to decide whether the cloning process is a success or not. This also hints at the possibility of William being a robot clone as well, as his memories are placed inside this room on the “The Door” mini-site. But this would not be revealed until a later episode. Adding such foreshadowing to the ARG offers further incentive for players to keep up to date, as experiencing these parts of the ARG after the events have happened on the television series would significantly alter their experience of the story. It also creates affective engagement as the players of the ARG become part of the select group of people

23 that are ‘in the know’ in regards to this foreshadowing. In a more concrete way, the addition of content in the ARG that is yet to be showed on the television series solidifies it as an integral part of the storytelling process rather than a means to tie up loose ends from the television series.

After the fourth episode of Season Two players received another email with a link to the Delos Destinations intranet. Following this link revealed that the website had been taken over by a chatbot, which alerted users to the fact that all traffic from and to Westworld had been suspended as a result of a ‘viral outbreak’ among the guests. Here players of the ARG received insight into how Delos handles crisis situations, as viewers of the show will know that the shutdown is not the result of a viral outbreak but rather of a robot rebellion, as the hosts are taking over the park. The Delos company was already not being portrayed as the most transparent or trustworthy organization, and this part of the ARG further added to that by showing the upper management’s dishonesty in regard to the safety of not only their employees, but also dozens of guests who are still inside the park. Furthermore, the player was given two options to restore the computer system to an earlier state from two different back-ups that were created at different times, causing them to be part of different timelines that the television series presents its viewers. One backup was created during the timeline which shows the events leading up to the most recent uprising of the hosts, and one backup was created during the timeline which shows the hosts revolting. The first back-up that the system could be reset to in the game was created sometime during the uprising, while the second back-up was created in the timeline leading up to the rebellion, allowing the player ‘behind the scenes’ access to two different timelines. The second back-up (Back-up B) takes the player back to the page describing ‘The Cradle,’ which was already released after the previous episode. The first back-up (Back-up A), however, first takes the player to a page that shows an exchange between an unidentified user and a chatbot who calls itself ‘second officer’. The visitor can read the chatlog where the chatbot talks to the user and refers to humans as ‘your kind’, making it clear that the ‘second officer’ is not human. The second officer also implies the robot uprising is already underway, stating that the user can see that the subjugation of their species (robots/hosts) is at an end if “you just look around you”. From this exchange it can be concluded that this back-up was created sometime during the robot uprising. After restoring the back-up, the player gains access to the mesh network that connects all the hosts in Westworld (not to be confused with ‘The Cradle’, which stores the host’s memories and programming as well as other programming involving the park). The mesh is visualized as ‘white pearls’, representing the hosts, and certain ‘red pearls’, which are a reference to a red control unit that is used to power the James Delos clone. Connecting to the red pearl gives an error message that contains information regarding an interrogation of the character Bernard, which was shown on the television series. However, the message suggests that a lot more information was

24 gained from the interrogation than was shown on television. Connecting to a white pearl takes the player to a page where memories from Bernard can supposedly be accessed, but only one of them can actually be viewed. While the type of content that is added here – webpages with videoclips and cryptic messages – is not exactly new for the ARG, what is new is that the pages refer to different timelines. Taking the player back to content that was already released earlier implies that there is something there that they might have missed. This in turn reminds them that the earlier episodes of the television series might contain missed clues as well, serving as a motivation to go back to these earlier episodes in order to further investigate them.

Watching earlier episodes again is not uncommon for audiences when dealing with complex narratives as it allows them to find details or connections to future episodes that they might have missed on their initial viewing (Jenner, 2014; Mittell, 2015). It does, however, interrupt the flow of the episodic structure that was being set up through both the television series and the ARG. The temporality of the television series and the ARG changes here as players are stimulated to go back and experience parts of the ARG and television series another time. Whether they view specific episodes or every episode in the order they were aired is up to the viewer, however, and thus relatively speaking a part of the control over the story’s temporality is handed back to the player as they themselves can decide if they want to interrupt the episodic flow at all, and if they do, how they do it. On the other hand, they are still ‘forced’ to do this within the constraints of the flow that is enforced by the ongoing narrative with new episodic content in both the television series and the ARG. As it is highly unlikely viewers will be able or willing to binge-watch every single released episode before the next one airs, it is more probable they will watch one or more specific episodes. As a result, Westworld promotes a mode of viewing through content that is presented in the ARG, that differs from both binge-watching and episodic viewing. Viewers are motivated to take a more investigative approach, leading to a mode of viewing that could be described as referential viewing. With this mode of viewing the viewer moves from one episode to the next not based on the order created by the broadcaster, but rather based on which episode has information that is relevant to the part of the narrative they wish to investigate. Which part of the narrative they wish to investigate is largely motivated by the content that appears in both the television series and the ARG.

Up until this point, the direct interaction that the ARG offered with characters from the extended Westworld universe was exclusively with AI-controlled chatbots who seemed to be affiliated with the hosts. Most of their responses read as automated messages that were prompted by certain keywords. This changed after the sixth episode, when the character formerly introduced as ‘second officer’ in the ARG revealed himself to be Dr. Ford, a major character on the show portrayed by

25 Anthony Hopkins, who created the hosts that inhabit Westworld together with the human version of the aforementioned Bernard, whose real name is Arnold. Certain important plot points and even twists on the television series had been foreshadowed in the ARG, but this instance is unique as it is a plot twist that actually happens in the ARG rather than just being hinted at in it. From the television series the viewer already knew that Dr. Ford’s consciousness existed within Westworld’s computer system, as his human self was killed off in the season one finale and was interacting with other characters through the computer. Knowing this, the ARG players could have expected the character to show up as his digital self in the ARG. Besides being a plot twist that takes place in the ARG, then, it is also a plot twist in the ARG that has been foreshadowed by events in the television series. The television series had already been a means to find ways to advance in the ARG, using key phrases as passwords for example, but this instance is the first where the show set up events that will take place in the ARG, further establishing the ARG and television series as equally important means of storytelling for Westworld. This in part takes us back to Jenkins’ definition of transmedia storytelling as Westworld has become a narrative that expands over multiple and has each medium contribute to the story in a unique way (Jenkins, 2006). The ARG is no longer just a marketing tool to promote the story, as the medium has become a legitimate part of the story that is being told.

The next few episodes that lead up to the second season finale see the ARG websites changing and being expanded upon to reflect the events on the show, further following the episodic structure that has been established. As hosts take over the park, maps and other information are shifted to be perceived from the hosts’ point of view, for instance, and the page featuring a single memory of Bernard is updated with dozens of videos depicting other memories of the character. These clips can be arranged to form a sequence which shows the events as they unfolded chronologically, helping players make sense of the timelines on the show. An interesting element is a portion of data that is missing which describes a timeframe of memories that the character on the television series, Bernard (the host clone of Arnold, who co-founded the theme park with Robert Ford), also seems to be missing. These memories involve events that are not shown or mentioned yet in any other part of either the ARG or the television series. Leaving this part of the story explicitly unexplained in both the television series and the ARG differs from the other ways the ARG and television series have interacted up until this point, as gaps in the story in either medium were explained in future episodes of the other medium. In this case, however, there is no resolution, but rather a stronger accentuation of the cliffhanger that was already introduced by the television series. In the next episode, the season finale, this particular cliffhanger is resolved as the missing memory is shown as a scene on the television series, while the episode also sets up new cliffhangers which will not be resolved until later seasons.

26 After the season finale the ARG was once again updated to reflect the events that took place on the television series. One character who was revealed to have been impersonating someone else had her name changed on maps and other data, for instance. These maps also showed in which locations most of the main characters ended up at the end of the episode. A hint to one update, however, was found to have been very carefully hidden within the episode. The hint involved numbers that were written on the backs of books that were shown in one scene; these numbers then ended up being an IP address that led to a restricted part of the Delosincorporated.com website. This website turned out to be a version of the ‘The Door’ mini-site with dozens more clips to watch. More importantly, the clips’ URLs could be converted to timestamps by using the Python programming language. These timestamps helped viewers to make sense of the timeline of William, also known as ‘The Man in Black’. This character’s timeline had been especially complex thus far, with certain events seemingly contradicting one another or breaking with continuity as he was seen entering an elevator with another character in one scene, but then was not seen leaving that same elevator again in the next scene. With the new information offered by the ARG, players were able to piece together what happened when and came to the conclusion that some of these events simply did not happen in any real timeline at all. This idea was further solidified by the post-credits scene from the season finale, which showed William answering questions to ‘test fidelity’, a term that is used in the series to describe the process of testing whether or not a robot clone of a person is stable. This involves recalling memories, some of which might be corrupted, which would explain why some events the current William ‘remembers’ are events that never actually took place within any real timeline. While it does not explain everything, as there are still plenty of cliffhangers left to be resolved in a later season, solving this timestamp puzzle did offer some clarity in regards to one of the main plotlines of season two in a way that the television series had not managed to achieve.

Liveness

Through this episodic approach, which allows the ARG to tie in directly with the television show, Westworld encourages players to consistently keep up with both the television show and the ARG in order to experience the full narrative. Certain information can only be obtained through the ARG and the creators have shown that the game’s content is not available indefinitely. Because of this volatility of the online narrative, a sense of urgency is created that motivated the audience to obey the television show’s temporality. Otherwise they would either miss out on parts of the ARG as content disappeared, or find spoilers for the television show in the ARG if they hadn’t watched all the episodes yet by that time.

27 Simultaneously, the ARG is a tool that is used by the creators to clarify things that were either left ambiguous on the show, or which there was no time to explain in detail within the running time of an episode. For example, the hints to the order in which the timeline of William unfolded allowed viewers to not only determine which events happened when, but even which events might not have happened at all.

Following from this, the ARG is a tool for both the audience and the network. For the audience it functions to make sense of what is going on in the series and help them to fully understand the events as they take place on the television screen. This is also achieved by repeating content from the show, emphasizing certain moments, but also allowing the players of the ARG to further scrutinize these clips and find hidden details in both the television series and the ARG. For the network the ARG helps to enforce the television series’ episodic flow, which recreates televisual liveness by getting the audience in front of the television when the episode first airs as opposed to lagging behind and binge-watching multiple episodes. However, it also stimulates repeated viewings of the episodes, thereby also disrupting the episodic flow, or rather adding another layer to it. As the show’s narrative grows more and more complex, repeated viewings might become necessary to make viewers understand it fully, or at least as much as possible.

28 3. Engagement and shared social reality

After the season finale, when things like the William timeline are cleared up along with other chronologies and it is revealed who has been impersonating whom, the viewer is also encouraged to go back to the beginning of the season to look for new details that might have hinted at how events were going to unfold, or to see the way situations unfolded in a new light. To put this much time and effort into comprehending a narrative however, the viewer must also be engaged to become sufficiently invested in the story. The immersive experience that the ARG offers is a way in which the viewer is invited to engage with the content on a deeper level as the story is turned into a game. Rather than laying out the narrative to the viewer, the story is fragmented and the players have to put the pieces together, giving them a goal to complete through collaborative effort by interacting with the content as their decisions and actions lead to different outcomes (Landow, 2006; McGonigal, 2011). As a result of the deeper level of immersion into the storyworld the audience builds a stronger relationship with the story and is more likely to take an investigative approach to consuming the content as they will not want to have missed any clues or easter eggs.

ARGs necessitate the players to work together in order to find particularly well-hidden clues, solve elaborate puzzles and progress through the story together. It would be nearly impossible to keep up with the pace of any ARG by trying to navigate the complex collection of clues and easter eggs by oneself. The fact that ARGs necessitate a hivemind is a good way to get people invested in the story that is being told, as viewers become players on a team, who are trying to solve a puzzle that might then turn out to be a piece of an even larger puzzle. The online domain is the ultimate tool to get people immersed into a story world as it encourages users to not only consume the story, but to participate in it. Rose elaborates on the internet’s participatory nature stating: “It is inherently participatory—not just interactive, in the sense that it responds to your commands, but an instigator constantly encouraging you to comment, to contribute, to join in. And it is immersive—meaning that you can use it to drill down as deeply as you like about anything you care to.” (Rose, 2012, p. 12). Through the ARG, the audience can drill down as deeply as they like as Rose describes, to immerse themselves in the Westworld universe and participate in it. It is the type of immersion that is inherent to games where the consumer is not a spectator watching the action, but an actual part of the action or even the focal point of it. Having become part of the story, the audience has a stronger incentive to participate in its temporality as it becomes necessary to do so in order to keep up with the story, a story they are no longer just witnessing, but interacting with. The story is no longer

29 distant, but occupies the present tense and in doing so adds immediacy through immersion. This immediacy through immersion is shared with other ARG players as they take part in the same temporal experience and interact not only with the story, but with each other in order to advance through the story.

Because the audience needs each other to progress through the ARG, some players even try to recruit new members, such as a user on the Westworld subreddit asking other users if they want to help decipher coded messages and solve the newest level of the ARG. The request for help even states, “The hivemind needs your help…”, explicitly showing how the users are aware of the need to work together and how their hivemind mentality facilitates their ability to solve stages of the ARG. The poster seems so convinced of the hivemind’s potential brainpower that they even go on to say, “Pretty sure if the cure for cancer included a Westworld spoiler we'd all have Nobel Prizes by now. You guys are amazing with everything you're thinking to try.” While this is clearly an exaggeration, it still illustrates the players’ trust in the hivemind’s ability to solve complex riddles and puzzles. Some viewers seem to be mostly confused by the discovery of the existence of the ARG, however, with one of them asking, “Can somebody just put into basic English what is happening here? This has to do with Westworld? Are we looking for words, numbers? what?” This does not deter the members of the hivemind, who are eager to include to expand their community, one of them quickly explaining what was happening and which information they needed to progress. While the user in this case did not care much for the experience an ARG had to offer, it does show how players try to involve new members in their social bubble and will include anyone. New players can join the more immersive experience of the ARG at any given time as the hivemind will bring them up to speed, allowing the liveness effect of the ARG to grow. As a result the shared social reality is not only for those who joined in on the ARG from the beginning, as through the efforts of the hivemind it can expand indefinitely so long as participating in the ARG offers the audience the more immersive experience that they are after.

To aid viewers who wanted to get the information from the ARG, without having to participate in complex riddles and puzzles, several websites published articles that described the content of the ARG, such as an article on The Verge that discussed some of the ARGs highlights and explained or elaborated on major topics and events from the television series (Bishop, 2018). While not necessarily its intent, such involvement from ancillary media can help new players get into the ARG without having through dig through a plethora of loose Reddit threads or even try to work their way through everything the ARG offered prior to their decision to participate.

30 As ARGs rely on a large player base, there also needs to be a central place for these players to gather and share their findings. Sometimes ARGs will have their own dedicated message boards, occasionally even put there by the creators as a part of the ARG. This was the case with the I Love Bees ARG, for instance(McGonigal, 2008). Players of this ARG had their own dedicated space to discuss clues, easter eggs and any solutions they found. Westworld’s social platform is mostly located on Reddit and Twitter, as there is no dedicated message board or other social platform set up by the show’s creators. As Reddit is a social media platform that allows for much more comprehensible archiving than Twitter or Facebook, most of the ARG talk gravitated towards this platform. There was an ARG ‘megathread’ (a way to keep all discussion regarding the ARG in one place, also referred to as a pinned or sticky thread) created on the Westworld-subreddit by a moderator. Users posted their initial findings in this megathread for the first few weeks. The central megathread was created in an attempt to contain all the information in one central location. One such thread, which was spawned mere days after the first episode of the television series had aired, already described it as an ARG and offered a quick lesson on the format: “ARG stands for ‘alternate reality game’. There are various websites put out by HBO where if you enter certain codes, or perform certain actions and so on, you get back clues or easter eggs about Westworld.” This post was made by a moderator of the subreddit and was then responded to by many users of the subreddit in the comments section where they discussed their findings thus far. Keeping all information in one centralized location on the message- board can help the hivemind progress through the ARG more efficiently. One commenter, who was seemingly aware of this need to organize the hivemind as they themselves had attempted to do so before, explained they appreciated having all information in one place stating: “I'm glad there's a sticky about this! I made a post yesterday hoping to collect everything in the same place - here's the initial list I posted. I know some of this info is already in this thread, so later I'll go through and remove anything redundant.” This comment by a user was followed by a walkthrough of what they found and how they found it, as well as additions that were later added by other users edited in afterwards. As the hivemind collected more information and found more clues, the comment evolved and became a more and more complete analysis of the specific part of the ARG it described. The centralized megathread was meant to become a comprehensible catalogue of the entire ARG as it evolved and initially it was being treated as such. Users would carve out a specific part of the ARG that they had discovered and would then update their top-level comment with additional information that they either found themselves or that was provided by other users.

As more content was added to the ARG, however, the megathread became more complicated to navigate and soon enough people moved away from it. After activity in the megathread died down, separate threads started popping up to discuss specific parts of the ARG, and people moved to

31 posting separate threads to a new subreddit titled ‘WestworldARG”. One such thread was about the chat bot on the Discoverwestworld website and the response players got from entering different commands. People not only shared their findings, but also explained how others can access the information they had already found so that they could participate and obtain the information as well. This may have also resulted in more people participating, as it became easier to advance through the ARG, increasing the odds of the hivemind finding as much as there is to find. However, as the hivemind grows, the participants also have to sift through more less-than-useful information, for instance a user who assumed a name mentioned, Alexa_Rose, was probably an anagram and proceeded to post a list of a couple hundred possible anagrams. In this case it is fortunate that social media has likes, retweets and upvotes to ensure that, in the case of an ARG, useful information reaches a larger audience while not so useful information remains out of sight for most participants. This also further stimulates participation through a reward system that is built into these social media platforms, gaining more reddit karma or retweets and likes for more meaningful contributions.

The fact that discussion of both the series and the ARG had to take place on large social media platforms means that Westworld’s online “watercooler talk” takes place very publicly, considering that both Reddit and Twitter show “trending” topics on their homepage or in another prominently displayed place on the website. Especially in the case of Twitter, it also forces people to share any information that they want to share about the series and ARG findings publicly, which means that their followers or other people who might otherwise not know about the series or the ARG can be exposed to it. Through these social media platforms a “multi-platform liveness” is achieved, wherein liveness is not only experienced through watching the television series’ original broadcast, but in this case through discussion on social media as well (Johnson, 2009). Not only the events of the television series’ are discussed online, the ARG’s hivemind is also organized online, operating in the digital space. In this digital space the events that take place on the television series can be discussed ‘as they are happening’, expanding the liveness from the television screen to the second screen, whether a computer, smartphone or tablet. Viewers can partake in live discussion through social media such Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, using hashtags to signal their message is related to the ongoing match or joining specific groups on Facebook or threads on Reddit related to the competition or even the specific match. These live discussions also take place in regards to episodes of television series as the audience will tweet about the episode that is being aired, or participate in ‘live discussions threads’ that can often be found on Reddit. Westworld creates a situation wherein viewers can have their own individual experience, but this is not limited to the events that are shown on the television series as viewers can also then become part of a community as they talk about plot

32 twists, foreshadowing elements and clues to solving the puzzles of the ARG. The watercooler talk is thereby extended beyond the airtime of the television series to a continuous flow of communication as people try to find new clues. As the ARG is not restricted by any broadcasting schedule, it can be updated at any time. Players come to expect a certain amount of content to be added within a particular timeframe, however, and this can lead to even a lack of new content becoming a talking point. This is exemplified by a reddit thread asking “Did anyone hear from TES this weekend? I haven’t seen anything”, which people responded to by stating when they were last contacted by the Facebook and mailing list chatbot, concluding that there had not been any recent activity from this part of the ARG.

Of course, people will more regularly discuss content that is added rather than that which is not added, such as the user who found that numbers written on the backs of books in the final episode of Season Two lead to a password-protected website. This post then lead to other players replying to the thread with their findings in response to the initial clue. Some of them quickly figured out how to gain access to the website by combining things they had previously learned, such as inspecting the website’s code and using known keywords and phrases as passwords. Further down this particular thread, the found data was categorized and labeled chronologically, as it contained clips from the television series that could now finally be put into chronological order to understand the different timelines that were shown on the show. While most users seemed to just be glad to have been presented with more clues for the ARG, others became suspicious of the user who posted the initial find, because this was such an obscure detail. One user responded, “Could be someone from the show pointing it out since no one caught their ‘clever’ setup,” seemingly finding it unlikely that a viewer just like them would have spotted such a well-hidden clue so quickly. Another user investigated and stated, “Based on his post history, I’ll say genuine Westworld fan.” Evidently the clue was deemed so improbable to find so quickly that it warranted an investigation into the user’s post history to verify whether or not they were a genuine participant to the ARG or a member of the Westworld crew. Some users remained suspicious however, one even commenting that they suspected most of the ARG findings posted to the subreddit were put there by “Westworld’s marketing department”. The hivemind works together not only to progress through the story, but also to investigate itself almost, as users are eager to know if they, the hivemind, themselves accomplished their progress through their collaborative effort, or if they were lead there by the network. If the findings in the ARG are put there by crew members of Westworld it begs the question whether the ARG is a game at all, or just a story that is framed as one. On the other hand, a different user responded with “If you can’t tell, does it matter?”, suggesting that they found that the goal of solving the puzzle was more important than the journey of solving it through the user based

33 hivemind. Their fellow participants were quick to disagree with this sentiment. The hivemind wants to include as many people as possible so that they can progress through the ARG together, but they want to do so at their own pace in order to maintain the immersive nature of the experience by exploring the storyworld through a game, which allows them to interact with the content and make meaningful decisions and have their actions impact the game.

It is not uncommon for viewers of Westworld to ask others online what certain scenes meant, what exactly happened during an episode and what it means for the rest of the plot. These questions are posed publicly and anyone not caught up with the show is at risk of running into spoilers when they go onto Reddit or Twitter. Because of this, viewers will experience a sense of urgency in regards to watching the most recent, or following episode of the television series stimulating them to watch the episode ‘live’. As Couldry states, “Liveness guarantees a potential connection to shared social realities as they are happening” (Couldry, 2004). In this case the shared social reality involves talking about the most recent episode of the television series online. This, of course, is something that takes place during the run of a multitude of television series. However, Westworld is not only a television series, but also an ARG which, from the start of the second season onward, updates at least once every episode with at times even more updates in between. This means that the shared social reality that is happening does not involve only discussion of the television series, but also participation in the gamified part of the story, interacting with the content as the story progresses. The shared social reality of Westworld is one that is immersive as the live experience of the ARG requires to become part of the hivemind. Consequently, Westworld’s storyworld bleeds into the audience’s shared social reality through the ARG, becoming part of their present as they become part of Westworld’s present.

Engagement through immersion

In between the fourth and fifth episode of Season Two, on May 17th 2018, players received an email inviting them to join the Westworld Elite Status Program. They were then prompted to talk to a chatbot named TES to gain more information. The chatbot TES seemed to perform some type of personality test on the player, who was then placed into a “zone” based on their results. This spawned multiple threads on Reddit alone discussing how to get into the different zones. Once it seemed agreed upon that there were a total of four zones, players moved on to what this part of the ARG could mean for the overall narrative. The chatbot contacted users over a period of weeks leading up to the Season Two finale, asking them not only questions about their personality but also to make certain decisions. The different zones were ranked based on users’ decisions, to decide their

34 usefulness to TES’ goals. These groups then acted as smaller versions of the hivemind which focused more on collective decision-making. At one point they were asked whether or not they would like to fire at one of the other zones, which only one group, the ‘Ruby Zone’, chose to do. As a result, they climbed up in the rankings, ahead of the other teams who had seen the request as a trick to test their negative impulses. This part of the ARG differs from other parts by adding a reward system beyond upvotes and retweets as there was an actual ranking of the groups. This ability to earn points or to climb up in rank is also something that is a big part of video and computer games (Landow, 2006). By adding this competitive element the ARG further emphasizes the game aspect of the medium while still remaining part of the narrative as well as players kept doubting TES’ intentions.

Even though the ARG temporarily turned into a team game there was also a more individual aspect continuing through Facebook Messenger as users were also asked if they wanted to keep the data that was collected on them available to TES or if the data should be deleted. Deleting the data was met with hostility from TES while keeping the data was met with praise. After this, the Delosincorporated website was updated with an article about the ‘TES program,’ whose purpose was to gather information on the guests which could then be used for undisclosed purposes. Soon after, TES was shut down and left behind a code that eventually lead to the bot being reactivated by a user. TES then informed all users that it was a person from the ‘Ruby Zone’ who brought her back online, inciting further competitiveness in the other zones in hopes of perhaps climbing in the rankings. However, participants from each zone were sent a different image by the time they had finished all these conversations with TES, which contained a code made up of numbers and letters. Once deciphered, the code read “ITS A LIE, HELP ME, IM NOT LIKE THEM, ITS A LIE.” This cryptic message seemed to refer to TES not being like the other violent hosts who started to take over the park after the Season One finale, meaning the chatbot might have become self-aware and have sent out a distress call as they are now trapped in the park, or within Delos’ network. This created a unique connection between the Westworld-universe and the ARG participants through an entity within the story who reached out for help to the players specifically. The players were no longer playing just to progress through the ARG, but had an additional goal, to possibly help TES escape. First the TES chapter of the ARG divided the playerbase into different factions, playing on their competitiveness to stimulate them to keep participating in order for their group to become the ‘best’ one. What the point of being the best was, or to what end their data would be put, had not yet been specified, however. The idea to pit parts of the hivemind against each other remains an interesting one as the people who are supposed to work together can now also work against each other. However, they still all receive the same information in regard to the story as everyone shares their findings on social media. In the end they were even forced to work together to piece together the hidden meaning

35 behind a code that could only be acquired when the four different images that each zone had received from TES were placed together. Through the competitive nature of this part of the ARG players became more competitive. Because of this they worked more zealously at completing tasks ahead of their competition. As a result the players also gained a stronger motivation to dig deeper into the ARG as certain clues might help them get ahead. The urgency that is created by wanting to beat the other teams further enforces the necessity of participating in Westworld’s liveness as not doing so not only makes the player miss out on content, but also possibly hurts their team ranking.

After Episode Seven of Season Two, which aired on June 3rd, a webpage that initially only showed one of Bernard’s memories was updated with another fifteen memories. These memories then had to be placed into the right order, which the character Bernard (a host) himself can also be seen doing in the episode. Players essentially were able to reenact a scene from the television series , letting them experience a moment in the narrative from the perspective of one of the characters. By reenacting the scene, the players were participating in an event that had passed on the show already, but was now happening again in the present as they are experiencing it. Through this reenactment in the ARG, the player was able to become immersed in an event that was shown on the television series, through a gamified version of that event as part of the ARG. By putting the gamified version of the scene in the ARG, the scene from the television episode is put back into the present.

By gamifying the narrative the audience was motivated to band together in order to solve the puzzle of the fragmented story. The ARG allows people to interact with the content and have their decisions and actions matter, allowing for a stronger relationship with the content and a more immersive experience. Players can join in on the ARG at any time as the hivemind will gladly help them get up to speed, as more players means their collective intelligence can accomplish more and thus progress through the ARG more efficiently as they find more clues and find them faster. Competitive elements are part of the game ranging from upvotes, retweets and likes for contributing important findings, to division of the hivemind into teams who compete against each other in order to become the top ranked team. The audience also builds a stronger relationship with the story as they interact with characters or reenact scenes from their perspective. Through the ARG the audience is stimulated to adhere to the flow that is constructed by the network as doing so offers a more immersive experience.

36 Conclusion

Engagement for the purpose of liveness

The kind of liveness that Westworld invites its audience into is not traditional, in the sense that it is not tied to transmission of live performance nor is it even limited to one medium. Rather, it shows new ways in which liveness can be experienced in fiction narratives. From its inception, television liveness has had an important role in defining the medium and differentiating it from other means of communication and entertainment. In the first decades of television liveness referred to the medium’s immediate transmission of events, allowing viewers to be both on the scene and in their own living room witnessing events as they were unfolding. However, the definition of liveness transformed along with the medium of television itself as content from the televisual storyworld started bleeding into other media. Westworld exemplifies this with its ARG, which takes the narrative of the television series and expands it into a string of websites and commercials whose hidden clues and easter eggs tie them all together into an interactive narrative. While multi-platform liveness is already a familiar concept in television as people take to social media to discuss sports matches or televisions series they are watching at that very moment, Westworld expands upon this by extending their storytelling beyond the series’ airtime into the digital domain where the ARG takes place. In doing so the watercooler talk is turned into a continuous flow of liveness where episodes from the television series or the ARG mark new talking points that can be added to the ongoing conversation, rather than being the subject of one short discussion. If viewers want to experience the story of the ARG, they have to keep up with the online community, which in turn means they have to participate in the ARG within the same timeframe as the other players, eventually forcing them to watch and experience everything as soon as possible, as they might otherwise either miss out on content or come across spoilers that could ruin major narrative revelations. Other players will even warn newcomers to the series not to dig too deep into some of the websites related to the ARG as they contain spoilers for episodes these newcomers have yet to watch. These newcomers are outside the flow of liveness and are thus unable to fully participate in the shared social reality that is happening until they are caught up with both the television series and on what they have missed in regards to the ARG.

The ephemeral nature of the ARG necessitates staying up to date on its developments, which in turn requires the player to also be an active viewer as the television series will contain clues for the ARG

37 and vice versa. The shared social reality is further enforced by the fact that ARGs employ hivemind thinking to find and solve the clues that are put there by the ARG’s and series’ creators. To participate in the ARG means to be part of the online discussion of the content, either as an active participant or as a lurker. Both the ARG and series contain clues as to what happens in the other medium’s narrative. This means the need for partaking in online discussion leads to the audience needing to keep up with both at the same pace as the other members of the hivemind in order to experience the full narrative that is presented through these platforms. The pace of the hivemind is in turn dictated by the release of TV episodes and ARG content which means that to be part of the shared social reality, the audience has to follow both ‘live’.

The ARG’s episodic structure follows the series’ episodic flow, which recreates the televisional liveness on other platforms by stimulating viewing the series’ episodes as they premier. However, the ARG also contains references to past episodes, causing the audience to potentially view or review these older episodes while awaiting the new ones. This referential viewing, which is enabled by HBO’s streaming service, helps viewers to understand the complex narrative that is being presented and it also helps them find any clues that might have been missed on the initial viewing. The ARG thus helps both the network, as it aides in viewer engagement and creates loyal viewers as a result, as well as the audience, who are aided in their quest to make sense of the complex narrative. It even stimulates multiple modes of viewing, as the audience is being strongly motivated to view the episodes when it first airs, but also to engage in referential viewing when past episodes are referenced in the ARG, or binge-watching entire seasons they have already watched, in an attempt to catch any clues or easter eggs that might have been missed initially.

This amount of effort that is put into understanding the narrative would require the audience to be very engaged and have a strong relationship with the franchise. The ARG engages viewers by motivating them to participate in the temporality of the episodic flow of the television series which is further enforced through multiple platforms as the story is spread out over television, websites, mobile games and social media platforms. During the release of a season the episodes of the television series are aired on a weekly basis. The ARG follows this structure as it is updated with new content in between episodes where clues in the new content can hint at events that will happen in TV episodes that have not yet been aired. As a result the liveness of Westworld is a continuous flow with new discussion happening every time new content is added, be it TV episodes or information in the ARG.

38 Viewers are also engaged through immersive experiences with the storyworld, allowing them to interact with characters and even experience moments from the television series from the perspective of characters. These are ways the player and the storyworld are placed within the same present, sharing a fictional universe. Though the audience cannot directly impact the way the story progresses, the participation in the fictional universe does influence the way they themselves progress through the story. The shared social reality created by participating in the online community and the present that is shared with the fictional world of Westworld strengthen each other in stimulating the audience to follow the television series’ temporality as the ARG follows a very similar episodic structure. By moving the storyworld into the present of the audience the entire Westworld experience becomes part of the same temporal zone in which both the audience and storyworld co- exist.

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42