SBC - Proceedings of SBGames 2012 Art & Design Track - Full Papers Exogenesis An Alternate Reality Game Study Lucas de M. Cardoso Edith Cowan University, Department of Communications and Arts, Australia Abstract ARGs are a modern kind of gaming that was born after Web 2.0. In some ways, ARGs are very similar to ARGs are a modern kind of gaming that was born after Role Playing Games (RPGs). ARG focus is also to tell Web 2.0. ARG focus is in telling a story where players a story where players interact with a fictional world interact with a fictional world using the real world as using the real world as scenario and interface. They are scenario and interface meaning using the many somewhat different from traditional RPGs, thought. technologies available online as well as the real world RPGs commonly use tables and dices and sheets of to tell a story. From this game concept, a practical papers to tell a story where players interpret roles, study was done in how it works and how it can be used ARGs use the many technologies available online as as a narrative tool focused on storytelling. well as the real world to tell a story. Like a treasure hunt, where the players go after riddles that lead to Keywords: alternate reality game, storytelling, other riddles, an on-line community works together to narrative, social-media, pervasive computing solve puzzles that will leads from site to site and leads from puzzle to puzzle, while a story is being told in the Authors’ contact: background. It is a modern storytelling medium, [email protected] allowing new possibilities of narrative, with the players influencing the story and participating in the solution 1. Introduction of the mystery. Games are one of humanity’s most ancient forms of This research aims was to explore and understand entertainment, following technologies tendencies the Alternate Reality Game as a new storytelling through history. The video game industry is estimated media, different from the usual commercial focus of to be worth $68 billion by 2012 surpassing the movie the genre. The project focus on the composition of an industry [McLaughlin 2010]. Helped by the Internet, ARG, experimenting with the possibilities of gamming is also expanding its social aspect. Remo developing a short but complete game that tells a story observes that “online game time rose 10 percent year- that engages the players by making them eager for over-year to make up 10.2 percent of Americans' answers and interested in what would come next, lead Internet use in June [2010], up from 9.3 percent” players through puzzles, and promote community- [2010]. thinking using several internet social tools like Facebook, blogs, Twitter, YouTube and web forums. Internet facilitates the distribution of content, making it possible for independent developers to The basic plot is a mystery/horror story about a participate in a market once exclusive to big young man called Phillip Blake that in a depressive companies. Cheaper game distribution allows more state is recruited by a Cult that has insidious plans for conceptual games to be available in the market and Phillip and the humanity. When Phillip appears to be experimentation can be rewarded. As Kolan & Shea missing the players are given the mission to investigate argue, “the indie scene has come of age, and we have what happened to Phillip and defeat the upcoming the online services to distribute affordable bite-sized apocalypse. games. Make something cool and the audience is there. Make something cool and it can spread like wildfire and become a hit” [2009]. Kolan, in his article about 2. Literature Review how franchising is destroying creativity in the video games, states that “we need to embrace creative In order to better guide the research of the theme, the thought, experimental gameplay (so long as it's fun, following themes regarding the main points about right?)”. One very creative and different way of developing an ARG focused in storytelling where gaming is the Alternate Reality Games, or ARGs. In researched: this game the player does not pick a joystick or a mouse and fight against the computer or each other, but solves problems and puzzles with help of a 2.1 The relationship between narrative and community. games through multi-media interactive fiction XI SBGames – Brasília – DF – Brazil, November 2nd - 4th, 2012 138 SBC - Proceedings of SBGames 2012 Art & Design Track - Full Papers Games are one of the most ancestral ways of human videogames’ artistic, cultural, and narrative entertainment, but there is no absolute definition for it. expression” [2006, p. 56]. Bogost laments that the Szulborski, in his book This is not a Game, observes engines of the games are developed in order to provide that “there have been many attempted academic better graphics and better playability and so do not definitions of games but none that have ever been often improve the narrative aspects or how characters accepted as definitive and all encompassing” [2005, p. reacts to the ambient they occupy [p. 64.]. He cites the 19]. Many definitions pick important aspects of the works of Aarseth and Juul whom propose that the nature of games but none of them are without flaw. narratological analysis of games must be made of a Crawford defines games as “a closed formal system “clean break” of literature and linguistics conventions. that subjectively represents a subset of reality” [cited in Regarding games narrative, Murray affirms that they Szulborski, 2005] which fits well this project. are limited to rigid plotlines because they do not have an abstract representation of the story structure that Jesper Juul, who, in his book Half-Real [2005], would allow them to distinguish random elements and proposes a “classic game model”, consisting of six decisions taken by different players [1997, p. 198]. features that work on three different levels, the first Richard Dansky introduces game narratives as a series being the game’s rules, the second being the player’s of tasks to be developed: story, the overall plot; relationship with the game and the third being the dialogues, that is everything that is said in the game; relationship between playing the game and the rest of supporting text, other texts that supports the the world. According to his model, a game is: development, like literature reviews, character i. A rule based formal system; descriptions, and world bibles; and cut scenes, the cinematics that occur in game [Bateman, 2007, p. 12]. ii. With variable and quantifiable outcome; iii. Where different outcomes are assigned Nielsen, Smith & Tosca [2008] cite Juul’s label for this as . Comparatively, they cite different values; progression games what Juul calls emergence games, a preferable form of iv. Where the player exerts effort in order to game that each object reacts in different ways depending on players’ decisions, creating a greater influence the outcome; sense of freedom and importance [p. 183]. Nielsen, v. The player feels emotionally attached to the Smith & Tosca agrees with Jenkins’ four narrative modes that can appear in games: , outcome; evoked narrative where the game reproduces universes already known vi. And the consequences of the activity are by the players like Star Wars or Lord of The Rings; , that privilege spatial exploration to optional and negotiable. enacted narrative over plot development; embedded narratives, a kind of detective story where players must find clues and solve This model does not tie games to any specific enigmas in order to progress; and emergent narratives, medium. Juul classifies games as “transmedial”, “since a more elegant narrative where the game space is many different medias (or tools) can be used for oriented to plot development enabled by players playing games” [2005, p. 7]. activities [p. 200]. After defining games, the study tried to understand 2.2 Alternate Reality Games multi-media interactive fiction. Murray, in her book Hamlet on the holodeck [1997], rightly affirms that we In order to understand Alternate Reality Games, it is are moving towards a moment of convergence as important to understand some core concepts that came novelists, playwrights and filmmakers to multiplatform before. stories and digital formats: a loosened boundary between games and stories, broadcast media and William Gibson’s Neuromancer [1983] described a archival media, narrative and drama and even audience dystopia where humans connected their brains to and author [p. 63-64]. She presents Laurels proposal of computers and travelled into what he called an interactive fiction system “presided over by a cyberspace: “the virtual terrain of databanks along a playwright who would shape the experience into the surfable internet” [Murray, 1997, p. 22]. Bolter & rising and falling arc of classical drama” [1997, p. Grusin, in reference to Gibson’s vision say, 200]. Aarseth, however, observes that we should be “cyberspace consisted of the network of all computers aware of the generic misuse of the term interactive for and information processing systems on earth or orbit” the various vague connotations in computer systems, [1999, p. 181]. For Murray, the actual technological while it should be keeping the notion of the mind-set is a revision of this cyberspace, in a simplistic “interacting act” [1997, p. 48]. form, without exploring the real possibilities of non- linear narrative [1997, p. 67]. Of course, her statement Bogost starts his analysis on game narrative stating is in the perspective of the late 90’s. Bolter & Grusin that “game engines move far beyond literary devices define cyberspace as the Internet and other and genres. Unlike cultural categories like modern manifestations of virtual media and classifies it as a novel or film noir, game engines regulate individual nonplace, a term created by Marc Augé that means XI SBGames – Brasília – DF – Brazil, November 2nd - 4th, 2012 139 SBC - Proceedings of SBGames 2012 Art & Design Track - Full Papers “spaces which are not themselves (sic) […] a rapidly emerging game genre and is Anthropological places” [1999, p.