Alternate Reality Games and the Cusp of Digital Gameplay 9781501316241, 9781501316272, 9781501316265

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
Introduction Antero Garcia and Greg Niemeyer
Who plays ARGs?
Treading a definition
Tropes and histories
The cusp of digital play
The changing landscape of ARGs and looking ahead
An assurance and a warning
References
PART ONE Guiding Principles of Alternate Reality Games
CHAPTER ONE From Alternate to Alternative Reality: Games as Cultural Probes
Alternate reality games as cultural probes
Political games: ARGs and LARPs
SEED: design principles
Conclusion: overwhelming reality
Games
References
CHAPTER TWO The Game Did Not Take Place—This Is Not A Game and blurring the Lines of Fiction
Introduction
Reading alternate reality games as a text
Blurring of the worlds
Playing in the fiction
Playing as a community
Playing with ethics
Playing alternate reality games as relational art
Playing alternate reality games
Constructing alternate reality games
Conclusion
DVD and TV
References
CHAPTER THREE Alternate Reality Games for Learning: A Frame by Frame Analysis
Introduction
Describing DUST
Designing DUST
Frame analysis
Alternate reality games for learning: a gnarly design space
Conclusions: framing through Cooperative Inquiry
References
CHAPTER FOUR Promotional Alternate Reality Games and the TINAG Philosophy
Methodology
Promotional ARGs and the TINAG philosophy
Negotiating promotional intent
Affective economics
TINAG and corporate sponsorship
Player/PM communication and identification
“Hoaxing,” marketing, and the ethics of TINAG
Breaking TINAG is part of the fun—live events and meta space
Conclusions
Notes
References
CHAPTER FIVE The Coachella Disaster: How the Puppet Masters of Art of the H3ist Pulled a Victory from the Jaws of Defeat
This Is Not a Game: aesthetics of transgressive play
Art of the H3ist: a cross-country car chase
Coachella disaster: pulling victory from the jaws of defeat
Coda
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
CHAPTER SIX Designing and Playing Peer-Produced ARGs in the Primary Classroom: Supporting Literacies through Play
Aims and methodology of the research project
Overview of the Mighty Fizz Chilla ARG
Pedagogical and theoretical implications
References
PART TWO New Frontiers of Alternating Reality
CHAPTER SEVEN Games Beyond the ARG
Introduction
Early ARGs: design patterns and limitations
Gameplay in Reality Ends Here
Process intensity and player agency
Conclusions
Games
References
CHAPTER EIGHT Methods: Studying Alternate Reality Games as Virtual Worlds
ARGs as social institutions
ARGs as virtual worlds
Methodologies for approaching analog virtual worlds
Two notes on strategies
Conclusions
Notes
References
CHAPTER NINE A Typology to describe Alternate Reality Games for Cultural Contexts
Introduction
Digital games and gamification in a cultural institutional context
Alternate reality games (ARGs) as pervasive games: defining expansive boundaries
Cultural alternate reality games (CARGs)
Our typology to describe CARGs
Conclusions and future works
References
CHAPTER TEN Sociability by Design in an Alternate Reality Game: The Case of The Trail
Storyline
Designing The Trail: a sociability framework
The concept of sociability
Group dynamics
Analysis
Conclusions
Notes
References
CHAPTER ELEVEN Ingress: A Restructuring of the ARG or a New Genre? An Ethnography of Enlightened and Resistance Factions in Brazil
Ingress Is Not A Game, or is it?
Ingress ing into game dynamics
Ingress’s social dynamics
Final considerations
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Conclusion Antero Garcia and Greg Niemeyer
Wild experimentation
Research tools for ARGs: studying the digital in the wild
Learning within ARGs: the myth of the educational ARG
What’s real in ARGs: Slipping across binaries
The future of ARGs: looking through the kaleidoscope of the imaginary
Finding the fun
References
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES
APPENDIX — NODES
INDEX

Citation preview

Alternate Reality Games and the Cusp of Digital Gameplay

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APPROACHES TO DIGITAL GAME STUDIES VOLUME 5 Series Review Board (Alphabetically) Mia Consalvo, Concordia University in Montreal James Paul Gee, Arizona State University Helen Kennedy, University of Brighton Frans Mäyrä, University of Tampere Toby Miller, University of California, Riverside Torill Mortensen, IT University Copenhagen Lisa Nakamura, University of Illinois Gareth Schott, University of Waikato Mark J. P. Wolf, Concordia University

Series Editors Gerald Voorhees, University of Waterloo Josh Call, Grand View University Katie Whitlock, California State University, Chico

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Alternate Reality Games and the Cusp of Digital Gameplay EDITED BY ANTERO GARCIA AND GREG NIEMEYER Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

N E W YO R K • LO N D O N • OX F O R D • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC 1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Antero Garcia, Greg Niemeyer, and contributors, 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Garcia, Antero, editor. | Niemeyer, Greg, editor. Title: Alternate reality games and the cusp of digital gameplay / edited by Antero Garcia and Greg Niemeyer. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. | Series: Approaches to digital game studies ; Volume 5 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016043972 (print) | LCCN 2017005608 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501316241 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501316258 (ePub) | ISBN 9781501316265 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781501316258 (ePUB) Subjects: LCSH: Video games–Design. | Shared virtual environments. | Game-based learning. Classification: LCC GV1469.3 .A395 2017 (print) | LCC GV1469.3 (ebook) | DDC 794.8/1536–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016043972 ISBN : HB : 978-1-5013-1624-1 ePub: 978-1-5013-1625-8 ePDF : 978-1501-3-1626-5 Series: Approaches to Digital Game Studies Cover design: Clare Turner Cover image: Heather Browning, photo © Greg Niemeyer 2016 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk iv

CONTENTS

Introduction Antero Garcia and Greg Niemeyer

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PART ONE Guiding Principles of Alternate Reality Games 29 1 From Alternate to Alternative Reality: Games as Cultural Probes Patrick Jagoda, Melissa Gilliam, Peter McDonald, and Ashlyn Sparrow 31 2 The Game Did Not Take Place—This Is Not A Game and blurring the Lines of Fiction Alan Hook 56 3 Alternate Reality Games for Learning: A Frame by Frame Analysis Anthony Pellicone, Elizabeth Bonsignore, Kathryn Kaczmarek, Kari Kraus, June Ahn, and Derek Hansen 78 4 Promotional Alternate Reality Games and the TINAG Philosophy Stephanie Janes 107 5 The Coachella Disaster: How the Puppet Masters of Art of the H3ist Pulled a Victory from the Jaws of Defeat Burcu S. Bakiog˘lu 131 6 Designing and Playing Peer-Produced ARG s in the Primary Classroom: Supporting Literacies through Play Angela Colvert 155 v

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CONTENTS

PART TWO New Frontiers of Alternating Reality 185 7 Games Beyond the ARG Jeff Watson

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8 Methods: Studying Alternate Reality Games as Virtual Worlds Calvin Johns 211 9 A Typology to describe Alternate Reality Games for Cultural Contexts Diane Dufort and Federico Tajariol 234 10 Sociability by Design in an Alternate Reality Game: The Case of The Trail Elina Roinioti, Eleana Pandia, and Yannis Skarpelos 259 11 Ingress: a Restructuring of the ARG or a New Genre? An Ethnography of Enlightened and Resistance Factions in Brazil Thaiane Moreira de Oliveira 288 Conclusion Antero Garcia and Greg Niemeyer Contributor Biographies 323 Appendix 329 Index 331

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Introduction Antero Garcia and Greg Niemeyer

If you weren’t reading this book it would still exist. However, a game only exists when it is played. This is especially true for alternate reality games (hereafter ARG s) because they are co-created by players with every move that is made. Players augment their autonomy in the game as they push the boundaries set up by puppet masters, and deeply enmesh themselves in the network of the game. While this book sets out to define and analyze them as games and a broader genre, ARG s resist definition because their essence only exists when they are played, and there really is very little to hold on to at the end of the game, save for the transformative experiences of the players. Over the course of this introduction, we attempt to more fully illuminate the dimensions underpinning the question What is an ARG? In doing so, we also question: ●

How are ARG s powerful?

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Who plays ARG s and why?

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What do the origins of ARG s mean for a genre currently in flux?

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And ultimately, how do ARG s transform both players and culture at large?

Reflecting on designing and running the ARG I Love Bees ten years after its completion, designer Sean Stewart placed the 1

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creation of ARG s not on any specific technology or even on a personal whim for specific kinds of interaction. Instead, he suggests that ARG s and the modes of play, learning, and communication that come along with them are simply “the way the twenty-first century wants to tell stories” (Story Forward, 2014). Considering the “participatory culture” (Jenkins, 2006) in which we interact today, such a claim is worth exploring. We are not telling stories via ARG s or playing games in this distributed social setting just because of technological advances, we are doing so because they are a reflection of the sociological milieu through which we interact today. With networked society shifting relationships both online and off (Castells, 2009; Jenkins et al., 2013; Rainie and Wellman, 2014), with the deluge of information pressed upon us daily increasing, and with transmedia storytelling becoming a clearer pathway for narrative development, ARG s are situated as a primary reflection of how the real world and imaginary narratives intersect. Considering the work of Michel de Certeau (1984), we can identify the city as the myth, and the game as reality. De Certeau writes, “The city serves as a totalizing and almost mythical landmark for socio-economic and political strategies.” Seen from physical altitudes of helicopters and satellites, or from the computational altitudes of the smart city, we encounter a fictional image of seamless optimization; the city becomes visible, logical, and readable. But, again de Certeau notes, “The ordinary practitioners of the city live ‘down below,’ below the thresholds at which visibility begins.” Walking is a potentially subversive practice. “Practitioners of the city” carve out a path through the logic of the city that matches their needs, not the plan. From walking we get to graffiti, the mnemonic subversion of the practitioners’ history in the ahistorical context of the anonymous city. From graffiti we get to ARG games, which are an embodied performance of a counter-narrative to the urban plan. In that performance, a community formed spontaneously by individuals becomes a real figure against the mythical backdrop of the planned city, against the cold hard urban metabolism. In that performance, players retrieve their role as citizens with a voice, and as members of a community that can hear them. Even if an ARG itself has no political content at all, the act of inscribing one’s body in an alternate myth, the chord struck between game and place, reclaims players as autonomous citizens capable of forming a community of their own.

INTRODUCTION

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Traveling within games both physically and virtually is about extending the narrative experience in ways that are more than simply being in a new location. In ARG s, the rules of the game superimpose a novel, subversive order on the grid of a city. The game city, layered on top of the multitude of existing configurations, emphasizes that there is no fixed or absolute order. Instead, each order is revealed as temporary and arbitrary, with specific strengths and weaknesses (see Appendix I). Like the cartography mapped by the fictional character Peter Stillman in Paul Auster’s (1987) novel City of Glass, ARG s encourage communities to consider the trajectories their feet tread. Computer networking pioneer, Paul Baran (1964) understood this concept of a liquid order and based network theory on its principles. Perhaps games in general (and ARG s in particular) are cultural processes that reflect society coming to terms with the liquidity of network culture. This does not mean that every game is a meaningful, vox populi alternative to corporate order. Corporate order is often camouflaged; what seems diverse, approachable, and horizontal, is in fact often highly centralized. Pokemon Go is an example of a game that simulates a very democratic and peer-to-peer oriented order, but in fact guides the flow of information back to a head corporation through the tentacles of invisible centralization. Every ARG enacts that fundamental political power of bringing many individuals into an articulated organized community. The articulation of that power is more important than the presence of a specific goal that needs to be achieved. Once players understand the feeling of exerting agency, they can later bring that agency to a different situation. Based on affinity rather than identity, we like to describe this more spontaneous citizenship resulting from play as a digital citizenship. It is based on the flow of information, rather than on material contingencies such as location, birth, race, and caste. In that sense, ARG s are worth a close examination because we find in them a source of inspiration and a site of exploration of what it means to be a citizen in the information age. Veiled as fun, ARG s have exploded into public consciousness in recent years because of their political charge. Though digital game studies are—by their nature—often tied to what transpires on screens and in people’s homes, ARG s are inherently digital because they define community as a group of people brought together by information. Time of play, rules, location of play, roles: these are

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pieces of information that configure a real crowd, thereby shortcircuiting the dialectic of power of the urban metabolism, which configures cities the same way, but from the top down, without including the agency of its practitioners. ARG s untether and embody the cultural changes provoked by increased mobile media access and social networking. Instead of keeping the political power of networking contained behind the screen, ARG s emphasize the collaborative nature of games that are mediated by the bodies of autonomous players rather than solely by flickering screens, keyboards, and controllers. To play an ARG is to dive into a counter-narrative en medias res, and to co-generate story, strategy, and collaboration in real time, in real places. ARG s not only expand where and how games are played but also who participates and to what extent. Perhaps more importantly, ARG s put into question what counts as gameplay and what counts as agency in the twenty-first century. This scholarly collection explores the foundational components of designing and implementing ARG s while also inciting a dialogue about how digital media, hybrid game formats, and networked societies are redefining games and the limits of where digital game play extends. Though there has been a trickling of ARG scholarship and volumes exploring a more broad pervasive gaming, ARG s as a specific genre are redefining key relationships between media participants and media producers. As such, the nature of play, gaming, and digital engagement is redefined vis-à-vis the experiences documented and analyzed in this volume. The remainder of this introduction explores the main histories that formed ARG s as they are presently understood, the key terminology within the genre, and the current spaces of inquiry and dialogue that ARG scholarship is entangled with. The two sections of this book both explore how the design, analysis, and spaces of research when engaged with ARG s that exists both within and layered on top of the real world.

Who plays ARGs? Participation within ARG s is largely dependent on the frame with which you are looking at a game. For the companies relying on ARG s as contemporary marketing campaigns, active participants, lurkers in

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online message boards, and even individuals reading about ARG play during and after a game has transpired are all valuable individuals for marketing and engagement. At the same time, if looking at an ARG as a player, the community of participants with whom one can share expertise and collaborate is a more realistic understanding of who counts as “players.” Further, the role of puppet masters as engaging in a prolonged narrative dialogue with participants means that they, too, are participating within ARG s and not simply designing them. These three basic demographics of engagement: readers, players, and designers, only scratches the surface. There are several ongoing questions, when looking at ARG s: Who is playing?; Who is designing?; and Who is observing? Considering how ARG s are played in public and are sometimes engaged in subversion, the role of individuals in public as participants and as witnesses of play—whether they are aware of this fact or not—as well as the role of actors within a gaming ecosystem makes a clearly defined player base difficult to suss out. Though several chapters in this volume look at closed gaming systems of participants in school settings or bounded by geography, ARG s historically are an open experience (at least for those who are aware of and can access the tools for participation within them). Marcus Montola et al. (2009) describe a “pyramid of participation” in which different kinds of participation in pervasive games can build off each other (121). Different players have unequal levels of participation within an ARG . In this sense, it is in reading across an ARG —often after most of the events have transpired—that a clearer sense of what the game is becomes clearest to the most number of people. Non-players are able to read about the narrative of an ARG once it has transpired as a result of the labor of a core group of ARG organizers and players. This closed community provides space for larger audiences of narrative engagement. In doing so, it is necessary for ARG studies to consider for whom ARG s enchant, enthrall, and create moments of fun. As much of the key terminology around ARG s like “rabbit holes” and “puppet masters” derived from player communities, how these groups self-govern, and learn is particularly important. Jane McGonigal (2007) has emphasized Pierre Levy’s (1999) notion of “collective intelligence” in describing the complex learning practices of ARG communities. Perhaps just as important as understanding the role of knowledge production in often crowd-sourced ARG

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experiences, we must also question how we define “community” within ARG s and to what extent participation is democratized across a gaming experience. Educational research regarding learning in today’s participatory culture emphasizes a “connected learning” in which youth interests guide powerful context of engagement. As Ito et al. (2013) note: Connected learning looks to digital media and communications to: 1) offer engaging formats for interactivity and self-expression, 2) lower barriers to access for knowledge and information, 3) provide social supports for learning through social media and online affinity groups, and 4) link a broader and more diverse range of culture, knowledge, and expertise to educational opportunity. (6) Connected learning experiences are shaped into self-organized “affinity groups” of shared expertise and tacit knowledge (Gee, 2004) in most ARG communities. As such, the principles of learning within ARG participation are guided by how groups of players cluster. As temporary “communities of practice” (Lave and Wenger, 1991), ARG players establish momentary groups of shifting hierarchies that topple, reorganize, and transform as their needs are met or shift. In such a way, ARG play mirrors the anarchist notion of the “temporary autonomous zone” (TAZ ; Graeber, 2004). Quoting Andrea Phillips—a moderator for a prominent ARG group, The Cloudmakers—in her 2003 article “This Is Not A Game: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play,” McGonigal emphasizes Phillips’ point that, “The game promises to become not just entertainment, but our lives.” This framing of livelihood is one worth considering when looking at communities of ARG players. These players are thriving around games—using the narrative experience as a TAZ . By their nature, TAZ s offer new social cues for participants. They are then another representation of the magic circle (a concept we will explore at length below). Circumscribing social practice around interests and expertise, ARG players redefine the society in which they are acculturated. By participating in an ARG , players are alternating their own reality. On top of investigating the fantastical narratives established by puppet masters, players of ARG s change their own social circumstances. The “alternate” of alternate reality

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games is one that leads to new social connections and real experiences of engagement.

Treading a definition ARG s are a lot of things to a lot of people. As such, they often elude singular definitions. Like the participation within an ARG , one’s perspective of what the genre means is dependent on how you are viewing it, what kinds of disciplinary affordances your vantage offers, and whether you are understanding these games from reading and reviewing their ephemera after a game has concluded or if you are exploring these games in situ as an ARG is being played. Regardless, the journey to fully understand the ARG is one that is full of diversions, rabbit holes, and interruptions. Watch your step. Unlike digital game experiences that are available to any player with the financial means, time, and skill to engage with the gaming text, ARG s can often be so distributed that the noise of play does not provide a coherent narrative until after the game has fully transpired. As such, changing the relationship between producers and consumers of games creates new challenges for designers, players, and researchers. As Sean Stewart (2012) notes, “It’s hard when you’re letting audiences in.” While we will look at various definitions to parse a basic understanding of ARG s to ground the rest of this volume, we begin by considering the processes of immersion (in ARG s and in forms of play more broadly). In particular, Janet Murray (1997) reminds us that when we discuss media and immersion, the metaphor is derived from the process of being submerged in water. Soaking in the narrative that abounds, the construction of a world, a premise, a reality that is alternate from our own is a process of acculturation. As much as the definitions of ARG s speak of “stumbling” upon ARG s (McGonigal, 2003) or of falling down a Lewis Carroll-like “rabbit hole” (Szulborski, 2005), Murray’s reminder of the use of immersion when discussing digital narratives is particularly useful. The flotsam and jetsam of digital storytelling and the hidden nuggets of narrative in the real world—seemingly everywhere— make understanding any given ARG a process of staying afloat and treading through the gaming soup. And just like that first peak underwater, narrative stuff pops into vivid reality. An entire world

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waves in currents beneath you. This is the experience of being immersed, seeing what was always there in crystal clear lucidity. And then—breathless and unacquainted with the less vibrant and ordinary—you come up for air and return to the world of us mundane surface dwellers. McGonigal (2003) describes the need for a “stereoscopic vision” when playing ARG s: needing to read two different worlds at the same time is an importantly different means of approaching games than those that augment the reality of one world. As such, we must consider the proto-ARG s that have guided the creation of the genre as well as untangle ARG s from a broader form of social engagement, play, and pervasiveness. While much has been written about pervasive gaming such as when digital platforms create augmented visions of the world around players (von Borries et al., 2007), there are important differences between ARG s and a larger body of pervasive gaming practices. As noted by Montola et  al. (2009) pervasive games “pervade, bend, and blur the traditional boundaries of game, bleeding from the domain of the game to the domain of the ordinary” (12). Often, pervasive games augment reality and perceptions of space through digitally-mediated tools. And while such tools for re-viewing and re-mediating the world around us are often employed by ARG designers, it is important to note that this is often not at the center of what we consider the game. Instead, a digital recording, an online database, or a series of clues that are found within an ARG can augment the spaces around us both physically and virtually. However, this is where many pervasive games and ARG s often diverge. An ARG ’s engagement with an augmented world is often as a component to a larger, unfolding of an experiential narrative; this is what is centered in ARG design rather than the digital lens through which many pervasive games re-mediate the physical world. As Stenros and Montola (2009) explain, ARG s are “a subcategory of pervasive games, typically featuring collaboration rather than competition, large self-organized player communities, Internet-based gameplay, and secretive production styles” (38). While this categorization focuses on typical styles of play in ARG s, the platform of where the game is found is also worth considering. As noted above, pervasive games are often centered around a digital platform whereas ARG s are often centered around a search for narrative; message boards (both created by players and provided by

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designers) act as both repositories of knowledge and narrative production as well as spaces for the kinds of communal engagement central to the ARG experience. In a white paper published by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA , 2006) focused on defining and exploring ARG s, the authors and contributors, Martin et  al., explain that ARG s “are not an entirely passive experience [. . .] and that they use the world around you—advertising hoardings, telephone lines, websites, fake companies, actors and actresses you can meet in real life—to deliver the game experience” (6). The white paper later adds that these ARG s “take the substance of everyday life and weave it into narratives that layer additional meaning, depth, and interaction upon the real world” (6). As always, there are prominent exceptions to this argument. Ingress, as explored in Oliveira’s chapter in this volume, is particularly grounded in widespread use of a mobile app for continuous and competitive play that challenges notions of what ARG s may becoming. As such, while definitions have been slippery in this nascent era of the genre, ARG s can be broadly understood as digitallymediated games that transpire within the “real,” physical world. The layered-fiction of a game’s premise—an alien invasion, recruitment into a secret agency—unfolds across the physical landscape of wherever players may be. In locating ARG gameplay in specific times and places that are mediated and delineated through digital interfaces, ARG s are unique in their design, execution, and meaning for players. In Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fiction Worlds (2005), Jesper Juul documents the varied definitions of games, their similarities, contradictions, and implications of these (30). While we do not provide such a matrices for ARG s, it is useful to consider how ARG s are understood differently within contexts both over time and within varied disciplinary realms. Looking at the early foundations of ARG s, for instance, Sean Stewart (Montola, Stenros, and Waern, 2009: xiii–xv) reflects on the key design principles in creating The Beast—largely considered the first “official” ARG (discussed below) by noting that the key design principles of the experience were for it to “Come into the players’ lives in every way possible” (xiii), “make it interactive” (xiv), and “embrace community” (xiv). Such principles provide an outline of ARG s that are focused on mediating relationships between players and

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alongside the narrative. In contrast, Dave Szulborski (an instrumental designer in the years following The Beast) relies on a description of the tools of ARG s, explaining that one “takes place on the Internet, although it’s nothing at all like most Internet or video games you may have played in the past” (Szulborski, 2005: 1). Further, researchers including authors of several of the chapters in this volume, have considered ARG s from the perspective of their role in educational spaces. Describing classroom-based instances of ARG s for a general audience in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Anastasia Salter (2014) writes: Alternate Reality Games (or ARG s) are built on the idea of a shared story invading the physical world, and can include scenarios of invading aliens, impending apocalypse, or mysteries waiting to be solved. While some incorporate technology or social media, many ARG s are built by transforming objects and spaces in the learners’ physical environment. Players collaborate and react to those ongoing stories through the mediation of the game designer, and in so doing, build new skills towards the intended learning objectives. Looking across these different definitions then, modern concerns with regards to the scholarship of ARG s can be understood in terms of their relationship with the digital media and platforms on which much of the play is enacted, the role of player communities and education, and the relationship between narrative and participant agency. Broader questions also emerge: Are ARG s actually games?; What does it actually mean to play an ARG ?; Are ARG s actually digital? Answers to such questions, slippery as they may be, are found in this volume through examining the interlocking tensions between players, agency, and community. Such tensions have been present since the first inception of ARG s.

Tropes and histories Why This Is Not A Game In one telling of the history of ARG s, their inception began with the design work of a team headed up by Sean Stewart—when

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they unveiled The Beast as part of a prolonged promotional campaign for Steven Spielberg’s film A.I. A murder mystery that relied on clues found in the promotional posters and trailers for the film and leading to exploring websites that described events taking place more than a century in the future, The Beast set a precedent for the kinds of play and immersion that would become emblematic of many games labeled as ARG s in the years that followed. Perhaps the most obvious aspect of The Beast taken up in future games was a deliberate obfuscation of the sense of playing an ARG . Coinciding with the creation of the first of this new genre was a grounding tenet for future design. Found in a quickly flashing sentence on the screen of A.I. film trailers was the phrase, “This Is Not A Game” (TINAG ). Noted by Stenros and Montola (2009), when it came to actually designing The Beast, “The total denial of the gameness was the design principle. Everything had to look and feel as much as possible like it was real and believable” (27). The deniability of The Beast as a game, even when the fictive elements clearly dictate otherwise, has become an innate part of the ARG experience—one that can arguably differentiate ARG s from broader pervasive gaming. As McGonigal (2003) notes, TINAG “means to explicitly deny and purposefully obscure its nature as a game, a task that has become increasingly difficult as immersive players grown more savvy about TIN [A]G techniques.” And while the role of TINAG is so significant as to incite dialogue across two chapters in this volume—Hook’s and Janes’s—it is also a trope within ARG s that is shifting. Games like Reality Ends Here (see Watson’s chapter) and Ingress (see Oliveira’s chapter) scrub away aspects of TINAG in contemporary ARG design. Further, while instilling an ethos of TINAG into The Beast “served as a token of good faith to the players” (Stewart in Montola, Stenros, and Waern, 2009: xv), it also blurred the boundaries of fiction and reality in unintended ways. While this blurring is often one of the most embraced aspects of ARG s—that they are both real and not-real—McGonigal (2003) suggests that some members of the player community of The Beast took TINAG too literally when trying to gamify and solve social challenges shortly after 9/11. In this sense, she notes that a danger of TINAG is “a tendency to continue seeing games where games don’t exist.”

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Magic communities and ordinary circles Seeing games where they don’t exist is a matter of perception and orientation. Johann Huizinga’s oft-cited explanation of a magic circle and the role of ritual in gameplay is fundamental to understanding when ARG s engage with society and when they do not. Play, according to Huizinga (1955), is: a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious,’ but at the same time absorbing the player utensil and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of a social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means (13). Solidly grounding Huizinga’s work decades later, Salen and Zimmerman’s expanded notion of the magic circle illustrates it as “a special place in time and space created by a game” (2003: 95). Whether cordoned off in digital or analog contexts, such a space is “enclosed and separate from the real world” (95). Pervasive games like ARG s, however, do not enclose the spaces of play quite so neatly. In fact, Montola et al. define pervasive games precisely by their diversion from traditional understanding of games within a magic circle. For them, a pervasive game is “a game that has one or more salient features that expand the contractual magic circle of play spatially, temporally, or socially” (12). This expansion is one that significantly challenges where and when a game emerges. Discussions of the magic circle float between concrete examinations of it and also refuting its existence in contemporary contexts of gaming (Pargman and Jakobsson, 2006). The past decade and a half of ARG research has largely relied on this understanding of the magic circle and ARG s’ ability to transcend Huizinga’s model via Salen and Zimmerman’s framing. However, we must return to the notion that such magic circles are primarily still part of a community perception and understanding of space. In Hidden in Plain Sight: The Social Structure of Irrelevance (2015), sociologist Evictor Zerubavel explains that the notion of

14 ALTERNATE REALITY GAMES AND THE CUSP OF DIGITAL GAMEPLAY

“relevance” is a socially grounded concept: “What we consider ‘relevant’ or ‘irrelevant,’ after all, is to a large extent merely a function of the way our attention is socially, and thus ultimately conventionally, delineated” (8). In this sense, our attunement to complex player communities guides how we understand what is a game, what is real, and how tropes or conventions are enacted. Along these lines, Juul’s (2005) argument that video games “are real” is an important contribution to how we both understand ARG s within a larger set of social structures and to how the dialogue within digital games studies bleeds into the boundary-straddling genre of ARG s (1). He extends his discussion of reality by noting that, “when winning a game by slaying a dragon, the dragon is not a real dragon but a fictional one. To play a video game is therefore to interact with real rules while imagining a fictional world, and a video game is a set of rules as well as a fictional world.” The coded language of TINAG and complicit understandings of it are grounded in multiple layers of social orientation: we understand play through the lens of player communities and we understand play through a lens of the sociocultural grounding of our everyday lived experiences. As Zerubavel notes, as members of attentional communities, “we thus learn what to notice and what to ignore as part of our attentional socialization” (2015: 63). While it is true that ARG s can be understood as redefining the magic circle and traversing it, they can also be understood as a discrete refocusing of player attention in ways that are taught and learned through community-based socialization. Particularly as TINAG is an attribute of ARG s that is not as fully present in recent ARG s such as Reality Ends Here (Watson, 2015), Endgame: Ancient Truth (NianticLabs, 2015), Ripple/Kudzu (Leibniz, 1704, 2015), and The Black Cloud (Niemeyer et  al., 2009), we must consider how other disciplinary lenses inform the tenets of play, understanding, and strategic engagement.

Rabbit holes, puppet masters, and other problematic language Alongside the grounding of ARG design as emphasizing TINAG , other key principles of play emerged with the debut of The Beast.

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Key vocabulary, guided by a player community known as the “Cloudmakers,” continues to be prevalent in ARG design. The developed entry points into an ARG , such as the clues on the A.I. film posters, became commonly known as “rabbit holes,” a reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll, 1865) in which one seemingly innocuous moment of exploration leads to cascading into an entirely new world. Szulborski notes for ARG designers that “A good rabbit hole needs to appear realistic and intriguing, and will hopefully motivate whoever finds it to proceed further into the fictional world they have unwittingly discovered” (Szulborski, 2005: 49). However there is a contradiction in this description: “intriguing” subverts the mundanity of realism. We can extrapolate from this that a “good” rabbit hole is one that, for those not looking for clues, blends into the background and noise of the world. However, for ARG players keen to the tropes of ARG design—a wayward character, a misspelled word, an incorrect date—these all trigger scrutiny from a larger community’s “collective focus of attention” (Zerubavel, 2015: 69). It is important to note that the landscape of ARG s shifts, erodes, and blossoms over time. What might have been a clever rabbit hole in the early 2000s may be obtuse and obvious for players acclimated to the landscape of ARG play today. A clever rabbit hole is dependent upon whom developed it, for what audience, and to what extent. A blatant poster in Antero’s English classroom, for example, was the rabbit hole that guided a class of high school students to interact with real world air quality measurements and engage in dialogue with the main character of The Black Cloud (Niemeyer et al., 2008): This rabbit hole was closed off from the public’s participation and was likely too obviously signaling a game was afoot for those looking for such clues (challenging TINAG principles for an expert ARG community). However, for a class of students unfamiliar with ARG s and not expecting to be playing within one (let alone on the first day of school), such a rabbit hole was what was needed within this landscape. Similar to the shifting nature and erosion of past rabbit holes, the trope of calling the designers of ARG s “puppet masters” is also one that has seen change over the years of ARG development. Evoking a clandestine organization guiding the narrative, the idea of a group of “puppet masters” has become a continuing label of

16 ALTERNATE REALITY GAMES AND THE CUSP OF DIGITAL GAMEPLAY

FIGURE I.2 A poster for a missing “pufftron” sensor acts as a rabbit hole for The Black Cloud in a high school classroom.

ARG designers. However, with increased research, interviews, and retrospectives that break down the process of developing ARG s, the shadowy sense of who is creating ARG s and for whom can largely be discarded. As a sense of embodiment, it can contribute to the TINAG ethos, but knowledge of who engages in the labor of ARG design is not a secret. Initial ARG s contended with players trying to discover and expose the creators of the gaming experiences. Revealing who was behind the curtain for games like The Beast became its own form of emergent gameplay ancillary to larger ARG goals (Juul, 2005: 76). Further, we should note that puppet masters are co-designers. They offer an initial piece of information that encourages wayward recipients down the proverbial rabbit hole. But they are not the sole designers of the game—despite such a label often placed on them. Instead, the playing community designs the game. Puppet masters provide the “What if” and engage in an ongoing dialogue of coproduction. In this sense, puppet masters are enslaved by the games

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they develop: they are beholden to a mutual agreement not to screw up, disappoint, or disregard the narrative promise of their creations. However, there are puppet masters that players must be wary about. Though less discussed as a motive of play than other aspects of ARG s, the role of the financiers of ARG s must be scrutinized. The Beast was a game developed in promotion of a blockbuster film. I Love Bees was a game developed in promotion of a highly anticipated video game. Art of the H3ist (see Bakiog˘lu in this volume) was a game developed in promotion of a new car. As ARG enthusiasts and scholars are aware, these are genre-defining transmedia experiences that are bankrolled by companies with significant financial stakes in the marketing of the game. The list of ARG s developed primarily as marketing campaigns is extensive. If we are to truly consider the larger social ecosystem that sustains and develops the ARG experience, these profit-driven puppet masters must be understood as components of this system. Of course, the ARG genre has led to numerous non-commercial and education-focused ARG s. This volume looks at several of these as case studies, as extensions of the ARG genre, and as spaces to challenge existing ARG research. However, if we are to look to The Beast as defining the initial tropes and expectations of ARG s, we must acknowledge that the in-game puppet masters are operating based on strings being pulled by a corporation with larger goals than simply providing an immersive experience. As players and researchers of ARG s, a critical media literacy is needed to read the aspects of power both within and around the development of these games, this genre, and the player base as both consumers and producers.

Alternate alternate reality game origins The nature of The Beast and its long-casting shadow over the previously unformed genre is the widely accepted, dominant creation myth of ARG s. Though clearly a huge force in guiding ARG design as noted above, its continued placement at the center of the nascent genre is one that is perpetuated through continued scholarship not unlike the work represented in this volume. As a genre that illustrates players in search of narrative, ARG s circulate around the narrative that the genre begins, emerging fully formed vis-à-vis The Beast.

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And yet. Moving beyond engaging ARG s as simply a subgenre within pervasive gaming, there are additional layers that distinguish ARG s since their beginnings. Szulborski (2005), for instance, traces a lineage of ARG s that includes Masquerade (Williams, 1979)—a children’s book that also included a real-world treasure hunt, Ong’s Hat—a narrative story that was told across online Bulletin Board Systems (BBS ) in the 1990s (Kinsella, 2011), and Publius Enigma—a cryptic riddle posted in a Pink Floyd newsgroup in advance of their 1994 album The Division Bell. Further, popular books like Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (1995) and films like David Fincher’s The Game (1997) have illustrated ways that playful narratives interject themselves upon reality. And even these examples of alternate realities guided through new technologies do not quite capture the full story of ARG inception. There is a deeper history of ARG s. The implications of this history are two-fold: 1

2

We must consider how narrative and imagination have shifted in how people see, perceive, and act upon the world; and We must look at how the nature of ARG play is taken up via our relationship to information and to each other.

Looking at these two needs via ARG history, let us embark down a new rabbit hole briefly. Looking at trickster narratives like that of Anansi or Br’er Rabbit (pre-Disney cooptation), we can see how folklore illustrated both cautionary tales and demonstrations of agency for enslaved Africans in the American South (Hyde, 1998; Levine, 1977; Roberts, 1990). Like most trickster narratives, the stories of Br’er Rabbit—escaping certain doom over and over— function as many things. They illustrate Br’er Rabbit as a cunning hero while also warning listeners of his foibles. These stories both guide how individuals interact and also allow them to imagine the alternate realities that they can manifest; folklore reflects one’s own status as embodying a single narrative among many alternate pathways. At the same time, an understanding of how individuals and groups interpret the various streams of information and how these help harvest understanding and action is also necessary. We

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can look as far back as the grounding of empiricism through the philosophy of John Locke and René Descartes’s statement “Cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am). Grounding knowledge in sensory experience, the ways we live, interact, and socialize can be seen as a massively complex set of choices, decisions, and discarded alternatives. Claude Shannon’s A Mathematical Theory of Communication (1948), posits an information theory that mathematically explores the transmission of knowledge. Though largely grandfathering much of the computing and hardware advances still in use today, the abstract notions of information emerging from entropy is fundamental to understanding social interactions via ARG s. Ultimately, Shannon’s work can be loosely understood as information in small “bits” moving from unclarity and uncertainty toward a received understanding. As noted by IGDA (2006), “ARG s teach us to heighten our ability to winnow patterns out of the otherwise seemingly random and meaningless data in the wide world” (10). How we parse and understand information—both individually and collectively—is a process of our own computing of information. Exploring the role of narrative and information in non-ARG contexts, we must consider Salen and Zimmerman’s (2003) definition of “transformative social play” as forms of gaming that “transform social relationships” (475). Looking at folklore, fairy tales, and “canonical” stories in Western society, the ways that narratives guide social interaction embody the cultural practices and decisions that are seen in ARG player communities. Likewise, being able to parse the complex data of both narrative and the real world and synthesizing across these multitudinous texts is a transformative process built upon our ability to understand and rationally interpret the world around us. The origins of ARG s are not simply grounded in singular instantiations of twentieth and twenty-first century marketing; they are built on a foundation of human development and narrative construction across history.

The cusp of digital play For a genre that is very much woven into the physical, social world (or at least attempts to be), ARG s may not seem like an obvious choice to unpack the trends of “digital” game studies. So often,

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the images of ARG s are of people. Answering phones, staging mock protests, doing random performative acts in public: these are the expectations of what ARG s look like. And yet, the mere distinctions between how ARG s are played, their platforms for participation, and the contexts in which digital tools are and are not included make them supremely ideal to tussle with traditional notions of performance, play, and learning. Unlike most video games, ARG s are not bound to a singular medium. Further, whereas Henry Jenkins’s (2006) descriptions of transmedia storytelling rely on extensions of narrative that hop from one platform to another (e.g., The Matrix story is delivered on films, video games, animation, etc.), ARG s tell stories through the deliberate synthesis of myriad textual products: ARGs are not bound to a singular platform. Despite this fact, the digital aspects of ARG s are particularly important: they are largely where strategic play, coordination, and dissemination occurs. If ARG s are often global affairs, it is the distribution of tasks via digital tools that makes such complex participation possible. In essence, ARG s are digitally mediated even if they are not entirely delivered through digital means. The game is not always digital but its administration is. Further investigating the role of digital media and tools in ARG s, we must also look at the limitations of replayability within ARG s. Though some ARG s such as Ingress and Reality Ends Here have moved beyond this, most ARG s are largely singular events that individuals are either present to experience or that they must review after they have concluded. The window of play is finite and social obstacles such as awareness and access affect if and how players are included within the process of engagement. Digital tools can archive play, facilitate coordination for players, and offer some aspects of play and procedure. In looking at the digital components of ARG s, we can see these games representing the cusp of where a contemporary digital game studies is headed. Whereas gaming used to be (and often is still) housed within a digital container, this Pandora’s Box is opened in ARG s: narrative (driven by both puppet masters and players) spills into various physical and virtual spaces. At the same time, we are seeing games like Ingress mediating turn taking through digital spaces. Further, as ARG s continue to evolve we are seeing a regression of the use of digital gaming contexts. This is a relationship with which gaming scholarship must contend; we are seeing digital

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aspects of pervasive games like Escape Rooms minimized: hints from Escape Room organizers may be offered within these games but the digital aspects are otherwise largely custodial: making reservations, keeping track of time, posting digital ephemera of one’s experience after the fact. Such is the relegated role of the digital in some gaming contexts today. In labeling “games of social experimentation,” Ian Bogost (2012) describes gaming contexts in which the ratio of socialized play is emphasized in lieu of computational procedures. Perhaps this is the direction of ARG studies as we move forward: with computation procedures minimized to emphasize the play, engagement, and socialization within ARG s, the process of playing and studying shifts. Perhaps, from this lens, we can see the process of alternating reality as an actionable outcome that derives from gaming. As McGonigal notes about The Beast, “it is reasonable to argue that nothing about this virtual play was simulated. The computer-driven alternate reality The Beast created was make-believe, but every aspect of the player’s experience was, phenomenologically speaking, real.” Some aspects of the alternate reality within ARG s are delivered via digital tools and some are delivered through social interactions. The digital systems of ARG s both deliver and support socialization and player interaction.

The changing landscape of ARGs and looking ahead The definitions and tropes of ARG s that have saddled the genre are nearly two decades old. Though premises like TINAG and the relational aspects of puppet masters are still largely in place in many current ARG s, the genre has shown the ability to grow and shift beyond these initial means of framing and containing ARG s. Arguably, this growth is problematic as it moves ARG s even more loosely into the broader territory of pervasive gameplay. Watson’s chapter, for example, looks at how the iterative processes of play and an imbued sense of scorekeeping within Reality Ends Here provides a team-based competitive element to ARG s. Though this collection contains analysis and description of several canonical ARG s, there is also a focus on how the genre is

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changing and what these implications portend for the future of digital game studies. The contents of this book are arranged over two sections: Part One: Guiding Principles of Alternate Reality Games Exploring the design and implementation of ARG s, the chapters in this section look at narratives, the contexts within which they are designed, and how the fundamental core aspects of ARG s are shaped an enacted. These chapters explore key aspects unique to ARG s such as TINAG and provide readers of varied experience with ARG s a grounded sense of how different designers create the layered-fiction of these games. Part Two: New Frontiers of Alternating Reality The second section of this volume focuses on how contemporary analysis and research of ARG s is challenging assumptions of what the genre means and how it functions. This section explores how the tropes, designs, and relationships within digital gaming literature are shifting the landscape of ARG research. The scholarship here focuses on how digital game studies is shifting in regards to the affordances of ARG design, play, and community building. Like ARG s, these chapters do not fit comfortably as solely representative of their respective sections. Our conclusion offers some synthesized suggestions for where ARG s and research of them are headed. Taking the call of the Approaches to Digital Games Studies series editors—Voorhees, Call, and Whitlock (2012)— seriously, the chapters here are “challenging, thought provoking, contradictory, and engaging” (8). In looking across the dialogue that emerges in these chapters, we seek to define the changing landscape of ARG s. In a retrospective reflecting (Story Forward, 2014) on I Love Bees a decade after its launch, designer Elan Lee noted that ARG s were defining storytelling and art in the twenty-first century: This is what art means in the age of Facebook, even though Facebook wasn’t invented yet. This is what art means in the age of Twitter, even though Twitter wasn’t invented yet. There was something about [I Love Bees] that is fundamentally part of the nature of what this age of the world is.

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As we move beyond simple enchantment of new modes of storytelling, the chapters that follow invite you to explore the aesthetics of this new genre and its continuing and continually shifting impact on broader games studies.

An assurance and a warning Before you begin diving into the bountiful chapters that follow, we should clarify that the volume that you are holding is not a game. Really. Your response to that statement likely falls along three different lines of gaming researchers’ positions towards ARG s as a genre. For a vast majority of you, of course this book isn’t a game. This is a scholarly collection and you’re perusing these sentences skeptical of our ability to pull off an entire volume on a subgenre of gaming that you may not be necessarily convinced should be considered part of an “Approaches to Digital Games Studies” series. Don’t worry: keep reading. For some of you, this reminder that this really isn’t a game comes as a relief. ARG s have a slippery tendency to present a facade of truth for players to both believe and to challenge. A front of reality, claims that “This Is Not A Game” (TINAG ) are suspect as they are the very foundation of ARG development. Knowing that this volume is not a rabbit hole into a larger realm and that endnotes, citations, and wayward punctuation do not need to be tediously combed over comes as a relief. Don’t worry: keep reading. And for a small group of you, this statement of not being a game is, actually, a declaration that the game is afoot. It is from this context that we can consider some readers’ skepticism with the claims that this is not a game. Considering the ways some scholars have injected ARG s and emergent gameplay into the academy (see Salter, 2014), maybe this is a game. (Even though we keep warning you that it is not and to acknowledge otherwise would be breaking the TINAG tenet—see Blair, 1991.) You, slim demographic that you are, know that this book is an invitation into a larger world of play, deceit, and performance. Don’t worry: keep reading.

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References Auster, Paul. 1987. City of Glass. New York: Penguin. Baran, Paul. 1964. On Distributed Communications: I. Introductions to Distributed Communications Networks. Santa Monica, CA : The RAND Corporation. Blair, Ian Kudzu. 1991. The Leibniz Node and Kant Fireplace. Berkeley, CA : Wilhelm. Bogost, Ian. 2012. “Persuasive Games: Process Intensity and Social Experimentation.” Gamasutra. May 23, http://www.gamasutra.com/ view/feature/170806/persuasive_games_process_.php Caroll, Lewis. 1865. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, UK : Macmillan. Castells, Manuel. 2009. The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume I. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. The Game. Directed by David Fincher. Universal, 1997. Gee, James, P. 2004. Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. New York: Routledge. Graeber, David. 2004. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Huizinga, Johan. 1955. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press. Hyde, Lewis. 1998. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. IGDA ARG SIG . 2006. “Alternate Reality Games SIG /Whitepaper.” International Game Developers Association, http://wiki.igda.org/ Alternate_Reality_Games_SIG /Whitepaper Ito, Mimi, Kris Gutierrez, Sonia Livingstone, Bill Penuel, Jean Rhodes, Katie Salen, Juliet Schor, Julian Sefton-Green, and S. Craig Watkins. 2013. Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Report for Connected Learning Research Network. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry, Ford, Sam, and Green, Joshua. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press. Juul, Jesper. 2005. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: MIT Press. Kinsella, Michael. 2011. Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat. Jackson: University Press Mississippi.

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Lave, Jean, and Wenger, Etienne. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leibnitz, Gottfried. 1704. “Nouveaux Essais sur L’entendement humain.” Levine, Lawrence. 2007. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levy, Peirre. 1999. Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. Translated by Robert Bononno. Cambridge: Perseus Books. McGonigal, Jane. 2003. “ ‘This Is Not a Game’: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play.” Proceedings from Melbourne DAC 2003 Streamingworlds Conference Proceedings. McGonigal, Jane. 2007. “Why I Love Bees: A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming.” The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, December, doi:10.1162/dmal.9780262693646.199 Montola, Markus., Stenros, Jaakko. and Waern, Annika. 2009. Pervasive Games: Theory and Design. New York: Morgan Kaufmann. Murray, Janet. 1997. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: The Free Press. Niemeyer, Greg, Garcia, Antero, and Naima, Reza. 2009. “Black cloud: patterns towards da future.” Paper presented at the Proceedings of the seventeen ACM international conference on Multimedia. Pargman, Daniel and Jakobsson, Peter. 2006. “The magic is gone: A critical examination of the gaming situation.” Proceedings of Mediaterra: Gaming realities. Athens, Greece, October. Rainie, Lee and Wellman, Barry. 2014. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge: MIT Press. Roberts, John W. 1990. From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Salen, Katie, and Zimmerman, Eric. 2003. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: MIT Press. Salter, Anastasia. 2014. “Alternate Reality Games in the Classroom.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, http://chronicle.com/ blogs/profhacker/alternate-reality-games-in-the-classroom/54769 Shannon, Claude. 1948. “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” Bell System Technical Journal, 27, 379–423 and 623–656, July and October. Stephenson, Neal. 1995. The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. New York: Bantam Spectra Books. Stewart, Sean. “Storytelling V: The Audience Strikes Back.” Presentation at the Power to the Pixel Cross-Media Forum. https://vimeo. com/52157203 [accessed October 3, 2015].

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Story Forward. 2014. 057: I Love Bees Creator Retrospective. Audio. Story Forward: ARG s, Apps, The Wild West of the Web . . . and Beyond. http://www.storyforwardpodcast.com/2014/08/14/057love-bees-creator-retrospective/ [accessed April 12, 2015]. Szulborski, D. 2005. This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming. Pennsylvania: New-Fiction Pub. von Borries, Frederich, Walz, Steffen P., and Böttger, Matthias. 2007. Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture, and Urbanism: The Next Level. Basel: Birkhäuse. Voorhees, Gerald, Call, Josh, and Whitlock, Katie. 2012. “Series Introduction – Genre and Disciplinarity in the Study of Games.” In Gerald Voorhees, Joshua Call, and Katie Whitlock (eds) Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens: The Digital Role-Playing Game. New York: Bloomsbury, 1–9. Williams, Kat. 1979. Masquerade. London: Jonathan Cape. Zerubavel, Eviatar. 2015. Hidden in Plain Sight: The Social Structure of Irrelevance Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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PART ONE

Guiding Principles of Alternate Reality Games

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CHAPTER ONE

From Alternate to Alternative Reality: Games as Cultural Probes Patrick Jagoda, Melissa Gilliam, Peter McDonald, and Ashlyn Sparrow

“There are circumstances whereby unreality contrives to create an impression that overwhelms reality.” HARUKI MURAKAMI ( A WILD SHEEP CHASE )

On Wednesday, July 23, 2014 a crowd of around 70 high school youth marched on the University of Chicago’s Mott building. Carrying handwritten signs and chanting rhymed slogans, the students demanded the release of a political prisoner named Pel who had been unjustly incarcerated following the alleged theft of a valuable communications device called “SEED.” Onlookers emerged from their offices to gawk at the unusual spectacle. They saw individuals in white laboratory coats parlay with protest leaders on the stairs, and eventually disperse the crowd. 31

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FIGURE 1.1 Youth protest on the University of Chicago campus. From a certain perspective, the events of this afternoon were not real. These negotiations were part of SEED, an alternate reality game (ARG) that the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab (GCC Lab) created for youth. Players were recruited by “ProPhyle” —a powerful corporation claiming to reside in a dystopian future —and were tasked with averting the imminent end of the world, determining its causes and responsible parties. For three weeks players used the eponymous SEED technology (an acronym that stood for “Story Enabling and Engineering Device”) to communicate with inhabitants from the future and debated possible solutions to an encroaching apocalypse. The SEED game communicated this narrative through a range of media, including video, radio, handwritten letters, text messages, social media, theatrical sets, and live-action performances by actors and the ARG’s designers. In order to locate and make sense of the primary story, players participated in an array of team-based challenges such as solving cryptographic puzzles, hacking into virtual machines, undertaking scavenger hunts guided by an iPad app, and participating in scientific debates. From another perspective, this protest was very real. For the onlookers who were not part of the game and did not know of the occasion’s ludic status, the event most likely appeared as an actual public demonstration. Moreover, many of the participants were themselves undecided about the status of the experience. That

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uncertainty about the game’s reality was augmented by the fact that this protest was neither planned nor prompted by the game designers. Instead, it was the players who imagined and enacted this demonstration in response to narrative events. This protest raises a number of questions: How, precisely, did a science fiction game designed primarily to transmit new media literacies and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) knowledge to high school students yield a public demonstration? How did top-down design decisions interact with bottom-up play to enable this emergent event? And what can the sequence of events that yielded this protest teach us about using games to promote political participation in the twenty-first century, especially among youth? In this chapter we analyze the ways that SEED fostered political action and resistance to operations of power through its narrative staging and gameplay. We track the design and implementation techniques, including game activities and emergent interplay between actors and players, which encouraged political thought and collective action. In particular, we examine how these elements resulted in the player-organized protest that unfolded in the third week of the game, and how players resisted the designers’ narrative plans for the game’s finale. Along with design and observation, we also base our analysis on three youth focus groups that we conducted after gameplay.

Alternate reality games as cultural probes In conceptualizing the emergent player protest in SEED, we find human geography scholar Nigel Thrift’s idea of a “cultural probe” useful to describe the experimental nature of ARGs as “an artscience of giving rise to new developments” (2011: 19). In a compelling diagnosis of the early twenty-first century, Thrift argues that we are in the midst of an “experimental economy,” which assumes that the world is in “a constant state of provisionality” (2011: 8). For Thrift, this period has been distinguished by five technological characteristics that include continuous and networked media, gesture and movement based interfaces that change physical environments, capacities to tag the world through “an informational overlay,” real-time feedback to user decisions, and agency that is increasingly shared between human beings and technological objects (8–11).

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In order to respond to this type of world, Thrift argues, we are less in need of additional scientific data that describe the world as it is than of interventions that can engage and evoke the world as it might become. For this purpose, he borrows designer William Gaver’s concept of a “cultural probe” (Gaver, Boucher, Pennington, and Walker, 2004). In their initial version, these probes were packages given to residents of three senior centers that consisted of postcards with open-ended questions, maps with stickers that could mark personally meaningful sites and experiences, and disposable cameras with prompts for taking expressive photographs (Gaver, Dunne, and Pacenti, 1999). Participants sent probe materials back to designers over several months, providing idiosyncratic data from which to imagine a re-designed media environment in senior communities. For Gaver and his colleagues, cultural probes are “designed to provoke inspirational responses.” These probes invite the types of serendipity and emergence common to performance art (Gaver, Dunne, and Pacenti, 1999: 22). Instead of constituting a solution, a cultural probe provokes speculative “functions, experiences, and cultural placements quite outside the norm” and then engages the responses it provokes even when they fall outside of predicted parameters (1999: 25). Following Gaver, Thrift advocates a “provocative awareness” that has historically motivated the creative arts, but could increasingly contribute to the social sciences “to produce frames that can produce uncertain outcomes, to be able to incorporate surprise” (Thrift, 2011: 18). While Gaver uses such probes for better design, Thrift’s aspiration is that they could interrupt cultural processes and contribute to social change. The idea of a “cultural probe” as a research method is promising, especially given academia’s fuller embrace of practice-based research through fields such as new media studies and the digital humanities (Ratto, 2011; Ingold, 2013). Yet it is difficult to imagine how Thrift’s expanded usage of this concept might operate in practice. In passing, Thrift mentions performance art and “radical game design” as two areas that offer possible models for cultural probes (Thrift, 2011: 19–20). We contend that the SEED ARG was a cultural probe that used design, performance, and play to provoke unexpected player responses that altered the execution and very status of the unfolding project. This ARG engaged in the somewhat paradoxical work of nurturing resistance and producing the

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conditions of opposition to the very rules on which it was founded. The starting conditions—a narrative, a suite of educational games, STEM learning goals, and research questions about long-term efficacy—changed in response to player actions. If someone made an odd assumption about the narrative that others took up then it became canonical. If players misunderstood a game’s goal then their interpretations often opened up alternate pathways. The creators resisted a design that would train players to move through a linear, fixed, and pre-established sequence, as they might in many video games. Instead of staging a scripted event, the creators adjusted and modulated the conditions of that event’s unfolding, tending carefully to its changing properties based on actions taken by a particular group of players, designers, actors, and mentors. The genres that contributed most directly to this method, which we describe in the following section, came from the areas of ARG s and live action role-playing games.

Political games: ARGs and LARPs Prior to SEED, the GCC Lab developed several ARG s, including Stork (2012) and The Source (2013), and several of its members have worked on others, including The Project (Jagoda and Sha, 2013) and Speculation (Hayles, Jagoda, and LeMieux, 2012). Through these projects the lab has honed its own aesthetic that combines games and performance through the pervasive game genres of ARG s and live action role-playing games (LARP s), both of which complicate the spatial, temporal, and social boundaries that frame most forms of play (Montola, Stenros, and Waern, 2009). SEED, in particular, draws on aspects of each genre that encourage player agency, resistance, and improvisation. We contend that ARG s and LARP s are concrete exemplars of cultural probes that belong as much to the social sciences and humanities as to the arts. The ARG is so compelling a form for many GCC Lab designers because it infects and destabilizes reality with game logic. A few well-placed puzzles, hidden in plain sight, can reveal patterns teeming just below the surface of everyday life and transform ordinary environments by inspiring collective play. ARG s achieve such transformations, in part, by generating paranoia. As Fredric Jameson has noted, paranoia has, since the late

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twentieth century, saturated culture through the conspiracy genre. As he concludes, however, “Conspiracy, one is tempted to say, is the poor person’s cognitive mapping in the postmodern age” (Jameson, 1988: 356). While paranoid literature and cinema serve as representations of conspiracy, ARG s involve players in more participatory and robust mapping practices. For instance, such games often generate and encourage apophenia: a more constructive way of forming creative connections among seemingly unrelated elements. ARG s also attach themselves to the real world by recruiting existing communications networks and digital technologies, such as search engines, public telephones, satellite imaging, or community boards —and rejuvenating them through playful orientations that are invested in altering social life. The GCC Lab designers primarily conceived of SEED as an ARG , but also borrowed several site-specific conventions from LARP s. The genre of LARP s, though it comes out of a tradition of tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons (Gyrax and Arneson, 1974), shares similarities with ARG s. In both genres, the real world serves as a backdrop for an elaborate fiction, and improvisation and suspension of disbelief (or even a more robust production of belief) prove crucial. LARP s involve players as characters, and because they generally run on a smaller scale than ARG s, can also be more site-specific and invite greater player creativity. While the site-specific tendency invokes the traditional “magic circle” of games at a spatial level, it also allows these games to cross social boundaries by involving onlookers as unknowing participants (Huizinga, 1950). LARP s, finally, tend to privilege acting over other forms of play, and use performance to explore social situations ranging from high-fantasy battles to real-world gender relations. For example, Eleanor Saitta describes a 2012 iteration of Mad About the Boy, which is set in a world where all men have perished. This LARP allowed a transgender woman, for instance, to play a cisgender character (Saitta, 2013). SEED was influenced by ARG s and LARPs with specifically political orientations. ARGs initially emerged as an apolitical form of advertising for a range of products: films with The Beast (Microsoft, 2001), video games with I Love Bees (42 Entertainment, 2004), and cars with Art of the Heist (McKinney, 2005). Despite this patronage, ARGs have exceeded branding, encouraging political interventions and new habits of thought. Designer Jane McGonigal describes one

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active subset of players for The Beast who tried to use information gathering and analysis skills learned from the game to “solve” the attacks of September 11, 2001 (McGonigal, 2003: 110). Other games, such as Year Zero or Speculation, played on science fiction and dystopian conventions to encourage their players to think historically about surveillance (Hall, 2009) and critically about the culture of Wall Street (Hayles, Jagoda, and LeMieux, 2014). Moreover, designers like McGonigal have attempted to harvest large-scale collective intelligence for practical ends through “forecasting games” such as Superstruct (Institute for the Future, 2008) in which players proposed restructurings of current political and economic organizations (McGonigal, 2011: 302). Still other games, such as EVOKE and The Source have experimented with the form as a pedagogical tool (Bonsignore et al., 2012; Chess and Booth, 2013; Jagoda, 2014). SEED drew on each of these ARG and LARP types to encourage political engagement inside and outside of the ludic experience. The protest that the players organized and executed in the third week, as well as the way that it changed the course of the ARG , was not planned but neither was it wholly random or unthinkable. Design decisions made it possible for players to imagine themselves as agents of change, act together, and articulate an agenda. The political pedagogy of SEED modeled different ways of approaching power. It encouraged players to question, challenge, and ultimately overcome an unjust force in ways that we could not entirely anticipate. The game overview and account of major events that follows demonstrates key moments at which players were primed to move from an atomized and competitive environment to an atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration that gave them the courage to organize the public protest.

SEED : design principles SEED can be understood, at once, as a game, a design practice, a collective performance, an educational curriculum, and a research technique for intervening in digital media culture. It unfolded on site at the University of Chicago and, for select portions, online across three weeks in July 2014. We recruited players using fliers, online information targeted at public schools, and invitations at after-school programs. The game attracted 69 youth, ages 13–18.

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For the game’s duration, these youth came to campus each weekday from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. The teams of high school students were led by graduate and undergraduate mentors that served as game runners, teachers, advisors, and mediators between the designers and players. While some activities took place outdoors on campus, most gameplay unfolded in a central location: one floor of a university building that was divided into cubicle workstations. Following these weeks of gameplay, we debriefed students about the experience. These participants then continued on, for two more weeks, through a camp that took them from the role of players to designers, as they learned how to design board games and ARG s about serious social topics, such as gang violence, gender discrimination in the workplace, and teen pregnancy. Throughout this five-week experience, youth were involved in STEM activities through games, a science fiction narrative, and hands-on digital media learning. Through the case study of SEED, we draw six practical conclusions about how an ARG can operate as a cultural probe. As these conclusions suggest, ARG s are cultural probes insofar as they provoke active play and introduce subversive techniques into everyday life. As research tools, these games can expand the scope of ethnographic methods and extend conversations across institutional, disciplinary, and social boundaries. The first three design choices that we highlight are neither necessary features of the ARG form nor entirely limited to it. The second set of three principles includes genre features of ARG s that are emphasized to a greater or lesser degree across existing games, and can also be considered more general ways of instantiating the first three. These six guiding practices are: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Using dystopian conventions to produce a utopian imaginary Subverting explicit power hierarchies through play Moving from competitive to cooperative and ultimately creative activities Blurring boundaries between reality and the game Enabling interplay between players and designers Creating an emergent community among players.

In what follows, we unpack these principles.

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1. Dystopian narrative One design principle that allowed SEED to act as a cultural probe was the narrative premise of an impending dystopian world that provoked player action and a desire to change the future. On the first day, after being recruited to the program, the players were told that they were a “Crop” taking part in a three-week boot camp called “Project Harvest.” This project was organized by the “Temporal Archivists” (Archivists), representatives in the present moment of “ProPhyle,” a future corporation with access to a technology that opened a limited communication channel between the present day and the 2030s. ProPhyle had created the SEED technology, whose core was a genetically engineered bonsai tree, to prevent a catastrophic event which would allegedly begin in Chicago on July 25, 2014, the final day of the program. Players had only a few days to save the world. Each day trained players to prevent the imminent event by passing scientific trials that would help them evaluate possible apocalyptic scenarios, using math and cryptography to uncover ProPhyle’s secret communications, and developing computer literacy that could alter SEED technology. SEED targeted youth who are under-represented in STEM fields, and encouraged a longue durée view of what counts as political action in the face of planet-wide issues. In the future world, the game revealed, it would be the players’ future selves who have pivotal roles in organizing resistance as much as understanding global threats. Dystopian literature has a long history of political commentary. Dystopian games, by contrast, can interpellate players not only as witnesses to a possible future but also as agents of change. ARG s develop these elements further by using the real world as a constraint on the fantastic catastrophes that often occupy video games, and by transitioning from a lone avatar to a distributed collective. Alexander Hall discusses the strategic use of dystopian themes in ARG s such as Year Zero, and adds that this genre also promotes the utopian capacities of technology (Hall, 2009: 74–5). Hall suggests that ARG s allow players to appropriate new media as tools to find, research, and intervene in the world. While the idea of salvation through technology can surely be deterministic, ARG s frequently foreground technology as a social actor.

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FIGURE 1.2 SEED technology set inhabited by the Temporal Archivists. In the opening days, SEED foregrounded technoscientific knowledge over the narrative’s social implications, but players gradually discovered that ProPhyle was not a benevolent actor. In the second week, messages from a future-based resistance group began interrupting ProPhyle broadcasts. Then the broadcasts stopped altogether when an unknown party stole the bonsai tree at the heart of the SEED technology. While teams were outside, the Archivists ransacked their bases, leaving chairs upturned, board game pieces scattered, and document folders spread open. Players returned to a darkened central workspace where an accusing image of the room that previously housed the SEED technology was projected onto the wall. The Archivists grew increasingly vigilant over player activities. At the end of the week, players discovered that Pel, the Archivist closest to them, had rebelled against the other Archivists and been imprisoned for the theft. In this atmosphere of distrust, players sought to discover the truth for themselves. Pel’s charismatic rebellion and unjust arrest were the direct causes of the player protest with which we began this chapter, but his actions also represented a conflict over the social conditions of technological access and dystopian control.

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FIGURE 1.3 SEED technology stolen and temporal link severed.

2. Inverting hierarchy A second key SEED design strategy was incorporating hierarchies of power into the game and subsequently destabilizing them to inspire resistance. Characters with more authority—members of the ProPhyle Corporation and certain Archivists—tended to display absurd behavior that invited players to question and oppose them. Players occupied the lowest rung in the game’s official hierarchy, but that position also gave them a privileged vantage point from which to witness and resist abuses of power. The demographic composition of our player base played a key part in this hierarchical inversion. We recruited youth participants primarily from the South Side of Chicago, one of the country’s most racially segregated and city’s most impoverished areas. Of the participants who took part in the research 63.8 percent were male. The players were 69.6 percent African American, 15.9 percent multi-racial, or 7.2 percent Hispanic or Latino. Of these students 62.3 percent attended Chicago Public Schools and 72.5 percent took part in free or reduced lunch programs. Additionally, these participants did not have familiarity with ARGs or LARPs prior to their participation. The first week of SEED opened with youth coming together onto what was for most of them an unfamiliar space, the University of Chicago campus. They were almost immediately divided into teams that included other

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students, most of whom attended different schools and were in different grades. The ambiguities of the situation were compounded when they encountered a group of adults who wore lab coats and, with total conviction, claimed to be historians of the future known as the “Temporal Archivists.” Several factors made it difficult for the players to dismiss the elaborate performance, and its scale, as simply fictional. The Archivists lent the spectacle legitimacy. While the majority of the players were urban youth of color enrolled in public schools, the Archivists were adults who signaled their authority through their level of education (i.e., the Archivists included University of Chicago faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates), their age (i.e., all of the Archivists were in their twenties and thirties and thus older than the players), and their race (i.e., some of the Archivists were white). Students also found themselves on a university campus that was unfamiliar and in a program that departed substantially from school and summer camp contexts. Despite the insistence that the experience would not be a game, there were signs that called the status of the event into question. Prior to the first day, youth signed up with parents or legal guardians, and received an overview of the program and its game-like elements. Moreover, most youth were rightfully skeptical about the existence of a time communications technology. Despite the straight-faced performance of the actors who played the Archivists, the game’s orientation involved absurd notes, including a parodic training video about how to prevent the end of the world, featuring “Goofus and Gallant” style characters. The Archivists themselves satirized authority by pestering players with surrealistic psychological tests, deploying equipment that might have appeared in a Terry Gilliam film, and comically spying on players. The height of this pageantry was the SEED technology room, a carefully built and inscrutable set. The space was a black-lit room with a floor covered completely with grass, which featured a bonsai tree encased in glass and connected with wires and vines to computer monitors. This weird space truly looked as if it might be an experimental device, even as it called attention to its own impossibility. At the top of the hierarchy, the stern and commanding Xander Conway always made himself available to player ridicule without breaking character, exposing the fragility of the system. As Xander’s plans to use the SEED

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FIGURE 1.4 In-game poster for the Temporal Archivists.

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technology for his own ends were revealed, players’ rebellious impulses found a defined outlet.

3. Competition to rebellious and cooperative play Across three weeks, the style of the game progressed from competitive, rule-based engagement to rebellious play and finally to collective coordination. This formal design choice informed the smaller embedded games, learning objectives, and narrative. Each week provided scaffolding for community formation, a growing understanding of rules, and play opportunities that exceeded designed puzzles. Without this development, the participants’ appropriation of the game world as a space for critical action would have been unlikely. The major activity arc of the first week prepared players to take part in a competitive debate tournament organized around four scenarios that could lead to an eventual apocalypse: climate change, global inequality, antibiotic-resistant viruses, and resource depletion. Each team received an evidence box with scientific and social research about its own scenario and those of opposing teams. The quantity of information would be overwhelming for any single person to process in the allotted time but manageable if divided among the players. In terms of experience design, the debates were organized in order to foster intra-team camaraderie (by requiring all team members to participate and share responsibility) and interteam competition. Unlike some later activities, the debates were more rule-bound, dependent upon the top-down decisions of judges, and generative of distrust between teams. In the second week, players faced a state of emergency following the SEED technology theft that confined them to their cubicles, requiring cooperation if they hoped to change their circumstances. Gradually, the dissatisfied players became distrustful of the Archivists’ disciplinary methods, and began to suspect them of being the real enemy. Moreover, after accusing players of theft, two lead Archivists interrogated each team, splitting them up and attempting to turn them against each other. Similarly to the first day of the program, many of these questions were absurd (e.g., Archivist Xander Conway pointed to a photo of the torn plastic quarantine sheet, and asked players about their radical views on interior decorating). None of the participants purposefully incriminated others, and the teams came back together with their mentors after

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each interrogation to strategize and discuss how they held out against the questioning. During this period, players also discovered clues left by a mysterious rebel group, which augmented their distrust of ProPhyle and the Archivists. Each team moved through several steps, which started with a trail of riddles written in rhyming couplets. One clue, for example, was hidden on the side of a computer and read: “Don’t refuse to find where the next clue is placed / Don’t trash the opportunity or throw it to waste!” This clue pointed to a message taped to the bottom of a trashcan, which in turn led to informative radio broadcasts and a website. Subsequently, collecting four passwords allowed players to clear their names and gain access to a website that disclosed the person who actually stole the SEED technology. In order to acquire access to this site, the teams needed to communicate and share data. One surprising event during this phase was a small playerorchestrated rebellion that the designers discovered only minutes before it occurred. Two or three teams sent out encrypted messages, which other teams decoded, directing everyone to make noise and cause chaos—at 2:45p.m. exactly. The teams used this outburst to meet secretly in the same physical space and coordinate a plan to prove their innocence. The plan succeeded, and even those teams that had not taken part in the organizing caught on quickly. This event was stressful for designers, who were concerned with both the safety of players and any possible damage to the building. At the same time, it marked a moment of notable change, insofar as participants began to experiment with self-organization and teamwork. At the event’s conclusion, one team accrued all of the passwords and convinced the Archivists that the players were innocent of the technological theft. The SEED theft and the coordination that it inspired led players from the competitive ethos of the first week to a sense of cooperation. Without knowing precisely what the players would do, the designers incentivized collaborative work by associating it with opposition to power. To pass encrypted messages, players had to achieve mastery over the cryptographic methods that the Archivists had taught them, but then to apply them to self-devised ends. The episode gave players what sociologist Jack Katz (1988) calls “sneaky thrills” that allowed them to transgress boundaries and experiment with their own capacities—albeit in a safe game environment and in the interest of the common good, rather than the criminally oriented activities that Katz discusses.

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In the third week, players were invited to voice their concerns and, at the Archivists’ annual meeting, to propose changes to their constitution. In preparation for this final event, designers gave players several topics that both returned to the apocalyptic scenarios and recast them in the frame of ethical dilemmas and political alternatives. Rather than requiring the hardline positions of the first week’s debates, these topics challenged players to articulate more nuanced positions about topics such as the use of violence for social change, and global versus local interventions in climate change policy. Extending the inter-team collaboration, the teams were split and reformed as hybrid teams. The player proposals were timed to fit within a four-minute structure and were well researched, articulate, and impassioned. Archivists voted on the proposals and five out of the eight passed. Following the vote, Pel confronted Xander with evidence of his manipulation of data from the future and proof that ProPhyle’s objective was not to save the world but rather to profit from disasters that they helped engineer. The Archivists then invited players to offer responses to this revelation. The players received no explicit preparation for this moment, and the designers were unsure whether they would be confident enough to improvise a response. As it turned out, players organized eloquent and creative replies, and there were more willing participants than we had time to invite on stage. Each of these phases allowed players to develop skills and motivations necessary for coordinated cooperation and improvised response.

4. Blurred boundaries SEED yielded three additional conclusions about genre experiences that are common to many ARG s. These elements enable ARG s to operate as cultural probes that defamiliarize habituated ways of being in the world, while provoking political participation intended to alter present conditions of life. These qualities expand on design principles #1–3, moving from a specifically dystopian narrative to any narrative frame that complicates consensus reality, from an inversion of hierarchy to the interplay between designers and players, and from a competitive to collaborative community. To illustrate design principles #4–6, we now draw on players’ reports from focus groups that were conducted after the game concluded.

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In general, ARG s cast the precise nature of reality into question, blur social boundaries, and encourage players to renegotiate its status. In SEED, one female participant noted that the “roleplay aspect” of the game “made me feel this was happening, like it was reality, when it’s really all part of the program.” A male participant observed, “The first week I was here, I thought they were serious. . . . I thought that was all real because of their acting.” In a male focus group, participants admitted to mistaking some real life people and interactions for game content. For example, one participant noted that, during a scavenger hunt, he encountered an older man and young boy by a pond and suspected that they were in on the game when, in fact, they were unrelated bystanders. Breaking from both consensus reality and the habitual limits of the game, the player protest was the most telling example of this blurred space that can open a realm of political activity. After receiving the news that the Archivists had imprisoned Pel, without offering him recourse to a fair trial, players decided that they needed to take direct action. Several players came up with the idea of holding a “riot.” Their plan was to lead an exodus to the building where Pel was allegedly being held—a building that (outside of the game’s diegesis) housed the GCC Design Lab and several other university organizations. The players initially planned to bang on the windows, blockade the building, and sneak inside. At this moment, the line between the fictional game and the nonparticipating university blurred for the players who ignored the disruption that such play might cause. The designers were hyperaware of the possible consequences of this action, especially because it had taken effort to find space on the university campus to host the program. Alerted to the burgeoning idea of a “riot” by one of the actors who had witnessed preparations, the designers attempted to shift the tenor of the idea towards “protest” without removing the players’ agency to redirect the narrative and meanings of the game. The slight reroute proved successful, and several mentors took this opportunity to discuss the logistics of organizing and planning effective social protests, even though we had not initially planned to make this part of our pedagogy. Players spent the morning painting signs, developing chants, and producing a list of demands. That afternoon, nearly 70 players, along with their mentors, gathered on the greenway across from the building, marching and chanting. The spectacle startled some people who were passing by

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FIGURE 1.5 An unscripted protest and negotiation in the SEED ARG .

on the street. Several unassociated people who were working in the building also came down or stopped to wonder at the demands. The Archivists stood at the top of the steps watching this protest, acting their part as an authority surprised at this resistance. In focus groups, players shared a range of opinions about the status of the experience as a fiction or a game. Even on the final day of the ARG , during debriefing, some players still expressed surprise that events had been staged. On the other hand, some players also internalized the ambivalence of the ARG form and collaborated in the shared production of belief. As one male participant noted, “They let us know we were in a scenario. They didn’t [ever say] ‘Hey you’re playing a game now,’ but you could tell that you’ve been put in a situation where you have to complete a task and you have something to do and it is vital that you do it. They did that very effectively on our first day.” As participants repeatedly pointed out, the sense of reality that SEED elicited was the result of the persistence of the game world, as well as the role-playing between designers and players. As one female participant noted, “I liked that the game was constantly ongoing. It wasn’t like, ‘We’re going to do the game thing from 9 to 11 and [then] we’re going to do other stuff.’ ” For others, the shared sense of playfulness, immersion, and world making contributed to the capacity to proffer belief to the

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SEED scenario and to experiment with political actions and shared decision-making.

5. Interplay between players and designers ARG s focused on entertainment, education, and activism encourage an interplay between players and designers, students and educators, game space and the real world that challenges hierarchical divisions and promotes robust agency. Over the course of SEED, students learned skills that eventually empowered them to organize and engage in the protest. Many players preferred the ARG to classroom education as a learning form because their agency mattered through the interplay in which game designers heard and incorporated player concerns and interests. As one female participant noted, “In school, you have to sit and listen to somebody. With our mentors, it’s like they’re listening to us.” Regarding the responsiveness of the ARG design, one male player observed, “They made up everything as we went along because we messed up what they were supposed to do. They had to change their ending and all the things. That was interesting.” Another participant foregrounded the shared sense of play between designers and players: “They . . . were having as much fun as we were, and not just sitting back and watch[ing] us play. They got into it and had fun with it.” Another male player also responded well to the replacement of a rigid and hierarchical educational structure with greater flexibility and improvisation. Regarding the ARG , he noted, “I feel it makes you think more intuitively. In other programs it’s in the face, ‘Do this! I’m going to teach you how to do this, you’re going to do this.’ [SEED is] more flexible, you have to use your mind and other things to guess . . . you can analyze.” Regarding the adaptable structure, another male player explained, “I prefer the open ended because it gives more room for decision making.” It was not only that players could make decisions, as with moments that yielded branching narrative options, but also that they experienced the significance of their choices through interaction with actors who improvised immediate responses. Sometimes, player choice was encouraged even when it clashed with designer preferences. In a culminating moment of decision, players had to determine whether they wanted to destroy or to preserve the SEED technology in light of its manipulation by Xander

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and the Archivists. Players then received a third option that would, ideally, break the gridlock—one of the neutral actors proposed that the SEED technology be made available to everyone, by planting the bonsai in a public place. The designers naïvely assumed that players would choose this third option to share the technology. However, though the vote was split, the players decided to terminate the technology, which entailed destroying the bonsai tree. Rather than refusing their decision, we decided to honor the democratic process. As such, Pel brought the bonsai to a sky bridge on the third story of the arts center within which the theater was located and dropped it onto the cement, as players watched. Later, outside the game’s frame narrative, several players would come to regret killing the tree, but at that moment they were ecstatic that they had won.

6. Community formation Finally, a quality of ARG s that make them promising cultural probes is the ways they inspire collective participation that challenges the competition and individualism common in many areas of contemporary life. One of the successes of the SEED ARG that players mentioned most often during focus groups was a growing sense of community, teamwork, and collaboration. This group sense authorized and gave players resolve to organize the emergent protest. Rather than requiring participants to engage in individual work, nearly all of the activities, from the science-oriented debates to the cryptographic challenges, relied on teamwork. In addition to solving problems and engaging in critical thought, players had to manage disagreements with participants who were different from them. As one male participant noted, “I developed more social skills and learned to tolerate.” A number of the players communicated the challenges of working with others on a shared goal, and of finding a role that could serve the larger community, but also the benefits of this negotiation. As one participant said, “It feels like you have to limit yourself when it comes to being in a group situation. You have to make the conscious decision of which position you want to own.” Instead of easy interactions, the game promoted reflections on unity amidst difference and promoted the capacity to work with a group, even when consensus was impossible. As a more concrete example, the final week invited players to work together toward the common goal of rescuing Pel. Each team

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hunted for information that would give it access to an Archivist’s computer using remote desktop software. An analysis of files also yielded key information: a map of the building, an access pass to circumvent the guard, the location of a keycard for the door, a schedule of each Archivist’s daily route, the code for a vault with the prison key, and the vault’s location. Collecting these clues and executing a shared plan were all required to successfully rescue Pel. In contrast to the publicity of the protest, or the chaos of the earlier lockdown, teams stealthily went about their daily business, while a small group of nominated players proceeded with the breakout. Nominating individuals put some strain on the teams for players who had to relinquish the glory of leading a rescue mission to a single member, while maintaining secrecy so that the Archivists would not discover them. The plan also required nominees, who had not worked together before, to quickly communicate, organize, and act. Ultimately, the players executed their plan rapidly, economically, and without calling attention to themselves. In light of player cooperation, the design team eliminated the darker, more apocalyptic endings to the story that were still in play at this stage.

Conclusion: overwhelming reality SEED refused the premise of an absolute reality or even a stable consensus reality. Through the initial uncertainty that it produced about the status of the experience, the game encouraged players to generate their own reality, to inhabit it, and experiment with it for three weeks. The freedom to approach the world as if it included crosstemporal communication and the capacity for youth to save the world in turn empowered players to foreground their own political priorities, to organize, and to engage the public sphere in new ways. While developing faith in a shared (and changeable) world, players also began to develop mutual trust. These bonds grew strong enough that, by the end, they felt capable of standing up for their beliefs in public, and making articulate arguments against even authoritative adults. Throughout SEED, we used a science fiction framework to confront players with topics such as climate change, resource depletion, viral spread, and global inequality. These are serious realworld issues that challenge political processes and threaten the continuity of human life itself. Even so, given their scale, these issues lack a sense of immediate significance for some people, appearing

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theoretical rather than concrete and imminent. Through narrative and gameplay, we attempted to infuse these critical topics with urgency. Though we approached such issues through apocalyptic scenarios, we did not simply direct youth toward dystopian realities. We told them that they had the power to change the future. The shared threat of these scenarios helped players imagine themselves in STEM , political, and media careers through which they could contribute to alternative social and political ways of being in the world. The enormity of these problems also demonstrated that multiple modes of expertise and collaboration are needed to address large-scale issues from fossil fuel depletion to epidemiology. Across role-playing and world-making exercises, they envisioned and simulated modes of governance and relationships to technology that might bring about a more sustainable world. Instead of a series of preconceived educational modules, this game operated as a cultural probe that invited urban youth to become stakeholders in social change. SEED did not describe the world as it is or simply give players puzzles with single solutions. Through ARG form, we sought to emphasize that a world, whether allegedly “real” or “alternate,” is perpetually in the process of emergence, renegotiation, and becoming. The case of SEED suggests that ARG s that engage players in political processes can encourage them to develop agency that yields a different sense of possibility in inhabiting and co-creating the world differently. Thus, the work of the designers of such games has perhaps most to do with defamiliarizing everyday life. As Thrift advocates, “The work of the social scientist, then, is to produce cultural probes that can help people to rework the world by suggesting new unorientations rather than correctives” (Thrift, 2011: 19). ARG s accomplish this task by making the world around us feel unfamiliar, uncertain, and thus ultimately transformable. At its best, such games invite us to collaborate on the unfolding of our world and to inhabit it in more present, thoughtful, and experimental ways.

Games 42 Entertainment. 2004. I Love Bees. [Alternate Reality Game]. 42 Entertainment. 2007. Year Zero. [Alternate Reality Game]. Edland, Tor K., Margrete Raaum, and Trine L. Lindahl. 2010. Mad About the Boy. [Live Action Role-Playing]. Norway.

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Game Changer Chicago Design Lab. 2012. Stork.[Alternate Reality Game]. Chicago, IL . Game Changer Chicago Design Lab. 2013. The Source. [Alternate Reality Game]. Chicago, IL . Game Changer Chicago Design Lab. 2014. SEED. [Alternate Reality Game]. Chicago, IL . Gyrax, Gary, and Dave Arneson. 1974. Dungeons & Dragons. [RolePlaying Game]. Tactical Studies Rules. Lake Geneva, WI . Hayles, N. Katherine, Patrick Jagoda, Patrick LeMieux. 2012. Speculation. [Alternate Reality Game]. Chicago, IL ; Durham, NC ; Poughkeepsie, NY; Waterloo, Ontario (Canada). Institute for the Future. 2008. Superstruct. [Alternate Reality Game]. Jagoda, Patrick, and Sha Xin Wei. 2013. The Project. [Alternate Reality Game]. The Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry. Chicago, IL . McKinney. 2005. Art of the Heist. [Alternate Reality Game]. Audi. Microsoft. 2010. The Beast. [Alternate Reality Game]. Microsoft.

References Bonsignore, Elizabeth, Derek Hansen, Kari Kraus, and Marc Ruppel. 2012. “Alternate Reality Games as Platforms for Practicing 21stCentury Literacies.” International Journal of Learning and Media 4 (1): 25–54. Chess, S. and P. Booth. 2013. “Lessons down a rabbit hole: Alternate reality gaming in the classroom.” New Media & Society: 1–16. Gaver, Bill, T. Dunne, and E. Pacenti. 1999. “Cultural Probes: Novel interaction techniques to increase the presence of the elderly in their local communities.” Interactions (January/February): 21–9. Gaver, William W., Andrew Boucher, Sarah Pennington, and Brendan Walker. 2004. “Cultural Probes and the Value of Uncertainty.” Interactions 11 (5): 53–6. Hall, Alexander C.O. 2009. “ ‘I am Trying to Believe’: Dystopia as Utopia in the Year Zero Alternate Reality Game.” Eludamos 3 (1): 69–82. Accessed April 20, 2015. Hayles, N. Katherine, Patrick Jagoda, and Patrick LeMieux. 2014. “Speculation: Financial Games and Derivative Worlding in a Transmedia Era.” Critical Inquiry 40 (3): 220–36. Huizinga, J. 1950. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. New York: Roy Publishers. Ingold, Tim. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London and New York: Routledge. Jagoda, Patrick. 2014. “Gaming the Humanities.” differences. 25.1: 189–215.

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Jameson, Fredric. 1998. “Cognitive Mapping.” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 347–57. Urbana, IL : University of Illinois Press. Katz, Jack. 1988. Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books. McGonigal, Jane. 2003. “ ‘This Is Not a Game’: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play.” Paper presented at the Digital Arts and Culture conference, Melbourne, May 19–23. McGonigal, Jane. 2011. Reality is Broken. New York: Penguin Press. Montola, Markus, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern. 2009. Pervasive Games: Theory and Design. Burlington, MA : Morgan Kaufmann. Ratto, Matt. 2011. “Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life.” The Information Society 27: 252–60. Saitta, Eleanor. 2013. “Mad about the Yankee.” In Crossing Physical Borders, edited by Karete J. Meland and Katrine ø. Svela, 72–82. Norway: Fantasiforbundet. Thrift, Nigel. 2011. “Lifeworld Inc—And What to Do about It.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29: 5–26.

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CHAPTER TWO

The Game Did Not Take Place—This Is Not A Game and blurring the Lines of Fiction Alan Hook

“You slowly wake up to discover that you have missed the early spring unfolding into late summer . . . yet now here we are, every one of us excited at blurring the lines between story and reality. The game promises to become not just entertainment, but our lives” PHILLIPS IN MCGONIGAL, 2003A : 114

Introduction Alternate reality games (ARG s) are an amorphous genre spanning a large range of practices and modes of interaction. During their nascent period in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they were often defined by case example, rather than by form or process, like other more traditional mediums such as film, television, or even video 56

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games. Extensive work was undertaken by groups of scholars, practitioners, and player communities; work from Special Interest Groups such as the International Game Development Association (IGDA ), ARGN et, Unfiction, and The Convergence Culture Consortium (C3) helped articulate the tropes, related practices as “common identifiers” or “family traits” (Askwith, 2006: 10), which define these interactive experiences. The aim was the creation of taxonomies or topographic mappings of the ecologies of interaction which take place. This paradigmatic approach has offered the communities of practice, critics, and scholars, a set of tools to help map the aesthetic pleasures of these texts and to critique their form. These experiences as texts for players to “read” are largely technologically mediated stories, which work across networks to create an ergodic narrative; one which the audience must exert “nontrivial effort . . . to traverse the text” (Aarseth, 1997: 1). Highlighted by Montola, Stenros and Waern (2009: 45) who draw on the work of Huber (2003), Costikyan (2005), and Järvinen (2007) scholastic work with more recognizable game formats such as video games and board games, ARG s should be identified by their shared mechanics, aesthetics, and systems; they are identified independent of technology. ARG s should be defined by their commonalities, their shared tropes, and their linking aesthetic experiences. The ARG as a ludic narrative creates a fiction which reflects on the spaces outside of the game, creating an alternate reality for the player to experience through digital mediation. This chapter will review how ARG s form a digitally mediated, pervasive, dispersed, and immersive text for players to navigate. Identifying This Is Not A Game (TINAG ) as a common identifier and core aesthetic in creating immersion for players, this chapter will review a range of techniques used to support the aesthetic. It will also consider how TINAG functions for players and some of the ethical and authorial considerations in using it to create public works. This work will help frame ARG s as co-authored experiences and their narrative negotiation between the players and the creators. This chapter will then argue that ARG s are a form of relational art, creating a space for community interaction and interpretation using examples from the first recorded ARG , The Beast, as well as The Lost Experience and Conspiracy for Good. Building on this ground work, the chapter will investigate Reality Games as an example of the extremes of the mixed-reality aesthetic experience, relating it to

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other experiences such as the mini-series Derren Brown: Apocalypse (2012). This will help reflect on the experiences of players and to consider the importance of performativity, consent, and ethics to ARG s as a medium.

Reading alternate reality games as a text ARG s present an often sprawling, but cohesive narrative, delivered across multiple platforms, performances, and interactions, where players often solve puzzles to progress the narrative (Phillips, 2005). These experiences “utilize everyday media channels and they unfold in the places where we work and live” (Askwith, 2006: 10); they are a product of media convergence (Jenkins, 2006), where narrative plays out across multiple media forms and creates a culture of participation, creating communities of collective intelligence (Jenkins, 2006; McGonigal, 2008; Gosney, 2005). ARG s have a dispersed and nebulous textuality which creates a narrative on, and between, large numbers of media texts. This transmedia storytelling (Jenkins, 2006) requires and encourages new forms of media literacy to engage in the medium’s textuality. Working between different digital mediated experiences creates new ways that the audience must encounter the text which differ from the narrative encounters in more traditional mono-media narratives (Aardse, 2013). Players often have to work together, as detectives to trace and identify what is part of the official world built to house the story. This collective negotiation of the canon of communications, both online and offline, by the ARG ’s community forms one of the many aesthetic pleasures of the genre. To traverse the labyrinthine narrative structures of the experience and work collectively to identify the canonicity of artifacts, communications, and events, players work together to participate in and solve the narrative (Bonsignore, E., Hansen D., Kraus K., and Ruppel M., 2011: 16). This also involves utilizing the skills, knowledge, and expertise of communities of players to solve the puzzles, and drive the narrative forward. In order to experience this narrative and discourse in its entirety, the player must access all the sources and platforms that constitute “the means by which the story is communicated” (Chatman, 1978: 19). This form of narrative could be argued to be a product of the “experience economy,” where the experience

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becomes the product, rather than in more traditional media industries which focus on creation of media object or product (Kristiansen, 2008). ARG s are real-time, experience-focused media, making them ephemeral performances of narrative and leaving only their traces on forums, message boards, and archives once they have finished. ARG s produce a pervasive and ludic experience for participants that is designed to create an often digitally mediated, immersive, and engaging narrative. The multi-platform experience tries to erase the boundaries between the spaces outside the game and the ingame narrative. These experiences are constructed by Puppet Masters who work as game designers, story architects, transmedia producers, and experience designers to write the story. The Puppet Master must manage the player’s immersion and the mediation of the text, to try and create a seamless and blended experience for players. Examples of ARG s such as The Lost Experience, orchestrated by the design team Hi-Res! work as narrative extension to the core storyline in the TV show Lost (2004–10). In this example, the game forms part of the dispersed paratextual ecosystem of a complex narrative structure of Lost and is a form of worldbuilding, which can encourage players to try and map, archive, and document the narrative as it unfolds (Jenkins, 2007). This mapping results in further offshoots, such as Lostipidia, a dedicated Wiki page which archives the ARG and the story-world of Lost. The Lost Experience gives players access to the history of the fictional organization the “Dharma Initiative,” asking them to help the character Rachael Blake investigate the “Hanso Foundation,” both of which are heavily featured in the TV show. This augments the audience’s knowledge of the narrative in Lost and enriches their viewing of the central text. The story though is only ever partially constructed by the Puppet Masters as, from large budget examples, such as The Beast (2001), to grassroots ARG s such as Lockjaw (2002), there exists a process of co-authorship between the players and the games architects. The Puppet Masters utilize the knowledge and experience of the player communities and an authorial feedback loop forms between the writers and the players (McGonigal, 2010). This feedback loop can create a flexible, open, and responsive text (Barrios O’Neill and Hook, 2012), the Puppet Masters will often lurk in the forums and monitor the wikis to feed players speculations on the direction

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of the narrative back into the plot. The Puppet Masters remain “behind the curtain”; creating a distancing of the authors of the game from the audience, in an attempt to create a coherent world for players to experience. This imaginary magician’s curtain requires constant maintenance from the designers and the players (McGonigal, 2010; Montola, Stenros and Waern, 2009). The curtain creates a social contract between the Puppet Masters and the ever-curious players; the Puppet Masters will do everything that they can to maintain a coherent narrative for players, and that in return the players will not “peek behind the curtain” to reveal their identities or shatter the community’s fragile immersion.

Blurring of the worlds The player’s traversal from the world outside the game usually takes place through encountering a trail-head or rabbit hole. These are points of departure designed to encourage a player’s participation and draw the player in. Drawing on the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Caroll, 1865), these rabbit holes help to immerse the player in the narrative. These recurrent narrative devices work as a call to action for players to start to investigate; they are the start of the mediated game experience and lubricate the transition to immersive narrative from the real world outside the game (McGonigal, 2005). The rabbit hole blurs the line between the fictional alternate reality and the spaces outside the game. In the ARG The Lost Experience a player’s call to action came in the form of adverts for the fictional organization featured in the TV program the Hanso Foundation. The adverts which ran in the commercial breaks ended with a URL for the players to visit and investigate. These adverts which posited the Hanso Foundation as a corporation in both the alternate world where Lost is set and the world the audience inhabit, work as a way to blur the realities. This was accompanied by books such as The Bad Twin, penned by a character in the show. Its manuscript is found by one of the characters in the wreckage, but the book is also available to purchase online in commercial retailers such as Amazon with supplementary author video interviews and book reviews. This blurring is physical, temporal, and social and tries to “obscure the meta-communication that might otherwise announce

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‘This is Play’ ” (McGonigal, 2003a: 2). The blurring is an important feature of ARG s and can be thought of as a blurring of the magic circle of play (Montola, Stenros and Waern 2009: 7–23). The magic circle delineates a space and time for play to occur and distinguishes the activities of the game from those outside of the game. This, as Woods highlights, is an understanding of the game as a “mediating cultural form, one which transcends everyday reality ‘by agreement’ ” (Woods, 2007: 22). The magic circle, first coined by Johan Huizinga (1955) creates a space for play to take place, and is “marked off beforehand, either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course” (Huizinga, 1955: 10). This notion of game and play is often deliberately challenged by ARG s, which try to create a chameleon-like media experience, which does not recognize the limitations of the magic circle, rather, it inverses them. For the ARG , the real world, becomes a place for enchantment through narrative and play, and the only space which sits outside are the digital community platforms such as the Unfiction forum, which become meta-communication platforms. This movement away from the traditional notions of games and the magic circle of play is highlighted by Castronova when he concludes “What we have is an almost-magic circle, which seems to have the objective of retaining all that is good about the fantasy atmosphere of the synthetic world, while giving users the maximum amount of freedom to manipulate their involvement with them.” (Castronova, 2006: 159–60). The aesthetic pleasures of ARG s’ performed reality offer an interesting space for inquiry into the performance of the real and blurred story spaces. These story spaces are playful narratives where the audience knows that the game or fiction is not real but performs as if it is. This aesthetic runs deeper than the suspension of disbelief which is used across a wide range of mediated storytelling; as the stories in these examples are not contained in one form, and are not limited temporally or spatially. In both instances, this can lead to misinterpretation, misconfiguration, or misunderstanding from audiences and unwilling participants in the narrative but can also form an aesthetic pleasure for the audience. McGonigal refers to these as meta-pleasures (McGonigal, 2003a: 13) as they do not come from the narrative or ludic elements of the text, but instead from the creators’ skill in creating an immersive fictional world. The audience celebrates or takes pleasure in the prowess of the authors’ creation of a seamless fiction.

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Playing in the fiction “a book has a frame . . . a box. Between the covers, disbelief is suspended. Outside the covers, disbelief is not suspended . . . an alternate reality game asks you to extend that bubble of suspension of disbelief into your actual life. That’s a very delicate membrane.” STEWART in ANDERSON, 2012 One of the defining tropes of the ARG genre is the propensity to “not even acknowledge or promote the fact [they are] a game, yet every website or discussion group may contain and reveal potential clues” (Kim, Allen, and Lee, 2008). This lack of acknowledgment has become one of ARG s most infamous aesthetics, termed This Is Not A Game (TINAG ) drawn from one of the genres defining examples The Beast, often thought of as the first ARG and created for a promotional campaign for the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). The TINAG aesthetic for the players becomes a rhetorical device to argue or understand the experience for both designers and players. However, as Michael Anderson suggests “literal reading of the mantra denies this central truth, ARG s are still games. They merely ask players to extend their suspension of disbelief across media, in exchange for a more engrossing narrative” (Anderson, 2012). This immersive rhetoric tries to blend the mediating frame of the ludic experience and narrative core of the ARG , in so doing it attempts to create a transparent interface with narrative. This transparency is designed so that the player “is no longer aware of confronting a medium, but instead stands in an immediate relationship to the contents of the medium.” (Bolter and Grusin, 1999: 24). Narrative devices such as The Rabbit Hole function as the mediums interface. Games such as The Beast or The Lost Experience have no official in-game player portal and no obvious player interface; the medium becomes transparent as it has no official delineation from events, artifacts, and communications, which are outside of itself. It is important to be cautious of the overemphasizing of this disappearance, as the belief in events of the game’s narrative for the players is always a “strategic performance” of belief (McGonigal, 2010: 4) and that the interface with a media or software could be an effect rather than an object (Galloway, 2012). TINAG , as a slogan, runs deep into the bones of the genre

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creating an intellectual frame or skeleton for the medium and has been described as an Aesthetic (Meifert-Menhard, 2013), a Rhetoric (McGonigal, 2003a) and a Philosophy (Szulborski, 2005) for the medium.

Playing as a community The narrative devices such as the “rabbit hole,” the modes of production such as the role of the Puppet Master, and the conceptual frames such as the curtain all serve the purposes of the medium’s core aesthetic which brings this diverse range of practices, productions, and experiences together into a genre. In the range of paradigmatic work which has preceded this study, scholars have presented some core aesthetics which can be rationalized into two main areas, one which focuses on the audience and one on the medium; these are a collaborative and collective community as an audience which works to reassemble a dispersed narrative and an immersive medium which tries to blend with or blur the distinguishing lines between itself as a fiction and the non-diegetic world outside of this fiction. The TINAG aesthetic, coupled with the physically dispersed nature of the text, creates a blended and transparent aesthetic encounter, one which tries to deny its own performative frame. McGonigal highlights this borderless textuality in her assessment of immersive aesthetics and collective play in one of the medium’s pioneering and seminal texts The Beast; “[it] recognized no game boundaries; the players were always playing, so long as they were connected to one of their many everyday networks” (McGonigal 2003b, 112). The experience does not have a set, predetermined duration for the audience as they enter the text. The text sprawls out across the networks, co-opting and appropriating other preexisting media objects and reframing or re-contextualizing them. The medium differs from other pervasive and ludic experiences such as pervasive games; the ARG experience leans towards narrativity rather than the ludic and the performance of belief is hidden, masked by TINAG as a rhetorical device. The audience’s goal is usually to traverse the narrative together as a community rather than to play and complete the game and player feedback is usually diegetic: through narrative progression rather than points,

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scores, or levels so to retain immersion and the suspension of disbelief. ARG s create a shared world for players to participate within collectively; they are relational. For players of The Lost Experience, the Hanso Foundation, and their Dharma Initiative which is the center of the show’s plot, are (for the duration of play) part of the world they inhabit, or at least they perform as if it is. The players work together to help The Lost Experiences protagonist Rachel Blake, as her hacker alter ego Persephone, investigate the Hanso Foundation, hack their website, find and decipher online and offline clues, and reveal the truth behind the Hanso Foundations suspicious activities. The community collectively collaborates through digital networked spaces such as wikis and forums that sit outside of the game. In the case of The Lost Experience the main space is the popular ARG forum Unfiction. Players work together to decrypt, decipher, and construct meaning collectively. These spaces for metacommunication, where the performance of belief can be paused or altogether dropped, form their own magic circle, which has been a long standing concept and one of the (contested) cornerstones of game studies. These spaces are the locations often constructed by players, where the game is discussed, mapped, and solved by the player community. The community works together to assemble the narrative, utilize collective intelligence to solve the puzzles and organize responses to real-world location-based missions or power plays (McGonigal, 2010). These spaces also become a place where players take “increasing responsibility for their own immersive experience, leaving the game designers out of the problem-solving loop” (McGonigal, 2003a: 13) and work as a community to collaborate “in suturing the game world ruptures. In other words, the players actively supported and protected the game’s belief in itself” (McGonigal, 2003a: 10). The players, by taking ownership of their own immersion and narrative agency become co-authors of the game and collaborators in the construction of the medium’s core aesthetics. An ARG is specifically designed to be too complex for any one player to solve alone. If TINAG is the medium’s bones then collectivity is its beating heart. These new technologically mediated co-authorial experiences which are discussed and developed online in shared communities “provide[s] us with the opportunity to experiment with collective methods of organization and regulation that dignify multiplicity and variety” (Levy, 1999: 66).

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In large online games such as The Beast, communities of players form, and start to segment into layers of hierarchy. The players of The Beast formed a community known as ‘The Cloudmakers’ through Yahoo Groups, which at its height had over 7,000 members (Leboeuf-Little, J. in McGonigal, 2003b). ‘The Cloudmakers’ had designated moderators, editors, and a core player base. Many of these core players created experiences inspired by The Beast and still work in transmedia production, adding a further layer of the mixed producer–consumer binary as the players add to the genre and help to shape its future. This divide in players also creates a pyramid-like structured game, where the community has a core of experienced players and a larger number of “lurkers.” Askwith (2006), offers a taxonomy of players and illustrates the divides in the community, suggesting the categories of Organizers, Hunters, Detectives, and Lurkers, offering descriptions of the players’ approach to the text and their participating role in it. These divided roles within a text are referred to by Dena (2008) as a tiered participation, and the majority of transmedia productions consider this segmentation of participation in their planning and design, whether it be in defined roles outlined by Askwith, or the depth that players wish to participate (Stenros et al., 2011: 2).

Playing with ethics Mixed viewership or audiences of artifacts, performances, and digital texts such as websites can raise a number of ethical issues, but unaware participation is highlighted as one of the most problematic (Montola, Stenros, and Waern, 2009: 203). For Montola, Stenros, and Waern, the ludic marker is the key to distinguishing between items which form part of the game, and those outside it. These markers are designed to distinguish diegetic game content for the player, but rely on an understanding or recognition of the game and its symbology. This ludic marker can take a number of forms. McGonigal notes, for instance, that The Beast is set in the year 2142 ad and all “in-game” communications reinforce this, either with date stamps or with reference to events which are clearly from a projected future, such as killer robots and sentient houses to indicate the fictional nature of the content (Stewart in McGonigal, 2003a: 9–10). These ludic markers do not

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need to be explicit as this could have potential to shatter player immersion, or work directly against some of the pleasures derived from the text but need to communicate the fictional nature of the text to the audience (Montola, Stenros, and Waern, 2009: 203). ARG s often use ludic markers to help players track the text across its multiple platforms (Montola, Stenros, and Waern, 2009), both digital and physical. These recurring symbols help to join together audiences and also work as signposts for the player community who are trying to identify the edges of the text or the canonicity of a website, artifact, or performance. In narrative extension ARG s such as The Lost Experience markers such as the Hanso Foundation help to identify in-game content. For standalone ARG s such as Conspiracy for Good (2010), written by Tim Kring, an interlocking looped motif was used to signpost the game. The slogan “I am not a member” was used to identify the experience in online videos, player generated content, and live events. This refusal to identify as part of a game’s secret society is an obvious wink to the TINAG aesthetic. The game was pitched as “social benefit storytelling” and the gameplay of its participants was designed to have real world lasting impact and legacy after the game drew to a close. The game’s heritage stands in Zambia, with the gameplay producing five stocked libraries, 50 scholarships for girls to attend school, and the donation of 10,000 books. In 2011, Andrea Phillips in her SXSW talk, author of the book A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling, called for the use of ludic markers to be taken further with the genre adopting a ‘fiction tag’ in all game website’s meta-data or a browser icon displayed in the URL bar in web browsers which indicates when a player is immersed in a game’s text (Phillips in Minchew, 2011). This move stands in stark contrast to the genres defining aesthetic, but Phillips argues that this is an ethical issue to help delineate the experience and help to identify sites as part of the text both for players and for unaware participants. As ARG s use real-world platforms as a place for play it is important that players adhere to the rules that would govern their behavior if they were not playing (Montola, Stenros and Waern, 2009). However, players are also governed by the social contract of the game and the expected modes of participation, such as “not looking behind the curtain.” The interactions that players encounter and perform in these games are often designed to “rewrite the social

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rules of a given space in highly visible ways” (McGonigal, 2010: 252). The Puppet Masters try to predict paths through the game, and bread crumb the experience for players (leaving prompts or clues to the path they wish players to follow). Just like a game designer of a more conventional game, such as video games, the Puppet Master must design affordances and constraints for the player but has to work with a possibly more unpredictable audience, as the freedom of movement inside the game is only contained by their physical abilities and skills of the players rather than controlled and mediated through a game as system. This means that the highly ludic elements of the game, then have to limit the outcomes for players (McGonigal, 2010). The players are unpredictable and the Puppet Master must offer them the freedom to explore the experience and narrative, but also guide their participation. Often player’s interpretation of the designers desired player behaviors can lead to unexpected (but hopefully not unmanageable) experiences for players. McGonigal states; “we could give the players a set of instructions—but clearly we could not predict or dictate how they would read and embody those instructions [. . .] the players [follow] commands but their interpretation of those commands left them fully in charge of their own experience” (McGonigal, 2010: 260).

Playing alternate reality games as relational art In his collection of essays entitled Relational Aesthetics the art critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud outlines a collection of artists, and works (largely from mainland Europe) which he collectively terms Relational Art. Bourriaud states that Relational Art is “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space” (Bourriaud, 1998: 113), which, like ARG s, has been argued as a move away from the goods to the experience or service based economy (Bishop, 2004: 54). Like ARG s, these artworks are participatory, authorially collaborative, and open-ended in their textuality. The texts cited by Bourriaud create work where the “audience is envisaged as a community: rather than a one-to-one relationship between work of art and viewer, relational

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art sets up situations in which viewers are not just addressed as a collective, social entity, but are actually given the wherewithal to create a community, however temporary or utopian this may be” (Bishop, 2004: 54). These communities form through shared experience of the art, which is reliant on their participation, interaction, and interpretation. The “art” in relational art is made through the connections, communities, and social participation in the work which usually physically resembles installation art in its form but, for example, the medium is not the plywood and household goods used to construct Rirkrit Tiravanija’s piece Untitled (Tomorrow Is Another Day) (1996) a scale replica of his apartment constructed in the gallery for the audience to explore, nor is it the ingredients which are famously used to cook his curry’s in his landmark piece Untitled (Free) (1996) in the 303 Gallery in New York where he created a pop-up restaurant for the gallery’s audience and served free meals. The medium is more ephemeral and transparent than that; it is the connections, the conversations, and the social interactions within the situation or environment that Tiravanija creates. As Tiravanija states in a documentary about his most famous work: the work is a platform for people to interact with the work itself but also with each other. A lot of it is also about a kind of experimental relationship, so you are not really looking at something but you are within it, part of it. The distance between the artist, and the art, and the audience gets a bit blurred. TIRAVANIJA in STOKES, 2012 Relational art, like ARG s, tries to blur the lines between a mediated experience of art (or media) and life, to create a mixed narrative or mixed aesthetic encounter. Relational art looks to privilege the intersubjective relations of the audience over the art object, creating an often momentary art practice which denies the art archive, the collector, and the museum. The approach in fine art of considering audience participation in the process or performance of art is not new, and you can easily map some of the approaches from relational art onto the practices from movements such as Dada, the Happenings of the 1970s, and the Fluxus movement, all creating flexible, open, and responsive encounters for the audience. These practices might have more in common with what Umberto Eco calls Work in Movement which “characteristically consist of

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unplanned or physically incomplete structural units” (Eco, 1984: 56). This reference to units can be seen in the planning and execution of transmedia-based productions such as ARG s where the work consists of a large number of textual encounters which tries to give its audience an experience without privileging a specific path through the text. This unit-based approach was utilized by the story designers behind the ARG Conspiracy for Good where the script was not written in a sequential structure but “fragmented into a set of story beats that to some extent could play out in varying order, and some of which could be influenced by the player” (Stenros et al., 2011: 2). Eco states, “the poetics of the ‘work in movement’ (and partly that of the ‘open’ work) sets in motion a new cycle of relations between the artist and his audience, a new mechanics of aesthetic perception, a different status for the artistic product in contemporary society” (Eco, 1984: 23–4). There is, however, a further complexity to the ARG , as the author or artist is often anonymous (at least for the duration of the work), shrouded by the magic curtain and distanced through the TINAG aesthetic. Relational works like those of the relational art movement or works such as ARG s “only function on the premise of the spectators’ intervention to and action within the space they prepare” (Chen, 2008: 73).

Playing alternate reality games The blurred nature of ARG s and other Relational Art forms through devices such as TINAG and the creation of up-signposted art works in public settings can present a number of practical, ethical, and even legal issues in the design and production process (Montola, Stenros and Waern, 2009). These issues mean that the purity of TINAG as an aesthetic is always compromised or negotiated. Montola presents what he describes as “a small but interesting underground trend in radical alternate reality games” (Montola, 2005: 3). This practice is described as Reality Gaming and is aimed at fabricating reality, where even the proposed player is unaware of their participation in the game. The practice is outlined as a niche or “fringe phenomenon” and Montola questions if they can even be described as games as there is a “lack the lusory attitude required for gameplay, and miss the safety brought by the protective frame of artificiality” (Montola, 2005: 3). Montola and Waern’s key example from the Pervasive

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Games: Theory and Design book is the game Vem grater, an experience staged at University of Gotland which forms a case study in their book. The experience, designed by students, centered on a character named Spiricom Thomas who wandered the campus asking students, staff, and visitors if they had encountered any ghosts, or heard of anyone who had any supernatural encounters. The students constructed a series of installations around campus to supplement the meeting with the ghost hunter and “fabricate a ludic event” (Montola and Waern, 2009: 193). The game unraveled as staff interpreted the installations as pranks or acts of vandalism and suspected them to be orchestrated by the man playing Spiricom Thomas who they did not identify as an actor but a “mad man on campus” (Montola and Waern, 2009: 193). The extreme experiences for the players of these Reality Games are similar to that of Steven Bronsnan, a participant in Derren Brown’s mini-series Derren Brown: Apocalypse (2012). If we adopt a player-centric analysis of Reality Games and Derren Brown: Apocalypse there are notable similarities which could be helpful in imagining the extremes of the aesthetics. In this two-part media spectacle, Brown opened a call for participants in a new, undisclosed, TV show. Steven Bronsnan, among others, underwent a series of physical and psychological tests to gage their suitability. Bronsnan was selected for the show, but told that he had failed the tests, this started the process where Brown and his team (including hackers, psychologists, medical staff, actors, and special effects artists) began constructing an apocalyptic narrative around Bronsnan and weaving it through his life. Brown’s team went to great lengths to create the narrative which wrapped round the unaware participant, hacking his mobile phone, feeding fake news feeds into popular websites (individually delivered to him), recording new versions of his favorite current affairs programs delivered directly to him, and making a large number of other physical and media interventions to construct a seamless and blended narrative. After the story had been seeded over a number of weeks, that the world would face a meteor strike which would eradicate the majority of the population leaving survivors as zombies, Bronsnan boards a coach to a secret concert of his favorite band, the day before his birthday. The coach breaks down due to electro-magnetic interference from the meteors while traveling to the concert in a remote location. The radio is interrupted by an emergency broadcast

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stating that all network and televisual broadcast networks will be severely disrupted if not destroyed and marks the point of narrative departure for Bronsnan. The TV show cuts to a slow motion sequence as the meteors strike and Bronsnan is hypnotized and taken from the wreckage to a staging area. The storyworld was constructed around him as a TV set in a 1,000 acre former nuclear weapons site, rigged with over 60 cameras, 150 microphones, filled with actors (a cast and crew of over 250 people), with linear paths for him to follow. Bronsnan awakes in a hospital bed in a scene reminiscent of 28 Days Later (2002), which is an elaborate set constructed with a linear narrative path that resembled a video game level, with set narrative nodes, fold back structure, and possibility for emergent narrative as Bronsnan traversed the game level and encountered challenges. This experience, like those of the Reality Game lacked the lusory attitude and ludic framing of the experience for Bronsnan as an unaware participant. Throughout the show the cutaways to Brown used to reassure the audience of the ethicacy of the experiment and narrate the documentary are rendered in an emerald green with digital glitches and televisual static. He makes reference to offering Bronsnan the chance to experience a challenge which will teach him what it is to have courage, a brain, and a heart. The experience tries to link and embed itself to the history, syntax, and rhetoric of the ARG , intertextually drawing on The Wizard of Oz (1939) as metaphor both visually and structurally. The experience was designed to change Bronsnan from someone described as leading a self-centered existence and taking his friends, family, and material comforts for granted. There is, of course, a rupture at the end of Derren Brown’s experiments with the mind, when the participant is plunged back into reality. Brown relies on “it was all a dream” as a narrative device to help Bronsnan transition out of the narrative. The show uses an epilogue interview to frame the experience for the participant and the audience viewing at home and reassure the audience of the ethicacy of the experiment.

Constructing alternate reality games So, what if we could temporarily suspend our concerns with player ethics and consider the purity of the aesthetic encounter for audiences?

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What if we could atomize the community and construct an ARG around the player as an individual, wrapping them in narrative, and then after the core of the story has taken place and the events unfolded, the mediation gradually fades away? What if we did not need to address concerns around unaware participation and could extrude out of the Reality Games mentioned by Montola in his work, a new (purely hypothetical) text, one which developed around the player, that the transition into the game narrative was subtle, nuanced, and transparent, but the ending of the mediation mirrored this subtlety? This could form an experience for the player in which the space between art and life closes, the space between the artist and the audience collapses in on itself and the participants become cocreators (due to their unawareness of the text) and co-consumers. What if the player or players are never aware that the game had begun, or that it had ended, or that it had even taken place? The narrative arc would form more of a bell curve with shallow sloping sides to ease the player into and out of the narrative and make their transition easy and seamless. The player would never have to fall down a rabbit hole, but would gradually find themselves immersed in a fantasy, which they could only differentiate from their lives by the degree of shift from the everyday and mundane. This could be a purer form of the aesthetic encounter for the participant as the Puppet Master would not need to concern themselves with player ethics or unaware participation. The Puppet Master would never step forward and the game would not need to deny its own existence as a text. There would be no double logic or performativity, the game would seep through the cracks, submerging the player, and then just as slowly it would drain away again. The player would never be aware of confronting the medium, there would be no direct interface, no ludic markers, and no rabbit hole, there would be no nudge and no wink. The game’s Pinocchio-esque dreams (McGonigal, 2010) would be granted and it really would not be a game, it would be real life as far as the player was concerned. The narrative would need to be small in its aspirations, it would not for instance mirror Brown’s zombie meteor apocalypse, but would instead need to be closer to the Real as to hide in plain sight. This experience of course could only ever exist as a hypothetical, as the author of the text has certain ethical obligations to the players and the public in creating work. This new experience would be transgressive and unethical to produce, but would also become

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more than a game. The voluntary participation in a game has long been argued as a core facet of the medium (Huizinga, 1955, Caillios, 1958, Sutton-Smith, 2001), and stripping away the conscious immersion of the player could radically change the nature of the text as a game (McGonigal, 2003a: 9) or strip it of that title but accurately fulfilling the declaration This Is Not A Game.

Conclusion ARG s are a complex and sprawling medium, not defined by their technologies of delivery but their modes of production, participation, and consumption. They offer the possibility to open new modes of player interaction and new forms of aesthetic pleasure, guided by some key textual commonalities, which have emerged organically as defining tropes to identify the medium. The co-authorship in ARG s between the player community and the Puppet Masters offers a new way to think about the text as flexible, open, and responsive. The text is one in movement and has a porousness which helps it blend into the media landscape, situating the player as a narrative cartographer. This cartographic encounter with the text forces the player to create meta-communicative strategies, such as forums and wikis, and creates a performative frame to encounter the text. These frames of interaction and performance created by the text are not just symptoms or by-products of the core aesthetic they are central to the experience for the player. Considering the edges of the medium, and its relationship to other media such as Reality Games or TV shows such as Derren Brown: The Apocalypse, and participatory art forms such as Relational Aesthetics, help to situate the medium and reflect its textual ecology. ARG s are relational media built in part by the communities which consume them, and due to their complexity, require a community to solve their puzzles and traverse the text. The medium and its communities of practice must always negotiate between the ethics of production and the core aesthetics to create imaginative, engaging, and experimental narratives but ones which consider the player, community and publics relationship to the text. ARG s could move towards a purer form of the core aesthetics, but to do so would mean transgressing player ethics and creating a text which moves away from traditional definitions of games and towards the Real

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blurring the experience completely, or making it so transparent that it vanishes completely.

DVD and TV 28 Days Later. 2002. [DVD ] Danny Boyle dir. Twentieth Century Fox. A.I. Artificial Intelligence. 2001. [DVD ] Steven Spielberg dir. Warner Home Video. Derren Brown: Apocalypse. 2012. [TV ] Channel 4. October 26 and November 2, 21:00. Lost. 2004–10. [DVD ] J.J. Abrams, Jeffery Lieber & Damon Lindelof. Buena Vista Home Entertainment. Wizard of Oz. 1939. [DVD ] Victor Fleming and King Vidor dir. Warner Bros.

References Aardse, Kent. 2013. “Alternate Reality Games, Narrative Disbursement and Canon: The Lost Experience.” In Fan CULTure: Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century, edited by Kristine Barton and Jonathan M. Lampley, 106–18. North Carolina: McFarland & Co Inc. Aarseth, Espen. 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press Anderson, Michael. 2012. “A Fond Farewell to ‘This Is Not A Game.’ ” ARGNet, February 6. http://www.argn.com/2012/02/a_fond_farewell_ to_this_is_not_a_game/ Askwith, Ivan. 2006. “This Is Not (Just) An Advertisement: Understanding Alternate Reality Games.” MIT Convergence Culture Consortium http://www.convergenceculture.org/research/c3_not_just_an_ad.pdf Barrios O’Neill, Danielle and Hook, Alan. 2012. “Alternate Reality Games and Literature.” In Using Games To Enhance Learning and Teaching edited by Nicola Whitton and Alex Moseley, 178–91, New York: Routledge. Bishop, Claire. 2004. “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.” October 110: 51–79. Bolter, Jay D. and Grusin, Richard. 1999. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. Bonsignore, Elizabeth., Hansen, Derek., Kraus, Kari., Ruppel, Marc. 2011. “Alternate Reality Games as a Platform for Practicing 21st Century Literacies.” Paper presented at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland, August.

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Bourriaud, Nicolas. 1998 Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les Presse Du Reel. Caillios, Roger. 1958. Man, Play and Games. New York: Free Press. Caroll, Lewis. 1865. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. UK : Macmillan. Castronova, Edward. 2006. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. New York: Cornell University Press. Chen, Dominic. 2008. “Prochronist Manifestation.” In Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, edited by Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Costikyan, Greg. 2005. “Game styles, innovation, and new audiences: An historical view.” Presented at DiGRA 2005 conference: Changing views—Worlds in play. Vancouver: Digital Games Research Association. Dena, Christina. 2008. “Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games.” Convergence (14), 1, 41–57. Eco, Umberto. 1984. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Indiana: University Press. Galloway, Alex. 2012 Interface Effect. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gosney, John. 2005. Beyond Reality: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming. Boston: Thomson Course Technology Huber, William. 2003. “Ka as Shomin-geki: Problematizing videogame studies.” Paper presented at Level up. Digital Games Research Association Conference. 4–6 November. Huizinga, Johan. 1955. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press. Järvinen, Aki. 2007. “Games without frontiers: Theories and methods for game studies and design.” PhD diss. University of Tampere. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry. 2007. “Transmedia Storytelling 101.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan March 22, http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_ storytelling_101.html Kim, Jeffery Y., Allen, Jonathan. P., and Lee, Elan. 2008. “Alternate reality gaming.” Communications of the ACM, 51 (2), 36–42. Kristiansen, Erik. 2008. “Designing Innovative Video Games.” In Creative Experiences in The Experience Economy, edited by Jon Sundbo and Per Darmer, 33–59. Cheltenham: Edward Elger Publishing. Levy, Peirre. 1999. Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. Translated by Robert Bononno. Cambridge: Perseus Books. McGonigal, Jane. 2003a. “A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play.” Paper presented at Level up. Digital Games Research Association Conference. November 4–6.

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McGonigal, Jane. 2003b. “ ‘This Is Not A Game’: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play.” Paper presented at the Fifth International Digital Arts and Culture Conference May 19–23. McGonigal, Jane. 2005. “Down the rabbit hole’ presented.” Paper presented at 050505: Center for New Media Groundbreaking, May. PowerPoint available at www.avantgame.com McGonigal, Jane. 2008. “Why I Love Bees: A case study in collective intelligence gaming.” In The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games and Learning, edited by Kate Salen, 199–228. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. McGonigal, Jane. 2010. “The Puppet Master Problem: Design for Real-World Mission Based Gaming.” In Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Fames and Playable Media, edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, 251–67. Meifert-Menhard, Felicitas. 2013. Playing the Text, Performing the Future: Future Narratives in Print and Digiture. Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter & Co. Minchew, Brandie. 2011. “SXSW 2011: Andrea Phillips on Blurring the Lines.” ARGNet: Alternate Reality Gaming Network, March 14. http://www.argn.com/2011/03/sxsw_2011_andrea_phillips_on_ blurring_the_lines Montola, Markus, 2005. “Exploring the Edge of the Magic Circle. Defining Pervasive Games.” Paper presented at DAC 2005 conference. IT University of Copenhagen, December 1–3. Montola, Markus, Stenros, Jaakko, and Waern, Annika. 2009. Pervasive Games: Theory and Design. New York: Morgan Kaufmann. Phillips, Andrea. 2005. “Soapbox: ARG s and How To Appeal to Female Gamers.” November 29. http://www.gamasutra.com/ features/20051129/phillips_01.shtml Stenros, Jaakko, Holopainen, Jussi, Waern, Annika, Montola, Markus, and Ollila, Elina. 2011. “Narrative Friction in Alternate Reality Games: Design Insights from Conspiracy For Good.” Paper presented at Think Design Play Digital Games Research Conference. Utrecht School of the Arts. Stokes, Rebecca. 2012. “Inside/Out Rirkrit Tiravanija: Cooking Up an Art Experience.” Moma, February 3. http://www.moma.org/explore/ inside_out/2012/02/03/rirkrit-tiravanija-cooking-up-an-art-experience Sutton-Smith, Brian. 2001. The Ambiguity of Play, New Ed. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Szulborski, Dave. 2005. This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming. Pennsylvania: New-Fiction Pub. Woods, Stewart. 2007. “Playing with an Other: Ethics in the Magic Circle.” Cybertext Yearbook 2007 – Ludology, edited by Markku Eskelinen, and Gonzalo Frasca Finland: University of Jyväskylä http:// cybertext.hum.jyu.fi/articles/90.pdf

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CHAPTER THREE

Alternate Reality Games for Learning: A Frame by Frame Analysis Anthony Pellicone, Elizabeth Bonsignore, Kathryn Kaczmarek, Kari Kraus, June Ahn, and Derek Hansen

Introduction Alternate reality games (ARG s) ask players to assume roles within the fiction of the game, and then work within the parameters of those roles to collaboratively solve complex problems. This allows players to perceive their actions as having real-world value and import that extends beyond the domain of the game’s fiction, thereby creating powerful learning experiences. In order to encourage such engagement, designers must balance the truth of the real-world activities with the fiction of the game’s driving narrative, 78

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an ethos referred to as “this is not a game” (TINAG ) (Bonsignore et al., 2012a; Bonsignore et al., 2013). TINAG is a variation on the familiar idea that audiences engage in a willing suspension of disbelief when engrossed in a work of fiction. The very elements that make ARG s useful as educational environments also make the format difficult to explain to new users, who often enter into the experience with preconceived ideas about gameplay and narrative delivery (Kim et  al., 2009). For example, first-time participants may envision games that conform to familiar types (e.g., video games), stories that fit the mold of conventional media formats (e.g., print or cinematic narratives that don’t require any significant input from the audience), and learning delivered in top-down fashion (e.g., teachers acting as experts). Educational ARG s, by design, subvert each of these established conceptions, and are therefore new and different to their players. We can think of this problem as one of framing. Framing, and the analysis of frames, refers to the way that people understand the given expectations of a social situation. The concept was developed by the sociologist Erving Goffman and explicated in his 1974 work Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. According to Goffman frames answer the implicit question, “What is going on here?” (Goffman, 1974: 8). In doing so, they offer a useful way to understand general preconceived notions that are socially constructed around a particular situation. A standing question for the design of ARG s is how to best leverage their strengths while still creating an experience familiar enough to engage players who are new to the genre. This chapter will report on how our team sought to design DUST, an educational ARG grounded in the deep-time sciences, in a way that was consistent with this two-fold objective. Our contention—based on analysis of data collected during the design and implementation of DUST —is that many obstacles in ARG design and gameplay stem from framing. Our players have unavoidable biases about gameplay, narrative, and learning that are complicated by and sometimes in conflict with our intentions and desires as designers of DUST. In this chapter we present an analysis of DUST and explain the theoretical frameworks we used to design it, as well as our goals as designers and the material constraints that shaped our process. We start with a description of our game. We outline frame analysis as an analytical approach for game studies. We describe the design

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process of DUST by examining three specific frames that were often in tension with one another: (1) Gameplay; (2) Narrative; and (3) Learning. We then provide vignettes that illustrate how our interdisciplinary design team attempted to resolve frame conflicts by using participatory design techniques (Druin, 1999; Muller, 2008). In particular, co-designing with teenagers (the target audience for DUST ) played an important role in identifying and resolving frame conflicts. We conclude with an examination of how our codesign methodology allowed us to perceive and mediate the various framing conflicts that arose as we designed DUST, and we discuss the promise these techniques may hold for other designers of ARG s.

Describing DUST DUST (https://fallingdust.com/) ran from January 2015 to April 2015. Targeting a diverse teenage demographic, it was designed to foster scientific inquiry skills. The story focused on a group of teens who witness the worldwide collapse of adults in the wake of a historic meteor shower. Faced with a potentially apocalyptic scenario, and their own impending collapse, the teens embrace the power of collaborative problem solving on the Internet. They turned to our players for help in solving a series of problems and puzzles in order to revive the adults and uncover the mysteries of the meteorite dust that has fallen from the sky. Players contributed to the emerging storyline by asking questions, finding evidence, posing theories, and contributing to the ongoing fictive narrative through online entries (see Figure 3.1). DUST is the first of two games designed and implemented as part of an interdisciplinary, multi-year research project to investigate the potential of ARG s as transformative tools for informal learning in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM ). As detailed later in this chapter, DUST was also undertaken in partnership with a group of young co-designers ranging in age from middle school to high school to college undergraduates from across the country, representing a wide array of racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds. As is expected of the ARG genre, DUST ’s gameplay is complex, distributed across multiple media channels, and features a blend of both narrative and gameplay. In Figure 3.1 we present a map of a

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FIGURE 3.1 The graphic represents a simplified version of our typical game flow. Story and app releases are tied to critical events in the DUST narrative. IRIS , an artificial intelligence character, directs players through a summative post and call to action. Players engage in scientific inquiry by posting questions, evidence, theories, and personal diaries to the Collaboration Laboratory (CoLab). As they collaborate using the platform, scaffolding is provided through a variety of resources both within and outside the CoLab, and data is collected for later analysis using a number of metrics built into the site.

gameplay scenario that exemplifies how players experienced and progressed through DUST.

Designing DUST While DUST’s live gameplay ran from January to April 2015, our design process unfolded over one year, from January through December 2014. DUST drew together a diverse team encompassing game designers, creative writers, artists, musicians, researchers, programmers, scientists, and content experts from a variety of institutions including Brigham Young University, the University of Maryland, and NASA . Furthermore, we assembled a talented team of young co-designers, drawing from middle school, high school, and undergraduate students from around the country. The interdisciplinarity of DUST ’s design partners enabled us to explore

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and synthesize heterogeneous conceptions about what games are, what ARG s are, what “open narrative” means, and how to best approach informal science education.

DUST and Cooperative Inquiry: the potential of Participatory Design for edu-ARGs Participatory Design is a set of practices and design/research methods whose core philosophy is to include end-users as active participants in the design process (Schuler and Namioka, 1993; Muller, 2008). The participatory design approach we used with teenagers throughout the development of DUST is known as Cooperative Inquiry (CI ). CI adapts and extends traditional participatory design techniques typically used with adults to enable collaboration with children. In CI , child designers work as equal partners alongside adult designers and researchers (Druin, 1999 and 2002), a power dynamic that enables design teams to share ideas in ways that maximize elaboration and iteration, yet minimize differences in age, ability, and communication styles. CI techniques have been successfully used with children and teens from 7–17 years old (Guha, Druin, and Fails, 2013), though relatively few studies have focused on teens. In projects that emphasize equal partnership between user and designer, participatory design is often referred to as co-design, and we often use the term co-design interchangeably with CI . Our intergenerational co-design approach allowed us to develop novel ideas at the ideation and elaboration stages of DUST ’s design process. It also gave us insights into teen views and understandings of ARG s, and how DUST ’s themes and interactivity might fit in their lives. In short, we better understood the frames with which they come to the design of new technologies and experiences. Throughout the DUST design process, we endeavored to use co-design techniques as a bridge to help move our teen co-design partners from the familiar (e.g., video games) to concepts and perspectives that were new to them (e.g., the interactive narratives and clues hidden across media that are so integral to ARG play). Importantly, co-design also offered us opportunities to become aware of and mediate beyond the initial frames teens held about ARG s that might conflict with the genre’s potential to promote authentic learning.

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Design methods Following the CI philosophy of including youth as equal partners throughout the design process, we went through several phases of co-design to develop DUST. We held a total of fourteen design sessions over eight weeks with 39 teens (13–15 years old). These sessions focused on character design, user interface design, and familiarizing young teens with ARG s as a genre. In keeping with the CI tenet of engaging intergenerational teams, we also held four design sessions over four weeks with 44 undergraduates (18–21 years old). Our goal with the undergraduates was to explore the perspectives of young adults who were close in age to our target teen player base. During undergraduate design sessions, we focused on interactive narrative design and techniques for embedding scientific inquiry and new media literacy practices into gameplay. Data collected throughout our co-design process included session field notes and video recordings, artifacts produced by our teen co-design partners (e.g., character descriptions and drawings), and design documents developed by our research team (e.g., wikis, story maps). When we began co-design, only the most basic elements of DUST ’s narrative arc had been predetermined. Design contributions from our teen and undergraduate co-designers included brainstorming names for the ARG , creating detailed character studies (many of which were realized in DUST ’s final cast of characters), and prototyping interactive activities and apps (such as a countdown-tocollapse based on player age). For our final co-design phase, teens assumed the role of testers and informants. In CI , youth “testers” help shape new technologies before their public release. During testing, adult designers and researchers invite direct feedback, asking questions such as: “What features did you like?; What features did you have trouble with?; What was hard to do?” (Druin, 2002). Playtesting is also a well-established technique in game design (Salen and Zimmerman, 2003). As with most traditional user interaction testing and game playtesting processes, our goal for this final design phase was to work through any technical complications in our CoLab platform and to gain insight into how teen players would interact with DUST after launch. During our two-week playtesting phase, 136 teens (12–16 years old) participated in face-to-face sessions with members of the design team and interacted online with DUST ’s graphic novel, fictional

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characters, and CoLab platform. We collected playtest data using digital traces of player interaction on the CoLab site, along with field notes from face-to-face focus-group discussions and observations of teens interacting with the CoLab and related mobile apps. A commitment to remaining open to the actions of our target audience—to include player production that might influence DUST ’s narrative progression (Dena, 2008)—guided all of our design choices. Our findings, which are highlighted in three design vignettes, will demonstrate how CI served as a means for resolving a number of frame-based design challenges we faced as DUST evolved, from initial co-design sessions to the live game, which held its own challenges for which we dynamically devised solutions. We now describe three principal frames and some of the tensions among them from the perspective of designers, co-designers, and other stakeholders.

Frame analysis Frames are cognitive schemata with which an individual approaches a social situation. These schemata tend to be socially shared, usually on a taken-for-granted level, and govern expectations about the given situation (Goffman, 1974). One of the first major applications of frame analysis to game studies was Fine’s Shared Fantasy, an ethnography that uses frame analysis to understand how fantasy gamers hold overlapping, seemingly contradictory understandings of tabletop role-playing (Fine, 1983). Further work with frame analysis in game studies (e.g., Consalvo, 2009; Glas et  al., 2011) highlights how players and designers approach the same frame, for which some shared meaning is established, but individual meanings of that frame are contested during both the design phase and gameplay. DUST is a game, and as designers we tried to create an experience that highlighted core ARG design principles, while keeping in mind that many of our players would likely expect the affordances and pleasures of mass-market video games. DUST is a narrative, and as designers we strove for an open-ended, participatory narrative while dealing with player expectations that fiction can be passively consumed. DUST is a learning environment, and we aimed to design an informal experience that valued exploration and inquiry-driven

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learning, at the same time recognizing the need to structure and guide the experience so that players weren’t lost or discouraged. In the next sections we explore the tensions in each of these frames.

Gameplay frame ARG s are distinct in their adoption of the TINAG mindset, where players tend to play as themselves rather than adopting an in-game avatar. The integration of the player’s day-to-day life with the fictional world of the game opens the door to counterfactual thinking, allowing players to imagine new ways of looking at real problems (McGonigal, 2011; Bonsignore et al., 2012a). ARG s are designed for communities rather than individuals: players tackle game challenges collaboratively, benefiting from a unique mix of individual competencies and literacies (McGonigal, 2011; Bonsignore et al., 2012b). Thanks in part to the principle of TINAG , which encourages players to transgress the boundaries associated with most other types of games, ARG s can also be described as transmedial, with play taking place across a number of platforms. Narrative and gameplay are tightly intertwined in ARG s, with a priority placed on granting players agency to influence the storyline. In video games, by contrast, distinct delivery mechanisms exist for play versus narrative, and player actions generally have limited influence on predetermined narrative outcomes. Interaction in ARG s, moreover, is not limited to a single input method (e.g., a controller); rather, it is enacted across many different platforms that all contribute to establishing an immersive game world. Finally, players play as themselves, rather than assuming a predetermined character, or a player surrogate avatar. While these values may appear natural to researchers, game designers, and players steeped in ARG conventions, data from our co-design sessions revealed that many of the teens with whom we partnered tended by default to view ARG s through the competing frame of video games, which have their own distinct affordances, pleasures, and expectations (Grodal, 2000; Newman, 2013; Deterding, 2014). We learned that our co-design participants largely figured gaming through the frame of the video game, and were sometimes confused by the guiding ARG design principles that we applied to DUST.

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Narrative frame Narrative is what makes all the different game elements of an ARG cohere. As transmedia fictions, ARG s deliver content through different media channels, often in individual installments or story beats. The narrative is also participatory; it is to some extent openended, with gaps that invite readers to fill them with their own ideas. While the story arc, cast of characters, central conflict, and sequence of events are predetermined, not every plot or textural detail has been scripted in advance. For example, in DUST the players are left to debate the original source of the alien microbes and describe how the events affected their personal lives. Finally, the narrative and gameplay are intrinsically tied in an ARG , with puzzles, quests, and other game mechanics embedded into the narrative itself. These characteristics, although well established in ARG s and other transmedia fictions, substantially depart from what are considered to be more prototypical narratives. The stories and formats that Western consumers are most familiar with offer self-contained experiences within a single medium, such as a book or film, and are controlled by creators or franchises that typically choose not to cede authorial agency to the audience. When reading a standard paperback edition of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, for example, the reader isn’t also pointed to an online virtual reality experience of Thornfield Hall or directed to real-world locations to find clues about Mr. Rochester’s first wife, hidden in the attic. Instead, the reader passively consumes the story by turning the pages of the book. Our teen players struggled to understand how to engage with the participatory ARG narrative not only because of their preconceptions about what narratives are, but also from not understanding how narrative relates to gameplay. Adult players of ARG s, the genre’s primary demographic, are comfortable with the trial-and-error principles of “ambiguous play” (McGonigal, 2011); they figure out how the different weapons in a first-person shooter work by actually firing them, or which words a parser will recognize in a game of interactive fiction by plugging in a command and seeing what happens. DUST, by contrast, heavily scaffolds gameplay for its young adult audience. Our prior experience designing for this demographic combined with extensive co-design sessions and beta-testing with teens uniformly established the need for instructional resources to help players understand how to advance

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through the game (Bonsignore et  al., 2012a; Bonsignore et  al., 2013). Questions that emerged from players in the debriefing following three weeks of intensive playtesting in October 2014 included: “Who am I supposed to be in the game, a character or myself?”; “What year is it?”; “Where are we?”; “What was going on in the fictional world prior to the meteor shower that catapults us into this mystery?”; and “What am I supposed to do?” “What am I supposed to do?” This question, a common refrain during playtesting and throughout the live launch, subsumed all the others. Unlike players of ARG s that have been designed for an older demographic, our teens did not readily transfer the principles and practices of ambiguous play from video games to DUST. The necessity of scaffolding gameplay for an audience unfamiliar with ARG s and transmedia storytelling presented a challenge to our design team in choosing the genre and delivery of our narrative.

Learning frame In learning sciences research, there is ample evidence that direct instruction is generally more efficient and effective than purely discovery-based experiences where a learner is left to explore a domain on their own with no guidance (Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark, 2006). However, it is important to delimit this finding with reference to specific contextual factors. For example, direct instruction is often more effective for novice learners, whereas those who have already developed expertise are better able to explore and solve problems in open-ended scenarios. In addition, we must also ask what is lost in environments that are entirely characterized by direct instruction. While explicit direction may be a more efficient way to introduce new concepts and skills to novice learners, there could be potentially negative consequences if they struggle to engage with the activities, develop interest in the topic, identify personally with the learning experience, or find any relevance between the learning and their personal motivations (Ahn et al., 2014; Azevedo, 2011; Calabrese Barton et  al., 2012; Clegg and Kolodner, 2014; Polman and Miller, 2010; Chinn and Malhotra, 2002). In a game situation, these consequences are potentially disastrous, and designers aim to avoid extinguishing enjoyable aspects of games (which coincidentally are also vital to sustain learning), such as interest, engagement, motivation, and personal relevance. The

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Key Assumptions of ARG Design

Competing Frame Assumptions

Key Design Questions

Gameplay

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Learning and Assessment

FIGURE 3.2 The table details core ARG design assumptions, competing frames that conflict with the ARG frame, and design questions that arise from those conflicts.

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concept of scaffolding—well designed and thoughtfully placed moments of guidance—is critical for promoting positive learning experiences in general, and good game design specifically. There are many ways to scaffold a learning process, for example by providing prompts in the interface, moments of guided instruction followed by open-ended projects or challenges, or collaborative interactions that provide learning resources for the learner as they engage with others (Guzdial, 1994; Quintana et al., 2004). In DUST, and in ARG s generally, designers face a critical challenge of scaffolding the learning process for a massive group of players, each of whom comes to the game with different levels of interest (Azevedo, 2011; 2013), skills and prior literacy (Gee, 2007; Jenkins, 2009), and identification with the domain of the game (Calabrese Barton et  al., 2012; Polman and Miller, 2010). Certain types of games—such as platformers—naturally provide scaffolding to players while still maintaining traditionally interactive, playful game mechanics. However, in an open-ended ARG where players are free to contribute in different ways and build their own narrative within the overarching storyline, balancing individual levels of scaffolding with opportunities for players to contribute in ways that are both personally relevant and comfortable (in terms of skill level) poses a particular challenge. Throughout our co-design process, we constantly explored ways of designing particular game mechanics and activities into DUST that intersect with learning sciences’ frameworks supporting learners’ prior knowledge, skills, interests, and sense of self.

Alternate reality games for learning: a gnarly design space In this section we discuss tensions between the frames, highlighting the ways in which co-design raised our awareness of them, as well as the approaches we took to mediate them. We detail three designbased vignettes.

Introducing a new genre Based on prior experiences working closely with both graduate students and middle schoolers as they interacted with a small-scale

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ARG and ARG design (Bonsignore et al., 2013), we knew that an effective way to introduce both youth and adults to the genre was to immerse them in it—if only as a “mini-ARG ” or small mission from an existing ARG . We introduced our teen co-design partners to the concept of ARG s through a so-called “Ride” offered by Fourth Wall Studios. Rides are short, semi-interactive, video-based stories presented through various media. In a Ride, at certain prescripted points, when a character on-screen calls a number on her phone, the viewer’s phone rings as well, and both character and audience can hear the same conversation on their own devices simultaneously. As one teen co-design partner put it after experiencing a ride, “you feel more involved in it . . . almost as if it’s happening to you.” Fourth Wall Studio’s goal was to create an experience that gave participants the sense of a live, large-scale ARG that was replayable and less resource-intensive (Hansen et al., 2013). From a practical perspective, a Ride was a good fit for our teens: it could be experienced and discussed with them within a one-hour after-school session. To facilitate conducting the Ride as a small group experience, we used only one phone during the session (an adult co-design partner/researcher’s mobile). We played the Ride in three different sessions with teens at the start of our codesign process. The Ride-based introduction to ARG s was wildly popular with our teen co-designers. Almost all of them reported enjoying the immersive experience, with most of them clamoring to answer the phone or read the mobile text messages and emails aloud during the Ride. When asked how the design of such transmedia, ARG -like experiences could be improved, most of our teen co-designers noted that they would increase their interactivity. Indeed, one group of girls commandeered the phone and began texting the protagonist in an attempt to raise the level of interactivity that is hard-wired into the more static Ride. Another boy wanted the power to contact the characters “through the video,” while two others wanted to call each other during the Ride, to converse with and control the characters in a sort of multi-point conference call. At the end of these introductory sessions, teens asked if we would be designing these types of experiences together. One girl asked, “Can we—can we make one? That would be really cool.” Despite their enthusiasm, questions remained that foreshadowed a tension between the video game frame that most of the teens were familiar

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FIGURE 3.3 In these images, two teen co-designers anxiously examine texts and listen to a phone message they received from a fictional Ride character. with, and the more narrative-focused stance ARG s present. For example, at a mid-way point through the Ride, one teen noted, “It’s awesome,” but then added, “. . . If this is a game, like, I don’t really understand what the game part of this is.” Similarly, one of our adult co-designers recorded the following in field notes: “Afterward I asked Ben what he thought of the ride [sic] that we had watched. He said that it was ‘ok’, but said that he didn’t really understand how you were supposed to play something like that.” Their questions may have stemmed from the more static, pre-scripted interactivity inherent in a Ride; however, in subsequent sessions, several teen codesigners had trouble deciding how future players might best interact with the ARG characters they were designing. To introduce the concept of ARG s to our undergraduate codesign partners, we used the book-based ARG , Cathy’s Book, rather than a “Rides” introduction. Cathy’s Book is a young adult novel whose page margins contain sketches, doodles, and notes written by Cathy, and also includes an “evidence packet” of letters, birth certificates, pictures, business cards, and phone numbers (Stewart et al., 2006). These paratextual elements offer additional clues intended not only to help readers solve the mystery surrounding Cathy’s boyfriend but also to immerse them more deeply in the storyworld. Our undergraduate co-designers were taking a new media and information studies course from our team’s learning

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sciences’ lead, and we wanted to immerse them in a fully-fledged transmedia experience rather than a 35-minute mini-ARG . During the class session in which we introduced the DUST project and ARG s in general, the undergraduates shared their interpretations of ARG s from their interactions with Cathy’s Book and its attendant transmedia elements. Their discussion underscored some of the findings from our co-design sessions with teens, and added new insights to our understanding of various competing frames for both narratives and games. For example, some of the undergraduates told us that they did not consider themselves gamers, but they found the interactive nature of the text “novel and interesting.” Because the format was new to them, they felt more motivated to look for clues and attend to the websites and sketches that are woven throughout the Cathy’s Book series. Other “nongamers” told us that they experienced “information overload” with the new format, which revealed a tension between readers more familiar with more traditional (passive) narrative frames and interactive narratives like ARG s, with which readers “play.” Conversely, several self-reported gamers felt that the book was somewhat boring and not interactive, given the expectations they held from the video games they played. Interestingly, other gamers shared that they could successfully negotiate Cathy’s Book because they drew upon their experience in games to “pay attention to every detail.” Regardless of the frames with which they came to Cathy’s Book, many of the undergraduates felt that they would never have picked up on the fact that it was considered part of a “game” genre because of its format and the fact its story can be followed to conclusion without interacting with any of its paratextual elements. This tension between ARG s that could be interactive, but don’t really feel like “a game” echoed some of the sentiments voiced by our teen co-design partners. These conflicts signaled the importance of scaffolding experiences that cross familiar frames.

Scaffolding players’ actions with badges During our playtest we found that players still had some difficulty reconciling the core ideas of ARG gameplay. A common refrain among beta-testers was, “What do I do?” As we reworked the DUST platform based on our beta test data, the conversation of

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player guidance moved to the fore. In an email exchange among members of the design team, the following conversation emerged: Derek: We [meaning other team members who had engaged in a conversation about incentivizing players] like the idea of having levels (e.g., intern, lab technician, . . .) that are based on points that are earned by participating in the QTE loop, since that’s the main scientific inquiry opportunity in the game . . . June replied, mentioning how the motivating effects of badges can influence learners differently depending on their interests and inclinations. June: What [studies have] found was for children who were already high academic performers, badges largely did not really affect them. . . . For already low performing children, badges had a different effect. For low achievers who had an approach motivation (wanting to perform), they went after more participation badges (but not skill badges). However, the more participation badges they earned was associated with a higher avoidance motivation (e.g., as they earned more participation badges, they were more concerned about making sure they didn’t look bad compared to their peers). Kari then brought up how the badges could be integrated from a narrative perspective: Kari: The finding from the first study that June shared with us suggests that badges and recognition should be bestowed on players by the characters, including IRIS and others (even if they’re automatically generated)—which I hope they mostly are!—the badges can ostensibly originate from [proxy players]. Anthony, from a game studies perspective, also contributed to the conversation: Anthony: One thing that I’ve started to think as I’ve been going through all of this is that we’re not designing a gamified system (which is the introduction of game-like elements to a non-game system), but rather we’re designing a feedback system for the

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game that we already have. Basically, the goal of this system should be to both highlight and give meaning to all of the fun activities that we’ve created for the players as they advance through the game. This email exchange captures how four individuals with different disciplinary backgrounds approached the same basic framework for badge design. The badging feature is one that we arrived at through our CI process, an outcome of our gradual understanding that the nature of ARG gameplay was at odds with the video game framework internalized by our participants. By incorporating a badge system that had been designed from numerous vantage points, we hoped to mediate (and to some extent yield to) the convictions about games that our cooperative design participants held, while still remaining true to our own goals for DUST and the affordances of ARG s more generally.

Engaging players in argumentation through narrative and character asides As a STEM -based ARG , DUST was designed to elicit story content from players in part by exploiting the deep congruities between standards of both English and science education, which each emphasize arguing from evidence in their own way. By grafting this practice onto the mystery genre of storytelling, we tried to create an environment where players could help mold and shape the DUST fictional universe by engaging in the kind of investigative reasoning that is simultaneously characteristic of good readers, good scientists, and good detectives. DUST achieves these aims in part through user interface design: the CoLab, as previously discussed, decomposes the process of scientific inquiry into its constituent elements: questions (Q), theories (T), and evidence (E). Players must identify which of these three categories is appropriate for the content they want to contribute, or else they can select the fourth category, Notebook (N), which allows them to either holistically blend and unify these otherwise disparate elements, or else draft a more freeform, affective response to the unfolding narrative. The QTE loop (as described in Figure 3.4) thus effectively

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channels player participation toward what TV Tropes calls the “Evidence Scavenger Hunt”: that part of the typical mystery story plot structure where cast and characters “scramble for evidence” and “chase down clues.” We found that this structure worked particularly well for our younger players. While adult players often felt comfortable with bolder narrative interventions our teens seemed to appreciate and respond to guided interactions that steered them toward sleuthlike roles with well-defined parameters. Coolquark for example, an active 16-year-old player, published—in addition to numerous status updates and comments—8 question posts, 8 evidence posts, and 3 theory posts, but only 1 notebook post over the course of seven weeks. In a post-game interview with one of the authors, she identified writing QTE entries as her favorite activity, and then went on to explain why she didn’t like authoring notebook posts: Coolquark: I have a hard time connecting with the story; the notebooks are really hard for me cuz I was making this game be so analytical; I was focusing on it so analytically. I enjoyed the science side of it but I had a hard time being creative about it and making up a story, so that one notebook post I made was the only one because I couldn’t figure out how to talk about my Mom being collapsed when she’s really in the very next room and I can’t pretend she’s not. Coolquark favored writing fact-based entries about the functions of the hippocampus or the biological characteristics of extremophiles rather than waxing poetic about how grief-stricken she was that her parents were in a coma-like state. Influenced by crime shows like CSI , she wanted to be a detective and research topics that would help players unravel the mystery. What she expressly didn’t want to do was craft fiction, preferring to leave that to the ARG designers or other players. “You gave me a big fat mystery,” Coolquark said, “and solving mysteries and puzzles is one of my favorite pastimes; I couldn’t just let it sit there and remain unsolved—I had to join in and help.” For Coolquark, solving the mystery at the heart of DUST was coterminous with doing science. It was also, hands down, what made the game fun. Conversely, telling a story was a source of

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anxiety and playing a game a source of distraction. With regards to the former, Coolquark worried that she might derail the plot if she dramatically intervened. With regards to the latter, the intrusion of ludic elements like badges threatened to cheapen the experience. “If we don’t figure this [mystery] out everyone is going to die,” Coolquark remarked during the interview by way of commenting on these tensions, “but at least I got a badge!” Coolquark’s style of play was therefore largely about making scientifically plausible and critically important contributions that nonetheless remained highly localized and sanctioned by the fictional characters so that they wouldn’t jeopardize the shape of the narrative at a macro level. Prompted by characters like IRIS to “collect more brain data with your health scanner app” or find “any info online that can give us ideas about what is affecting the adults,” Coolquark located the holes within the story that she could fill with CSI -like forensic detail. In the spirit of TINAG , she did this by drawing on realworld scientific resources and reporting on data she collected and analyzed using the game apps. Coolquark’s fear that she might alter the plot with her writing was a real one, as gamerunners responded to player actions to integrate those suggestions into the narrative. In response to IRIS ’s query of whether the players wanted to create and distribute tardigrades that would kill the alien microbes, rather than vote yes or no, player Hunter1 suggested testing the alien-killing tardigrades on animals before using them on humans. This comment prompted a gamerunner to send an “urgent request” email for a post from a teen character enacting that suggestion. A character writer did so, writing a spur-of-the-moment notebook post from Fisher about the adventures of Steve the Caterpillar, who thus far had survived the animal trials. Fittingly, Fisher was one of the characters in the next graphic novel installment shown testing and packaging the cure, so this was a moment when the close-ended aspects of the narrative in fact helped support the open-ended nature of the narrative overall. By having characters like IRIS and Violet issue calls-to-action, confirm users’ hypotheses and findings, drop clues, and summarize the story so far, the design team was able to implement a support system for players that helped partially overcome the “What do I do?” dilemma. These characters performed the added function of turning the QTEN contributions of players like Coolquark and

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Hunter1—proffered in the spirit of solving the mystery—into legitimate story content that advanced the plot through each of its requisite stages, leading ultimately to the awakening of the adults and the resolution of DUST. As noted in our introductory sections, one design challenge we faced was how to give players a sense of agency when interacting with the seemingly close-ended graphic novel format that framed DUST ’s story. The CoLab’s QTEN interface gave players like Coolquark opportunities to respond to “calls-to-action” from the graphic novel installments and DUST ’s teen character blog posts. In addition to offering QTEN posts as a means for players to directly interact with DUST ’s storyline, our choice of a graphic novel format as the medium for delivery afforded us an opportunity to include some players directly into the DUST storyworld. At the end of the game, we rewarded our most active players by turning photos they provided of themselves into illustrated profile pictures in the DUST style. This brought the immersive nature of the genre full circle by visually placing the players in the storyworld, and most of them were thrilled to receive this perk: player Hunter1 responded: “Heck Yeah! I’ll reply again in a little bit with picture or two for you! This sounds awesome!” And after seeing the result, player icecreamfloat remarked, “Erm, is it good or bad that my character looks better than me? ;^;.”

Embedding interest-driven, authentic assessment into the DUST narrative Two DUST design solutions, inspired in part by co-design sessions with teens, helped us reconcile differences across the game, narrative, and learning frames: badges and polls. As described above, the process we followed to design DUST ’s badge system accommodated all three frames. First, badges were aligned with our teen codesigners’ video game frame notions of earning achievements by solving problems and completing activities. Framed through a lens of learning, DUST ’s badge system balanced direct instruction and scaffolding with a freedom to explore, tinker, and play by giving players a choice in the types of badges they tackled (Figure  3.3 shows the scientific inquiry tracks that players could select from). Moreover, the skills associated with badges were authentically tied to the conflicts and challenges that DUST ’s players faced.

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FIGURE 3.4 Summary of the top level Badge Categories. Polls posted by DUST ’s teen characters gave us an opportunity to embed assessment into the storyline (see Figure  3.5). These single question/vote prompts grew from the desires of our teen co-designers to have multiple modes of interaction with ARG characters using direct messaging features, props, and post-comments. We used DUST ’s teen characters’ fictional backgrounds and personalities to channel different types and levels of scientific disposition and interests for players (Crowley et al., in press; Luce and Hsi, 2015). For example, the fictional James Cannon and Lia Wilson are interested in science but uncertain about their abilities to solve scientific challenges, while Fisher Hempel and Violet Cannon are not only fascinated by science, they remain confident in their abilities. With the character-driven polls, we tied assessment into dialogue that represented character attitudes toward science and science topics. Thus, rather than delivering assessments outside the authentic learning context, in pre- and post-tests, we aimed to integrate them more naturally into DUST ’s narrative context. The polls required relatively low levels of effort (in terms of skill and time), but afforded

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Design Solutions (Frame Mediators)

Gameplay

Narrative

Learning and Assessment

FIGURE 3.5 The chart maps our initial design questions to the design solutions and affordances we created to address them, using CI to mediate across competing frames.

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players moments to reflect on their experiences and growing awareness about science-related topics within the game.

Conclusions: framing through Cooperative Inquiry Through the practice of CI we learned that many teens would come to DUST with existing “ways of knowing-and-playing” that the game would challenge. Co-design gave us the opportunity to break apart preconceived notions that our players had about games, interrogate our own values with regard to ARG design, and actively involve our participants in the process of design. In doing so we found tensions centered on expectations for digital gameplay, interactive versus passive narratives, and self-initiated versus heavily directed learning. Having identified these tensions, we were able to partially resolve them through character development and by building new affordances into our CoLab platform, as well as through the format and structure of the co-design sessions themselves. Nonetheless, questions and tensions remained. Would teen players who had not had the opportunity to interact with and discuss miniARG experiences like Rides be able to appropriate and respond to DUST characters and activities in the way that most adults do? How could we reconcile their existing notions of games with the unbounded transmedia interface and active participatory storytelling nature of an ARG like DUST ? Once the game launched, we continued to improvise, develop, and subsequently refine techniques for mediating frames by incorporating explicit calls-to-action, summary blog posts, resource pointers, and tutorials, all of which were initiated or provided by fictional characters within the DUST storyworld. Our hope is that ARG designers and learning scientists can learn from the framesets that our co-design process revealed, and can apply them to the design of their own transmedia experiences. As a relatively new interactive genre—especially to youth— ARGs remain a play space in which competing frames continue to be negotiated. Although they present many challenges to designers, ARG s also offer intriguing opportunities. From a narrative perspective, players must learn when to move from reading an ARG story beat to actively responding to it and contributing to its

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evolution. From a game perspective, players must learn to see that the edges of an ARG are permeable, and that they can and should look beyond one media or platform for resources and characters that will contribute to their success in the game. From a learning perspective, players must realize that an ARG offers them opportunities to devise their own paths for information-seeking, evaluation, and sharing, which can be a daunting task, especially for teens more familiar with traditional, heavily directed learning environments. One of our design goals for DUST was to offer a space for teen players that would not require them to alter their existing frames drastically, but to help them become aware of those frames and learn to negotiate across them as they contributed to the game. Our co-design and playtesting efforts were an effective means to support this goal. Moreover, the live launch of DUST, experienced by over 2,000 players and gamerunners, yielded deeper insights into several nuanced game, narrative, and learning framings that young ARG audiences possess. In Goffman’s original conception, frames provide a way to organize the social world. They answer the question of “what is going on here?”, and they allow people to build understanding and form strategies to approach complex situations. However, frames are not set in stone. They are mutable and changeable, and given time they can be socially restructured by their participants. Goffman contends that we are most aware of frames when they become intrusive and disruptive. When an incident challenges what we typically hold to be normal or routine for a given situation, it is then that we become most aware of what our expectations were in the first place (Goffman, 1974). Arguably that is perhaps the core purpose of ARG design: disrupting the day-to-day and asking players to take a new look at the world around them. ARG s destabilize and interrogate traditional frameworks while at the same time fabricating new ones. For this reason they can be highly disorienting and confusing to their participants. In an effort to ameliorate that confusion, we employed a strategy of CI , involving members of our teen target audience directly in the design process to gain their expert opinions on the systems that we were creating. Goffman’s work often focuses on breaks in framing as deceptions and misunderstandings. Through co-design, we seek to cut against this grain by giving all stakeholders—especially youth—an

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opportunity to bring their preconceptions into the light and make their frames transparent. This approach in turn allows us as designers to work honestly towards creating gameplay experiences that draw on the theoretical power of ARG s, while still remaining faithful to our players’ desires and interests.

References Ahn, June, M. Subramaniam, E. Bonsignore, Anthony Pellicone, Amanda Waugh, and Yip, J. 2014. “ ‘I Want to Be a Game Designer or Scientist’: Connected Learning and Developing Identities with Urban, AfricanAmerican Youth.” In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2014). Boulder, CO. Azevedo, Flávio S. 2011. “Lines of Practice: A Practice-Centered Theory of Interest Relationships.” Cognition and Instruction 29 (2): 147–84. doi:10.1080/07370008.2011.556834. Azevedo, Flávio S. 2013. “The Tailored Practice of Hobbies and Its Implication for the Design of Interest-Driven Learning Environments.” Journal of the Learning Sciences 22 (3): 462–510. doi:10.1080/10508406.2012.730082. Bonsignore, Elizabeth, Derek Hansen, Kari Kraus, June Ahn, Amanda Visconti, Ann Fraistat, and Allison Druin. 2012a. “Alternate Reality Games: Platforms for Collaborative Learning.” In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the Learning Sciences, 1: 251–58. Sydney, Australia: ISLS . Bonsignore, Elizabeth, Kari Kraus, Amanda Visconti, Derek Hansen, Ann Fraistat, and Allison Druin. 2012b. “Game Design for Promoting Counterfactual Thinking.” In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012), 2079–82. ACM Press. doi:10.1145/2207676.2208357. Bonsignore, Elizabeth, Derek Hansen, Kari Kraus, Amanda Visconti, June Ahn, and Allison Druin. 2013. “Playing for Real: Designing Alternate Reality Games for Teenagers in Learning Contexts.” In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC 2013), 237–46. ACM Press. doi:10.1145/2485760.2485788. Calabrese Barton, A., H. Kang, E. Tan, T.B. O’Neill, J. Bautista-Guerra, and C. Brecklin. 2012. “Crafting a Future in Science: Tracing Middle School Girls’ Identity Work over Time and Space.” American Educational Research Journal 50 (1): 37–75. doi:10.3102/0002831212458142. Chinn, Clark A., and Betina A. Malhotra. 2002. “Epistemologically authentic inquiry in schools: A theoretical framework for evaluating inquiry tasks.” Science Education 86, no. 2: 175–218.

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Clegg, Tamara, and Janet Kolodner. 2014. “Scientizing and Cooking: Helping Middle-School Learners Develop Scientific Dispositions: SCIENTIZING AND COOKING .” Science Education 98 (1): 36–63. doi:10.1002/sce.21083. Consalvo, M. 2009. “There Is No Magic Circle.” Games and Culture 4 (4): 408–17. doi:10.1177/1555412009343575. Crowley, K., Barron, B.J., Knutson, K., and Martin, C. (In press). “Interest and the development of pathways to science.” In Interest in Mathematics and Science Learning and Related Activity, K.A. Renninger, M. Nieswandt, and S. Hidi (Eds.). Washington DC : AERA . Dena, Christina. 2008. “Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games.” Convergence (14), 1, 41–57. Deterding, Sebastien. 2014. “Modes of Play: A Frame Analytic Account of Modes of Play.” Doctoral dissertation, Hamburg, Germany: Hamburg University. http://ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/volltexte/2014/6863/pdf/ Dissertation.pdf Druin, Allison. 1999. “Cooperative Inquiry: Developing New Technologies for Children with Children.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 592–99. ACM Press. doi:10.1145/302979.303166. Druin, Allison. 2002. “The Role of Children in the Design of New Technology.” Behaviour & Information Technology 21 (1): 1–25. doi:10.1080/01449290110108659. Fine, Gary Alan. 1983. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gee, James. 2007. What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Glas, Rene, Kristine Jorgensen, Torill Mortensen, and Luca Rossi. 2013. “Framing the Game: Four Game-Related Approaches to Goffman’s Frames.” In Online Gaming in Context: The Social and Cultural Significance of Online Games, edited by Garry Crawford, Victoria K Gosling, and Ben Light. London: Routledge. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Grodal, Torben. 2000. “Video Games and the Pleasures of Control.” In Media Entertainment: The Psychology of Its Appeal, edited by Dolf Zillman and Peter Vorderer, 197–214. London, UK : Routledge. Guha, Mona Leigh, Allison Druin, and Jerry Alan Fails. 2013. “Cooperative Inquiry Revisited: Reflections of the Past and Guidelines for the Future of Intergenerational Co-Design.” International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction 1 (1): 14–23. doi:10.1016/j. ijcci.2012.08.003.

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Guzdial, Mark. 1994. “Software-Realized Scaffolding to Facilitate Programming for Science Learning.” Interactive Learning Environments 4 (1): 1–44. doi:10.1080/1049482940040101. Hansen, Derek, Elizabeth Bonsignore, Marc Ruppel, Amanda Visconti, and Kari Kraus. 2013. “Designing Reusable Alternate Reality Games.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1529. ACM Press. doi:10.1145/2470654.2466203. Jenkins, Henry. 2009. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press. Kim, Jeffrey, Elan Lee, Timothy Thomas, and Caroline Dombrowski. 2009. “Storytelling in New Media: The Case of Alternate Reality Games, 2001–2009.” First Monday 14.6. http://firstmonday.org/ojs/ index.php/fm/article/view/2484/2199 Kirschner, Paul A., John Sweller, and Richard E. Clark. 2006. “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching.” Educational Psychologist 41 (2): 75–86. doi:10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1. Luce, Megan R., and Sherry Hsi. 2015. “Science-Relevant Curiosity Expression and Interest in Science: An Exploratory Study.” Science Education 99 (1): 70–97. doi:10.1002/sce.21144. McGonigal, Jane. 2011. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. New York: Penguin Group. Muller, M. 2008. “Participatory Design: The Third Space in HCI .” In The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications, edited by Andrew Sears and Julie Jacko, 2nd edn, 1061–82. New York: Taylor & Francis. Newman, James. 2013. Videogames. 2nd edn. London; New York: Routledge. Polman, J.L., and D. Miller. 2010. “Changing Stories: Trajectories of Identification among African American Youth in a Science Outreach Apprenticeship.” American Educational Research Journal 47 (4): 879–918. doi:10.3102/0002831210367513. Quintana, Chris, Brian J. Reiser, Elizabeth A. Davis, Joseph Krajcik, Eric Fretz, Ravit Golan Duncan, Eleni Kyza, Daniel Edelson, and Elliot Soloway. 2004. “A Scaffolding Design Framework for Software to Support Science Inquiry.” Journal of the Learning Sciences 13 (3): 337–86. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls1303_4. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. 2003. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.

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Schuler, Douglas, and Aki Namioka, eds. 1993. Participatory Design: Principles and Practices. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates. Sfard, A., and A. Prusak. 2005. “Telling Identities: In Search of an Analytic Tool for Investigating Learning as a Culturally Shaped Activity.” Educational Researcher 34 (4): 14–22. doi:10.3102/001318 9X034004014. Stewart, Sean and Jordan Weisman. 2006. Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233. New York: Running Press Kids. TV Tropes. “Evidence Scavenger Hunt.” http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/ pmwiki.php/Main/EvidenceScavengerHunt Vygotsky, Lev, and Michael Cole. 1981. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Promotional Alternate Reality Games and the TINAG Philosophy Stephanie Janes

As Alan Hook notes in his contribution to this volume, alternate reality games (ARG s) form a broad genre which has developed since the late 1990s and early 2000s. They are characterized by a sprawling narrative, experienced by players through everyday media channels (email, IM , phone call, websites, post, fax, and live events to name a few). Players must solve puzzles and complete tasks to move the narrative forward and form communities to discuss their progress. Puzzles or events are designed to be completed collaboratively—they are frequently too difficult to solve alone and require the collective skills and knowledge of the community. Another characteristic of ARG s is the “This Is Not A Game” (TINAG ) philosophy (also outlined by Hook), which requires the ARG to deny its status as a game. When the ARG is promoting another product, TINAG also requires it to deny its status as marketing. This creates significant practical and ethical issues which might not necessarily occur in non-promotional games. This chapter seeks to focus on the role of TINAG in a specifically promotional context. After a brief discussion of methodology, it provides an 107

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overview of the development of TINAG as a governing aesthetic of the genre. It then outlines the benefits and challenges of maintaining such an approach in a promotional environment and how this may affect perceptions of TINAG for both parties.

Methodology This chapter will draw on data provided by a player survey, analysis of player forum discussion, and interviews with ARG producers (known on forums as Puppet Masters or PM s). Interviews were conducted with Sean Stewart, (Lead Writer on The Beast and Cofounder of ARG specialist company 42 Entertainment) and Adrian Hon, (Founder of Six to Start and lead moderator on the forum for a player community called Cloudmakers. PM perspectives were also taken from trade and mainstream press interviews and transcripts of ARGF est 2007.1 Player perspectives were collected taking a netnographic approach (Kozinets, 2010), using two complimentary methods. Kozinets defines netnography as “an adaptation of participantobservational ethnographic procedures” in an online context (2010: 74). This methodology has been used in similar studies of online communities of media consumption, including Star Trek and X-Files fan communities (Cova and Pace, 2006; Kozinets, 2001). Kozinets suggests surveys can provide “a sense of people’s attitudes and opinions about online communities” and information about “people’s self-reported representations of what they do, or intend to do in regards to their online community and cultural activity” (Kozinets, 2010: 45). This was therefore appropriate for investigating players’ attitudes towards TINAG in promotional ARG s. However, a survey alone may not have provided a representative sample and elicited attitudes may have differed to those expressed on the forums. Analyzing forum discussion was therefore necessary, but a more structured approach was required due to the vast quantities of data. Kozinets suggests less obtrusive netnographic approaches can be effectively combined with survey work to inform one another (Kozinets, 2010: 56). This study therefore uses the initial stages of the forum analysis to inform the design of an online survey, the results of which inform the more detailed analysis of archival forum data.

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Discussion data was primarily collected from two forums: Unfiction.com and Superherohype.com. Unfiction has a large ‘Meta’ forum in which design issues, (including TINAG ) are discussed by players and PM s. The forum chat from Superherohype relates specifically to Why So Serious, an ARG promoting The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008). Discussions were collected and analyzed using qualitative data analysis software (NVivo) to identify discussions relevant to TINAG . All forums are available to view without becoming a member and all posts reside in the public domain. No forum members are identified, either by their name or forum handles. Unfiction forum was selected as the primary focus for the survey as it is ‘relevant, active, interactive, substantial, heterogeneous and data-rich’ (Kozinets, 2010: 89). It forms the largest, most established hub of active ARG players (34,647 registered users as of October 2015). All survey data is anonymous.2 The survey was initially put to a pilot group of five forum administrators and asked the following questions, regarding TINAG in promotional games: ●

How important is it that TINAG is maintained?

●

Why is this important to you?

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Would you be more or less likely to play an ARG if you knew it was part of a marketing campaign?

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How far do you agree with the following statements: In-game branding can be used effectively in ARG s if it makes sense within the game world. 2. Good ARG s can leave me feeling emotionally invested in the film/TV show. 1.

Thirty-eight responses were received (27 complete, 11 partial). However, as anticipated, this could not be considered a representative sample of active users on Unfiction. The survey therefore performed a signposting function, providing a strong basis on which to further question and effectively map the positions expressed in the forum discussions. This multi-method approach was therefore appropriate for the needs of this study and allowed for an investigation into player and producer attitudes towards the maintenance of TINAG in promotional ARG s.

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Promotional ARGs and the TINAG philosophy Hook provides a thorough overview of the origins of the genre’s immersive aesthetics and key tropes, noting its strong links to advertising. Some of the most prominent ARG s have been used to promote other entertainment products e.g., ilovebees for console game Halo 2 (Bungie Studios, 2004). Some ARG designers were keen to move the genre out of the marketing arena, but many larger games were funded through the marketing budgets of media conglomerates. Scholarship has tended to focus on the games as examples of collective intelligence (Jenkins, 2006), or vehicles for social, political, and personal change (McGonigal, 2011), often reluctant to engage with them as marketing. Work that does address ARG s in this context often focuses on them as transmedia extensions of a central text (Gray, 2010; Jenkins, 2006) and often prioritizes their textual elements over their function as promotional materials. However, I would argue that promotional ARG s have much to tell us about relationships between media texts, audiences, and producers. They are particularly interesting in that they are played in real time, with a team of designers reacting to players’ actions or in-actions to keep the game running smoothly. This results in a feedback loop which is more immediate and intimate than other gaming situations, developing a complex power dynamic between the two parties. As Hook notes “there exists a process of co-authorship between the players and the games’ architects” (see p. 59), although the extent of that co-authorship is always questionable and will vary between games. For example, promotional games will always be subject to tighter restrictions surrounding the intellectual property (IP ) of the product being promoted, whereas grassroots games may provide more space for PM s to respond to player demands. Notions of co-authorship are key to many player and producer definitions of ARG s, yet despite expressing a desire for games which allow for more narrative control, almost exactly the same percentage of survey respondents (70 percent) agreed that PM s were ultimately in control of any ARG . One respondent argued “it’s the illusion of control, not necessarily the control itself” which is important. This chapter will not delve into the complexities of this issue, but it is important to

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note the limitations of narrative control and authorship for players, particularly in a promotional ARG . PM s are also required to remain “behind the curtain” for the duration of the game. Any direct interactions with players must occur “in-game,” through the manipulation of game content. Although PM s may lurk on player forums and use discussion to inform their decisions, they are not permitted to communicate with them in this space. These rules encourage a relationship which is simultaneously intimate and distant. This distancing is crucial to maintaining the “This Is Not A Game” or TINAG philosophy. The term TINAG originated with The Beast, an ARG designed to promote A.I: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001). The phrase was embedded in trailers for the film, as an entry point to the game. Since then it has been conceived both as an aesthetic and a design philosophy for PM s, who endeavor to create games where the boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred. Characters and in-game sites are developed to behave “realistically.” Players, for their part, agree to treat the game as if it is “real,” preserving the immersion as far as possible (Thompson, 2005). TINAG therefore means the ARG denies its status as a game to provide a more immersive experience. Dave Szulborski (2005) suggests this is achieved in several ways. There are no defined rules at the outset of a game. Players learn the rules as they play and part of the puzzle is working out what those rules are. There is also no defined purpose or goal at the outset, and if there is it is broad at best.3 Players’ laptops, phones, tablets, etc. are the tools required to play but these are already embedded into their everyday lives, they are not markedly “game” pieces. Finally, echoing Elan Lee’s (2002) guidelines for creating ARG s, Szulborski argues that ARG s have no defined gamespace, because the gamespace and the real world are one and the same (Szulborski, 2005: Chapter 1). Although often believed to have emanated from Lee’s design philosophy, McGonigal argues that TINAG was not so preconceived. She suggests the phrase emerged largely from Lee’s frustration with Microsoft’s perception of The Beast as requiring the same development processes as their other games: “This is not a game like all the others . . . It was a kind of public raging against the internal obstacles to design innovation” (McGonigal, 2006: 356– 7). She therefore argues that its dissemination to audiences was less clearly defined and appeared instead as an ambiguous message

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which they interpreted themselves. The eventual development of TINAG was therefore more organic, and defined collaboratively by both players and PM s (McGonigal, 2006: 358–9). McGonigal perceives TINAG primarily in terms of performance, as players perform TINAG to each other as well as to themselves. She notes that players of a dissimulative game, (which claims itself not to be a game at all), must: “. . . believe ‘this is not a game’ in order to enjoy the immersive pleasures of its realist aesthetics. They must disbelieve ‘this is not a game’ in order to maintain the ludic mindset that makes realistic murders, apocalyptic science, cyberterrorism and other dark plots pleasurably playable” (McGonigal, 2006: 319). Belief itself, she argues, is not the same as an intentional performance of belief or disbelief. She suggests players actively work to maintain TINAG in a “strategic, collective performance” (McGonigal, 2006: 321), covering or fixing any breaks in the illusion which might occur during the course of the game (2006: 332). Grian et  al. (2008) similarly view this as a collaborative mode of performance, maintained by and for the community. Player attitudes reflect this assertion, suggesting this can be demonstrated in both theory and practice: “We . . . like to believe that it’s not a game . . . But each time we say it we are just reinforcing the idea that it is actually a game. In addition to providing a reinforcement of the boundary, it also provides a rallying cry to reaffirm the community.” If taken less as a mode of performance and more as an aesthetic or design philosophy, some practitioners and critics have suggested TINAG is “a transitional phase, now past its best before date” (Stewart, 2012). Michael Andersen (2012) similarly argues “it is a design choice that is not essential for ARG s.” Some commentators encouraged debates around alternative ways of describing how players, PM s, and in-game characters behave in order to uphold an immersive fictional game universe. However, others mourn the lack of it, particularly in promotional games: “I miss TINAG . There are marketing efforts everywhere that put good effort into setting up an Alternate Reality . . . but then regularly shatter the suspension of disbelief by overtly game-ifying the experience” (Comments section in Andersen, 2012). Practical issues around maintaining TINAG are also discussed. At ARGF est 2007, designers suggested that not defining gamespace at all was too problematic and led to players becoming confused or

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deterring them from playing (Kerr, 2007), or encouraged gamejacking4 (Jones, 2007). Hon similarly suggests there has to be some transparency in order to manage audience expectations and keep control of the game: “How long is it going to last, how difficult is it going to be . . . will I have to travel anywhere? . . . All this stuff and there’s no front page! And I know this would destroy the whole TINAG thing but . . . do you want to have this and no game or do you want to make a game?” (Hon, 2012). Yet TINAG remains crucial to a genre in which blurring the lines between reality and fiction is key to the enjoyment of the game. 87 percent of surveyed players felt it was important that TINAG be maintained in an ARG , but it carries benefits and drawbacks for both players and producers which are specific to promotional ARG s. Two key benefits are the role of TINAG in the negotiation of the commercial intent of the games, and its role in increasing affective investment in ARG s.

Negotiating promotional intent In a previous article in Arts and the Market (Janes, 2015) I explained how TINAG allows players to distance themselves from the promotional intent of the game. This can be beneficial in an era when marketers are seeking ways to “cut through the noise.” It is increasingly difficult to capture audiences’ attention when they are bombarded with media in their daily lives. Key Millennial demographics are particularly apt at filtering out marketing messages and are dismissive of anything that feels like a hard sell. If a promotional ARG does not announce itself as a game, then neither will it announce itself quite so loudly as a piece of marketing, resulting in a softer sell which may be more appealing for target audiences. Furthermore, many promotional ARG s reach out to fan communities, who have a complex relationship with what might be termed the more commercial elements of contemporary media texts. As Hills (2002) notes, fandoms must constantly negotiate their position within a consumer capitalist system as they display commodity-completist practices alongside anti-commercial ideologies (Hills, 2002: 28). Fans are “always already consumers” (2002: 27), and their fandom is often expressed through the

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consumption of products relating to their chosen fan text. On the other hand he argues that fans and academics often seek to define their consumption practices against those of the “bad” consumer, deemed mindless or undiscriminating. For example, players understand the need for a promotional ARG to reach out to wider audiences, yet continually differentiate between what is “for us” as a player community and what is “for them,” the “general public” whose skills are decidedly less refined: “It seems to me the direction of this ARG is to allow more of the public into the game by making portions of it smack dab in their curious faces. I don’t know if this means weakening a more challenging game for us . . .” According to Hills, this inherent tension must be simply livedout understood as “an inescapable contradiction which fans live out,” rather than attempting to resolve it theoretically (Hills, 2002: 29). This experience is intensified as more audiences are encouraged to form fannish, affective relationships with promotional media texts which are firmly embedded in systems of consumer capitalism, such as promotional ARG s. However, in my survey, one respondent suggests “maintenance of TINAG helps me connect with the product in a way where I don’t [my emphasis] feel like [I’m being] used” (Respondent #15). Another argues TINAG is “what makes the difference between an ARG and an advertisement” (Respondent #26). TINAG therefore functions as a in-built negotiation strategy, which comes built into the (admittedly vague) rules of the game itself. For players If This Is Not A Game then This Is Not Marketing either. Without it, the marketing function becomes overriding, the game is no longer enjoyable and players may feel manipulated or taken for granted. This is not to suggest players approach promotional ARG s uncritically or unaware of their purpose as marketing, but that the games TINAG provides an internal framework which allows them players to more easily negotiate their enjoyment of a game which has highly intentional commercial text.

Affective economics This concern about being “manipulated” by advertising highlights how TINAG encourages an affective investment in ARG s. Temporary suspension of disbelief is often a viewing requirement

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for other forms of media, but no other genre asks players to take actions based upon that suspension in such an immediate, realworld context. They ask players to act upon it, to communicate with fictional characters and follow their instructions as if they really matter. For players to do so requires a strong emotional investment and trust between PM s and players. The greater the investment the greater the fallout if it proves foolhardy or does not provide the kind of return players are looking for. Both players and PM s have defined their relationship strongly in terms of mutual trust. When asked why TINAG was important to them, a popular response from surveyed players was that it helped maintain a sense of immersion which allowed for higher levels of engagement and emotional investment: “The more real everything seems the more emotionally invested you can get in it” (Respondent #27). This emotional investment could also be said to work in the service of what Jenkins (2006) calls Affective Economics. This marketing theory “seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions” (Jenkins, 2006: 62). Once they understand those emotional attachments, marketers can attempt to shape them, getting people emotionally involved with brands or products. They seek brand investment on a deeper level than short-term transactions and often invite consumers to interact with the brand to establish this investment. Buzzwords include “emotional capital” and “lovemarks” as opposed to brands (Jenkins, 2006: 69–70). Just over 50 percent of surveyed players agreed an ARG could be described as “an intensely felt, emotionally affecting experience.” 80 percent also suggested a good promotional ARG would leave them feeling more emotionally invested in the film/TV show it was promoting, appearing to work in marketers’ favors. Jenkins conversely argues that consumers benefit because Affective Economics allows them to form “collective bargaining structures” (Jenkins, 2006: 63). When entering into such emotionally invested relationships, media producers must be prepared to negotiate with consumers whose emotional trust they have courted. Jenkins maintains the vision of a consumer at least partially empowered by this new relationship. It is not for this chapter to ascertain whether promotional ARG s are effective examples of Affective Economics. However, survey responses do suggest a heavy

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amount of emotional investment from players in the games, which they cite as being aided by the maintenance of TINAG .

TINAG and corporate sponsorship Maintaining TINAG also has implications for any overt use of sponsorship within a promotional ARG . Sponsorship may become necessary to fund larger games and existing sponsors involved in financing the film itself may also want to be represented in related media content. On one hand, TINAG provides space for product placement or sponsorship to heighten the sense of “reality” in a game. On the other “you can absolutely butcher this concept if you insert things in the wrong way. If it feels contrived . . . you’ve accomplished the exact opposite” (Lee quoted in Siegel, 2006). Poorly integrated in-game advertising pulls players out of the fiction, reminds them that someone is profiting from their suspension of disbelief and makes them feel foolish for taking that leap of faith. Mittell notes the integration of advertising into the ARG for Lost (ABC , 2004–10) “irritated” many players. It was not so much the embedded advertising which offended them, but the “tacky and superfluous” inclusion without “significant payoff.” As an example he describes the in-game character DJ Dan who is anti-corporation but has real life corporate banners on his website (Mittell, 2006). However, Hon is unsure whether overt sponsorship would genuinely drive players away: “It’s a matter of degree . . . the barrier for entry with ARG s is pretty high in the first place, and once people are following they’re not likely to give up any time soon” (Hon, 2012). Sponsorship in Why So Serious was highly visible, involving Domino’s Pizza, Comcast, and Nokia. 80 percent of surveyed players felt in-game branding could be effectively integrated into promotional ARG s, and one noted it could add to a realistic setting (Respondent #32). Initially, players felt Domino’s in particular was not a good “fit” with the tone of the campaign and the film but understood the need for its presence: “It’s definitely off . . . it kinda downplays the whole feel of the movie . . . but we understand because its more money for wb [Warner Bros].” However, part of the game for which Domino’s were responsible failed to adequately support the game experience and broke with

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TINAG too abruptly. Domino’s were due to deliver boxes containing a code which unlocked a secret forum but in many cases failed to do so or delivered empty boxes. Some branches were not participating, and players who tried to ask Domino’s employees directly about the viral campaign were met with blank faces. Players had to either return to the branch to complain, or contact 42 Entertainment to enquire about their prize. Had staff been better informed, the tone of the relevant thread on Superherohype.com (an extensive 113 pages long) might have been more positive.5 Players do not expect promotional games to be free of sponsorship, but TINAG is one of the key pleasures of an ARG . If ill-conceived or executed corporate partnerships threaten this, they also threaten enjoyment of the game. TINAG may cause producers problems in this situation, but it does seem possible to maintain it whilst keeping lucrative sponsors involved. There are therefore several valid reasons for maintaining TINAG in promotional ARG s. However, the following examples suggest there are also drawbacks, and it is sometimes necessary to compromise or even break with TINAG .

Player/PM communication and identification Strict TINAG also dictates PM s cannot identify themselves until the game is over. However, PM s working on behalf of other people’s IP have not only ethical but legal obligations to be more open about who they are and who they work for, particularly if requesting and holding players’ personal data (email addresses, phone numbers.) Players may even find it reassuring to know who the PM s are from the outset. Furthermore, if they can identify positively with PM teams, it can similarly influence their perception of the corporate client. During Why So Serious, when Warner Bros were frequently congratulated in the same sentence as 42 Entertainment: “Well done 42E and WB. It’s been a blast.” Players have a fairly practical view on the responsibility of corporations to identify themselves and protect their IP : “When it’s based on a movie/TV show, we know where it’s coming from and the corporations have to protect their copyright. So the presence of

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the branding isn’t so bad.” It is therefore in both player and producer interests to break with TINAG and identify PM s in these circumstances. In addition, history tells us there will often be a group of players intent on discovering the identity of the PM s if this information is not made clear either in or out of game. During The Beast, this got so intense that moderators had to warn players about digging too far: “While such curiosity is inherent in the way we Cloudmakers do business, it has been pointed out (and rightly so) that blasting the PMs for clues, stalking PMs, etc. would just ruin the game and potentially get people in legal trouble.” This may have been partly because it was difficult for players to trust PM s when they had no information about the PM s or their motivations. Similarly, expectations around of player/PM communications within games have changed significantly. During The Beast, some players reported feeling betrayed by a group of moderators who, it emerged, were involved in direct communication with the players, unknown to the rest of the community.6 However, no survey respondents suggested they felt direct communication to be overly negative. Over half had been contacted by PM s in various capacities, mostly to organize prizes or for post-game feedback. By the time 42 Entertainment were running Why So Serious, players anticipated a more transactional relationship with PM s and behaved accordingly. Many of their communications addressed 42 Entertainment as a customer services outlet, to whom they could direct their complaints about a faulty product. This was exemplified when the Domino’s Pizza sponsored segment of the game went awry and one complaint was signed off particularly formally: “Thanks for your time in reading. Sincerely, Emma and Steve.”7 However, players still seem to feel this should be a last resort. Forum discussion indicates that players are less concerned about knowing who the PM s are, but it also reflects a strong preference for PM communication to remain in-game and to come from characters rather than PM s directly. When players and PM s talk about “trust” it is often regarding PM s’ ability to maintain TINAG and avoid give them direct hints about the game by pretending to be players: It feels like the necessary trust is, if they’re stuck or have something wrong . . . we put something in on the side of the world to correct or lead or guide, but we never go where they live

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because there is some difficulty to describe violation, then it’s a hoax, then you’re lying. STEWART, 2012 McGonigal’s take on this relationship, quoted by one player on the Unfiction forum elegantly describes how this balance should be maintained for the benefit of both parties: . . . the clear visibility of the puppet masters’ work behind the curtain does not lessen the players’ enjoyment. Rather, a beautifully crafted and always visible frame for the play heightens (and makes possible in the first place) the players’ pleasure—just as long as the audience can play along, wink back at the puppet masters and pretend to believe. McGONIGAL, 2003 The “wink,” suggests the necessity of some form of communication between PM s and players but also denotes the importance of a bond of trust, without which the game collapses. If strict TINAG prevents this, it can be problematic in any ARG , promotional or otherwise, and it is actually helpful if it is compromised.

“Hoaxing,” marketing, and the ethics of TINAG Players must also trust that PM s will maintain an immersive experience within which they feel safe, and that their emotional investments will not be taken for granted or made to look foolish. Issues of hoaxing have therefore been debated at length in both player and PM communities. Christy Dena (2008) provides several ways in which this can be avoided by providing in-game clues, (thus staying true to TINAG ), whilst avoiding accusations of misleading players. Promotional ARG s are usually engaged in extending and building a clearly fictional world in a manner that intersects with audience’s realities, but no one is likely to mistake Gotham City for their own hometown. The risk of hoaxing is therefore less likely than if a grassroots ARG ran a plotline about a kidnapping, for example, in a way which did not so overtly mark its fictionality. As

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McGonigal notes, such concerns appear naïve now, but fit an ongoing historical cycle of fears around about dangerous immersion which emerge with new iterations of immersive and mimetic media (McGonigal, 2006: 328). Hook speaks about the ethical challenges of creating a “pure” TINAG engagement with the text. i.e., an unaware player. There is some interest in this within the player community, and one Unfiction forum thread debates the possibility of creating a completely TINAG experience. Szulborski (2005) talks at length about his experience running a game called Urban Hunt, which was designed to play as strongly as possible on this aesthetic so that players were consistently questioning whether the game was “real.” However, as Hook notes, the ethics around this design approach are dubious at best. PM s were initially at pains to explain that ARG s did not intend to trick or hoax people: “The last thing that we want to do is to make an experience that’s indistinguishable from real life, because while it seems like that would be a good goal, it’s actually so scary that it becomes really unattractive . . .” (Lee quoted in Ruberg, 2006). Some players cited the blurring of reality and fiction as one of the pleasures of an ARG : “what I love is the ‘is it actually real’ feeling.” Yet, for others, a complete lack of boundaries was terrifying. McGonigal’s work, cites Michael J. Apter’s (1991) argument that “pleasure in play is dependent upon a sturdy ‘protective frame’ around a perceived challenge” (McGonigal, 2003). One player notes that this does not mean “there is no room for ambiguity in ARGS” but that a visible game framework facilitates gameplay, rather than preventing immersion: “If I get a bizarre phone call from some weirdo in an ARG, I’m probably going to enjoy it. If I get a bizarre phone call from some weirdo and don’t know that it’s part of an ARG, I’m going to call the police.” Discussions around concerning TINAG are therefore also to do with trust, ethicality, and setting of expectations. For promotional ARG s this also involves setting expectations around how the game will deal with its status as marketing. There is some debate as to whether a game should announce itself as such from the outset. Some players feel that since TINAG is a purely “in-game” issue, an announcement from the start is not detrimental to the experience of the game: “They [42 Entertainment] may hold a press conference before a game and announce they’re doing it but once the game

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starts I’m 95 percent sure that the curtain will be as firmly in place as it ever was.” Others, much like Szulborski, prefer to come across game sites more organically, hoping players will question whether the sites are “real” or not from the start. However, this can limit the audience to established players who know where to look or and keep track of potential trailheads on forums. From a Hollywood marketer’s perspective, a game which adheres so strictly to TINAG that it cannot announce itself to a wider audience is unlikely to attract the necessary player numbers to make an impact. As one survey respondent states, “There is so much noise that you really NEED to be overt in your promotion of your game” (Survey Respondent #2). Players may feel betrayed if they find out at a later stage that the game was promotional all along. Stewart (2012) suggests this is less likely to be an issue with narrative properties, “because it is, after all, the mirror of the film or book or record—an invitation to a world” and therefore not necessarily as direct a call to purchase. However, he acknowledges this might not apply to non-narrative properties, like Audi’s Art of the Heist (an ARG used to launch the Audi A3 in 2005). In that case, some transparency is necessary because “where you get into trouble is where you try to stealth it in. Generally, you just have to treat the players with respect. They don’t like the feeling of being hoaxed on behalf of a product” (Stewart, 2012). Only 18 percent of surveyed players stated they would be less likely to play a game purely because it was promotional. Some even suggested they would rather know it was a piece of marketing because: “It is that much more of a stab when you find out not only have you been tricked, but that you’ve been tricked into watching an advertisement.” More pointedly, it risks accusations of exploiting fans who are effectively signing up to do the marketing work for free. They are already aware of their role in doing media work and are willing to exchange this for an entertaining experience. If PM s do not level with them about that transaction from the start, they risk breaking the trust which the game requires to be successful. Art of the Heist had a clear sign-up page and one forum member recounts a positive reaction to his use of one: “most people were actually grateful for it. Instead of having my ARG build up slowly, and a lot of players missing the first event, it started stronger with

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close to 10,000 peoples who opt-in.” Players are perfectly aware of the promotional nature of some ARG s, and that the games gain funding and exposure from being attached to other products. However, strict TINAG obscures these intentions, which can cause tension between PM s and players. In this case player and producer needs are being met simultaneously by compromising TINAG . The PM gains a wider audience and it is easier for players to join in from the start of the game.

Breaking TINAG is part of the fun—live events and meta space Real-world events in a promotional ARG are very effective in maintaining TINAG . They build upon the intimacy of personal communications channels and blur the boundaries of the fictional and the real world. These are emphatically one of the most popular elements of the games. The Beast integrated three simultaneous live meetings, which were well-received by the player community: “I just want to say that the rally night was amazing fun and it just boggles my mind how elaborate this game is.” 42 Entertainment went on to set a precedent during Year Zero and ilovebees, leaving expectations high for the large-scale, live events in Why So Serious. However, TINAG must also be compromised during such events because they end at a predetermined time in a way they would not do in “real life.” Encouraging players to be perpetually “ingame” can also cause problems. During The Beast an actor was followed by a player as he left the site, hoping to gain more information. Lee (2002) accepts this was precisely what the game had encouraged players to do—follow up every avenue for information and never break the TINAG mindset. This player’s actions had not been planned for and the actor had to break character to tell him he had no further information. Lee half jokes that the only way to solve this is to have the character “die” ingame: “Take him out on a stretcher, because that’s the only way you’re going to get him out of the picture” (Lee, 2002). These issues are by no means restricted to promotional games, as indicated by Evans et  al.’s analysis of a standalone ARG run in Nottingham (Evans et al., 2014).

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Yet, breaking TINAG in live events can be just as pleasurable as maintaining it. Those involved in “rallies” for Harvey Dent during Why So Serious enjoyed interacting with members of the public who were unaware of the viral campaign, or mistook them for real political rallies.8 The following quotes are from two players who participated in the rallies: Player 1: I enjoy the confusion and really tried to get into character. It’s more fun when you act serious and tell people it’s not a movie, it’s a real thing and it’s important for the future of Gotham. When they walk away confused and/or mad, I know I did a good job and had a lot of fun doing it. Player 2: I liked staying in character as well, but my morality wouldn’t allow me to deliberately confuse someone. I kept up appearances unless someone asked me point blank if this was for a movie . . . I found that we got more smiles and laughs out of people when they knew it was a gag . . . Personally that made me feel better than someone looking at me like I’m a Scientologist trying to give him or her a stress test. These statements reflect two kinds of pleasure being derived from these encounters with an unknowing public. The player 1 enjoys the sense of “being in the know” and prefers to keep the public guessing as to whether the rally is “real” or not. Player two derives equal pleasure from breaking TINAG , sharing their “inside knowledge” and receiving a positive reaction which reaffirms their cultural capital even as they are giving it away. Both these situations exemplify how both maintaining and breaking TINAG can contribute to the sense of exclusivity that a promotional ARG hopes to confer on fan communities. They also reinforce the notion of ARG as a strategic performance; one that is performed at various levels by individual players. This highlights TINAG as a choice which belongs not only to designers, but to players as well. Indeed, it is they, not the PM s, who decide whether to perform it or not, and different players will have different preferences. In order to gain a wider audience base, ARG s must cater for those preferences and avoid becoming too restrictive for players who might wish to break with TINAG . Even Szulborski (2005), a strong proponent of strict TINAG ,

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argues that real-world events need not necessarily be conducted in an entirely “in-game manner.” He suggests players can justify the contradictory in and out of game aspects of this kind of interaction. He does argue that maintaining it can aid immersion in the game, but player testimony suggests breaking this immersion can actually be part of the fun. ARG s require players to simultaneously immerse themselves in the game and distance themselves enough to consider the implications of blurring the lines between fiction and reality. In particular, players must differentiate between in-game and out-ofgame sites, requiring an awareness of the game’s commercial context and their role in it. One player commented insightfully on the irony of a game in which players must at least partially invest in the TINAG philosophy, yet continually seek out its constructed walls: “ARGers say they don’t like walls in a game and like the blur [between fiction and reality], but will push at the edges of the world until they find the wall anyways.” Identifying and pushing boundaries is therefore one of the pleasures of playing the game, something which complete adherence to TINAG would not allow. Other players also note the pleasures of removing themselves from the immersive mode of TINAG , if only at the end of the game: “A little bit of ‘paying attention to the man behind the curtain’ goes a long way. I mean, AFTER I see a movie, I am always kind of curious to rent the DVD and listen to the director’s commentary.” Another notes that it helps develop stronger community bonds: I think maybe part of why we feel the need to draw the in/out game boundary is that so many of us enjoy working together as a team. Many of us like to share our info with each other in a meta setting . . . that’s why I feel the need to have an out of game area, so we can progress together through the story at the same time. In a similar vein, identifying the boundaries of the “magic circle” of play in a promotional ARG helps players define what material can be considered ARG “proper,” and what is “for us” as a player community. This is opposed to “viral” content, perceived as being aimed at a wider, uninitiated audience. This reinforces community boundaries and builds upon the element of exclusivity which, in an age of near total accessibility, is

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valuable to both marketers and consumers. However, it also serves to delineate between what is “game” and what is “just marketing,” further assisting in the negotiation of the games’ commercial intent as previously discussed. It seems this negotiation can occur not only by maintaining TINAG , but also by breaking it and further demarcating those boundaries between fiction and reality. This returns us to McGonigal’s argument that players are always performing these two apparently contradictory beliefs, both of which are productive in constructing a pleasurable ARG experience.

Conclusions Although there have been significant shifts in how TINAG is conceptualized by both producers and consumers, it remains an important structuring concept for both promotional and nonpromotional ARG s. Players wish to see it maintained and it forms part of a two-way relationship between players and PM s, based on mutual trust and respect. In a promotional context, maintaining TINAG can work to benefit both players and producers. It allows players to negotiate the potentially problematic commercial nature of the game while simultaneously providing a slightly softer sell, which is more attractive to fan communities who are often the games’ target audiences. It also encourages a deeper immersion in the game which in turn allows players to develop a more affective connection with characters and events. This may be productive for both players and producers in terms of what Jenkins calls Affective Economics. However, there are a number of situations in which it is not possible to keep TINAG strictly, particularly in a promotional context. Visible corporate sponsorship in a promotional ARG can also have implications for TINAG . It can support it by heightening realism or it can break it and draw too much attention to the fiction. Players display an open minded approach to the integration of sponsorship in promotional ARG s, but if poorly handled it can threaten the enjoyment of the game. Here a balance must be struck but ultimately PM s need to find a way to integrate sponsors which respects TINAG . TINAG also demands that PM s remain behind the curtain, but again, players seem understanding with regards to the legal and

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ethical obligations of PM s to identify themselves and their clients in a promotional ARG . This can have positive PR implications for corporate clients and may help build trust between player and PM teams if a strong reputation can be built, as in the instance of 42 Entertainment. Player attitudes towards player/PM communications have also shifted over time, and certain player communities may be comfortable with a more commercial, transactional relationship with PM s, which requires breaking TINAG . The emotional investments afforded by TINAG must be treated respectfully, and the blurring of fiction and reality that comes with it can lead to accusations of “hoaxing.” TINAG informs a relationship between players and PM s based on mutual trust. If players feel their investments have unwittingly been made in the service of a product, that trust is broken. In these situations, PM s may have to make their intentions clear at the expense of a strict TINAG experience. This does not necessarily prevent it from being upheld throughout the rest of the game, but avoids risking potential accusations of exploiting fan labor for the purposes of word-ofmouth promotion. Live events are hugely popular in promotional ARG s, but may pose problems for maintaining TINAG . However, as exemplified in Why So Serious, players may derive pleasure from both maintaining and breaking the performance. This particularly reflects the fact that as the genre has developed, differing perspectives have emerged about how players prefer to experience TINAG . Some prefer to have PM s remain further behind the curtain than others. Some find pleasure in meta discussions, others prefer to experience the game without dissecting its construction. Some enjoy an extreme blurring of the boundaries between fiction and reality, whereas others feel those boundaries are necessary to make them feel safe enough to immerse themselves in the fiction. Strict TINAG is increasingly perceived as one kind of ARG experience which is not for everyone and which a promotional campaign cannot necessarily provide. This is generally accepted by a player community that has seen the genre diversify in recent years. Many players perceive TINAG as something performed by the game rather than themselves. It is always important that the game maintains a sense of itself as real even if players prefer to enjoy the fiction in a different, possibly less immersive manner. The ability to jump in and out of the fiction is indeed one of the pleasures of an

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immersive ARG . We can perceive TINAG as both something which the audience performs (and has the choice to perform) and a design choice made by PM s. This reflects McGonigal’s articulation of a co-created mode of immersive gameplay, but also allows TINAG to become flexible enough to cater to the needs of audiences seeking different levels of immersion in ARG s both promotional and nonpromotional, something which the games must embrace if they are to seek broader audiences.

Notes 1 ARGF est is an annual conference which has provided an open forum for discussion between PM s and players since 2003. 2 In order to differentiate between forum data (non-elicited) and survey responses (elicited), forum data in this article is displayed in italics, whereas survey data is referenced with the relevant respondent number. 3 Szulborski argues that promotional ARG s establish their goals faster, which essentially breaks down TINAG (Szulborski, 2005: Chapter 1). 4 Gamejacking involves the creation of websites or other information which appears to be in-game but is not actually associated with the ARG . It is intended to derail the game by confusing players and promoting misinformation. 5 For full thread see: http://forums.superherohype.com/showthread. php?t=304617 6 For a thorough account of this see Adrian Hon’s blog http://photo. vavatch.co.uk/seattle/ 7 Names have been changed to preserve anonymity. 8 The campaign took place during the presidential campaigns of 2008, in which Barack Obama was elected to office, which may have heightened awareness of and response to any activity which appeared to be politically motivated.

References Andersen, M. 2012. “A Fond Farewell to ‘This Is Not A Game.’ ” ARGN et February 6. Available at: http://www.argn.com/2012/02/a_fond_ farewell_to_this_is_not_a_game/ [accessed March 16, 2015].

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Apter, Michael J. 1991. “A Structural Phenomenology of Play.” In Adult Play, eds M.J. Apter and John Kerr. Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger. Cova, B. and Pace, S. 2006. “Brand community of convenience products: new forms of customer empowerment—the case ‘my Nutella the Community.’ ” European Journal of Marketing, 40: 9, 1087–1105. Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/ full/10.1108/03090560610681023 [accessed January 5, 2015]. Dena, C. 2008. “Anti-Hoaxing Strategies and TINAG fallacy.” Available at: http://www.christydena.com/2008/01/anti-hoaxing-strategies-andthe-tinag-fallacy/ Evans, E., Flintham, M., Martindale, S. 2014. “The Malthusian Paradox: performance in an alternate reality game.” Pers Ubiquit Comput 18:1567–1582 Goodfriend, G. 2007. ARGF est Conference 2007. Transcript originally posted at http://wiki.argfestocon.com/index.php?title=2007vt07_ Transcription. No longer available at this URL , quotations taken from author’s own hard copy. Gray, J. 2010. Show Sold Separately: promos, spoilers, and other media paratexts. New York University Press, New York Grian, H., Williams, J., O’Hara, K. 2008. “Participation, Collaboration and Spectatorship in an Alternate Reality Game.” OZCHI 2008 Conference Proceedings, December 8–12, 2008, Cairns, Queensland, Australia. Hills, M. 2002. Fan Cultures. Routledge, London; New York. Hon, A. 2012. Interview with author, October 26, 2012, London, UK . Janes, S. 2015. “Promotional Alternate Reality Games – More Than ‘Just’ Marketing.” In Arts and the Market, 5.2. Special Edition, eds Keith Johnston and Daniel Hesford. Jenkins, H 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jones, E. 2007. ARGF est Transcript 03 – Panel 1 – Developing an ARG . Available at: http://wiki.argfestocon.com/index.php?title=2007vt03_ Transcription [accessed January 5, 2015]. No longer available at this URL , quotations taken from author’s own hard copy. Kerr, J. 2007. ARGF est Transcript 04 – Panel 2 – Running an ARG . Available at: http://wiki.argfestocon.com/index.php?title=2007vt04_ Transcription [accessed January 5, 2015]. No longer available at this URL , quotations taken from author’s own hard copy. Kozinets, R. 2001. “Utopian Enterprise: Articulating the Meanings of Star Trek’s Culture of Consumption.” The Journal of Consumer Research, 28:1, 67–88. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/321948 [accessed January 5, 2015]. Kozinets, R.V. 2010. Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. SAGE , London.

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Lee, E. 2002. “This is Not a Game: A Discussion of the Creation of the AI Web Experience.” Game Developers Conference, San Jose California. March 22. Available at: http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ cloudmakers/files [accessed January 5, 2015]. McGonigal, J. 2003. “A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play.” Proceedings of Level Up: Conference of the Digital Games Research Association. Utrecht, the Netherlands. May 4–6. McGonigal, J. 2006. This Might Be a Game: Ubiquitous Play and Performance at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. PhD Thesis. University of California at Berkeley. Available at: http://www. avantgame.com/writings.htm McGonigal, J. 2011. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. New York: Penguin Group. Mittell, J. 2006. “Lost in an Alternate Reality.” Flow, 4:7. Available from: http://flowtv.org/2006/06/lost-in-an-alternate-reality/ [accessed January 2, 2015] Phillips, A. 2005. “Soapbox: ARG s and How To Appeal to Female Gamers.” Gamasutra.com. November 29. Available at: http://www. gamasutra.com/features/20051129/phillips_01.shtml Ruberg, B. 2006. “Elan Lee’s Alternate Reality.” Gamasutra.com Available at: www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130182/elan_lees_alternate_ reality.php [accessed January 5, 2015]. Siegel, S.J. 2006. “Joystiq Interviews Elan Lee of 42 Entertainment.” Joystiq.com, November 14, 2006. Available at: www.joystiq. com/2006/11/14/joystiq-interviews-elanlee- of-42-entertainment/ [accessed January 5, 2015]. Stewart, S. 2012. Interview with author, December 18, 2012, London, UK . Szulborski, Dave. 2005. This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming. Pennsylvania: New-Fiction Pub. Thompson, B. 2005. “This is Not a Game and the TINAG Philosophy.” ARGN .com. Available at: http://www.argn.com/2005/04/this_is_ not_a_game/ [accessed January 5, 2015]

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CHAPTER FIVE

The Coachella Disaster: How the Puppet Masters of Art of the H3ist Pulled a Victory from the Jaws of Defeat Burcu S. Bakioğlu

—In loving memory of Brian Clark In spring of 2005, Audi of America launched a premium compact car creating a new category in the automotive industry, the A3 premium compact car. Other automakers had introduced similar models but had failed in their marketing. Determined to target a highly-tech-savvy audience used to filtering out advertisements with the click of a button, Audi’s agency, McKinney Silver, hired Campfire advertising agency to come up with an innovative advertising campaign (Editors of Creativity, 2005). Campfire, in turn, launched an immersive media campaign, an alternate reality game (ARG ) 131

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called The Art of the H3ist (hereafter AotH), which included a team of talented screenwriters: Gregg Hale, Michael Monello, Steve Wax, and Jim Gunshanan. Brian Clark (GMD Studios) and Matt Fischvogt (copywriter for McKinney Silver) also joined their team (Campfire, n.a.; Heesch, n.a.). The writers had gained fame through a daring independent film, The Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Sànchez, 1999), one of the first to build its audience online prior to its release (Story Forward, 2015). ARG s are pervasive games that blur the lines between reality and fiction by conveying a hybrid gaming experience through online and offline mechanisms. Jane McGonigal (2003a) writes that ARG s consist of mixed-reality games that use mobile, ubiquitous, and embedded technologies to create virtual playing fields in everyday spaces. While players move through the world, sensors from various devices capture information about their current contexts and locations and then deliver personalized gaming experiences (Dena, 2007). The gameplay comprises solving puzzles by unlocking stages, retrieving clues scattered across the web or in real-world locations, and performing a host of activities (Bakiog˘lu, 2015). ARG ’s blatant denial of their status as games, indicated by their famous mantra “This Is Not a Game” (Szulborski, 2005), highlights their uneasiness with a game identity. They contradict the traditional understanding of what games are. For example, unlike traditional games, ARG s don’t have a predefined game space characterized by Huizinga as the magic circle. ARG s lack common game markers. Instead of making use of boards, dice, or pawns, ARG s implement everyday technologies and interfaces that allow a player to voluntarily dismiss the “game” status of their activities. In addition, ARG s have no predefined rule set, but convey rules subtly during gameplay through responses of puppet masters (game designers) to player actions allowing designers to model player behavior though in-game mechanics. For these reasons, ARG s could be framed as a transgressive gaming genre. In this chapter, I argue that ARG s can be conducive to transgressions on a player-level as well. Briefly defined, transgressive play is gameplay that goes against the rules set by the game. In ARG s the basic rules of playing become clear as the game progresses, but the contexts for play are situated in the ever changing real world. Some contextual shifts are unpredictable, leading to permutations of sanctioned gameplay. Such transgressive acts

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introduce a certain level of unpredictability into the game through external factors that are out of the puppet master’s control. While some transgressions threaten a game in serious ways (e.g., possibly ending it), others enrich the gameplay by exploring possibilities not taken into account by the game designers. In what follows, I argue that transgressive gameplay can be a catalyst for enhancing the gaming experience if the said gameplay is executed in accordance with the fundamental rules laid out by the internally consistent fictional world that the ARG has created. In such cases, the gameplay is negotiated in real time between players and puppet masters as they adjust moves and possibilities for moves according to the events that transpire in-game. Seen from this perspective, then, ARG s are one of the few instances where genuine interactive fiction that permits player agency in story development can be said to exist. To better understand how transgressive play promotes compelling gameplay despite its potential to bring about unpredictable and sometimes game-destroying outcomes, I examine a live event in AotH that took place at the Coachella Music Festival and threatened to end the game prematurely. The creative team’s efforts at rescue required rewriting the ending not only to meet the game timeline but also to make amends with disappointed and frustrated players. The puppet masters’ solution was one not previously permitted in ARG s as a genre: to give a player a fictional role in the game. Specifically, the creative team invited one of the players who participated in the live event at Coachella to have a role as a character in the ending of the game. This unprecedented move not only enhanced the experience for the community of players by making the events feel more real, but also effectively redefined the previously established rules of the ARG genre by tearing down the once sacrosanct player/puppet master boundary. AotH relates the story of a group of art thieves planning the theft of several famous paintings from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. The plans and other miscellaneous information related to the heist were hidden in the Solid State Memory (SD ) cards of six A3s about to be shipped to the United States from a facility in Germany. While the “thief” who hides them there barely escapes the police, he takes pictures of the VIN numbers of the cars to identify them later, but is caught in surveillance footage that later surfaces online. Once the cars arrive in the United States, the mastermind of the heist

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(located in the United States) sends his men to retrieve these cards on his behalf before anyone else does. Throughout the game, players are recruited1 to retrieve and decode these SD cards to reveal the clandestine operation. By solving puzzles, interacting with the game characters online and during live events, the players of AotH did not merely watch the planning of the theft, but took part in the dismantling of what was presented as the largest art heist in history. I open the discussion by providing a brief overview of ARG s and how these games are conducive to transgressive play. Then, I examine the details of AotH to demonstrate what made it one of the most compelling ARG s to date. Specifically, the discussion in this section demonstrates that the players in AotH contributed as much to the story development as they did to the gameplay. The section that follows discusses how unpredictable circumstances of daily life gave way to transgressive play in AotH. Aspects of the transgressions that occurred were ultimately integrated into gameplay to enrich the gaming experience. I close the chapter with concluding remarks on how AotH affected ARG s as a gaming genre.

This Is Not a Game: aesthetics of transgressive play The term alternate that appears in the genre name itself can be a misleading characterization of ARG s. These games do not submerge a player within an alternative world, but rather integrate the world of the game into the everyday existence and life of a player while providing a game-based orienting frame. The ultimate goal of an ARG is to have the player suspend her disbelief, to make-believe that the events and characters exist in her life world, not in an alternative reality at all (Szulborski, 2005). According to ARG scholar and game designer Jane McGonigal (2005), alternate realities should be understood as real worlds that use games as metaphors. Alternative realities, on the other hand, are realities one chooses between, such as when one logs onto a virtual world, a computer-generated 3D environment like Second Life or World of Warcraft, in which all events occur within the confines of that reality and have no bearing on any other reality outside of it. The ARG player is not faced with such a choice. When participating in

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ARG s, she experiences both the real world and the game world concurrently. Fictional characters in an ARG might well reach out to a player through the player’s home phone number, send mail to her home address, or participate in real-world events. Historically, ARG s draw on a robust tradition of a wide range of games, documents, practices, hoaxes, and even publishing stunts (Szulborski, 2005: 71–92; Askwith, 2006: 12–16). Even if ARG s are not readily identified as digital games per se, they are highly technology-dependent in that they use pervasive technologies, or microprocessors embedded into everyday objects, to deliver unique experiences. While it is difficult to come up with a specific definition that fits all ARG s, a number of characteristics are manifest in all of these games. Following the design rules set forth by Jordan Weisman and Sean Stewart, whose game The Beast is hailed to be the very first ARG ,2 Christy Dena suggests that ARG s: 1) use a range of media platforms and real life spaces; 2) have a high degree of both narrative and gameplay experiences; 3) are played collaboratively, mainly through online networking; 4) respond to player activities through human intervention by puppet masters (the designers of the game); 5) create an alternate reality where nothing is identified as being fiction (although, as mentioned earlier, players choose to suspend disbelief and treat this fiction as an alternate reality); and 6) are played in real time (email sent to arg-discuss listserv July 17, 2006). Since its initial incarnations, ARG s have never easily fit into the gaming category. As noted earlier, anyone who chooses to play an ARG will choose to believe that the experience is “real” and that the stakes are high.3 Elan Lee, one of the leading designers of The Beast, the first ARG , explains that he and his co-designers intentionally nurtured this dubious attitude in their game. Their goal was to create a game with an identity crisis (McGonigal, 2003b). The players are not duped into taking the realness of the game at face value, but display a performance of belief in the game’s reality and actively work to erase markers of gameness that they encounter (McGonigal, 2003b). Perhaps for this reason, ARG s do not appear to be games to an outsider at all. In fact, there have been incidents whereby those outside the game mistook game events as real news and were understandably outraged in finding out that they were duped. Worse yet, players themselves have occasionally misread everyday signs as fictional cues that they saw as meaningful in a gaming

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context. These misperceptions have occasionally led to dangerous outcomes for the players.4 Put simply, ARG s expect players to actively work to erase the gameness of the game by intentionally disregarding expectations associated with standard games. To better facilitate this, ARG s don’t use common game markers. Instead of making use of boards, dice, or pawns, these games utilize technology and devices that players regularly use to communicate in the real world. Using everyday devices such as phones, email, SMS , billboards, faxes, and websites has a number of benefits. First of all, this aids a player in suppressing or ignoring the knowledge that she is really just playing a game (Szulborski, 2005: 13). The game’s fiction is expressed through nonfiction discourse such as through dialogue or player-character interaction that takes place in live events or chats. Secondly, it aids in transforming everyday spaces into playgrounds through strategy and make-believe. Finally, the familiarity of everyday devices provides the players with a frame of reference regarding how the game is to be played. This familiarity is complemented by puppet masters who use scripted events and interactions of the game to teach players the logic of gameplay. Puppet masters reward correct actions while discouraging incorrect ones through responses as they monitor real-time interactions and create a kind of a rulebook as the game progresses. All of these features indicate that ARG s contradict some of the fundamental principles of what makes a game in the traditional sense, and as such, they could be perceived as transgressive. Perhaps more relevantly, ARG s can be transgressive on a player-level as well. In fact, I argue that ARG s are conducive to transgressive play defined as gameplay that goes against the rules set by the game. Even if the basic rules of playing a particular ARG become clear as the game progresses, it is important to keep in mind that the game is played in a range of changing real-world contexts, some completely unpredictable, leading to a range of permutations of gameplay. Some of these permutations threaten the game in serious ways (e.g., possibly ending it), while others enrich the gameplay by exploring possibilities not taken into account by the game designers. ARG s are transgressive because they cultivate rule-breaking players in that they encourage out-of-the-box thinking prone to experimentation. Experimentation is vital to figure out what works in a game that lacks a predefined rule set guiding the players. Little wonder then that some of the players come up with creative

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solutions that may not be within the scope of the emergent game rules, a gameplay that enhances the level of unpredictability in the gaming experience. Anything can happen depending on how players choose to interact with the game, leading the outcome to be anybody’s guess. Sean C. Stacey (2006), the founder of the popular unfiction forums where ARG players convene, views this as the primary charm of ARG s and characterizes it as chaotic play. He writes that an ARG “begins with a set of ideas and ends wherever the performance or play may take it. The authors may set it in motion but they must work together with their audience to see its conclusion for the first time themselves. By its nature, it is improvisational” (Stacey, 2006). He elaborates, “[t]he real magic happens when the audience reaches a critical mass of participation, and the sort of organized chaos that ensues is anybody’s business” (Stacey, 2007). For all intents and purposes, it is this organized chaos that becomes the breeding ground for transgressive play. Transgressive play is not limited to ARG s, but rather, is inherent in all games to a certain extent, mostly as a result of the unpredictability of the user agent. In fact, one could argue that transgressive play is a form of meaningful play which is described by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (2004) to be emerging from the interaction between players and the game as well as from the context in which the game is played. In this sense, “an action a player takes in a game results in the creation of new meanings within the system” (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004: 33–4) and transgressive play is just that, new and unpredicted meanings. In Espen Aarseth’s formulation transgressive play is the struggle against the game’s ideal player, a concept that emerges from his own formulation of the implied player (Aarseth, 1997: 127; 2007: 132). He repurposes the term from Wolfgang Iser (1978) who, as a part of his formulation of a theory of the act of reading, uses it to refer to the fictional audience the text addresses. The implied reader, according to Iser, is a hypothetical construct that embodies predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect. Analogously the implied gamer “can be seen as a role made for the player by the game, a set of expectations that the player must fulfill for the game to ‘exercise its effect’ ” (Aarseth, 2007: 132). But as Aarseth observes, real players do unexpected things “often just because these actions are not explicitly forbidden” (2007: 132), and in some cases, because they are explicitly forbidden. Transgressive

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play, then, “is a symbolic gesture of rebellion against the tyranny of the game, a (perhaps illusory) way for the played subject to regain their sense of identity and uniqueness through the mechanisms of the game itself” (2007: 132). Given the origins of ARG s, it is not much of a stretch to consider that the implied players of ARG s are those who adopt transgressive play. The case of the ARG is complicated since its default mode of gameplay could easily be perceived as transgressive; a rule-breaking game cultivates rule-breaking players. When the modus operandi of a game is transgressive, the distinction between sanctioned gameplay set forth through the implied player and gameplay that goes against this hypothetical construct is blurred. As an example, a “Do Not Enter” sign as part of a game may be perceived as a direct invitation for an ARG player to figure out how to get past the restriction. In most circumstances, this would be the anticipated action for the ideal ARG player. However, in some cases (as in the Coachella case discussed in detail later), signs indicate genuine restrictions that are ignored because there is no way of distinguishing them during play from puzzles that require experimentation to be solved. Moreover, players might occasionally choose to go against basic rules that emerge during gameplay for various reasons. For example, they might selfishly insist on playing the game on their own terms (provided that it does not bring the game to a halt) or experiment with a wide range of alternative actions to see which ones allow them to advance. After all, experimentation lies at the heart of the puzzle-solving mentality that defines ARG s. According to Szulborksi, it is essential for a game to construct a believable, internally consistent world in which the player has information necessary to make choices that affect the game in understandable ways. When that happens, transgressive play can be meaningfully integrated without having that world crumble. But ARG s are played in real-world contexts beyond control of the puppet master and unpredictable gameplay can develop that harms the game process regardless of how consistently the game world has been constructed. In the following section, I examine the details of AotH to contextualize the Coachella incident and to demonstrate how the game successfully incorporated interactivity into storytelling by rendering player actions to be just as essential for unlocking the game elements as they were driving the storyline.

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Art of the H3ist: a cross-country car chase To be sure, the creative team behind AotH were veterans of immersive entertainment and used every opportunity, every resource, and every technology available to weave the world of AotH into the daily lives of the players in innovative ways. They were lucky in this regard. Backed by an established German automobile manufacturer eager to break into the American market, the AotH project was well-provisioned in terms of budget and resources, which led to the creation of an extraordinary ARG storyline and experiences that not only attracted known ARG veterans, but also those who had never played ARG s before. In addition to opening up its media budget for this campaign, Audi gave permission for the designers to use all of their dealerships, all of the high-profile events that they were sponsoring, and secured the cooperation of their managers and security personnel nationwide. The creative team used these resources to offer immediate experiences situated in real life locations so that players could physically go and see the incidents with their own eyes and gather information on site. Thus, players became agents integral to the story development as they were the ones who were involved in the eye-witness reporting of the events and their actions were crucial in unlocking the narrative. The game started at the New York International Auto Show, followed by a break-in staged the night before the final day of the auto show. The A3 that was on display at the show was briefly moved to an Audi dealership located in Park Avenue for a scheduled party two days prior to the ending of the show. Before it could be returned to the show for the last day, the puppet masters staged a theft of the vehicle from the dealership. In the aftermath of the theft, a sign was posted at the auto show at the location where the car once stood, soliciting eyewitnesses to come forth and fliers were distributed seeking information about the theft (see Figure 5.1). The Audi dealership was littered with fake breakaway glass and was immediately secured with police tape. Signs were posted in the vicinity of the store soliciting eyewitnesses to come forth and fliers were distributed seeking information about the theft. Unsuspecting real-world witnesses of the theft reported that they saw shady figures during the event. The footage of the incident from the security cameras was posted online (Barros, 2007). Just for good

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FIGURE 5.1 Sign at the New York International Auto Show. (Photo © Musante, n.d.)

measure, the marketing manager of Audi, Stephen Berkov, issued a press release announcing the VIN number of the “stolen” A3, asking the cooperation of anyone with information about its whereabouts, and promising not to prosecute in return. Subsequently, the game was to turn into a cross-country car chase. The online campaign that followed was nothing short of extraordinary. The experience was augmented by ads placed in major magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, The New Yorker; in television commercials, on billboards (see Figure 5.2), and in online banners that appeared on technology sites such as Wired, metafilter, dailykos, and lockergnome (Kiley, 2005). Soon enough, the blogosphere got a whiff of the story (by then, it was clear that it was a game) and began publishing updates about it. Several fan sites dedicated to the game also went up. The website, stolenA3.com, went live as the main portal for the campaign allowing people from all over the world to follow the unfolding story. Audi announced that it hired Last Resort Retrieval, a fictional art retrieval business owned by two of the characters in the game, Nisha Roberts and her boyfriend, Ian Yarbrough, to track down the car. Players could log onto the company’s website, LastResortRetrieval.com (see Figure 5.3), to learn about the backstory. The site contained thousands of emails, phone conversations, documents, videos, and pictures, backdated

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FIGURE 5.2 Missing car poster at Times Square. (Photo © Musante, n.d.)

over a year (PRN ewsWire n.a.). It was realistic enough that U.S. News and World Report contacted LastResortRetrieveal.com (see Figure 5.3) for professional help for the cases they were investigating about the items that had mysteriously disappeared or been stolen (B. Clark, personal communication, December 13, 2008). The design of these sites mixed fiction and reality by posting fictional information in places where people get real life news. The design team planned five live events, where selected players, referred to as retrievers, were assigned certain “missions.” These were mostly clandestine operations to retrieve the SD cards encoded with data and stored inside the showcased cars. The retrievers were selected through a hexadecimal job ad placed on Monster. com. Appearing as gibberish to the uninformed, these job ads appeared to potential players as secret messages mostly from Nisha. Through these cryptic ads, she recruited those who could assist in a certain city at a given time.5 Retrievers were then provided

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FIGURE 5.3 Last Resort Retrieval Home Page. (Photo © Heesch, n.d.)

with fake press passes to allow them to “sneak” into whatever event was occurring and were given Treo 650 smart phones (considered a novelty in the pre-iPhone era), pre-coded with a conference call number, along with ear buds to be used during the event so that the incidents could be streamed online for the rest of the players. The players also used the phones to text information among themselves and take pictures and videos of incidents taking place. Nisha collected these phones after events to gather information that the players recorded and then gave them brand new phones to keep instead. As players retrieved the SD cards hidden in the cars, they discovered that these cards contained parts of the plan for the art heist that was to take place at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. The SD card inside the car stolen from the car show contained the final piece of information needed to bring together all pieces of the puzzle to reveal the full plan for the art heist. The first mission, done entirely in-story (without player involvement) in Pennsylvania, modeled the kind of participation expected of the players. This mission was followed by a series of live events, the first of which

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took place in Atlanta; players were sent on a mission to go inside an Audi dealership and distract the salesperson while securing the SD card that was hidden inside the A3 on display. Video cameras placed around the car streamed the event live for those who were not participating. The players met Nisha at a Waffle House near the dealership prior to the event. Acting in character she briefed them on the plan. After successfully retrieving the card, players met with Nisha at the rendezvous point, where she uploaded the files to her server giving access to all players (not just those at the event) so they could work on cracking the puzzles in the files to piece together parts of the art heist plan. Similar events took place at the Coachella Music Festival, E3 Media and Business Summit, at a red carpet party at the Audi Forum in New York, and in Chicago on a boat ride where retrievers were tasked with finding missing parts of the heist plan and interacting with the game characters in person while doing so. The game concluded at the villain’s party in Malibu, California, in which all the characters and players who lived in the vicinity participated (Leavitt, 2005). All the live events were streamed online either by players themselves or by the creative team. In this manner, players were taking part in the actual investigation of the missing car and live reporting on the events while also recovering clues to a fictional but fascinating art heist. The creative team used these live events to mobilize every opportunity to weave this game world into the everyday existences and lives of the players. Players could meet the characters in person, interact with them, read about their back-stories, eavesdrop on their phone conversations, and help them in their objectives. In this fashion, players became an important agent of story development as well. Their actions moved the story forward as puppet masters adjusted the game according to the gameplay as it developed. In this respect, AotH is one of the few instances whereby a game successfully incorporates interactivity into storytelling. What the creative team was not prepared for was how fundamentally one of the live events, dubbed as the Coachella disaster, was about to change the course of the game and threaten to prematurely end AotH. In the section that follows, I focus on the Coachella incident that showcases how transgressive play could be meaningfully integrated into gameplay in the hands of masterful puppet masters.

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Coachella disaster: pulling victory from the jaws of defeat The primary attraction of ARG s stems from their ability to transform daily life into a magic circle of some sorts. To be sure, the improvisation of chaotic play and the ability to produce the unexpected adds to its appeal. But the unpredictability of gameplay, as exciting as it may be, does not always yield positive outcomes. To prevent undesirable outcomes, puppet masters resort to modeling behavior early on, making sure that players act within a given range of possibilities. However, no clearly defined rules allow players to know what the expected gameplay is at any point. These challenges are often overcome through the use of meta-communication, a conglomeration of discussions about the experience conducted within the framework that the game creates (Stacey, 2007). In this model, players use the game’s sites and communication engines to talk to one another and to the game’s characters, who treat players as other characters in the game and convey to them relevant information about the game. However, meta-communication can break down, leading players to unpleasant and sometimes even dangerous situations (Martin, 2008). I examine here a case that occurred in AotH where emergent gameplay spun the game out of control and threatened a premature end. That case occurred at a live event planned at a party that Audi was co-sponsoring at the Coachella Music Festival. The incidents that occurred at the event blindsided the puppet masters and breached players’ trust, requiring that puppet masters resort to outof-the-box solutions to make amends with the player community. Ultimately, events unfolded that required a substantial rewrite of the story’s end. As Clark describes it, the incident was a “classic victory drawn from the jaws of defeat.” As in other live events, five retrievers, who later became known as the Coachella5, were selected and given free tickets to the venue. The event was to take place later that night at a tent party that Audi was co-sponsoring with a magazine. As things turned out, the team ran into a number of problems primarily because the mission was being staged at a venue over which they had no control. The setup was similar to a few other live events that had taken place earlier. Two A3 models of different colors (red and white) were to be

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showcased that evening. The creative team prepared the web cameras and the wiring to monitor and stream online the events taking place around the red car where the mission was planned. But they found out at the last minute that the co-sponsor of the party changed the setup without letting them know in advance. The puppet masters were forced to change the position of the cars and rewire everything, but they were not able to position the cameras to see all the action. The co-sponsor brought in a famous DJ and had given out more passes than the capacity of the location permitted. To make matters worse, the promoters wanted the party to be instantly full, so they kept it closed off after the start time, trying to build a crowd outside by the velvet rope before letting anyone in. When the DJ started spinning loud music in the tent before anyone got in, partygoers got upset and started complaining. They began to push into the party, thinking they were missing part of the big act. Communicating with another AotH player who was not an official retriever, but who had obtained a pass to the Audi party from elsewhere, the Coachella5 found out that things, for some reason, “were about to get ugly,” likely because of the extended wait for reasons about which party goers were in the dark (Hitshermark, personal communication, January 20, 2009). Meanwhile, the creative team was trying to figure out how to salvage the situation to avoid a possible riot. Originally the Coachella5 were supposed to meet Nisha outside the festival grounds, in the parking lot, where they were going to be given their mission, one that required them to get into the party. But when things spiraled out of control, the creative team postponed the meeting with Nisha. Instead, they sent the producer, Myke, to find the players and hold them off until the mess at the doors had passed, but he couldn’t find them. When he finally did, he gave the players rainbow-colored wristbands allegedly to allow them entry to the party. However, these wristbands were not listed as valid anywhere on the grounds, which made the players curious about the Myke’s motives. Myke went from entrance to entrance, showing his wristband, talking to the security guards, unsuccessfully trying to gain access to the grounds where the Audi tent was located. But the party promoters were still trying to keep people out of the tent attempting to make it look like it was too full to admit those gathered outside. After a phone conversation and numerous failed attempts at entering the grounds where the tent was located, the

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creative team told Myke to come back and leave the retrievers to enjoy the music. The man returned to the Coachella5, and without giving players any explanation, told them that they would have to reconvene in several hours. Already suspicious of Myke’s motives, the retrievers felt like he was trying to lose them on purpose, when in fact, he was trying to buy time for the creative team to come up with an exit strategy (M. Monello, personal communication, January 6, 2009; Hitshermark, personal communication, January 20, 2009). Whatever the reason, the suspicious activity made the players all the more eager to keep track of him and more determined to get into the party. This misinterpretation of events was to become one of the instances in the history of ARG s where players have misread an everyday sign as an in-game obstacle that they have to overcome, and this “mistake” ultimately, became the Achilles heel of AotH. By then, everyone’s cell phone batteries were drained. Even if they hadn’t been, the poor cell phone coverage on the festival grounds made it nearly impossible for the creative team to communicate with the retrievers. The retrievers, in turn, were not able get consistent updates from other players. The Coachella5, as another player, J5, remembers, “did not have any direction and were pretty much left alone, so they tried to advance the plot by improvising” (J5, personal communication, January 20, 2009). It was the perfect storm that led to the complete breakdown of the meta-communication between the players and the puppet masters. Not knowing whether or not the party was truly closed off, Coachella5 treated the bodyguards blocking the entryway as a puzzle they had to solve in order to get in, and succeeded in doing so even before the party began. The creative team had not had a chance to finish the setup since it was unexpectedly changed earlier. The red car from which the retrievers were supposed to steal the SD card was still locked. Even if it had not been, it would not have mattered, because the puppet masters hadn’t had time to place the card inside the car yet (M. Monello, personal communication, January 6, 2009). One of the players, Hitshermark, noticed that the web camera that was supposed to stream the events online was facing the wrong A3 (the white one which was unlocked), rather than the one that she knew they were supposed to get into (the red one), which was being guarded by the security and was locked. Realizing there was no way to call off the events, the creative team

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played out the scenario. Hypothetically, they reasoned, since the web cameras had already been set up, Nisha would have been monitoring the place and would have noticed a group of people suspiciously poking around. But since she hadn’t met them prior to the event to give them their missions (as she was originally supposed to), she would have not known that they were indeed the retrievers she had hired. So the creative team asked her to act suspicious of the players’ motivations. The actress playing Nisha was good, almost too good. The improvised gameplay that followed left the players confused as to why Nisha was so suspicious of them, since technically, she was the one who had accepted their applications to be retrievers in the first place to help her out in this mission, even though she had never met them before. After a while, the retrievers spotted two goons, sent by the scripted villain, who were also after the information that the players were supposed to retrieve. Goons had been incorporated into the plot to add thrill to the game. Realizing that Coachella5 had to get the goons out of the party before they could even start looking for the SD card (and hoping the other car would be unlocked by then), Hitshermark gave the goons the old memory card from her camera, convincing them that that was the card they were looking for. While seemingly a good improvised plan at first, Nisha unapologetically called the retrievers out as traitors when she saw that the memory card had been handed over to the villain’s men. She was unaware that the card was a replacement. Being confronted by Nisha in this way turned the players off. From their perspective they had acted to assist her. Around 3:00 a.m., seeing that the car was still locked, the retrievers took their pictures in front of the car and sent it to the characters (of the story) with the note: “We were here. Where were you?” clearly a send-off to the undelivered mission experience (see Figure 5.4). A short while later, they received another text message letting them know that Nisha had called off the mission. Tired, thirsty, hungry, frustrated, and feeling betrayed, the retrievers went back home. The aftermath was a near-disaster. When the player community found out what had happened, they became angry. Although following the incident everything appeared to be all right in-game, there was a subtle resentment among the player community as to how their fellow-players had been treated. The player trust had been breached. The following day, the Coachella5 were delivered

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FIGURE 5.4 Coachella5 taking their pictures in front of the A3, “We were here, where were you?” (Photo © Hitshermark)

brand new Treo phones (which they would have gotten at the end of the event had they met with Nisha when they were supposed to), shirts, and other memorabilia as a way to make amends. Realizing that community members had turned against their primary character, Nisha, and were justifiably upset over how things went down, the creative team was acutely aware that more was needed to make amends. It took them a couple of days to sort out the complications that had arisen (M. Monello, personal communication, January 6, 2009). They canceled certain events and pushed back the dates of others. Because the Coachella5 had had a horrible experience during their mission, the creative team felt that it was important for this group of retrievers to be involved in the finale of the story to take place in Los Angeles. They did not want the retrievers to feel as though they had failed, but rather, they wanted them to feel comfortable about what had happened in the story (B. Clark, personal communication, December 13, 2008). With that in mind, the creative team decided to do something that had never been done before in any ARG ; they asked Hitshermark, a well-known player in the community, to become a character in the story. This decision had major implications for the ARG genre. Never before in an ARG had a player been asked to play a role as an actor in the story. For the first time, the sacrosanct curtain between the puppet masters and the players had been lifted. This redefined the rules of ARG s as a gaming genre.

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When asked, Hitshermark accepted a minor role but she did not want to be told anything about it until the last possible moment so she could play the game through to the end without insider’s knowledge. The team flew her to Los Angeles three days prior to the finale and asked her to record Ian getting kidnapped by one of the goons with her Treo phone. Then, because she had allegedly “seen too much,” she was filmed being kidnapped by someone else. As soon as the video was released, players were in shock and frantically tried to get a hold of her. Assuming that her phone was now at the hands of the fictional kidnapper, they asked how much ransom he wanted for the safe return of their friend. But it was too late. The next day, a newspaper clip was released to the players announcing the discovery of a body that the players immediately identified as Hitshermark’s. The impact was huge. In addition to redefining the rules of ARG s, Monello explains that this incident gave the story a dangerous feel, “like a Bourne Identity-type story” (M. Monello, personal communication, January 6, 2009). As one of the players remembers, this unexpected turn of events added personality to the gameplay, “Like one of our own was taken [by the kidnappers], it did cement it into reality a bit more. Just added a bit more believability to the whole thing” (J5, personal communication, January 20, 2009). By taking the innovative step of turning a player into a character, AotH was able to achieve a heightened sense of realism for its player base.

Coda ARG ’s seemingly open-ended nature, characterized by an absence of predefined rule sets for any given game and by the lack of a distinct game space, cultivates players who think outside-the-box when collaborating to solve the challenges presented to them. Oftentimes, this means that these games encourage rule-breaking habits leading to all manner of emergent gameplay at the heart of what makes the ARG experience memorable and rewarding. Transgressive gameplay, like the action that took place at the Coachella mission, bears the potential to dramatically enhance gameplay. The incidents that unfolded at Coachella presented a number of challenges to the creative team who was forced to go off script and rewrite the story on the fly to fit a situation that changed

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by the minute. When embarking on the Coachella mission, the players engaged in gameplay in accordance with the rules that had been established in the previous missions: distract the guard by the Audi, enter the unlocked car, find the SD card, and give the retrieved information to Nisha. Yet the context of this particular mission had unexpectedly changed due to reasons beyond the puppet masters’ control. With the breakdown on meta-communication, the players had no way of being able to read the cues presented to them accurately. As a result, the gameplay had to be negotiated between the players and the puppet masters in real time, leading to a genuine interactive fiction and emergent play unforeseen by either parties. Ultimately, transgressive play that emerged during the Coachella mission forced the puppet masters to rethink the existing rules of ARG s and tear down the curtain between the designers of the game and its players, a rule that has long been deemed to be sacrosanct for a vibrant ARG experience since the genre’s first incarnations. This dramatic action taken by the puppet masters enhanced the realness of the game for its players. The connection between reality and fiction became more visceral when players realized that one of their own had been kidnapped and killed at the hands of their fictional enemy. In this fashion, the game architects were able to bring about an outstanding gaming experience from a live event that portended disaster. In so doing, the creative team redefined the established rules of ARG gaming. Even though transgressive play has been traditionally deemed to be disruptive, it bears the potential to lead to an open-ended gameplay that can unleash opportunities for a game to grow and redefine itself. For ARG s, in particular, it opens the doors to new avenues for participatory game design whereby the game designer and the player collaborate in creating a compelling gaming experience as well as a more effective storytelling. One could argue that, Art of the H3ist became much more than a successful marketing campaign for Audi A3 because of this. It became a project that demonstrated experience design at its finest.

Acknowledgments My thanks to Mike Monello (Campfire) and Brian Clark (GMD Studios) for reviewing earlier drafts of this chapter.

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Notes 1 Retrievers were selected through a hexadecimal job ad placed on Monster.com. Appearing to be gibberish to the uninformed these job ads were in fact, posted to recruit players to attend the live events throughout the game. 2 The first ARG proper is attributed to a clever marketing campaign that promoted Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film, A.I. To pique the maximum amount of interest, the campaign was designed as an unannounced game discovered by a few attentive moviegoers who later formed a web-based discussion forum called the Cloudmakers. The Cloudmakers actively engaged with what came to be an unusual game called The Beast. The vision of its creators, Jordan Weisman and Sean Stewart, came to define the characteristics of ARG s as a gaming genre (Stewart, n.a.). 3 McGonigal (2003a) discusses various instances in The Beast in which players intentionally ignore accidental indicators of activities as a game so that they continue playing it as a “real life” event. 4 Perhaps one of the most dramatic examples of this scenario is a private game created annually for Microsoft employees. The Game, as it was called, resulted in a player falling into a mine shaft when he misinterpreted the clues and was left paralyzed (Martin, 2008). Transmedia producer Andrea Phillips explains that the only way designers can tackle challenges that might arise unexpectedly as a result of the unpredictability of life and play is by attending to context and environment, eliminating (as possible) ambiguity in cues and signs, and building in a kill switch if something goes horribly wrong despite the planning (Phillips, 2011). 5 In order to avoid negative PR or a potentially dangerous situation, the creative team ran a full background check for every applicant, and if there were more applicants than an event could support, they chose those who proposed the most interesting set of characters.

References Aarseth, Espen. 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergotic Literature. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Aarseth, Espen. 2007. “I Fought the Law: Transgressive Play and the Implied Player.” Presentation at the DiGRA 2007 Conference: Situated Play, September 24–8, Tokyo, Japan. Art of the H3ist. New York, NY: McKinney, 2005.

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Askwith, Ivan. 2006. “This Is Not (Just) An Advertisement: Understanding Alternate Reality Games.” MIT Convergence Culture Consortium. http://convergenceculture.org/research/c3_not_just_an_ ad.pdf “Audi: Art of the Heist.” Campfirenyc.com. http://campfirenyc.com/work/ audi-art-of-the-heist [accessed July 20, 2016]. “Audi: The Art of the Heist, Car Launch.” Jasonmusante.com. http:// www.jasonmusante.com/work/Audi.html [accessed July 20, 2016]. “Audi’s Art of the Heist.” Klausheesch.com. http://klausheesch.com/work/ audis-art-of-the-heist [accessed July 20, 2016]. “Audi’s ‘The Art of the Heist’ Campaign Launched With Stolen A3.” PRNewsWire. Last modified June 8, 2005. http://www.prnewswire. com/news-releases/audis-the-art-of-the-heist-campaign-launched-withstolen-a3-54585817.html Bakiog˘lu, Burcu S. 2014. “Bull In a China Shop: Alternate Reality Games and Transgressive Fan Play in Social Media Franchises.” Transformative Works and Cultures 17. Bakiog˘lu, Burcu S. 2015. “Alternate Reality Games—Definition.” The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Barros, Luiz F. “Audi, the Art of the Heist.” YouTube. Last modified May 23, 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD8lVJecOX8 Blair Witch Project. Directed by Myrick, Daniel and Sànchez, Eduardo. Haxan Films, 1999. Dena, Christy. 2007. “Creating Alternate Realities.” In Space Time Play, edited by Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matthias Böttger, 238–41. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag AG . Editors of Creativity. “Campaign of the Year: Audi ‘Art of the Heist.’ ” Advertising Age. Last modified December 16, 2005. http://adage.com/ article/special-report/campaign-year-audi-art-heist/47839/ Huizinga, Johan. 1950. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element In Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press. Iser, Wofgang. 1978. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Kiley, David. “A New Kind of Car Chase.” Bloomberg. Last modified May 16, 2005. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/ stories/2005-05-15/a-new-kind-of-car-chase Leavitt, Neal. “Audi’s Art of the Heist Captured Leads.” iMedia Connection. Last modified July 28, 2005. http://www. imediaconnection.com/content/6386.asp Martin, Jonathan. “The Game.” The Seattle Times. Last modified September 14, 2008, http://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nwmagazine/the-game/

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McGonigal, Jane. 2003a. “A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play.” Presentation at DiGRA 2003, November 4–6, Utrecht, the Netherlands. McGonigal, Jane. 2003b. “This Is Not a Game: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play.” Presentation at the Melbourne DAC 2003 Streaming Worlds Conference, Melbourne, Australia. McGonigal, Jane. 2005. “Alternate Reality Gaming: Experimental Social Structures for MMO s.” Presentation at the Austin Game Conference, Austin, TX . “Mike Monello—The Tightrope of creativity.” Storyforward. Last modified April 9, 2015. http://www.storyforwardpodcast. com/2015/04/09/069-mike-monello-tightrope-creativity/ Phillips, Andrea. 2011. “Hoax or Transmedia? The Ethics of Pervasive Fiction.” Presentation at South by Southwest, Austin, TX . Salen, Katie and Zimmerman, Eric, 2004. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: MIT Press. Stacey, Sean. “Undefining ARG .” Unfiction. Last modified November 16, 2006. http://www.unfiction.com/compendium/2006/11/10/undefiningarg/ Stacey, Sean. “The Puppetmaster-Player Communication Dynamic in Alternate Reality Gaming and Chaotic Fiction.” Unfiction. Last modified December 15, 2007. http://www.unfiction.com/ compendium/2007/12/15/the-puppetmaster-player-communicationdynamic-in-alternate-reality-gaming-and-chaotic-fiction/ Stewart, Sean. “The A.I. Web Game.” Seanstewart.org. http://www. seanstewart.org/the-beast-2001-a-k-a-the-a-i-web-game/ Szulborski, Dave. 2005. This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming. Pennsylvania: New-Fiction Pub.

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CHAPTER SIX

Designing and Playing Peer-Produced ARGs in the Primary Classroom: Supporting Literacies through Play Angela Colvert

In recent years, a number of studies have explored the ways in which alternate reality gameplay supports children’s learning in classroom settings (Carroll and Cameron, 2003; Niemeyer et  al., 2009; Connolly et  al., 2011). However, there has been little investigation into the educational benefits of engaging students in alternate reality game design (Chess and Booth, 2014), and pupils designing ARG s in mainstream school settings appears to be a rare occurrence (Colvert, 2009; 2015). If pupils are supported to become ARG designers what will they learn? What will we learn from them? How might ARG design and play shape and transform pedagogical approaches in formal education? This chapter will present a design-based account of the planning, making, and playing 155

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stages of an ARG from the perspective of a group of young 10- and 11-year-old designers who were supported by their class teacher to create an ARG for a class of 9- and 10-year olds in the same school. The findings of this study extend current conceptions of ARG design and will be of interest to those who wish to view the educational potential of ARG s from a fresh perspective. Drawing on analysis of the texts produced prior to and during play, interviews with the designers, and teacher observations, the chapter highlights how the designers identified their own key design principles and in doing so successfully tackled issues and challenges relating to fictionality, authenticity, and agency.

Aims and methodology of the research project The research project described in this chapter was undertaken in a large London primary school by a teacher-researcher who set out to investigate how engaging in the peer production of an ARG would support children’s literacies in a classroom context. In this study three dimensions of literacies were in focus: cultural, critical, and operational (Green, 1988; Beavis and Green, 2012). Operational dimensions of literacies related to the technical skills and understanding needed to manipulate and appropriate resources, cultural dimensions related to the way the children drew on their knowledge of discourses to shape meanings and the critical dimensions related to the way in which they reflected on and managed power relations. The three sub-research questions which shaped the investigations were: ●

How are the critical dimensions of the designers’ literacies demonstrated as they manage the rule systems of the ARG ?

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How are the cultural dimensions of the designers’ literacies demonstrated as they appropriate modes and media during ARG authorship?

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How are the operational dimensions of the designers’ literacies demonstrated as they shape the networked structures of the ARG ?

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The act of authorship is a process of communication which involves shaping discourse through the design, production, distribution (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001) and interpretation (Burn and Durran, 2007) of messages. Therefore, in order to answer the research questions, the analysis of data needed to extend the teacher-researcher’s understanding of the acts of meaning-making undertaken by the designers at each of the stages of ARG authorship: data was gathered throughout the planning, making, and playing process and included semi-structured interviews held at the end of the project, texts which formed part of the ARG produced prior to and during play, and planning documents. In order to better understand the social purpose of the texts which the designers produced, the teacher-researcher undertook thematic coding of interview data, which provided insights into the designers’ “interests” (Kress, 2010) and intentions. The thematic codes which emerged from this analysis then provided foci which informed the multimodal analysis of the textual components of the ARG .

Overview of the Mighty Fizz Chilla ARG The ARG discussed in this chapter was based on The Mighty Fizz Chilla, a novel by Philip Ridley (2002): a story in which a mysterious Captain asks a young boy for help in catching the monster which has ruined his life. The game-design project which formed the basis of the research positioned the teacher-researcher’s class of 10- and 11-year-olds (the designers) as expert game designers and storytellers. They were challenged to ‘bring the story to life’ and create a game for a class of 9- and 10-year-olds (the players) who would need to find the “Mighty Fizz Chilla” (or “MFC ”), the monster at the heart of Ridley’s story, before it reached the school. The teacher-researcher explained to the designers that in creating the game they would need to develop the narrative, consider the rules that would shape play, and create puzzles and problems for players to solve. The theme of the quest, a hunt for a monster, which was central to the novel, would also be key to the game, the difference being, of course, that in the novel the quest is narrated, whereas in the ARG the quest would be partially narrated by, and partially enacted by, the players (who had not read the novel). The designers understood that, through game design, they were to create a playful and exciting

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experience for both the players and themselves. In setting this brief, the teacher-researcher hoped that the designers would be prompted to present players with an “embedded narrative” (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004) and a “digital pretext” (Carroll and Cameron, 2003; Carroll and Cameron, 2009; Anderson et  al., 2009) that would support the dramatic participation of the players and the creation of an “emergent narrative” (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004) during play.

Planning After the class had discussed their initial responses to the brief, the teacher-researcher asked them to reflect on how they would set about constructing “a trail of clues” which would help the players to identify, locate, and catch the Mighty Fizz Chilla. The teacherresearcher prompted them to reflect on where the players might want to search for information about the creature and what forms of evidence they might seek. Drawing on their knowledge of the “new media landscape” (Kress, 2010), the designers decided to present visual, auditory, and written evidence to players, and that the clues should be dispersed across a range of media: websites (including message boards) film (such as webcam diary entries and CCTV footage) artifacts (such as books and maps) and live dramatic action (events occurring in the classroom and playground such as the school secretary delivering parcels to the players’ classroom). The designers also decided that the setting of Ocean Estate featured in Ridley’s novel should be given an online identity in the form of a community website. They suggested that this website could provide the players with access to a range of webpages and a variety of text types that they would produce, including newspages, tourist information sites, and the personal webpages of characters. They also suggested that the website should contain links to message boards which could support their communication with players. In the next planning meeting, the designers were divided into five working groups, each of which was responsible for communicating and designing in role as one of the novel’s characters: Mr. Chimera, Dee Dee Six, The Captain, Cressida, and Milo Kick. Each group was asked to consider how their character could help the players complete the quest and prompted to reflect on what information

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their characters could reveal. The class decided that only the Captain’s group and Mr. Chimera’s group would reveal information about the appearance of the creature as, in the novel, only these characters had first-hand experience of the monster. The designers also decided that the group representing Milo in the game should primarily support the players to locate the creature but that the Captain’s group might also provide information about its whereabouts (in Ridley’s novel, the character Milo is a young boy of thirteen, enlisted by the Captain to help him track down the MFC ). In contrast to the other characters in the novel, Cressida and Dee Dee Six know nothing about the MFC and so the designers decided that they should not reveal any information about the creature to players during the game. Instead the class decided that their groups would offer support to players as they tried to catch the creature. To further support the designers, the teacher-researcher constructed a planning aid to help the class to visualize the “web of clues” they were constructing. Each of the flies on the web represented a clue, a piece of information, which would reveal something about the identity and whereabouts of the creature or suggest actions the player might take to catch it. The spiders represented the players who would need to collate, interpret, and act on the information in order to complete the quest. A large version of this diagram was used during subsequent planning meetings and as clues were suggested by each group these were recorded on the images of the flies.

Making Each group decided to make websites, film footage, and artifacts which would reveal key information needed to complete the quest and help players to identify, locate, and catch the MFC . The process of making these texts was an iterative one which was informed by weekly whole-class planning meetings in which the groups updated each other, and the teacher-researcher, about their progress and sought advice about their developing ideas. These regular meetings supported the teacher-researcher in planning the resources needed for the following week, but more importantly, allowed for the cross pollination of ideas. These regular discussions often led to collaboration between groups, particularly as they began to shape the challenges they would set players.

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Identifying the MFC One of the first challenges the designers set for players was to identify the MFC . The players would need to find multiple references to the creature and construct an image of the monster. To support the players in this, the Captain’s group included references to the MFC on his personal webpages. These webpages were intended to support players to connect the references to “beasts,” “creatures,” and “monsters” found in other texts in the game with the name of the creature they were looking for. Both the Captain’s group and Mr. Chimera’s group also wrote online news articles which included witness statements alluding to partial sightings of the creature, intended to give the players hints as to the MFC s strange appearance: it had the face of a shark, stripes like a tiger, wings like a bird, and a horn like a unicorn. Significantly, both groups decided to withhold images of the MFC until the players were nearing completion of the quest as they felt this would help to sustain and extend the players’ imaginative engagements and investigations. In this way, the designers left conceptual gaps (Iser, 1980) in the narrative for the players to fill. Although they intended to give players access to the websites from day one of gameplay, artifacts which contained visual images of the creature such as a “wanted” poster (see Figure 6.1) and a book about “creatures of the deep” (see Figure 6.2) would be revealed later.

Locating the MFC Another of the challenges the designers set for the players was to locate the MFC . The players would need to obtain maps and plot the creature’s progress in order to ascertain the route by which it would arrive at their school. To this end, Milo’s group created an “ancient” map of the Thames (see Figure 6.3) which highlighted the whereabouts and dates of sightings. They also created a map of the sewers which led from the Thames (the nearest river to the school) to the drains in the school playground. In order to alert players to the existence of the maps and prompt them to ask for items, Milo’s group created a weblog in which Milo recounted finding a strange map on the beach. In shaping this challenge Milo’s group enlisted the help of the Captain’s group to create additional maps, asking them to record a weblog in role as the Captain, reporting that his maps had been stolen.

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FIGURE 6.1 Wanted poster created by the Captain’s group.

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FIGURE 6.2 MFC page in the Creatures of the Deep book collated by Mr. Chimera’s group. 

FIGURE 6.3 Map of the Thames created by Milo’s group.

Catching the MFC Once the players had worked out that the monster would arrive at the school via the sewer system and located the possible point of entry into the playground—one of the drains—they would need to decide the best action to take. Would the players choose to tame or kill the creature? Dee Dee Six’s group decided that their character, a

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scientist, would provide support to players in creating magic formulae. They produced personal websites in role which provided information, via one of the links on the homepage, about the potions she could create. They also created weblogs in which she discussed her frustration about a spilt potion which now prevented her from catching or taming a beast. These texts were intended to prompt the players to ask her for help in creating a potion. The group planned to deliver a book of “Mythical Recipes” to players when asked, and they enlisted the help of the class in writing potions for this book. Cressida’s group collaborated with Dee Dee Six’s in shaping this challenge, proposing that the ingredients needed should be delivered to players in a locked box which could only be opened by cracking a code on a rock they would produce. Cressida’s group produced the coded rock and Dee Dee Six’s created the cipher needed to crack it by writing some of the words in the potion book in the same code.

Playing During the week that it took to play the ARG , the teacher-researcher spent each morning in class with the players observing and prompting their engagement with the game. Each afternoon the teacher-researcher returned to her own class and supported the designers in reflecting on the next steps they needed to take, providing them with access to message boards so they could communicate with players. The game began when the teacherresearcher shared an email she had received from residents explaining that a beast on the loose had been causing havoc in Ocean Estate, and that now the creature appeared to be heading to their school. The email, which was a warning and a call for help, had been written by the young designers and the teacher followed a script she had been given by the designers when introducing the challenge. At the end of the email was a link to the Ocean Estate website and, after accepting the challenge with great enthusiasm, the players explored the multiple webpages in search for information. On day two the players began to post their findings and emerging theories and plans on the message boards, and started to ask the characters of Ocean Estate for help. On day three the designers made the link to the webcams live and, after watching these, the players asked the characters to send them artifacts featured in the film footage they had seen. On day four, the artifacts arrived in the post. There was

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great excitement among the players as they unwrapped the parcels and examined the contents. On day five the players collated all the information they had found, made the potion needed to catch the creature, poured it on the MFC s favorite food, and placed the bait by a drain in the school playground. After the weekend, on day six, the players discovered that the bait had gone and found an egg in its place. After much debate about what should be done with the egg, the players incubated it only to discover that, after one playtime, the egg had hatched and the monster escaped! However, inside the egg was a riddle which, once solved, would lead the players to a meeting with the designers. In this meeting, which signaled the end of the game, the designers congratulated players and presented them with individually designed certificates. They also shared “behind the scenes” information about how the game was produced.

Identifying key design principles At the end of the game, semi-structured interviews were held with each group of designers, during which they were asked to reflect on their experiences of the project. Transcripts of these interviews were thematically coded in order to identify key authorial concerns and three broad themes were identified: agency, fictionality, and authenticity. The theme of agency related to the ways in which rules were managed, fictionality was related to the ways in which the fiction of the Mighty Fizz Chilla was developed during the game, and the theme of authenticity was related to how the experience of the game was conceptualized as “play” by the designers and players. Intersecting these themes, three categories also emerged: managing modality (relating to broader themes of fictionality and authenticity), constructing coherence (related to both fictionality and agency), and directing action (relating to agency and authenticity). Once identified, these categories were explored further through analysis of the texts produced before and during play in order to discover more about how engaging with these design principles supported the designers’ literacies.

Managing modality The category of “managing modality” subsumed codes such as “believability” and “reality/fantasy” and related to broader concerns

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with the fictionality of the MFC and the authenticity of play. The term modality is drawn from the “social theory of the real” (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996) where modality “serves to create an imaginary ‘we’. It says, as it were, these are the things ‘we’ consider true, and these are the things ‘we’ distance ourselves from” (1996:155). The ambiguity of the reality status of ARG s, the blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction, has long been considered to be a defining characteristic of the genre. There is some research which suggests that this aesthetic design principle, which sees many ARG designers and players adhering to the mantra “This is Not a Game” (Szulborski, 2005; McGonigal, 2003), may have educational benefits for young people playing ARG s in class: increasing motivation (Connolly et al., 2011) developing children’s critical thinking (Bonsignore et al., 2012) and supporting role-play and the participants’ adoption of attitudinal roles (Carroll and Cameron, 2003). However, there has been little investigation into how negotiating and shaping the “reality status” of an ARG with and for their peers might support children’s literacies. Examining how the designers managed modality during the peer production of this ARG reveals insights into the cultural dimensions of literacies required in such an endeavor. The texts produced prior to and during play contained “modality cues” intended to situate the reader in relation to the text and to guide players’ attitude towards the messages. These modality cues signaled the “reality status” of the texts and shaped the relationship between game designers and players, supporting the audiences’ interpretation of the proposed “truthfulness” of representations. For example, linguistic modality markers, words like “might,” “should,” “could,” and “can,” indicated the different levels of certainty and assurance attributed to the utterance (Halliday and Hasan, 1985); “I will” has a higher modality, and makes a stronger truth claim than “I might” and “it could be a monster” has a lower modality, makes a weaker truth claim than “it is a monster” (Davies, 1997). Images also shaped the modality claims made by the game. For example, the designers sometimes decided to include naturalistic photographic images as, in some contexts, such images are often considered to be more “realistic” (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006) according to a “naturalistic,” everyday perspective. However, the texts presented by the designers were intended to cue the players to interpret the “fantasy” status of the texts.

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Before play, the designers reflected on how they would support players to accept and engage imaginatively with the fictional premise of the game. In one planning meeting a designer expressed her concern that the players might find it hard to invest the effort needed to “believe” in the fiction of the MFC : I just think the monster is erm the actual monster [the Mighty Fizz Chilla] isn’t really not believable type of monster I mean [. . .] I mean I [. . .] think that we could have bel[ieved] I think they could believe like a dragon or something but not a half shark half squid type thing cause I think it’s quite an hard thing to work with. Since the appearance of the MFC was so unusual, in order to support players to “perform belief” (McGonigal, 2003) the designers decided to adapt the fiction of the monster and make it appear more “plausible,” by framing it within more traditional fantasy conventions. They also considered ways to make the existence of the MFC more “possible,” by contextualizing the fiction within a science fiction narrative. In order to encourage the perception of the MFC as a plausible monster, the designers in Mr. Chimera’s group invited the players to draw on their cultural knowledge of mythical creatures. So, for example, the introductory paragraph on Mr. Chimera’s website referenced a range of fantasy animals and contained an explicit invitation to engage with the fiction: My name is Mr. Chimera this home page is for magic people. People witch [sic] believe in magic things and mythical creatures such As pixies, baby krakens, unicorns and many others. Read on and feel the magic tingle up your spine . . . Here the designers cue the player’s interpretation of the “reality status” of the site by using linguistic markers which signal the fantasy modality proposed by the game; the word magic is repeated three times and nouns like pixies, unicorns, and krakens are prefaced by the adjective mythical. By addressing the players directly, the designers situate them as participants in an imaginary world and suggest that if they explore the site and “read on,” then they should accept the fiction in order to get maximum pleasure from

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the experience and feel their spine “tingle.” Similarly, another of Mr. Chimera’s websites invited players to “contact” the character to find out more about “wondrous” and “fantasticle” creatures. Play would not be possible without the actions of players and their mock acceptance of the “magic.” Images on these webpages were also intended to cue the players to recognize and accept the fantasy modality of the game, depicting familiar monster “types” such as dragons and merpeople, as well as creatures they had invented such as the “Tropical Piranhadon” (Figure 6.4) and the “Flame-Headed Thunder Snake.” Common to all of the images on these sites were the non-specific backgrounds to the pictures, which impacted on the modality status of images. Kress and van Leeuwen assert that: By being ‘decontextualised’, shown in a void, represented participants become generic, a ‘typical example’, rather than particular, and connected with a particular location and specific moment in time. KRESS and VAN LEEUWEN , 2006: 161

FIGURE 6.4 Tropical Piranhadon.

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In this instance, each of the images is intended to be indicative of a type of creature. Mythological creatures are “types” which are not necessarily rooted in a particular time or place and therefore although the images are not all “naturalistic” the lack of background could actually be seen to strengthen the fantasy modality claims of the game. Before play the designers in Dee Dee Six’s group also made the monster seem more possible by constructing a science fiction narrative about cloning to explain its existence. Part of this narrative was revealed in a newspaper article, headlined “Fearsome Formulas,” which reported that: “On Tuesday this week we discovered a severe breakthrough in evolutionary science. Scientists have been working on a formula which will mutate animals to adapt to a much harsher environment.” The article went on to explain that: We think the government are trying to hush up a severe accident. We believe that some of the so-called ‘god sent formula’s’ have leaked in to the Thames. If we are correct we may have mutated fish swimming around. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) explain that “in the dominant discourses of ‘our society’, ‘belief’ has lower modality than ‘knowledge’, ‘dream’ lower modality than reality, and ‘religion’ lower modality than ‘science.’ ” However, the tentative tenor of this reportage actually serves to heighten the truth claims made by this article from the “naturalistic” perspective of “everyday reality,” as the reticence to state absolute truths is typical of serious news reports. Drawing on scientific discourse in this way can also be seen to lower, or temper, the fantasy modality claims made by the representations of more “fantastical” creatures. During play, modality claims were negotiated in online exchanges between designers and players. For example players often indicated their mock acceptance of magic through the use of winking emoticons at the end of their messages. In one such interaction, a player asked Dee Dee Six’s character a question about a potion and the designers responded in role (see Figure 6.5). Here, the player uses the word “potion” as a modality cue, indicating and accepting the fantasy modality of the game. A winking emoticon is also used at the end of the question, apparently

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FIGURE 6.5 signaling its playful nature. The response from Dee Dee Six’s group is consistent with the character as represented on her website. The word “fact” is used to emphasize the validity and certainty of the short statement. Additionally, the choice of font, combined with the fact that message is typed in bold and in capitals, serves to add to the tone of certainty and assertiveness, characteristics of the character’s scientific “world view” that are communicated in other areas of the game, such as on her personal webpage. Although the designers select the word “beast,” which has a lower fantasy modality than “monster,” the word “potion” clearly signals the fantasy modality claims being made. Occasionally the players contested modality claims, for example by pointing out inconsistencies they perceived in representations of characters. However, in the few instances in which the players’ expressed incredulity, the messages also simultaneously communicated the desire to play along by asking characters to provide further information or send objects by post (Colvert, 2009). Authoring transmedia texts such as ARG s poses particular challenges for young designers as they involve shaping complex tapestries of modality claims and counter claims. However, in this study the designers rose to the challenge—managing the modality of the game with their peers in sophisticated ways and supporting the players’ ability to “judge both the modality markers of the text and their significance” (Hodge and Kress, 1988: 130) during play. This communication with peers in order to perpetuate play

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demonstrated a deep understanding of the cultural significance of both the modes and media used in the ARG , and reframed the cultural dimensions of the designers’ literacies as they considered how to construct an authentic fiction with and for their peers.

Co-constructing coherence In coding the interview data, the broad category of “co-constructing coherence” subsumed codes such as “working out/interpreting clues,” “correcting player’s interpretations,” and “incorporating players’ ideas.” “Coherence” here refers to the “impression of textual unity which the reader interprets and recognizes based on the linguistic and contextual cues she receives” (Halliday and Hasan, 1985: 72). ARG design involves creating a tapestry of texts and a key concern for adult designers is often how best to utilize the resources at their disposal so that each part contributes to the whole (Jenkins, 2006). However, having produced a network of texts, it is only during play that designers are able to assess whether players are perceiving a coherent narrative: “when a reader perceives a group of sentences or utterances to form meaning in relation to each other, these are considered to be a text” (Halliday and Hasan, 1985: 72) and although the designers of ARG s can guide players’ meaning-making, they cannot accurately predict how texts will be interpreted or in what order they will be accessed (or indeed if some will be accessed at all!). Investigating the designers’ co-construction of coherence during play revealed insights into the operational literacies required to sustain game play through the construction of complex networked texts. In order to better understand how the designers created a coherent fiction in collaboration with players, the teacher-researcher analyzed the structure of the texts they produced, drawing on theories of cohesion outlined in the work of Halliday and Hasan (1976; 1985) and Lemke (2002). In particular focus was the way in which the designers distributed references to the MFC prior to play in order to support the players in making conceptual links, and to guide players’ interpretations. Halliday and Hasan’s work is primarily concerned with grammatical and lexical cohesion in linguistic texts, and therefore shaped the analysis of the written and spoken words in the game. Using Lemke’s (2002) examination of hypermodality supported the analysis of the cohesive ties within the hypertext of the websites.

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Prior to play all the designers distributed references to the MFC across modes, media, across the texts made by other groups and over time (Colvert, 2013). Many of the texts in the game did not explicitly name the monster on the loose, and instead referred to the MFC as a “beast” or “strange creature” or “monster.” To help players to recognize these terms as references to the MFC , and therefore recognize the significance of the clues, the Captain’s group included multiple references to it within and across the Captain’s personal webpages: Welcome to my Home page!!!! Strictly no Mighty Fizz Chillas allowed!!!! Trespassers will be harpooned! Curse Ye, Ye horrid beast, Curse Ye!!!!! Sorry, I’ve gone into another of my rages again. Anyway, this website will tell ye all about my adventures across the seven seas, and everything ye need to know about the cursed creature!!!! Ye know what I’m talking about, right? Ye don’t know?! It’s the Mighty Fizz Chilla!!!! Arghhh!!!!! In this short passage the designers use the phrases “horrid beast” and “cursed creature” as synonyms for the MFC , creating cohesive ties between the references and cuing the players to make conceptual links between these terms. On another of the Captain’s websites the designers introduce the acronym for the Mighty Fizz Chilla: “AS THE WORLD KNOWS IM HUNTING THE , THE . . . THE MFC STAND FOR MIGHTY FIZZ CHILLA .” It was important that the players understood and recognized the synonyms used to refer to the MFC as this would help them to identify important information in texts which did not explicitly name the MFC . During play it became clear that the players had misinterpreted some of the references to the MFC , and that this had resulted in them “discovering” multiple monsters. One player explained that they had discovered that were two monsters (“2m”) on the loose: “hi we have a lots more we no a abot we will find it there are 2m.” Other players proposed that there may be even more creatures on the loose and that Milo might be one of them: “Sorry to tell you this but they’re might be two monsters or even three! [. . .] I think that he [Milo] is the second monster fizzy wasp and that might help .” Although during play the designers often accepted unexpected interpretations if they would not adversely

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affect gameplay, in this instance they decided that it would be necessary to correct the players as they felt that including additional monsters in the game would make it too complex and difficult to manage. Cressida’s group wrote in role on the message boards in order to clarify that the phrase “fizzy wasps” used in the game was metaphoric. In these interactions the designers shaped and strengthened cohesive ties between references to the MFC to reduce ambiguity and in doing so asserted their authority over the possible interpretations of texts in an attempt to influence the players’ meaning-making. This ability to shape and manage the coherence of the ARG demonstrated the sophisticated operational dimensions of the designers’ literacies, as they mapped references to the creature across a complex network of texts both prior to and during play.

Directing actions The category of “directing action” included codes relating to “guiding players’ actions,” “correcting players’ actions,” “multiple possibilities,” and the “importance of [the] feedback loop.” Negotiating the power dynamic between puppeteers and players is a key concern for ARG designers and requires careful management, particularly as the actions of players can often be unpredictable (McGonigal, 2007). In ARG s designed for classroom use, teachers and researchers generally take responsibility for guiding players and deciding when to intervene. However, a number of researchers have begun to reflect more on how democratic approaches to ARG design and play might be achieved in the classroom, and more autonomy granted to student players (Niemeyer et  al., 2009). Investigating the designers’ management of the rule systems of the game, and their facilitation and guidance of the “consequential actions” (Laurel, 1993) of players revealed insights into the critical dimensions of literacies involved. The category of “directing actions” was investigated by undertaking discourse analysis of the message boards, as it was through online dialogue that the designers prompted and rewarded players’ actions. Although critical discourse analysis is primarily concerned with analyzing spoken and written language (Fairclough, 2003), the approach is compatible with multimodal analysis. In the analysis of the message boards, both the written text, and multimodal

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features such as font and color of words chosen, and the emoticons used were attended to. There were multiple “speakers” on the message boards, but these were grouped into two sets: players and designers. The designers would post messages for the players either to elicit or reveal information. Alternatively, they would respond to players’ calls for action or attempt to prompt players to act. Fairclough usefully distinguishes between ‘knowledge exchange’, where the focus is on exchange of information, eliciting and giving information, making claims, stating facts, and so forth; and ‘activity exchange’, where the focus is on activity, on people doing things or getting others to do things. FAIRCLOUGH , 2003: 105 Both types of exchange were analyzed in order to better understand the ways in which the agency of players was managed by the designers. This analysis involved investigating the impact of demands and offers constructed by the multimodal texts (Kress and van Leeuwen. 1996) on both the agency of players and designers, and on the authenticity of the quest; in this the function and effect of visual compositions and of linguistic statements (factual, predictive, hypothetical, and evaluative) and questions, were examined. Prior to play the designers modeled action and knowledge exchanges on message boards in order to prompt players to initiate action. Later in gameplay Milo’s group tried to prompt the players to ask for a map (in order to keep track of the creature’s location). To this end they produced some webcam footage with the intention of encouraging the players to initiate an action exchange. However, again, the designers did not make explicit demands for the players to act; instead they used evaluative statements and gestures to persuade the players to ask for objects. Fairclough suggests that “noting the implicit value-content of factual statements [helps] to make a link between the apparent orientation to knowledgeexchange and [. . .] a deeper orientation to activity-exchange” (Fairclough, 2003: 112). In the webcam footage the designer performing in role as Milo begins by stating “I was on the clifftop and I found this amazing map,” emphasizing the word amazing by

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lengthening its pronunciation. In addition to linguistic cues, the character of Milo employs gaze and gestures to draw the players’ attention to the items. Milo’s evaluative statements are combined with demands, both linguistic and visual, on two occasions: the phrases “Look at it. Innit. Cool innit.” and later “Looks cool, come on” are combined with the complimentary action of holding the map briefly up to the camera giving players just a glimpse of it. The designer performing in role uses tone and exclamations to indicate her excitement at possessing the object, thus suggesting the artifact’s value. Gazing at the map, Milo says “WOW ” breathlessly before continuing, “Cool innit.” Through attaching values to the map featured in the webcam footage, the designers are encouraging the players to ask for it. During play the designers entered into written exchanges with the players on the message boards, and in this way were able to give feedback on the players’ progress in the game, both positive and negative. A positive response involved “accepting an offer, carrying out a command, acknowledging a statement and answering a question” (Halliday, 2004: 108), whereas a negative or “discretionary” (Halliday, 2004: 108) response, might involve rejection of an offer of goods-and-services, refusal of a demand for action, a contradiction of information offered, or a refusal to provide information. The designers gave positive feedback on the message boards which let players know they were on the “right” track and were asking the “right” questions. If the players demanded actions that would further the quest then the designers responded positively with a reply that might reasonably be expected by the players. For example, if the players asked the characters to send items that were needed in the quest then the designers would agree to send them. This can be seen in the following online exchange between the designers, writing in role as Milo, and a player: Subject: Capt maps!!! Author: pig Hey Milo we got your video on the computer. We want the maps that you got because it could lead to where the moster will go and attack [sic] next. Please please can you give us those maps. We [need] the maps to caputure the monster before it attcks again. Author: Anonymous I will send it to onyx and he will send it to you ok

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In this sequence the player has initiated an action exchange and asked the “correct” question, asking for the map as the designers had hoped he would. This “expected response” (Halliday, 2004: 108) from players was in turn responded to by the designers with two statements indicating that the action would take place and the map be sent. If the players did not demand the items needed to complete the quest then the designers continued to prompt them to do so, and if the players asked for items that the designers were not expecting them to ask for, the designers might refuse to send them. It seems significant that the designers’ demands are disguised: they aim to tempt the players to act rather than demanding that they do so. The agency of players, the possibilities for consequential action, is implied rather than stated, and the rules governing play— that is the need to ask for items—are not made explicit. These communicative choices have implications for the ludic structure and authenticity of the game. In this ARG the designers presented the game as a space of possibility (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004) more akin to the experience of the free play of paidia (Caillois, 1961) than the rule-bound ludus (Caillois, 1961), despite the ludic structure which needed to be adhered to. In doing so the designers demonstrated the critical dimensions of their literacies, carefully and purposefully managing the power relations between themselves as original designers of the game and the players in order to perpetuate play.

Pedagogical and theoretical implications This chapter has begun to outline pedagogical implications of peerto-peer ARG authorship in a classroom setting by highlighting ways in which the process reframed the literacies of a group of young designers. However, the findings of this study have broader implications and demonstrate that ARG authorship in schools can offer a way of reframing curriculum provision too. This study also makes a theoretical contribution in shaping a hybrid model of ARG authorship which maps the key authorial concerns expressed by the young designers onto the cultural, operational, and critical literacies demonstrated in the process.

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Reframing cultural dimensions of literacies ARG authorship not only prompted the designers to reframe their own cultural literacies but also provided a useful pedagogical frame for supporting the cultural dimensions of children’s literacies in a classroom setting. Burnett et  al. suggest that “an empowering literacy education involves a recognition of the affective, embodied and material dimensions of meaning making” and that it should emphasize “that meaning-making is inflected by what we feel, what has just happened and who we are with, as well as how we are positioned by those people and things around us” (Burnett et al., 2014: 163). Designing the ARG with and for their peers heightened the designers’ awareness of the affective nature of meaning-making, particularly when they discovered that players were not responding in ways they had expected them to. The feedback loop in the ARG s enabled designers and players to communicate with each other, supported the negotiation of modality claims and meanings, and brought to the fore the socially-situated nature of communication. This reframing of literacy practices through ARG design is particularly pertinent for educational settings in which cultural dimensions of literacies are often sidelined in favor of a more cognitive stance, in which literacy is viewed as a skill to be learned, and understandings of fixed meanings are constructed and demonstrated by the individual rather than collectively.

Reframing operational dimensions of literacies ARG authorship also provides opportunities for reframing operational dimensions of literacies in formal education, foregrounding and supporting multiple authorship practices rather than the individual practices often valued in school settings. The process brings to the fore the provisionality of text making, characteristic of new authorship practices (Williams, 2014) rather than the “fixity of the types of ‘finished’ or ‘polished’ texts [. . .] produced within set time periods in specific lessons” (Burnett et al., 2014: 160): the texts in the ARG were shaped and reshaped in an iterative process of communication and, through the use of forums, both players and designers collaborated in developing the texts which supported play. Providing opportunities to construct

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coherence when creating and interpreting transmedia texts in collaboration with others is important if we are to support young people in becoming active contributors and participants in shaping the new media landscape. Burnet et  al. have suggested that “empowering literacy education values collaboration in text making and is emancipatory in the way it facilitates access to other’s texts and ideas” arguing that “institutions need to find ways of valuing collaborative work” as “working on texts together [and] embedding links and sources from multiple sites are all skills that the young are likely to need in their future lives if not in school” (Burnett et al., 2014: 163). This study required the designers to shape the operational dimensions of their literacies together as they created cohesive chains across work produced by different groups and individuals, often embedding hyperlinks on their own webpages to the webpages of others or referring to texts produced by other groups in their own textual productions. This is not a technical ability that was recognized in the formal assessments of school but was important to the project and to their understanding of how transmedia texts function and shape the experiences of readers/players.

Reframing critical dimensions of literacies In relation to reframing approaches to supporting critical dimensions of literacies in schools, ARG authorship provides a context through which power relations can be explored in a playful context. Burnett et  al. suggest that an empowering literacy education involves “exploring how you position yourself and how you are positioned by others through texts” and education needs: to support critical engagement to help children and young people understand how young people understand how texts and related materials position readers and players. Given that so much of life is played out online, this critical dimension needs to go beyond the text analysis so often associated with critical literacy to include a focus on how individuals can and want to be presented online, the kinds of communities they participate in and how these relate to ‘broader social and textual networks’ (BURNETT and MERCHANT, 2011:50). BURNETT et al., 2014: 164

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The process of ARG authorship outlined in this chapter provided a fictional frame in which designers adopted hybrid identities, performed online, representing themselves as fictional characters in the game whilst simultaneously adopting the role of real game designers who were responsible for guiding the community of players. ARG authorship thereby prompted the designers to explore the ways texts can prompt and direct the actions of others and in that can involve subtle, hidden, assertions of authority from participants. ARG authorship thereby reframed the critical dimensions of the designers’ literacies as, given the iterative nature of game design and play, the process required that they address issues relating to power, and carefully manage their own authority as the original designers.

Reframing play as a 3D literacy practice Although this chapter has primarily focused on how the designers’ literacies were framed by play, I argue that it is also useful to consider the findings of this study from the inverse perspective. How was play framed by the children’s literacies? Play in this study was conceptualized as a process of meaning-making which involved managing modality, constructing coherence, and directing action. This study suggests that not only can literacies be considered to have operational, cultural, and critical dimensions but play can too: during ARG authorship literacies are framed by play and play is framed by literacies. One of the contributions of this study is a new hybrid model of ARG authorship which maps three dimensions of literacies (Beavis and Green, 2012) onto the key design principles explored by the young designers during peer-to-peer play. This model of ludic authorship can be represented in a Venn diagram (Figure 6.6). This hybrid theoretical model of ARG authorship offers a fresh perspective on the interconnected relationship between literacies and play. Wohlwend argues that we should “redefine play as a literacy, a key component of ‘new basics’ ” (Dyson, 2006) [. . .] in twenty-first century literacies’ and suggests that this might go some way to “empowering teachers to reclaim curricular space in their classrooms” (Wohlwend, 2011: 127). It is hoped that this threedimensional approach to conceptualizing play as literacy, might also go some way to supporting teachers, and game designers, to

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FIGURE 6.6 Key authorial concerns, and associated literacies, demonstrated during ARG Authorship.

plan opportunities for peer-to-peer game design in classrooms and also articulate the rationale for such a move.

References Anderson, Michael, John Carroll and David Cameron. 2009. Drama education with Digital Technology. London; New York: Continuum International Pub. Group. Beavis, Catherine, and Bill Green, B. 2012. “The 3D model in action: a review.” In Literacy in 3D: an Integrated Perspective in Theory and Practice, edited by Bill Green and Catherine Beavis, 39–60. Camberwell, Victoria (Australia): ACER Press. Bonsignore, Elizabeth, Kari Kraus, Amanda Visconti, Derek Hansen, Ann Fraistat, and Allison Druin. 2012. “Game design for promoting

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counterfactual thinking.” In CHI ’12: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2079–82. Burn, Andrew, and James Durran. 2007. Media Literacy in Schools: Practice, Production, and Progression. London: Chapman. Burnett, Cathy, and Guy Merchant. 2011. “Is there space for critical literacy in the context of social media?” English teaching practice and Critique vol.10, no.1: 41–57. Burnett, Cathy, Julia Davies, Guy Merchant, and Jennifer Rowsell, eds. 2014. New Literacies Around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Caillois, Roger. 1961. Man, Play and Games. Translated by Meyer Barash. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe. Carroll, John, and David Cameron. 2003. “To the Spice Islands: Interactive process drama,” 5th International Digital Arts & Culture Conference. Melbourne: RMIT. Carroll, John and David Cameron. 2009. “Drama, digital pretext and social media in Research in Drama Education.” The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 14, 295–312. Chess, Shira, and Paul Booth. 2014. “Lessons down a rabbit hole: Alternate Reality Gaming in the classroom.” New Media and Society 16(6): 1002–17 Coiro, Julie, Michele Knobel, Colin Lankshear, and Donald Leu. 2008. “Central issues in New Literacies and New Literacies Research.” In Handbook of Research on New Literacies, edited by Colin Lankshear, Michele Knobel, Donald Leu, and Julie Coiro, 1–22. New York: Laurence Erlbaum. Colvert, Angela. 2009. “Peer Puppeteers: Alternate Reality Gaming in Primary School Settings.” Paper presented at DiGRA, Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory, Brunel University. www.digra.org/dl/db/09287.19018.pdf Colvert, Angela. 2013. “What is the MFC ?” In Virtual Literacies: Interactive Spaces for Children and Young People, edited by Guy Merchant, Julia Gillen, Jackie Marsh and Julia Davies, 105–25. New York: Routledge. Colvert, Angela. 2015. Ludic Authorship: Reframing Literacies through Peer-to-Peer Alternate Reality Game Design in the Primary Classroom. Unpublished PhD thesis. Institute of Education: University College London. Connolly Thomas, Mark Stansfield, and Thomas Hainey. 2011. “An alternate reality game for language learning: ARG uing for multilingual motivation.” Computers and Education 57(1): 1389–1415. Davies, Maire Messenger. 1997. Fake, Fact, and Fantasy: Children’s Interpretations of Television Reality. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.

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Dyson, Anne Haas. 2006. “On saying it right (write): ‘fix-its’ in the foundations of learning to write” Research in the Teaching of English, 41: 8–44. Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. Green, Bill. 1988. “Subject-specific literacy and school learning: a focus on writing.” Australian Journal of Education 32(2): 156–79. Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood. 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Routledge. Halliday, M.A.K, and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Halliday, M.A.K, and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1985. Language, Context, and Text. Geelong, Victoria (Australia): Deakin University Press. Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress. 1988. Social Semiotics. London: Polity Press. Iser, Wolfgang. 1980. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry. 2006a. “Game Set Interview: Henry Jenkins on the Responsibility of games.” http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2006/06/ gamesetinterview_henry_jenkins.php Jenkins, Henry. 2006b. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning. Kress, Gunther. 2010. Multi-Modality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2001. Multimodal Discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Edward Arnold. Laurel, Brenda. 1993. Computers as Theatre. London: Addison-Wesley. Lemke, J.L. 2002. “Travels in hypermodality.” Visual Communication 1(3): 299–325. McGonigal, Jane. 2003. “A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play.” Level Up Conference Proceedings: DiGRA 2003. Utrecht: University of Utrecht. www.digra.org/dl/ db/05097.11067.pdf McGonigal, Jane. 2007. “The Puppet Master Problem: Design for Real-World, Mission Based Gaming.” In Second Person: Role Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.

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Niemeyer, Greg, Antero Garcia, and Reza Naima. 2009. “Black cloud: patterns towards da future.” Proceedings of the 17th ACM International Conference on Multimedia, 1073–82. Ridley, Philip. 1992. Krindlekrax. London: Penguin. Ridley, Philip. 2002. Mighty Fizz Chilla. London: Penguin. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. 2004. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. Sutton-Smith, Brian. 2001. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Van Leeuwen, Theo. 1999. Speech, Music, Sound. London: Macmillan. Williams, Bronwyn. 2014. “Mobility, Authorship, and Students’ (Im) material Engagement with Digital Media and Popular Culture.” In New Literacies around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy, edited by Cathy Burnett, Julia Davies, Guy Merchant, and Jennifer Rowsell, 140–54. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge Press. Wohlwend, Karen. 2011. Playing Their Way into Literacies: Reading, Writing, and Belonging in the Early Childhood Classroom. London and New York: Teachers College Press.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Games Beyond the ARG Jeff Watson

Introduction In contrast to more capacious terms such as “big game” or “pervasive game,” the term “alternate reality game” (ARG ) refers to a very specific and well-defined form of interactive transmedia storytelling that “[takes] the substance of everyday life and [weaves] it into narratives that layer additional meaning, depth, and interaction upon the real world” (IGDA ARG SIG , 2006). In this paper, I will critique this kind of experience design, focusing on its emphasis on “top-down” transmedia storytelling and the effects this emphasis can have on limiting replayability, accessibility, and sustainability. Such limits are not always a concern to designers. Indeed, for those primarily interested in telling stories across platforms and contexts, these limits can in fact be strengths. But real-world games and other playful systems need not always be about telling stories (or “delivering content”); rather, and perhaps most crucially in education, innovation, and civic engagement contexts, such games can also be about empowering participants to tell their own stories and construct their own environments. From this perspective, the limitations the traditional ARG design posture imposes on replayability, accessibility, and sustainability are critical. This paper will explore these limits in depth, and will 187

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propose a more systems-centric (or “high process intensity”) “story facilitation” approach. To ground these reflections, portions of the discussion presented here will make reference to Reality Ends Here (USC School of Cinematic Arts, 2011), a creative collaboration alternate reality game that runs for 120 days each Fall at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA ). Like a strange mixture of Fight Club and a college A.V. club, Reality Ends Here involves secrecy, collaboration, and competition as players forge alliances, create and share media projects, collect and trade game resources, and jockey for position on league tables administered by a shadowy (fictional) organization known as “The Reality Committee.” Designed as an optional notfor-credit learning experience to accelerate peer discovery and the development of media-making literacies among incoming film, television, and interactive media students, Reality Ends Here prototypes a different kind of alternate reality game, and is an embodiment of the design philosophy presented here. While this paper is not intended as a postmortem or comprehensive exegesis of Reality Ends Here, the game will nonetheless serve as a touchstone for several key arguments. Unlike many ARG s both within and beyond the domain of education, Reality Ends Here involves relatively few curated narrative elements such as non-player characters (NPC s), scavenger hunts, puzzles, scripted events, branching or gated lexia, and so on. Rather, the game leans heavily on emergence to produce its narrative arcs and learning outcomes. Once players penetrate the game’s mysterious narrative “wrapper,” they discover a kind of mediamaking sport wherein the self-directed and collaborative production of media artifacts—films, games, art installations, and the like—is the central focus of the activity. For players, the ultimate objective of the game is not to explore or uncover a narrative world created by its designers, but rather to collaboratively and competitively create entertainment media of their own. Out of this creative activity, the “story” of a nascent community of media artists emerges. Reality Ends Here has had powerful effects on both individual learners and the overall network health of the SCA community (Stokes et al., 2012). Like a sport, and in contrast to many “traditional” ARG s, the story of a “season” of Reality Ends Here is not scripted or “puppet mastered” by the game’s creators; rather, it is told through the actions and energies of the players themselves as they engage with

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the rules of the game and with one another. This design orientation speaks to what John Dewey (1938/1997) identifies as the “intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education.” This relationship has long been understood as being crucial in the construction of learning environments. As Socrates suggests in Plato’s Meno, teaching is distinct from the mere delivery of content: rather, it entails creating the conditions necessary to assist learners in their own self-directed “discovery of the truth” (Plato, 1999). While a discussion of the design philosophy underlying Reality Ends Here may have its most apparent utility in the consideration of the design of experiential learning contexts, the reflections contained herein are intended to apply to all kinds of alternate reality game design. Desire and agency are at the heart of any playful system. Learning, play, and discovery are synonymous concepts. Words like “school” and “scholar” share a common root in schola (σχολή), the ancient Greek word for “leisure.”

Early ARGs: design patterns and limitations Reality Ends Here and other transmedial play experiences that minimize or eschew a “content delivery” approach in favor of more participatory and procedural modes of player engagement and narration are often colloquially classified as ARG s. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish these kinds of systems from ARG s “proper” on the basis of the fundamentally different approaches they take to participation and the generation of narrative. In the context of the present discussion, the primary observation to make in this regard is that the vast majority of ARG s may not actually be games at all. To be clear, it is not my position that “game” is a word that we can, or should, pin down to an exclusive meaning. Playing a game is more of an attitude than an empirically-measurable state. No definition would suffice to explain why we would almost universally agree that The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013), mancala, Year Zero (42 Entertainment, 2007), a hypertext fiction created with Twine, and “The Game” (that you just lost) are all games. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this paper, I will use the word to refer to a designed system of players, resources, goals, and rules. Consider some of the

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canonical definitions of games. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (2003) define games as “[systems] in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that [result] in a quantifiable outcome” (96). Roger Caillois (1953/2001) defines games as free activities “governed by rules [and] make-believe” (10–11). Avedon and Sutton-Smith (1981) define games as “an exercise of voluntary control systems in which there is an opposition between forces, confined by a procedure and rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome” (7). Despite the variations in nuance among these definitions, each emphasizes the central role of rules in governing the flow of a gameplay experience. This central role is perhaps easiest to perceive in simple non-digital games. For example, the schoolyard game of tag usually has a rule that assigns the role of “it” to one or more players. Depending on the schoolyard, different things will happen to you if you are touched by “it.” Some schoolyards have the rule that if you are touched by “it,” you are out and must go do something else; in other places, if you are touched by “it,” you become “it”—or you become another “it.” In each case, the rules of the game, in combination with the social and material contexts within which it is being played, meaningfully give rise to the experience of that particular game, governing how it unfolds from beginning to end. This tight feedback relationship between the rules of the game and the runtime experience of the game can be found in almost all predigital games (and in many digital ones, too). As I will discuss below, many of the replayability, accessibility, and sustainability issues inherent to ARG design can be mitigated by taking a more rulesetdriven approach akin to that taken in games like tag. For the majority of ARG s from the 2000s and early 2010s, gameplay is not rooted in a ruleset in the manner of games like tag, chess, hockey, Munchkin (Steve Jackson, 2001), or Diplomacy (Allan B. Calhamer, 1958/2008), but rather in the strategic and responsive curation of narrative materials by producers (or “puppet masters”). In these ARG s, players discover narrative figures through an encounter with one or more access points embedded in realworld contexts. These access points, known in the parlance as “rabbit holes,” lead players into a dynamic matrix of story components distributed across various kinds of digital and physical media. By exploring these components, players discover discrete and linked puzzles and challenges that serve both as impetus to connect with other players, and as time- and context-sensitive

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content bottlenecks. In order to advance the narrative of an ARG , players often find it necessary to work together, first by assembling into affinity groups via both official (i.e., game-sanctioned) and unofficial (i.e., player-created) social media structures, and then by tackling puzzles and challenges collectively, leveraging the range of competencies, geographies, and biographies present in the player population. As puzzles are solved, the ARG ’s puppet masters release successive cycles of story and interactivity, tweaking their approach along the way based on the observed behaviors and emerging collective intelligence capabilities of their players. This process repeats itself until the narrative concludes, typically with the launch of a product or service. At this point, official support for the player community is usually terminated, primary online game assets are deleted or otherwise rendered inactive, and the ARG ends. Early participants and producers of ARG s compared their emergence to watershed moments in pop music (Andrea Phillips in Watson, 2010) and cinema, with some going so far as to suggest that the ARG was the defining narrative mode of the turn of the century (The Cloudmakers, 2010). Indeed, especially in the context of the early 2000s, ARG s represented a uniquely transmedial mode of interactive storytelling. When playing an ARG , participants consume story in a variety of modes, via a range of devices, channels, settings, and practices. This nonlinear and fragmentary or distributed consumption-participation pattern was seen as a logical outcome of millennial shifts in media engagement habits, and was used by some futurists as a model for how stories might be created and consumed in the dawning era of ubiquitous computing and social media. Other observers, invested in visions of participatory and collaborative storytelling, noted that, unlike typical consumers of cinema, television and other few-to-many media forms, the players of ARG s are necessary and constitutive elements of the work. That is, in an ARG , audience participation is ideally an essential and formative component of the text. To practitioners and theorists with a stake in participatory culture, the notion of an interactive storytelling form conceived from the ground up as a means of facilitating the collaborative production of media artifacts provided a “perfect illustration of all of the principles . . . shaping the media landscape at the present time” (Jenkins, 2004). Further, ARG s were viewed as fitting into a long tradition of spatially and temporally distributed narrative forms, and for some, their emergence indicated

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the arrival into the mainstream of practices that had hitherto been relegated to fan subcultures and marginal art movements. Like the critical interventions of Situationism, which sought to reconfigure public space as a “new arena for creation” wherein “unforeseen games will become possible through the inventive use of material conditions” (Nieuwenhuys, 1958), the ambiguously bounded play of ARG s has the ability to produce dramatic shifts in subjectivity that “[sensitize] participants to affordances, real or imagined,” “[make] all data seem connected, or at least plausibly connected,” and “make surfaces less convincing” (McGonigal, 2003: 43–4). Similarly, ARG s promised to do to mainstream storytelling what “distributed narratives”—experimental narratives spread out across “time, space, and the network” (Walker, 2004)—had done to avant-garde and electronic literature: Distributed narratives break down the aesthetics of unity we have followed for millennia. They take this disunity a step further than the bricolage of postmodernism, by collapsing the unity of form as well as that of content and concept. Yet perhaps they also point to a new kind of unity: a unity where the time and space of the narrative are in sync with the time and space of the reader. WALKER , 2004: 11 Finally, by bringing together once-disparate practices such as puzzle design, performance art, and cinematic storytelling, ARG s were seen as being on the cutting edge of interdisciplinary new media thinking. Great things were forecast, including the use of ARG s in establishing and leveraging collective intelligences in order to solve real-world problems. While ARG s may have proven that they have the potential to mobilize elite groups of “lead users” who can co-create content and evangelize for a brand or cause—and that they can quickly generate alarmingly efficient collective intelligences—they have, perhaps understandably, failed to live up to some of the high expectations set out for them at the turn of the century. ARG s have not seen the kinds of growth in popularity that other forms of interactive media have seen over the past fifteen years (Dena, 2008), nor have they proven to be a particularly effective way of building lasting communities or collaborative practices, especially when compared

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to other approaches to organizing and maintaining collective action. This “failure” of the ARG to live up to the high expectations that attended its emergence can be attributed to three interrelated design practices, namely: 1) that ARG s are constructed as temporallybounded event-driven experiences; 2) that ARG s treat their core audiences as monadic “collective detectives” rather than groups of diversely motivated living and breathing individuals; and, 3) that despite the decidedly playful and improvisatory character of the relationship between puppet masters and players, ARG s are ultimately not deeply generative textual systems, but rather vehicles for delivering curated story materials. Many of the problems associated with ARGs can be traced back to their status as temporally-bounded and linearly-unfolding experiences. As producer Jim Stewartson puts it, “[ARGs have historically been] essentially rock concerts. Very large, real-time, elaborate experiences that were really cool and really fun for the people who were involved with them” (Morris et al., 2009). This event-like design clearly eliminates much of the potential for replayability, just as it exacts almost equally dire consequences on accessibility and sustainability. Indeed, the preponderance of the accessibility limitations of the ARG are related to its temporal structure. In a typical ARG, players who don’t have enough time at the right time to participate can find their experience “spoiled” by those who do. Even players with high levels of interest in the activity and a strong desire to participate in the ARG’s challenges can be reduced to lurking on message boards or merely following along with puppet master- or player-created story summaries if they don’t have the time required to keep up with hard-core players. Consequently, the vast majority of the players of traditional ARGs aren’t “players” at all, but are rather more like spectators, albeit very multimodal ones: Of the millions of people who ‘experience’ an ARG only tens of thousands actually play them [and] the rest read the texts created by players. Now, as I have stated many times before, this is a very interesting model of audience tiering and shows a preference for player-created narratives above producer-created ones (indeed, the desire for a linear narrative above a fragmented one) . . . but the large numbers often claimed . . . are not indicative of the people who actually play these forms. They are hardcore games

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that only a (relatively) small amount of players can actually play directly (due to skill, time and access obstacles). I don’t see how a form with such accessibility issues is the ultimate form. DENA , 2007 Marcus Montola et  al. (2009) point out that this “pyramid of participation” enables transmedial designs wherein “different play modes contribute to each other and support an experience that is larger than its parts” (121). In such an arrangement, spectators coexist with variously-engaged players, wherein hard-core participants act as the “stars” of the ARG ’s narrative; puppet masters and serious players document the actions of the hard core in real or near-real time; and the rest of the player/spectator base consumes this documentation serially. This kind of structure has been experimented with to varying degrees of success. However, since this and other kinds of “tiering” (Dena, 2008) demand the production and management of numerous additional layers of content, any benefits in terms of accessibility can be outweighed in terms of additional limitations on sustainability. In order to achieve a tiered design, a puppet master might create very difficult puzzles and extremely obtuse narrative content for hard-core players; somewhat easier puzzles and relatively comprehensible narrative content for casual players; and easy-to-solve puzzles with highly legible narrative content for neophyte and incidental players. The usual result is that the more that designers shift an ARG toward a tiered design, the more work they have to do to initiate and support the overall system. Further accessibility and sustainability problems emerge from the manner in which ARG designers traditionally address their players. As Sean Stewart notes in an interview with members of The Cloudmakers (2010), “[the] premise from Day One was that the entire Internet should be considered as a single player; that we could put an ad in a newspaper in Osaka in the morning and have some kid in Iowa using that information by supper time.” That is, while individual players in an ARG are putatively free to privately interact with characters or artifacts from the game, puzzles and challenges are designed with such complexity that any information gathered from these interactions often needs to be shared with and processed by a collective in order to be properly contextualized and rendered sensible in a timely fashion. While this design has the effect of encouraging the formation of collective

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intelligences—and clearly satisfies Levy’s (1999) notion of collective intelligence as being “the mutual recognition and enrichment of individuals” (13), at least in terms of how individual players can contribute according to uniquely held competencies—in the context of a time-based, event-driven, relatively closed information system such as an ARG , it also decreases the degree to which new players can easily access and enter into the activity. That is, once a functioning “collective detective” (The Cloudmakers, 2010) has been established, it will tackle the challenges presented by puppet masters with a self-refining efficiency that can discount the need for new members. Knowledge production structures populated by elite players with available time, an appropriate range of competencies, and relevant social and economic capital will gather, process, and analyze data faster and more thoroughly than non-integrated outsiders ever could. As the ARG progresses, prospective members without adequate reputation within the player community and in-depth knowledge of “the story so far” (Dena, 2008) will naturally find it increasingly difficult to find a role within the collective. To illustrate this problem, consider the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA ) Network Challenge crowdsourcing experiment (2009). In this experiment, ten red weather balloons were placed in visible—and often quite remote—locations around the United States, and the public was challenged to find the balloons using any legal means necessary. Nine hours after the event commenced, all ten balloons had been found by a team from MIT. In this instance, the team, which had conscripted around 5,400 balloon spotters via social media and various public entreaties, served its purpose and was quickly dissolved. But what if the DARPA Network Challenge had been only the first of many challenges in a long-term experience—that is, if it was merely the first puzzle of a three monthlong ARG ? How would this emerging collective intelligence have evolved? Would it have become more broad-based like Wikipedia, exploring the diverse interests and passions of its user base, or would it have gravitated toward greater efficiencies, tighter working groups, task-oriented committees, and editorial sub-teams? According to fieldwork conducted by McGonigal (2007), the latter may be more likely: rather than becoming more inclusive or expansive, the group might in fact become increasingly specialized along particular “threads of investigation” tied to the core problems

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with which it was presented. The puzzles in ARG s are ultimately very specific: unlike Wikipedia, which is almost completely openended, the knowledge production demanded by an ARG is usually focused on a particular storyworld and an associated set of puzzles with clearly defined solutions—much like the narrow-but-complex balloon-finding task of the DARPA experiment. Further, since the puzzles in ARG s are often cumulative and informed by the solutions to earlier puzzles, those who were on board for the first discoveries—in the DARPA example, these individuals would be those who understood the MIT methodology by which the original 5,400 balloon spotters were coordinated and the information they provided was processed—would likely be more valuable and acceptable assets to the team than newcomers unaware of those practices and procedures. Somewhat ironically, then, this kind of collective intelligence design, when applied to closed information systems such as ARG s, can have steeply diminishing returns in terms of community building. Further, as soon as the producers of the ARG stop delivering fresh content, the increasingly tight-knit collective intelligence will no longer have anything to be “collectively intelligent” about—and, as with the 2009 DARPA experiment, it will usually rapidly dissolve.

Gameplay in Reality Ends Here Many of the issues identified above can be mitigated by moving away from the curated content design mentality characteristic of early ARG s, and toward a more procedural or rules-based approach. To understand what such an approach might look like, consider the experience of playing Reality Ends Here. Imagine you are a recent high school graduate preparing for your freshman semester at film school. In the middle of the summer, you receive several anonymously sent postcards instructing you to “carry your cards with you at all times,” and directing you toward a website. You visit the website and find nothing more than a countdown timer on a black background. At an orientation luncheon before the first week of university classes, you find a fragment of a cipher in a fortune cookie. Glancing around, you notice the student next to you has also received a fragment. Putting your heads together, the two of you discover that the combined fragments spell out the location of an office somewhere on

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campus. You head to the office. Waiting for you are several sophomore students, surrounded by old filmmaking junk and movie posters. One of the sophomores gives you a small kraft envelope containing ten custom-made collectible cards. Your friend also receives one of these envelopes, which you quickly learn contains a different assortment of cards. You notice that the address of the website you visited earlier—the one with the countdown timer—is stamped on the back of the envelope. The sophomores tell you to visit the website again, and that all will be explained there. Cards in hand, you and your friend, now joined by another curious student you met at the “Game Office,” find a place to sit and visit the website, which has changed since your last visit, and now prompts you to register for an account. Once registered, you gain access to the full website, and quickly find an explanation describing how the game works. You learn that the game is a kind of weekly competition (or “jam”), overseen by a secret association known only as “The Reality Committee,” in which you will make films, games, interactive art, and other kinds of media—which sounds great to you, since those are exactly the kinds of things you’ve decided you want to do with your life. To participate in the competition, you must use the cards you received to generate creative prompts, and then make (and share on the game’s website) media projects based on the prompts you generate. You learn that there are two basic kinds of cards, and you’ve got a few of each in your envelope. You have a couple of green “Maker” cards, which specify a particular type of media artifact, such as a short film, a board game, a music video, a “happening,” or a meme, among many others. You also have a handful of pink “Property” cards, which specify themes, places, things, archetypes, and other elements that might appear in a film or game or other work of art: big picture stuff like “Love” and “Hubris,” along with more quotidian elements like “A Horse” or “L.A. Harbor.” The rules on the website explain that, by connecting one Maker card with one or more Property cards, you can generate a creative prompt, and that you will score points in the game if you make a media project based on that prompt, document it, and share the documentation to the game website through an online submission form. The more cards you integrate into your creative prompt, the more points your finished project will be worth, so long as you can “justify” the use of each card to your fellow-players in a video statement you must make before the project can appear on the

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website. You can make as many (or as few) projects as you like, and if you work with others—which by this point seems like an advisable thing to do, and maybe also a fun thing to do—everyone who works on the completed project will receive the full points value of the project. And there’s one more thing: the Reality Committee promises to make something “unusual and interesting” happen to those who score the most points during each week of gameplay. You jump in. Partnering with your new friends, you pool your cards and try out some combinations. Not all the cards connect together the same way, so it takes some time to figure out a combination that works and that satisfies your newfound team’s creative urges. You finally settle on using the “Film Noir” Maker card in combination with almost a dozen Property cards, some of which suggest elements to include such as “An Elevator,” “Betrayal” and “A Magic Trick.” Later that week, your team fleshes out its concept and organizes a DIY production. You do the shooting (on your smart phone), a teammate does the editing (on her laptop), another takes charge of lighting (using lamps “borrowed” from her dorm), and you drag in some other new teammates to act and do the music. In the end, you come up with an interesting little black and white love triangle film noir short that features a key scene in an elevator and involves a backstabbing magician. Perfect. You submit it to the game website, drop by the Game Office to record a “justification video” wherein you explain how each card you used informed your project, and watch as your work is posted to the game website. You notice that you’re not the only ones participating. There are other teams submitting projects, too. The leaderboard competition heats up. You notice other teams shooting films and pooling cards. The mysterious Reality Committee tweets links to the projects they think are interesting, and you’re thrilled when they tweet the link to your short. Despite the intense competition, and thanks to another project you manage to squeeze in before the weekend, you end up near the top of the Weekly Leaderboard. As the week comes to a close, you receive a brief businesslike message from the Reality Committee. “The Committee approves of your efforts,” they write. “Find your way to the corner of Jefferson and Figueroa at 5:00 p.m. today and look for our signal.” Not knowing what to expect, you follow the message’s mysterious directive. Once at the corner, you find yourself with several of your fellow students: two of them people you’ve collaborated with, and two

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others from other groups. The five of you, the highest scoring players for the week, wait for the Committee’s “signal.” Eventually, a vehicle bearing the Committee’s logo—a logo you recognize from the website and from those strange postcards you received months ago—pulls up next to you. You get in. The vehicle takes you across town to a deserted café. Two strangers wearing carnival masks sit in the corner. Your group—unescorted, uninstructed, and maybe a little freaked out—eventually decides you should approach the strangers. They remove their masks and reveal that they are alumni of the film school and the designers of a well-known video game. They invite you to sit and together you discuss the life of the artist. When you return to your dormitory later in the evening with news of this experience, your fellow students wonder what strange experience awaits at the end of the next week. Someone who saw your film noir short asks you if you want to collaborate on another project: it seems you might have found another Godard fan amidst the student body. You take out your cards and get to work brainstorming new ideas. In this manner, Reality Ends Here unfolds for the duration of each Fall semester (approximately 120 days) at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, yielding hundreds of media projects, social connections, and memorable experiences. Not all students play, but those who do—typically around half of the incoming cohort—play hard, sometimes participating in upwards of 25 projects over the course of the semester (Stokes et al., 2012). As the game does not depend on the unfolding of a single master narrative, play is largely asynchronous, based on the play styles and schedules of individual players and/or self-assembled player groups. Card play, media production, and online engagement may occur at any time, as these activities are driven by the game’s ruleset rather than time-sensitive curated story elements. Further, once it is underway, the game proceeds in weekly cycles, beginning on Sunday evenings, when the Weekly Leaderboard is reset to zero. This weekly competition enables new players to join in and participate on a level playing field regardless of how long the game has been running for prior to their induction. The weekly cycles in Reality Ends Here also establish a narrative rhythm for the game as player activity naturally ramps up to a climax as the end of each week approaches. Narrative emerges out of these climactic moments, as players or player groups may come out of nowhere to win a week, or fall to the wayside as other groups rise to prominence—among many other possible

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outcomes. This structure is unlike the traditional ARG design pattern in two crucial ways: first, players may join (or leave) the game at any time and still have a complete and fully-legible experience; and second, every action a player takes meaningfully impacts the “story” of the game, since the story is about them instead of some ersatz fictional construct.

Process intensity and player agency Reality Ends Here is an example of what might be called a “high process intensity” ARG . Video game designer Chris Crawford defines process intensity as “the degree to which a [game] emphasizes processes instead of data” (1987). Games that produce player experiences primarily via rulesets (or “procedures”) can be said to be high in process intensity, while games that produce player experiences primarily through the interactive deployment of sequenced or networked story elements can be described as being high in data intensity. ARG s usually belong to the latter group insofar as they typically concentrate on delivering a “story” that has largely been determined in advance by the game’s creators, albeit in a highly nonlinear and interactive format. This is fine; not all games need to work the same way. But for activists, educators, independent artists, and other designers looking to effect a sustained and sustainable activation of the participatory energies of specific populations, to employ high data intensity/low process intensity approaches to generate and manage interactivity is to invite rapidly ballooning content-curation and community management problems. Such problems can quickly overwhelm all but the most well-funded of projects. Indeed, it is not happenstance that the ARG began as a big-budget Hollywood advertising technique: its very structure demands a high level of production capability, particularly when the design objective is to create sustained and intensive player engagement. In this regard, much of ARG design is reminiscent of early experiments in electronic literature and interactive cinema. These experiments initially sought to create vast explorable narratives via branching story trees. However, artists who took that approach quickly discovered that to do so meant writing or shooting orders of magnitude more material (or “lexia”) than is required in the

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creation of a standard linear novel or film. To create even the faintest illusion of player agency, the creators of branching narratives needed to develop so much content that in some cases it exceeded the limits of the storage media they had at their disposal. For example, the interactive movie-game Dragon’s Lair (Cinematronics, 1983) needed a total of 27 minutes of animation stored on multiple laserdiscs to provide an interactive experience that lasted for a maximum of 6 minutes (Hunter, 2007)—and even then, gameplay consisted of little more than making a handful of left-or-right decisions about which direction the protagonist should move. Like many ARG s, games such as Dragon’s Lair are high data intensity/ low process intensity games: they shuffle around a lot of data or content (the animated video clips that the player triggers through making choices), but don’t have very complex procedures of play or rulesets (the only “rules” involved are those that determine what video clips are played when the player moves the joystick). Compare Dragon’s Lair to an even older video game, Rogue (Michael Toy and Glen Wichman, 1980), a procedurally-generated dungeon-crawler that continues to inspire game designers to this day. Rogue is a low data intensity/high process intensity game. In Rogue, the virtual world is generated on the fly at runtime via an algorithm. Instead of devoting limited computational resources to storing and displaying pre-rendered content (as in Dragon’s Lair), the designers of Rogue use a compact ruleset to create their game world, producing an expansive and endlessly replayable world of fantasy adventure and tabletop RPG -style interactivity that would have been technically impossible to produce using pre-made dungeon scenarios given the limited storage resources of early 1980s home computers. Despite being made for free by hobbyist programmers, the parsimonious use of algorithms rather than branching content trees resulted in Rogue having much more interactivity and depth than was presented several years later by the spectacular but ultimately simplistic and deterministic left-or-right decision-making interface of Dragon’s Lair. Regardless of whether they are computationally mediated, one of the real superpowers of games is their ability to create dynamic interactive experiences through rules rather than archives of curated content. Approaching the design of alternate reality games from this perspective opens a range of new possibilities for producers. Perhaps most significantly, this approach can confer a more meaningful kind of agency onto players than can

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other approaches: instead of limiting the roles of players to decoding, parsing, and assembling pre-curated story components so as to reveal a story that has been constructed by someone else, high process intensity games can put players at the heart of the story itself, leaving its unfolding up to them, rather than the game’s producers. This impact on agency has significant implications regarding the kinds of systems design that can be employed in ARG s. A game that is designed to tell a story through the delivery of curated media artifacts typically has a low process intensity and a high data intensity—that is, it generates play experiences and narrative figures less through the emergent properties of players interacting with a ruleset than through the pseudo-interactive presentation of premade elements (or “data”). For games seeking to enable and empower players to tell their own stories (that is, to meaningfully direct and define the spectacle that shapes and constrains the use and identity of the contexts within which the game takes place), designs that involve the deployment of curated multimedia assets can be rejected in favor of designs that exhibit high process intensity. In short, high process intensity designs maximize the degree to which players, rather than designers (or puppet masters) are in charge of the emergence of narrative. In the context of long-term ARG s in particular, high process intensity designs can be much more accessible, sustainable, and replayable than low process intensity games. They can be more accessible primarily because they do not depend on sequences of narrative which players who arrive to the game after it has begun need to “catch up” with in order to engage with the experience; they can be more sustainable because designers do not need to constantly create new content to keep players engaged—rather, the design process consists of creating a ruleset that will generate experience “on the fly” through the procedures of play; and they can be more replayable because they cannot be “spoiled”—the stories they tell are manifestations of the players’ actions, and are different every time, depending on who is playing and what strategies and tactics they adopt. An easy way to understand these concepts is to consider the differences between an alternate reality game and a sport. An ARG like Reality Ends Here works much more like a sport than it does like a traditional alternate reality game. As discussed above, a typical alternate reality game deploys a story through a series of puzzles

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and challenges which unlock multimedia assets. These assets, as they are assembled into a legible whole, constitute a sequential narrative. Players who discover an ARG after it has begun have effectively missed the beginning of the story. The amount of effort required to get involved with the experience thus increases in direct proportion to the time that has elapsed since the game began. Further, since every stage of the game is effectively another “turn” in a pre-curated narrative, designers must create huge archives of material in order to keep the game moving. As soon as this flow of fresh material stops, so too does the experience of the game. In a sport such as ice hockey, it does not matter that the game has been in existence for over 100 years. New players do not need to know what happened during the 1919 Stanley Cup, or even what happened during the first part of an individual game, in order to meaningfully participate. The primary work of the “designers” of hockey is to periodically tweak the rules of the game in order to improve it from various perspectives such as safety, speed, and balance. Each year, at its General Managers’ Retreat, the National Hockey League considers new rules and experiments with them. However, the designers of hockey do not create the “story” of hockey: that is done by the players (see Watson, 2015). The story of every hockey game, season, and series, whether played professionally or in a Saskatoon backyard, is told through the interaction of players, referees, and scorekeepers with the rules and resources (i.e., the ice, skates, sticks, regulations, and pucks required for play) of the game. No “top-down” storytelling is required. This is much more sustainable (and scalable) than the typical alternate reality game, wherein most of the “official” story of the game is created by the designers. Hockey is also infinitely replayable, at least so long as ice, steel, sticks, and vulcanized rubber are available to potential players. While the design of the game has remained relatively static since the 1920s, the stories it has produced have been different each and every year. As a recent advertisement for the Stanley Cup Playoffs notes, one can read the story of the Quest for the Cup a thousand times but still never know how it will end. As illustrated by the example of ice hockey, having a high process intensity does not mean that a game must involve large amounts of computation: rather, it simply means that the narrative figures which emerge through gameplay are determined as much as possible by the generative text of the rules of the game. The procedures of

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this text can be executed computationally, but may also be executed in whole or in part by the players themselves in the manner of “analog” games or sports. Further, additional procedures will emerge through the interface between gameplay and social reality. Ian Bogost calls games which use compact computationally executed procedures to give rise to more expansive socially executed procedures, “games of social experimentation” (2012). To illustrate this kind of gameplay, Bogost points to hybrid digital/analog multiplayer party games such as Johann Sebastian Joust (Die Gute Fabrik, 2011), which use lightweight computational systems to both mediate and inspire complex social and physical gameplay instantiations. Designer Douglas Wilson (2011) describes Joust as a “no-graphics, digitally-enabled folk game”: [The game is] for 2 to 7 players, designed for motion controllers (such as the PlayStation Move). The goal is to be the last player remaining. When the music—selections from J.S. Bach’s “Brandenburg Concertos”—plays in slow-motion, the controllers are extremely sensitive to movement. When the music speeds up, this threshold becomes less strict, giving the players a small window to dash at their opponents. If your controller is ever moved beyond the allowable threshold, you’re out! Channel the power of J.S. Bach, and try to jostle your opponents’ controllers while protecting your own. As with games like Joust, in a game like Reality Ends Here, computation primarily plays a mediating role, while the bulk of the rules of the game, both those created by the designers (which Salen and Zimmerman call the “explicit” rules) and those invented or interpolated by the players (or the “implicit” rules), are articulated socially in analog and extra-ludic digital contexts, such as on Facebook or other social media environments inhabited by players. The website for Reality Ends Here tracks player scores and provides a means for the sharing of media artifacts produced through gameplay, while the main rules of the game are encoded in the procedures related to the collectible card game and its attendant media-making objectives. In this sense, the computational components of the system have a low process intensity and a relatively low data intensity, while the game system as a whole is nevertheless high in process intensity. That is, the myriad narrative figures that emerge

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from “official” gameplay are almost wholly determined by the rules of the collectible card game which players use to seed their creative collaborations, rather than by the code underlying the website, which functions primarily as a feedback system. On the other hand, the social codes that emerge as players compete, collaborate, and perform in Reality Ends Here gradually come to constitute an additional unwritten layer of procedurality authored by the players themselves. One striking example of this emergent process intensity in Reality Ends Here is the “group system” and its attendant phenomena of “card banking.” These dynamics emerged during the first implementation of the game (2011) and persist to the time of this writing. In the early phases of the game’s first season, a group of approximately eight particularly engaged players formed into a tight association akin to a kind of production company. This group, known as “MARRA” (an acronym for the names of its five founding members), pooled their game cards together and signed an “exclusivity contract” which prohibited group members from working with any other players in the game. MARRA quickly shot to the top of the leaderboard as they used their tight team arrangement and relatively large pool of cards to plan and execute a series of high-scoring projects. That is, the new “rules” they invented for themselves initially served to ensure their collective advancement in the game system. However, as the game went on, this strategy partially backfired, at least in terms of MARRA exhausting their supply of cards. One of the core rules relating to the game cards in Reality Ends Here is that each time a card is used in a creative prompt, that card decreases in value, and once it has been used three times, it is no longer worth any points whatsoever. This fact ultimately led MARRA to seek out new methods for acquiring cards. Further, in part in response to the early dominance of MARRA , new groups began to form, several of which engaged in various kinds of what became known as “card banking.” In card banking, players pool cards in the manner of a credit union. The most successful example of card banking in the 2011 season was manifested by the large player group known as the “The Tribe,” which assembled a card bank numbering hundreds of cards. The central “rule” of The Tribe’s card bank was that all players who are members of the card bank receive credit on all projects produced by other members of the card bank, so long as they share all their cards with the bank. This and other “card

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economy” protocols established additional layers of procedures for various subsets of players. By designing the core (or “official”) game system around procedures, rather than curated content, designers of ARG s can lay the groundwork for players to further iterate and repurpose the game according to their own desires. This high degree of social process intensity is a key mechanism through which player agency can be emphasized at every stage of gameplay.

Conclusions Ultimately, any move toward increased procedurality in the design of ARG s and other kinds of pervasive games speaks as much to the value designers place on the communities such games can build as it does to the importance they assign to individual player agency. Because traditional ARG s can be extremely expensive and labor-intensive to maintain, media companies and institutions overwhelmingly abandon the communities they create once the putative purpose for their creation has been satisfied (McGonigal, 2003, IGDA ARG SIG , 2006). While this instrumental view of community may have short-term benefits to institutions, brands, and artists, and while many deep-pocketed media companies are likely comfortable with the risk of “blowback” from disaffected ARG fans (especially since said fans will have long since served their marketing purpose by the time their complaints come to the fore), in the long term, such a view effectively undermines much of alternate reality gaming’s potential for the creation and transformation of communities. For media companies, educators, and activists alike, one way around this problem of expense is to develop replayable games that engage participants in repeatable practices rather than the consumption of additional layers of curated narrative. Toward that end, designers entertaining a new ARG -like project would do well to augment their storytelling and media strategy research with the fundamentals of game design, discoverable via tomes such as Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop (2014) or Salen and Zimmerman’s Rules of Play (2003). Unlike the labor-intensive puppet master-centric traditional ARG model, more deeply procedural design solutions have the capacity to produce most or even all of an ARG ’s content and interactivity— that is, the bulk of the spectacle of the experience—through the

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emergent effects of a ruleset. These kinds of games may not be the future of transmedia storytelling; but perhaps they are the future of transmedia story facilitation. In his seminal essay on Linux, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” Eric Raymond (2001) notes that “[it] may well turn out that one of the most important effects of open source’s success will be to teach us that play is the most economically efficient mode of creative work.” (61) By providing players with a sandbox within which they can meaningfully engage with the world of a cause or media franchise, game designers can do more than just streamline the production process. They also win hearts and minds. As veteran ARG writer and player Andrea Phillips told me in an interview (Watson, 2010), “Once you’ve given your audience official permission to collaborate with you in any meaningful sense, they’re yours forever, hook, line, and sinker.” By moving away from the time-sensitive and event-driven structure of traditional ARG s, designers can create more open-ended games that work better as engines for participation and community building. Doing so ultimately means replacing a text-centric storytelling mentality with a systems-centric rules-based story facilitation approach. This kind of approach is not an abdication of authorship or aesthetic responsibility; rather, it is a shift from the domain of literal content creation to that of procedural content creation. Such a shift has the potential to break the designerly logjams that have afflicted ARG s since the early 2000s, and move the form and its descendants toward more accessible, replayable, and sustainable designs.

Games 42 Entertainment. 2007. Year Zero. Universal Music Group: Santa Monica, CA . Calhamer, Allan B. 2008. Diplomacy. Wizards of the Coast: Renton, WA . Cinematronics. 1983. Dragon’s Lair. Cinematronics: El Cajon, CA . Jackson, Steve. 2001. Munchkin. Steve Jackson Games: Austin, TX . Naughty Dog. 2013. The Last of Us. Sony Entertainment: Los Angeles, CA . Toy, Michael, and Glen Wichman. 1980. Rogue. University of California Santa Cruz: Santa Cruz, CA . Watson, Jeff, Simon Wiscombe, and Tracy Fullerton. 2011.Reality Ends Here Season 1. University of Southern California: Los Angeles, CA .

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Wilson, Douglas. 2011. Johann Sebastian Joust. Die Gute Fabrik: Copenhagen, Denmark.

References Avedon, Elliott M., and Brian Sutton-Smith. 2015. The Study of Games. Ishi Press. Bogost, Ian. 2012. “Persuasive Games: Process Intensity and Social Experimentation.” Gamasutra. May 23. http://www.gamasutra.com/ view/feature/170806/persuasive_games_process_.php Caillois, Roger. 2001. Man, Play and Games. Reprint edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Crawford, Chris. 1987. “Process Intensity.” Journal of Computer Game Design, 1 (5). http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/the-journal-ofcomputer/jcgd-volume-1/process-intensity.html Dena, Christy. 2007. “Discover Manoa!: Second Life RPG & the Problem with ARG s.” Christy’s Corner of the Universe. April 9. http://www. christydena.com/2007/04/discover-manoa-second-life-rpg-the-problemwith-args/ Dena, Christy. 2008. “Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: PlayerCreated Tiers in Alternate Reality Games.” Convergence Journal: International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14 (1): 41–57. Dewey, John. n.d. Experience And Education. Amazon Kindle. Fullerton, Tracy. 2014. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Third Edition. Boca Raton: A K Peters/CRC Press. Hunter, William. 2007. “Coin-Op Video Game History.” The Dot Eaters. http://www.thedoteaters.com/p2_stage6.php IGDA ARG SIG . 2006. “Alternate Reality Games SIG /Whitepaper.” International Game Developers Association. http://wiki.igda.org/ Alternate_Reality_Games_SIG /Whitepaper Jenkins, Henry. 2004. “Chasing Bees, Without the Hive Mind.” MIT Technology Review. December 3. http://www.technologyreview.com/ read_article.aspx?id=13561&ch=infotech&a=f Levy, Pierre. 1999. Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. Translated by Robert Bononno. Cambridge, MA : Basic Books. McGonigal, Jane. 2003. “ ‘This Is Not a Game’: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play.” In Proceedings of the Melbourne DAC. Melbourne, Australia.

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McGonigal, Jane. 2006. “This Might Be a Game: Ubiquitous Play and Performance at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.” Berkeley, CA : University of California, Berkeley. McGonigal, Jane. 2007. “Why I Love Bees: A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming.” The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning (December): 199–227. doi:10.1162/dmal.9780262693646.199. Montola, Markus, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern. 2009. Pervasive Games: Theory and Design. New York: Morgan Kaufmann. Morris, Chris, Sean Stewart, Elan Lee, and Jim Stewartson. 2009. “Events, Not ARG s: Interview with the Founders of 4th Wall.” Variety.com. http://weblogs.variety.com/technotainment/2009/05/ events.html Nieuwenhuys, Constant. “Another City for Another Life.” Internationale Situationniste. 2. (1958). Plato. 1999. Meno. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. http://www.gutenberg. org/ebooks/1643 Raymond, Eric S. 2001. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. First edition. Beijing; Cambridge, MA : O’Reilly Media. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. 2003. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Illustrated edition. Cambridge MA : MIT Press. Stokes, Benjamin, Jeff Watson, Tracy Fullerton, and Simon Wiscombe. 2013. “A Reality Game to Cross Disciplines: Fostering Networks and Collaboration.” In DiGRA 2013 International Conference. http:// benjamin.newdream.net/bridges/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/StokesW atsonFullertonWiscombe2013Reality-Game-To-Foster-Networks_conffinal2.pdf The Cloudmakers. 2010. “Puppet master FAQ.” Cloudmakers.org. May 8. http://familiasalla-es.cloudmakers.org/credits/note/faq.html Walker, Jill. 2004. “Distributed Narrative: Telling Stories Across Networks.” In Proceedings of the Association of Internet Researchers Conference. Brighton, UK . http://jilltxt.net/txt/Walker-AoIR-3500words.pdf Watson, Jeff. 2010. “Taking Risks and Dancing with Audiences: Andrea Phillips on Writing for Transmedia and ARG s.” Remotedevice.net. http://remotedevice.net/interviews/taking-risks-and-dancing-withaudiences-andrea-phillips-on-writing-for-transmedia-and-args/ Watson, Jeff. 2012. “Reality Ends Here: Environmental Game Design and Participatory Spectacle.” Los Angeles: University of Southern California. Watson, Jeff. 2015. “What Hockey Wants: Drama, Narrative, and Sports.” Well Played 4 (1). http://press.etc.cmu.edu/content/volume-4-number-1

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Methods: Studying Alternate Reality Games as Virtual Worlds Calvin Johns

The approach to studying alternate reality games (ARG ) discussed here offers an alternative to the dominant formalist perspectives from the field of game studies. By figuring ARG s as worlds rather than games or narratives, the anthropologist can better uncover the mechanisms “in the wild” by which the structures of the game work in and on the players’ everyday social lives. Leveraging Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory and the frame analysis of Erving Goffman, the methodology theorized below approaches ARG s from the inside, privilege the perspectives and experiences of the players, and trace how the emergent world of the game comes to be felt, cognized, and embodied—or not.

ARGs as social institutions Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman define a game as “a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that 211

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results in a quantifiable outcome” (Salen and Zimmerman, 2003). In some part, I can abide this definition. Theirs is no doubt a sensible understanding of games, hitting each of the big titles—chess, Monopoly, football, Super Mario Bros., Halo, and marbles. However, Salen and Zimmerman further this definition by likening the system of a game to the grammar of a language: In games, this concept of grammar takes the form of game rules, which create a structure for the game, describing how all of the elements of the game interact with one another. Structure (in language or games) operates much like context, and participates in the meaning-making process. By ordering the elements of a system in very particular ways, structure works to create meaning. SALEN and ZIMMERMAN , 2003: 63 In this formulation, the structure of the game is nothing less than langue, a world-independent system of semiotic value that by the force of its rules defines and prefigures all the possible relationships and meaningful actions that can be made within it. For example, the system of rules that constitute the game of Monopoly prefigures what each piece can mean at any given moment and how players can take meaningful actions: buying houses, landing on certain places, exchanging money with the bank, etc. The players cannot create new meaningful actions within the game without changing the game itself. However, in games as much as language, it is often the case that the nature of the system is precisely what needs to be interrogated, not taken for granted. The organizing practices and logics—what amount to the structures—of an ARG emerge in process as the players solve problems and interact with the media, props, and other elements provided by the game’s creators. This is what makes studying ARG s more interesting that writing another formalist account of Monopoly. The payoff of studying an ARG for the social scientist is found in grasping the unique nature of this emergence, in tracing the particular modes of being and believing that arise during any given game. In doing so we may elucidate the machinations of other social institutions and generate a fresh awareness about what it means to be human. Leaving the game-as-system approach behind, then, I rely on John Searle (1995) to figure a game as one kind of social institution

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among many. In Searle’s terms, a social institution is “an objective reality” that nevertheless exists “in part by human agreement,” a “pattern of activities” that can be defined by the formula “X counts as Y in Context C” (Searle, 1995: 2, 44). Searle’s definition encompasses Monopoly easily enough: in the “context” of playing Monopoly, the plastic house “counts as” a marker of income; outside the game, the plastic house is just a bit of plastic that resembles a house. However, we must be careful not to take Searle’s “context” and Salen and Zimmerman’s “system” as equivalent. The “context” in Searle’s account of Monopoly does not refer to the system of rules but to the overall activity of playing the game. It is the intersubjective frame or horizon that is negotiated and enacted at every moment, a shared and continually reaffirmed intention to play the game. To play Monopoly is to agree to behave according to the rules of the game, and each individual rule in the game is just one more vector or pattern among many present during the several hours spent playing the game. At any time, players can forget a rule, ignore a rule, or change a rule; the game has no power to contain them. However, some institutions are farther reaching. Other patterns or vectors will no doubt permeate those several hours as well: gender performance, middle-class morality, money, the law of the land, etc. The above example highlights two important features of what we might call a game-as-institution approach. First, social institutions come as bundles of patterns not prescriptive grammars. Searle goes to lengths to maintain that these institutions are not grammars that prefigure potential behaviors within fixed systems. Institutions at their very root are donned frames of meaning with little weight of their own. He says: What we think of as social objects, such as governments, money, and universities, are in fact just placeholders for patterns of activities. I hope it is clear that the whole operation of agentive functions and collective intentionality is a matter of ongoing activities and the creation of the possibility of more ongoing activities. SEARLE , 1995: 57 These structures may very well go unchallenged and remain in place for centuries, but they remain only patterns. Recognizing

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social structures as more or less durable patterns of ongoing collective activity rather than prescriptions for future activity is critical. Each performance—each instantiation of a rule or law or habit—provides a moment where the institution might fail. This is in essence the argument Judith Butler (1993) makes about the subversive power of drag performance: that binary ideas of gender can still be toyed with despite the obvious weight and pervasiveness of the institution exposes the institution’s origin as a social object. Second, Searle’s games-as-institutions do not bracket themselves off from the world as autonomous semiotic systems but partake of and participate in it. A game can be seen as an overlay that adds to the other meanings and patterns of ongoing social life, not a system that replaces one code with another. That ARG s add an overlay to ongoing social life is one of their most distinguishing features, and Searle’s approach seems aptly suited to study the unique ways ARG s permeate and interrupt everyday life. The central question becomes what the nature of this overlay might be and how the players experience it. A games-as-institutions approach allows us to ask direct, datadriven questions about how ARG s function as social institutions: How does “X count as Y” in any given situation? When two or more options are present, which “Y” wins? What are the shapes and limits of “Context C” vis-à-vis other social institutions and situations? What actors, affects, and activities emerge? How does the institution reach out into the world to elicit other actors, affects, and activities? Viewing games as social institutions allows the social scientist to approach them with any and all of the tools and methodologies of her discipline. However, two qualities seem to set ARG s apart from more traditionally studied social institutions: their origins as comparatively artificial institutions—typically centered around a hoax or fabrication—and their playful, relatively superficial depth. In this light, the ARG appears as a kind of partial or incomplete social institution, maybe an institution waiting to happen. Beyond the questions listed above, then, a robust method of study must be prepared to ask and answer another series of fruitful questions: Which elements of any given ARG come across as artificial? Which real? What distinguishes the two for the players? If all social institutions are in some sense fabricated on human agreement and

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intention, how are ARG s any different? How pervasive and durable must a pattern of activities be to be felt as a social institution by those inside it? To refine these questions and narrow the scope of our research, we need to tighten up our formulation of the ARG , taking seriously these qualities of fabrication and superficiality. To better understand the artificiality of the ARG , I look to another massively multiplayer form of gaming founded on giving players an experience of an affectively felt but immaterial environment, the online virtual world. I next work through a methodology from the field of cultural geography to situate the apparent superficiality of the genre relative to other institutions “out there” in the actual world.

ARGs as virtual worlds In seminal texts on the study of virtual worlds, Tom Boellstorff, (2008: with Nardi et  al. 2012) characterizes virtual worlds as technically distinct from the digital environments that sustain them. He argues that, while the digital elements of Second Life are rightly situated in the computer-generated medium, the virtual elements are rooted in something markedly human (2008: 29). Boellstorff invites us to wonder what a non-digital virtual world would look like. Speaking in plainer terms and seemingly at odds with Boellstorff, Ken Hillis (2009) defines Second Life not as a virtual world but a “graphical chat,” arguing that the platform lacks “by default” the explicit game elements of other massively multiplayer online worlds, e.g., a combat engine, required puzzle-solving and teamwork, a linear narrative, etc. I find myself agreeing with Hillis that Second Life is at its core a glorified chatroom, and his analysis helps us see the online virtual world for what it is, another kind of social institution. However, that Second Life is not “by default” a virtual world yet somehow becomes one provides us an opportunity to see how a virtual world emerges through the performances and associations of the players as they go about exploring and inhabiting the computer-generated environment. How does the structure of Second Life pave the way for the emergence of the virtual? Can similar performances and associations occur in the actual world that will also flicker with the virtual? What do we mean by virtual anyway?

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In Parables For The Virtual, Brian Massumi (2002) describes virtuality as the co-presence of hitherto considered mutually exclusive states. It is the charge in the atom, the description that glosses over not a physical entity but a complex super position of possibilities. A charge is not physical like a rock or wall, but it is material and part of the world. A wave is not a substance, but it is a material entity. Massumi considers such material-but-abstract things virtual. The virtual is a potential state of all material things, seen as an excess of presence that arises when the current state of affairs opens itself to and in some ways begins to participate in mutually exclusive possible future states. While such a moment of excess presence strikes a commonsense understanding of materiality as some kind of explosive, rare moment, the best physicists hold that matter is pretty much always experiencing this kind of multiplicity (Barad, 2007). Can humans participate in this kind of virtuality? How do our minds experience the past and future in the present? What is the nature of intersubjectivity? How do signs represent or stand in for things, objects, experiences that are not physically present? What might this sense of a tentative excess mean for studying ARG s? Cultural geographer Derek McCormack (2010) cites Massumi’s notion of the virtual when he describes the wreckage site of a hydrogen balloon expedition as a “spectral afterlife: a distributed field of affective materials that circulates through specific configurations of object, text, and image.” In 1897, the Swedish Andrée Expedition left Danes Island headed towards the North Pole and shortly thereafter disappeared. In 1930, the wreckage was found: a scattered field that included photographic film, human remains, diaries, and research materials. McCormack uses the “spectral” and “virtual” to theorize how this new geography of charged space might best be understood. He clarifies: The spectral does not refer so much to a realm of spiritual ether floating or hovering, wraith-like, above the reassuring solidity of living bodies or actual objects. The spectral is, rather, a constitutive element of geographical experience, taking place as a persistent and unsettling capacity of place to enchant and haunt. 2010: 641

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Explained in this way, studies of the spectral are fundamentality concerned with physical presence and absence, with felt but unseen materiality. Though different individuals will have different experiences at different times, there is nothing dismissively subjective about the affects and absences that charge places such as Gettysburg, Disneyworld, the ruins of Dresden, or the Ganges. McCormack holds that such “specific configurations” of “affective materials” could emerge anywhere, even as they do not necessarily exist everywhere. The physical world affords such configurations, and they cannot be wholly erased. In linguistic terms we might characterize these spectral geographies as environments vibrating with indices. For C.S. Peirce, the index is a sign that stands for its object by being contiguous in some way with it. The index is the relief, the imprint, the piece of evidence. A footprint is an index of a foot and by extension the absent person who made it; a weather-vane indexes the direction of the wind; bullet holes are indices that someone was shooting a gun, maybe that violence occurred. The “charge” of McCormack’s spectral geographies seems to come from the proliferation of affectively rich and entangling indices that work as more than simple signs. These indices seem to conjure the felt presence of what they represent in significant ways, making an analysis that figures them as mere signs somehow lacking. More than words on the page or images on a screen, such indices embedded in the environment produces a kind of aura or specter that has the power to haunt us. The online virtual world seems to display a similar power in the digital, computer-generated medium. The images on the screen are powerful indices, affectively “charged” enough to elicit strong emotions and attachments. Hillis calls the avatar on the screen a “Sign-Body,” a unique form of index that he resists reducing to mere sign. The avatar of Second Life is in one way merely an index of the human behind it, but in another way it is a re-embodiment of the human, a physical body translated and transported into a digital medium. The avatars are experienced as material but abstract, image and object both. It is not simply the bodies’ existence that matters, but their virtual proximity via the avatars. The power of the virtual world is not in its physicality but its materiality. There is a reason why addiction, obsession, deviance, and escapism are common topics when discussing

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online virtual worlds. Their power to enchant, compel, and envelop cannot be denied. The power of the ARG can be likewise palpable. Every experienced player remembers that first game, that feeling of wonder, of enchantment, of experiencing the environment in a new way. From a strictly formalist perspective, the ARG seems to overlap the online virtual world almost exactly. Both are social institutions characterized by individuals negotiating and navigating a seemingly artificial but nevertheless compelling environment, one saturated with affectively “charged” indices that work to conjure a world into being, a world virtual but no less inhabitable. If Second Life and World of Warcraft are rightly defined as digital virtual worlds, the ARG becomes what might be characterized as an analog virtual world. Instead of using computer-generated objects as indices of a fantastical reality eager to haunt and encompass us, the ARG uses the tools of the theater, the hoax, the con man. The ARG hacks into the everyday lives of the players and adds enough elements to conjure a kind of overlay that spreads beyond the props and objects of the game to expand and enchant the actual world of the players. Seen this way, to encounter the virtual is not to move into a smaller world. Rather, to encounter the virtual is to inhabit a kind of suspended space where some immaterial potential has drawn the actual up into itself, a tentative doubling or mirage that must retain its “charge” to continue. As legendary designer Dave Szulborski famously puts it, “the goal is not to immerse the player in the artificial world of the game; instead, a successful game immerses the world of the game into the everyday existence of the player” (Szulborski, 2005: 31). However, I might argue that the successful game does not immerse itself into anything at all; the successful game interpolates the everyday existence of the player into the larger frame, trumping whatever frames the ordinary, actual world offers. An appeal to the virtual provides not only a way of overcoming the apparent artificiality of the ARG as a social institution but also expands the ARG into a more robust conceptual object, the analog virtual world. However, we must still address the apparent superficiality of the ARG . How can we best take seriously a social institution that arises only in part and only for play? Without computers, how do you launch a virtual world “out there” in the world?

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Virtual worlds “in the wild” In a discussion of the proliferation of social media and other selfsurveillance technologies, Nigel Thrift (2011) paints an unnerving picture of what he calls a “security-entertainment complex” in the global North, an assemblage of market and military technologies that works to dislocate and reassemble everyday life as a phantasmagoria of incomplete, ultimately unsatisfying worlds. He dubs this ubiquitous cultural machine Lifeworlds, Inc. and describes several technosocial movements that animate processes of both shattering and multiplying worlds. These worlds emerge as manufactured systems of significance and relating that generate affect and pull bodies into motion, turning people on to behaviors, values, and lifestyles intimated in the machine. Taking a relatively benign example, we might examine the birth of the “selfie,” which we can gloss for our purposes here as a photograph taken of oneself, often with a mobile phone, typically with the intent of being shared through SMS or by posting online through social media. Leagues away from the staged self-portraits of twentieth-century travelers—destined for display before a reluctant slide-show audience—the selfie emerged as a technique of self-surveillance in service to new social media technologies that then led the development of newer technologies, e.g., the “front-facing” camera of newer mobile phones. Platforms such as Instagram, Flickr, and Imgur emerged to make sharing selfies and other such on-the-go photos easier. Billions of dollars have been made developing and selling such platforms; fortunes have been made, headquarters relocated, cities saved. The humble selfie becomes a demonstrative entry point for scholars of the social looking to interrogate new patterns, new industries, new worlds of what might best be called the “performance of the self.” Of course, the selfie can become much more than that as well. Our example takes a turn towards the malign when we locate another vector in the same assemblage, namely, Facebook’s now ubiquitous facial recognition software. Thrift asks us to pause for a moment and consider what it might mean that so many of our new leisure and social technologies in the global North are emerging at the intersection of market and military interests. Even something as harmless as the selfie is complicit. How long before the computer-recognized “selfie” holds as much weight as the fingerprint in a state’s legal system?

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However, while a chilling awareness of Lifeworlds, Inc. might tempt the critical scholar to take to the trenches and redouble the critique, Thrift admonishes the opposite. Echoing a growing number of scholars, Thrift argues that the present moment may demand something more—or other—than critique. He introduces the notion of “cultural probes,” specifically designed assemblages similar to the swirling structures of Lifeworlds, Inc. but designed as methods of research, aimed at generating an experience of “provocative awareness” for both the research subjects and the researchers themselves. The cultural probe will by design intervene in ongoing worlds and everyday modes of being, a project not of observation but experimentation. Such probes, writes Thrift, “need to be understood as spaces, frames constructed to produce uncertain outcomes which still have grip, frames which both interrupt and restart the process of association and, in the process, conjure up invitations to act differently” (Thrift, 2011: 19). This idea of “spaces” that reframe and restart new social patterns is key. While he does not mention ARG s specifically, Thrift’s description of the cultural probe could work as an advertisement for the genre. Meant as probes already, the structures and spaces of any given ARG —which typically co-opt the very same self-surveillance and social media technologies Thrift cites—are encountered by players precisely as provocations, excitations, invitations. Ultimately, what Thrift offers is a compelling image of what a fabricated, distended virtual world might look like “in the wild” and how such a world might circulate and adapt amidst other incomplete, effervescent worlds.

Methodologies for approaching analog virtual worlds What the creators of an ARG produce—all the props, personas, plot points, and print media—amounts to an assemblage meant to provoke and invite, a machine of charged indices that can, once activated, open up the everyday lives of the players to a world larger in some way than the actual. The virtual world that is the living game emerges only as unaware participants become self-aware players, as individuals come to understand themselves caught up in

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an incomplete institution and then proceed to make it their own. This negotiation of awareness and the types of assembling and organizing it demands are a central part to any ARG . The task of the researcher, then, becomes tracing not only the physical infrastructure or assemblage but also the growing sense of “provocative awareness” that emerges in the minds of the players and comes alongside what John Searle might call a growing “we intentionality” (see Searle, 1995: 24). While formulating the ARG as a social institution already opens up the form to the many methodologies of the social sciences, I here borrow from two methodologies that help us target the specifically virtual aspects of ARG s: Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory and the frame analysis of Erving Goffman. These two methods need to be seen as reinforcing and underscoring one another, not complementing1 each other. Just as the world of the game is material but abstract, so the two methods engaged must both bridge the gap between the physical and the virtual. Engineers do not build a bridge by starting from one bank using steel and from the other bank using concrete, hoping they meet in the middle. Rather, the two materials are used together from the very beginning to accomplish the task. After describing actor-network theory and frame analysis in terms germane to ARG s below, I close the chapter with two practical discussions that implement these two methods together in situations relatively unique to ethnographic fieldwork of ARG s.

Actor-network theory In developing his actor-network theory, Bruno Latour characterizes what he calls a “world” as a kind of nascent assemblage that emerges in the wake of the social scientist’s research. Whatever the initial subject of the study, whatever the representations and analyses created by the scholar, the process of research will inevitably give rise to some kind of an assemblage—though often unacknowledged—in its wake. Can the social scientist honestly claim to leave no mark on the structures and individuals subjected to study? Can she honestly deny that in arranging her theoretical framework, in tracing patterns and generating data, in moving from informant to informant and bringing people together, in publishing accounts, in making claims, in creating labels, in collecting up her

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“subjects” into some loose assembly if only in writing—can she honestly deny that such a sustained investigation could effect some new arrangement “out there” as well as on paper? Latour’s purpose here is not to critique the social scientist as unprofessional or messy. Rather, Latour takes the emergence of such “worlds” as inevitable in some way and asks the social scientist to take responsibility for them, to take a reflexive step towards valuing such a wake. Furthermore, Latour argues that taking this reflexive step is not to be seen as secondary or complementary to the “proper” research, the production of some worthwhile analysis. No, his actor-network theory is precisely a method of approach in which taking account of the world assembled is the primary concern. In fact, a proper and thoroughgoing account of the “world,” argues Latour, will obviate any need for a subsequent overarching or generalizing analysis of the network. Latour suggests that, “A good account will perform the social in the precise sense that some of the participants in the action—through the controversial agency of the author—will be assembled in such a way that they can be collected together” (Latour, 2005: 138). Of course scholars will go about producing representations, theories, and analyses as part of their professional labor, but these will be taken reflexively as crucial parts of the “world” being traced, parts folded into the emergent assembly. Thus, the scholar of good faith acknowledges how her work effects/affects a world. In specific terms, then, the network of associations traced out in the work of the scholar becomes just another actor out there “in the wild” participating in the life of a world. The first question we should ask ourselves is maybe obvious: What other institutions and experts are producing and participating in emergent worlds? Where else do images and representations, analyses and explanations, fold back into the everyday lives of those being imaged, represented, analyzed, or explained? Then again. . . Where do they not? Is whatever we call “the Social” anything more than or prior to so many ongoing processes of assembling and representing folded in on themselves? What if ordinary life is just worlds all the way down? “There is no rear-world behind to be used as a judge of this one,” writes Latour, “In this lowly world there lie in wait many more worlds that may aspire to become one—or not, depending on the assembly work we will be able to achieve” (Latour, 2005: 118). The

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ordinary world is a swirling environment of possible worlds, some more apparent/substantive than others. Latour characterizes these inchoate worlds—partially assembled or only assembled by a few— as “experimental systems,” and parallels to Massumi’s theory of the virtual and to Thrift’s cultural probes become apparent. Research projects are designed not to generate new data or new representations, but to generate new modes of being, new patterns, new social institutions—which they always did at least in part anyway. In studying the interesting and complicated social phenomena that make up everyday life, the actor-network scholar herself produces new accounts and new assemblies that grow into lively, inviting worlds—or not. For example, a traditional social scientist would likely admit that reality television shows such as The Real World or Big Brother, despite their modes of sociality being so blatantly contrived and “artificial,” can still teach us about broader forms of sociality and associating. What the actor-network theory scholar offers is that maybe “broader” is not the right word. The reality television series acts not as a singular piece of a larger “Social” fabric, nor as a microcosm of a larger macro; neither is the social world of the series a distorted copy or reflection of something prior. The world inside such a production is its own assembly, its own space where sociality is performed, associations made, accounts given. It is, a new form of sociality vying with and changing whatever ongoing patterns and institutions the contestants bring with them. The world of the show cannot be rightly related to some pre-existing “Social” world, and thus the terms of traditional of social analysis fall flat in the face of Latour’s actor-network theory. Rather, by shining a light on the patterns of association apparent in a show such as The Real World and by holding them up alongside other forms of sociality to be examined such shows can generate a kind of provocative awareness for the viewers as much as the scholars. If they do not, they will likely be canceled and forgotten. So it goes. If they do arrest, elicit, invite, and engage—if they do provoke, they may go on to change an entire generation’s concept of fame, marriage, talent, sex, etc. And if this is the case, then they become doubly worthy of study. Just like the selfie, the reality television series both follows and leads technologies and patterns of associating. Would such scholarship be illegitimate if the researchers were the ones to produce the show themselves? Would it violate the

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central conceit of traditional social science so harshly if the researchers designed such an inchoate world deliberately? Can the researcher fabricate an artificial situation to learn about sociality? Then again . . . When do they not?

Frame analysis Erving Goffman introduced his notion of the “frame” as an answer to the phenomenological question “What is it that is going on here?” (Goffman, 1974: 9, italics in original). Anyone who encounters an ARG will no doubt ask herself this exact question again and again over the course of the game. An uncertainty about the nature and boundaries of the ARG is very much fundamental to the genre. Fortunately for scholars of ARG , Goffman developed a robust methodology for approaching the manifold ways this question is asked and answered. His “frame analysis” provides a broad list of mechanisms and patterns of activity—linguistic, gestural, affective, cognitive—that people engage when negotiating what it is that is going on at any given moment. The frame is precisely the “it” that is at hand, the shared awareness that a loose model or form exists for the activity that is occurring, the intersubjective understanding that a “thing” or “situation” is afoot. Goffman maintains a more traditional view of agency than Latour that is beneficial to studying ARG s, which are concerned so centrally with questioning what exactly it is that is going on at any given moment. Goffman writes: My perspective is situational, meaning here a concern for what one individual can be alive to at a particular moment, this often involving a few other particular individuals and not necessarily restricted to the mutually monitoring arena of face-to-face gathering. I assume that when individuals attend to any current situation, they face the question: “What is it going on here?” Whether asked explicitly, as in times of confusion and doubt, or tacitly, during occasions of usual certitude, the question is put and the answer to it is presumed by the way the individuals then proceed to get on with affairs at hand. [. . .] I am not addressing the structure of social life but the structure of experience individuals have at any moment of their social lives. GOFFMAN , 1974: 8, 13

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Goffman’s frames run parallel in many ways to Searle’s social institutions, most usefully in that they both explicitly preclude any objective-vs.-subjective or physical-vs.-mental dichotomy. Goffman writes that frames are at once “principles of organization which govern events” and “our subjective involvement in them” (1974: 10). For Goffman as for Searle, the assumption is that there is of course an objective reality, a clash of forces, a material universe, and we can of course learn about this world; however, any such learning—as far as any such learning is intelligible and representational in nature—will always be social. Discussing how certain frames are maintained and negotiated, Goffman theorizes what he calls a fabrication as a structure by which some people can be “in on” a frame while keeping others intentionally out. While common fabrications are glossed as tricks, schemes, confidence games, and ruses, Goffman argues that fabrications are not essentially about a lie, but a secret. The multiplying falsifications and untruths constructed by the fabricators serve a greater purpose: protect the secret. When a participant in the frame is “in the dark” about a particular fact of the matter known to other participants, she is said to be “contained” in the fabrication. I characterize the ARG as a frame that contains two crucial fabrications, both of which can likely contain an indefinite number of smaller fabrications. Firstly, what I call the major fabrication is the secret that there is a game afoot at all, the “This is not a game” stance of most ARG s. Creators of the ARG produce content and structures that hack into the everyday infrastructures of a world in such a way that most individuals interacting with fabricated elements of the game might not even realize it. I consider individuals who interact with the game without knowing it is a game participants; only those who break out of being “contained” in this fabrication become players. Secondly, what I call the central fabrication contains the secrets of the fictional environment known only to the creators, the mystery or narrative that participants and players alike work to resolve. Importantly, these fabrications are not concentric. For example, a participant may work within the game to uncover facts about the fictional characters and conflicts without knowing them to be fictional. Different fabrications will demonstrate different specific mechanisms, and it becomes the task of the researcher to trace and

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catalog the various mechanisms deployed maintaining the major and central fabrications. Likewise, different participants will experience varying degrees of “containment” over the course of the game. Even a player who has broken free of the major fabrication in part can interact with props or actors that she does not know to be part of the game. Thus, the fabrications—like the frame as a whole—are constantly navigated and negotiated by players and designers alike.

Two notes on strategies The two brief strategies outlined below engage methods from actornetwork theory and frame analysis in tandem. More specifically, both approaches describe how a scholar can use methods of actor-network theory to “trace” how players undertake “frame work” to resolve the fabrications of the ARG . The tracing method of actor-network theory pays careful attention to nonhuman actors and the ways physical objects participate meaningfully in sociality. It is not enough to say that objects “hold” or “carry” social meaning; objects operate in the social as meaningful actors. Goffman’s notion of “frame work” covers the various mechanisms by which individuals vie for understanding and control within a frame. I first discuss a strategy for approaching the “provocative awareness” that emerges as players struggle against the major and central fabrications of the game. As participants become aware that something more is happening around them, they will interact with their environments differently and begin to recognize others like them. I characterize the dynamic between participant and player as a key to understanding the force of the major fabrication. I then discuss in the final section a novel way the researcher might approach the sprawling and entangled assemblage of the game that favors certain kinds of artifacts. Importantly, this assemblage includes not only the fabricated elements produced as part of a “system” by the game’s designers—the props, persons, images, video, websites, ideas—but also any similar elements likewise produced or taken up by the players themselves. It is in the players’ exploration that the infrastructure planned and produced by the designers becomes a virtual world.

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A “provocative awareness” that something is afoot The researcher must pay careful attention to how the question “What is it that is going on here?” can even be asked in the first place. It is a question that arises only when someone becomes aware that she lacks a certain perspective or intention that seems required to fully participate in the activity at hand. For an ARG to succeed, the players must at some point realize that they are playing at something, even if they do not know exactly what that something is. If the participants never get an inkling that “something is up” while interacting with the structures of the ARG , then they will either never sense the “probe” at all, or they will experience it as a hoax, not a game. This means designers must simultaneously reveal and conceal the nature of the game; they must drop hints but never confirm any guesses. At its core, then, the major fabrication is an effort in unfalsifiability. I give the label participant to those individuals fully “contained” within the major fabrication, who follow the events and activities of the game at face value and have no idea something other is afoot. In contrast, players see through the major fabrication—at least in part. Every player will begin as a hapless or unsuspecting participant and take at least some initial steps alone, making the first awareness of the major fabrication a kind of “coming of age” moment for each individual within the ARG . The initial realization that something is afoot opens up the present but also works backwards to recode or re-evaluate the past. At exactly what point was the ordinary world left behind and the virtual encountered? They find themselves caught up in the virtual, unsure now about what else might be afoot. Insofar as the major fabrication is unfalsifiable and distended, even the players who realize that something is afoot cannot be sure moment by moment what is what, and so they can never be certain just how much they are still contained and how much “out of the loop” they still are. It is a struggle to grasp the frame. To the extent that players only receive partial confirmation about the nature of the ARG from the designers, the first solid “it that is happening” typically emerges from the individual’s awareness that others have been asking the same question too. The broader meaning of what is happening may remain unclear; however, what

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can be known is that a group of individuals is coming together to question and uncover whatever this “it” that is afoot is. Players come together and work from a necessarily uncertain position within the virtual to construct knowledge in two directions, against the two fabrications of the game. In one direction, initiated players must decide whether and to what extent they should organize and communicate with each other outside the major fabrication. Such planning is risky in a localized ARG because the more participants any player “lets in,” the greater the risk of her being left out or left behind when later events occur. In other words, the more people who know “what’s going on,” the farther from the center of the action any given player is likely to feel. Of course, players cannot be sure how many other players there are in any case, never knowing how central they might be to the narrative or what greater narrative may remain entirely unknown to them. This competition over being “in on” and “in control of” the fabrication works exactly like “frame working” in Goffman’s sense, where individuals vie for position within the intersubjectively negotiated frame. In this vein, players struggle to have control of the situation and gain or retain leadership and decision-making roles in the game. In the other direction, the very same players must still decide what to do about the unfolding narrative within the central fabrication, playing along with the events and challenges “as if” the fictions were real. The central fabrication will emerge in the form of small puzzles or challenges, clues, or curious media—whatever the nature of the specific game—and it is through a tentative progression within the mystery or narrative that the major fabrication can be hinted at or experienced. This performance takes on a charged valence precisely because of the uncertain nature of the major fabrication—there is no way to tell precisely what is actually happening and what is pretending to happen at any given moment. We might liken this charged, doubling performance to playing with a toy.

Solving a mystery with an assemblage of toys Paul Kockelman (2006) figures an instrument as a semiotic process: an artificed object operates as a sign “standing for” a purpose or

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function whenever it is correctly manipulated by a user. Most instruments are tools, objects designed with particular capacities that afford particular functions and meet particular purposes. Crowbars, for instance, have a particular shape that affords them capacities to serve purposes when articulated sufficiently in the world. However, we can imagine any number of objects being seen as an instrument when some understood function of its physicality allows it to serve a purpose. Building on this work, I theorize toying as a specific kind of instrument, a specific kind of semiotic process. In most cases the instrument as a semiotic process arises when an artifact is approached by the user as fit for a certain purpose. We might give it the form “I need some object, X, that can Y.” The process looks something like Heidegger’s definition of the “tool” as an artifact that allows its own physical being to elide beneath its humanoriented use. In contrast, toying, as a semiotic process, arises when an artifact is scanned for potential functions and affordances with the purpose of play. We might use the form “What Y might this X serve?” The toy is too conspicuous for Heidegger in that it never settles on a fixed purpose; it never moves from “present-at-hand” to “ready-to-hand,” as it were. In other words, the tangible affordances of the toy resist eliding under some present use. For example, the first time I use a crowbar as a paperweight, I am toying with the crowbar. I have taken an affordance of the object heretofore meaningless and put it towards a new purpose. The best toys are designed to remain this open constantly—modeling clay, building blocks, a generic cape, the cardboard box that trumps the gift on Christmas morning—but some objects must be “charged” with such indeterminacy by their position in a particular context or frame. In the ordinary world, a police detective can be said to “toy” with her environment in the same way. It is a mode of approach. The detective is tasked with regarding each “X” as a potential index of the crime afoot. Every object at the crime scene is potentially a clue, an “X” that may stand for or point to a very crucial “Y” needed to prove the identity and activities of the perpetrator. The pivotal difference between the actual crime scene and the virtual crime scene is that the ARG is characterized by what we have so far called “false indices,” material signs that point to fictional truths; however, the process of “toying” is similar.

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Reaching out into the everyday lives of the players, the ARG demands constant toying as players navigate their everyday environments. Everyday life becomes enchanted insofar as any given moment or occurrence, any given “X,” can be more than what it appears. The “X” is no longer just an “X” at all, as any given object potentially carries a “Y” within the central fabrication of the game. This is how the virtual emerges—or not. Like a crime scene for the detective, the entire actual world becomes open-ended and indeterminate for the players, alive with potential indices, and every “X” must be questioned, lifted up and examined, shaken, wielded “as if” to see if it has value in the fictional world of the game or not. However, at any given moment, the players will not know whether this “X” is properly part of the game or not, and so all of these potential indices are held in tension, toyed with over and over; they are “charged.” The researcher then traces this ongoing process of toying, which is the routine and ordinary activity of the game. As soon as the player “wields” something in the frame of the game, “donning it” or “trying it on,” as it were, that element is now just as much a part of the assemblage as the most important clue or artifact produced by the creators. In this way, the virtual world is always more than or larger than both the ordinary world and the system of the game.

Conclusions This chapter works to figure the ARG as a unique kind of virtual world, one that emerges when a structure of “charged” indices enchants the everyday lives of unsuspecting participants and elicits dedicated investment in resolving a carefully crafted fabrication. Such an ARG can offer no less than a life-changing experience for participants. ARG s do something. Participating in an ARG offers more than a false sense of importance or control; players experience for themselves the sizable effects individuals and collectivities can have when generating new meanings together. Moreover, playing an ARG enchants the world, and every strange or curious occurrence becomes suspect. Just like an experience with hallucinogenics, the opportunity to “see through” the face-value presentation of meaning and matter can last for years. Everything becomes a toy, conspicuous, present-at-hand.

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And once you have played an ARG and know how they hide waiting in the environment—how you can be participating for days before realizing that you are a player—you can never actually be sure whether you are participating in one in the moment or not. Maybe you are right now.

Notes 1 Tim Ingold (2000) characterizes what he calls the “complementary fallacy,” a widespread academic practice of studying human life as though it consisted of two disparate yet complementary worlds, the biological (matter) and the social (spirit). Anthropologists, he argues, have acclimated to this division and stick to one world without making claims about the other. There forms a kind of mutual disregard between the “hard” scientists and the “soft” scientists; of course, a mutual disregard may at times feel more like a cold war to those near the borders. What Ingold calls for is a singular vision of the human, as at once organism and individual, a vision capable of giving the biological scientist and the cultural anthropologist a commensurable language. Likewise, Bruno Latour (2008) argues vividly against bifurcating reality into two opposing realms, the cultural and the natural, with “meaning” on one side and “world” on the other. The staunchly objectivist view, held by the Natural side, holds that only matter and physical Laws exist, considering the proliferation of social scientific theories as so much nonsense, nothing but aestheticism and moralizing. On the Cultural side, constructionists hold that science is itself “culturally constructed” and that “scientific facts” are political tools devoid of objective reality, which, after all, does not exist. The result of this bifurcation is “to make impossible the truth of poetry, as well as [. . .] the realism of science” (2008: 12, emphasis in the original). He asks, “What will happen if, instead of trying to bridge the distance between words and worlds, we were trying to move sideways along with the various elements that appear to go in the same direction?” (2008: 14). His answer is to acknowledge the differences but move together regardless.

References Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting The Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and The Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC : Duke University Press.

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Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Celia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor. 2012. Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Methods. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Butler, Judith. 1993. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” In The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, edited by H. Abelove, M.A. Barale, and D.M. Halperin, 307–20. New York: Routledge. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. New York: Harper and Row. Hillis, Ken. 2009. Online A Lot of The Time: Ritual, Fetish, Sign. Durham, NC : Duke University Press. Ingold, Tim. 2000. Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Kockelman, Paul. 2006. “A Semiotic Ontology of the Commodity.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 16(1): 76–102. Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the social: An introduction to actornetwork-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, B. 2008. What is the style of matters of concern? Two lectures in empirical philosophy. Assen, Netherlands: Royal Van Gorcun Publishers. Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables For the Virtual. London: Duke University Press. McCormack, Derek. 2010. “Remotely Sensing Affective Afterlives: The Spectral Geographies of Material Remains.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(3): 640–54. Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. 2003. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. Searle, John. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: The Free Press. Thrift, Nigel. 2011. “Lifeworlds, Inc.–And What to Do About It.” Environ Plan D, 29(1): 5–26.

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CHAPTER NINE

A Typology to describe Alternate Reality Games for Cultural Contexts Diane Dufort and Federico Tajariol

Introduction May 2011, Belfast, Ireland. Players worldwide helped Ana, a transfer student, unravel a mystery that lead her, and the players along with her, to navigate through virtual and real spaces, to find answers about her father’s death, to fight conspirators, and to find an issue to the labyrinth of Belfast. To help Ana, players needed to search for clues hidden in videos and blog posts and to meet with game characters in person. These players experienced [In]visible Belfast, an alternate reality game (ARG ) created to promote the Belfast Book Festival, engaging and enabling participants to discover and to learn about Belfast and local author Ciaran Carson. This ARG is an example of how the rise of multimedia led cultural institutions to growingly rely on digital technologies in order to reach new audiences. In this process, cultural institutions use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT ) to foster leisure and informal learning activities around their collection. The 234

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design of cultural ARG s (CARG s) expects to align visitors’ expectations and cultural institutions’ goals. This is a theoretical and methodological challenge to help designers and cultural actors reaching a mutual understanding. This chapter reflects on the use of ARG s as learning tools in museums and other cultural institutions. In the first section, we present the assets of games and the use of technologies in a cultural context. Then, we define alternate reality games, their main characteristics as well as additional interaction-stimulating and immersive features, observed in some ARG s, that can prove of particular interest in a cultural learning oriented game. In the third section, we define cultural alternate reality games, their purpose, and specificities. Finally, we describe our proposition of typology to categorize CARG s, which could also be a tool to support the design of cultural alternate reality games. Though much of the rest of this volume builds off of given definitions of ARG s, this chapter will deliberately explore the nuances and differences in the definitions of ARG s.

Digital games and gamification in a cultural institutional context Playing games is one of the most relevant human activities for the construction of the self (Mead, 1934), the connection of social links (Piaget, 1954), and the evolution of society (Bruner, 1972). According to Huizinga (1955), a game is a free activity, absorbing player’s attention and in which the player is free to continue or quit, without a material rewarding, with fixed rules acting in a particular spatial area and time delay, favoring the building of social groups interacting each other. Caillois (2001) added that the outcomes of this activity are not predefined, according to the rules accepted by players, and these rules replace the laws of human society during the time of the game. In a game, each player is aware of the fictional nature of the storyworld, and (s)he expects a quantifiable outcome (Salen and Zimmerman, 2003) of her activity, whose experience is highly satisfying (Csikszentmihalyi and Hermanson, 1995). In this sense, by playing a game human beings explore and rewrite their everyday experiences from an unexpected perspective. She acts “as

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if” she was doing something else that is only metaphorically linked to what she is doing. That led authors to define the game as a metaphor or as a fictive activity (Caillois, 2001; Huizinga, 1955). The processes above ultimately concerns systems of culture. Given that culture is not an individual creation but a system of representations, which are specific to a human community and shared among its members (Moles, 1967), cultural institutions often commit artists and curators to create exhibits that stimulate social interaction about, around, or with artworks (Bannon and Bowers, 2001; Ciolfi and Bannon, 2002; Heath et  al., 2002; Hindmarsh et  al., 2001). ICT have been employed to actively engage the members of the audience cooperating each other and new forms of cultural learning experiences emerged aiming to present cultural heritage in a more appealing way (Kiefer, Matyas, and Schlieder, 2006; Michael et al., 2010). In fact, during museum and heritage sites visits, the audience does not just receive some information, they build interactions with other individuals and a precise environment. These interactions are key components for an audience’s learning experience. (Falk and Dierking, 2000; Heath et  al., 2001; Laurillau and Paternò, 2004). To this end, museums and other cultural institutions are often seeking to benefit from the opportunities offered by digital technologies. In other words, museums growingly reflect on the use of communication and information technologies to actively engage visitors and to enable interaction and collaboration between them. This aim led museums to exploit these technologies (Hawkey, 2004; Parry, 2007; Tallon et al., 2008) with either on-site resources such as guides or interactive kiosks, or online (e.g., websites) or home-based resources (e.g., interactive CD -ROM s). The use of technologies by museums and in heritage sites quickly evolved along a more global “media convergence” process (Jenkins, 2006; Lambert, 2003). Indeed, with the fast growing development and ubiquity of mobile devices, new forms of cultural learning experiences are emerging (Kiefer, Matyas, and Schlieder, 2006; Michael et  al., 2010). At the same time, visitors, have complementary expectations. Indeed, they not only seek to be active in heritage sites and museums. They also try to interact with other visitors (Davallon, Gottesdiener, and Le Marec, 1999). This form of interaction is a reassuring and gratifying need and not only a pleasant asset (Bannon and Bowers, 2001; Ciolfi and Bannon, 2002; Fourmentreaux, 2006; Lambert, 2003).

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In looking at these shifts in the experiences and expectations of cultural institutions, we argue that ARG s have the potential to be an appropriate response to both cultural institutions and visitors’ expectations.

Alternate reality games (ARGs) as pervasive games: defining expansive boundaries ARG s are sometimes considered “pervasive games” or “ubiquitous games.” Both pervasive and ubiquitous concepts originate from the computing domain where they describe a full integration of Information Technologies (IT ) devices into the user’s environment while becoming omnipresent and invisible (Weiser, 1999). If these terms are commonly used interchangeably, Nieuwdorp (2007) states that ubiquitous commonly refers to a technological approach while pervasive relates to a cultural approach, which focuses on the user and the integration of the artifact in her usual environment. Different perspectives coexist both in the computing and the game domains (Nieuwdorp, 2007). In relation to games, the different perspectives lead authors to relate ARG s to pervasive or ubiquitous games. According to Montola, the pervasive game genre includes both ubiquitous games and ARG s as subgenres (Montola, 2005; Montola, 2011) while Bogost (2011) places ubiquitous games, pervasive games, and alternate reality games as distinct subgenres of mixed-reality games. McGonigal (2006) points at a semantic difference: “ubiquitous” stands as a synonym of omnipresent, therefore describing a passive state; “pervasive” describes a process, a transition between two states. According to her, an ubiquitous game would tend to a persistent rhythm while pervasive games would provide a more mobile and intermittent experience, thus making ARG s ubiquitous. In this chapter, we consider ARG s as a subgenre of pervasive games. But, whether one considers whether ARG s share or inherit characteristics of pervasive or ubiquitous games, they blend a game world into the ordinary life of the player, blurring the social, temporal, and/or spatial boundaries of a game (Montola, 2005,

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2007, 2011; Montola, Stenros and Waern, 2009). An ARG blurs three types of boundaries: spatial, if it is not played in a dedicated virtual or in a physical space (e.g. game board, virtual space, field); temporal, if its game sessions are blended in ordinary life; social, if there is an ambiguity between participants and non-participants (Montola, 2005; Montola, 2007).

Main features ARG s have some characteristic traits, such as transmedia storytelling (Bonsignore, 2012; Bonsignore, Hansen, Kraus, and Ruppel, 2011; Dena, 2008; McGonigal, 2006), anti-escapism, and ambiguity. As ARG scholarship has traditionally focused on the first aspect, we focus here on the two other important elements of the genre. Anti-escapism. As ARG s are played in the real world, McGonigal (2011) qualifies them as anti-escapist. In other words, people don’t play ARG s to escape their life but to improve it in several ways including enchanting it or making decisions that have an impact in their life. McGonigal argues that reality is “broken” and can be fixed with games, especially ARG s that apply the collective intelligence of their players to real life problems encountered in fields such as environment or health. Indeed, in ARG s, players are lead to do things “for real” (Montola, 2007). In World Without Oil, players were invited to think about how their life would change during an unprecedented oil crisis: what problems they would encounter due to the resulting oil shortage and what solutions they would apply to these problems. They contributed to the game with blog posts, videos, or comic strips (JafariNaimi and Meyers, 2015; McGonigal, 2011). Ambiguity. As a subgenre of pervasive games, ARG s are characterized by their blurring of boundaries. This generates ambiguity and confusion concerning what is part of the game and what is not. Ambiguity has proven to not only be a source of interaction but also of interest and enjoyment to players (Dansey, 2008; Gaver, Beaver, and Benford, 2003; McGonigal, 2003; Montola, 2007; Bellotti, Ferretti, and De Gloria, 2005; Reid, 2008; Benford et al., 2006). For example, in post-game interviews, players of the pervasive game Uncle Roy All Around You (Benford et al.,

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2004) referred to ambiguous events as one of the most disconcerting and thrill-inducing features of the game, making it an enjoyable experience. According to Gaver, Beaver, and Benford (2003), there are three main types of ambiguity that can be exploited in interface design and pervasive games: i. The ambiguity of information: occurs when a player receives vague or strange information, sources of speculation or requiring interpretation. This type of ambiguity is common in ARG s as part of the intriguing nature of rabbit holes. For instance, in The Beast (Microsoft, 2001), a sentient machine therapist was credited in the trailer of the movie “Artificial Intelligence.” In that case, the ambiguous information was the strange reference to a nonexistent profession. In Ghosts of a Chance (Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2008), a bodybuilder stormed into a conference room during the ARGF est-o-con convention in Boston. He posed, flexing his henna-adorned muscles in front of more than 100 ARG players. A clue was written with henna on his shoulder. In that latter example, the ambiguity of information was provided not only by the very peculiar presence of a bodybuilder in the middle of a conference but also by his link to the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Indeed, some players had a hard time believing a serious institution would send a stripper at an ARG convention. In both games, these oddities stimulated speculation and intrigued players. ii. The ambiguity of context: occurs when an object or game element is brought out of its usual context or when the usage conventions of said game element/object are broken. For instance, in the Danish artist Jeppe Hein’s Modified Social Benches, the confusion is created through the contrast between the expected usage of a public bench and the fact that the benches were unusable. iii. The ambiguity of relationship: provokes thoughts, questions and/or introspection, by exploiting the player’s relationship with an object or an element of the game. Gaver, Beaver, and Benford (2003) mentioned a device supposed to be controlled by the user’s psychic powers. The ambiguity of information, results from the pervasive nature of CARGs. However, it has also been exploited deliberately as a resource for designing other genres of pervasive games. In these cases, ambiguity was considered a valuable feature, improving the

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enjoyment of the player with its thrill-inducing and interactionstimulating characteristics. In addition to that, ambiguity is also at the root of a few immersive phenomena that were noticed in some ARGs and that do not have the same status as the above main characteristics.

Additional characteristics of ARGs Each ARG shares the previous main characteristics, while other additional features do not appear in all ARG s. More precisely, these additional features would be important assets in games played in a cultural learning context. Apophenia and pareidolia. The ambiguity of information stimulates a natural optical phenomenon called pareidolia (McGonigal, 2004). Pareidolia is a sort of perceptive illusion, a tendency to perceive as significant a meaningless stimulus. A typical example of pareidolia would be seeing a cloud and perceiving it as the shape of a Tyrannosaurus Rex playing a saxophone. It is pareidolic because the shape of the cloud itself is a random occurrence. Only the interpretation of an individual will link the shape of the cloud to the dinosaur. Another individual could very much interpret the same cloud as looking like a face or a sheep. Dansey (2008) describes pareidolia as a visual form of apophenia without attributing to the latter term its common clinic connotation (as a development stage of schizophrenia). Apophenia covers a wider area than the simply pareidolic. Indeed, apophenia qualifies any tendency in an individual to attribute an incorrect meaning to a coincidental event. In other words, apophenia is the phenomenon in which “a sense is given to nonsense” (Dansey, 2008). In ARG s, apophenia can inspire a player to interpret a coincidental event as a game event (McGonigal, 2004; Dansey, 2008). McGonigal (2003) describes a case of apophenia in a Go Game session. During their game, one of the teams found a pile of materials (e.g., pieces of metal and old furniture) next to a sign stating, “Assembly required.” Thinking that this was part of the game, the team members spent 20 minutes building a chair with these materials. A few minutes after, one of the infiltrated game actors, an accomplice, approached the group (McGonigal, 2006). Not only had these players interpreted something totally unrelated (apophenia) as a game event, but the

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coincidental approach of the game actor at this very moment, while he was patrolling in the area, highlights another phenomenon: coincidence. Coincidence. The “happy coincidence” (Reid, 2008), is a “magical” moment when the overall context is favorable and fills the gap between the real world and the game world. According to Reid (2008), three types of coincidence can occur: i) natural coincidence: when natural events and game events are linked in some way. For example, thunder resonates in the real world while a player encounters a description of a tragic event happening during a thunderstorm; ii) social coincidence: when a player sees it as fortuitous to share a game event with another; iii) feigned coincidence: when actors or game elements are exploited to orchestrate or cause events that are interpreted as coincidences. In the case of the feigned coincidence, the player perceives it as a coincidence but it is an event that was planned and staged by the puppet masters. Coincidences make the space where a game is orchestrated more meaningful to the players, thus generating a sensation of connection to the place or historical site (Reid, 2008). Coincidences could also be interpreted as messages destined to the players and invite them to look beyond appearances and to search for potential game hints in the real world (McGonigal, 2003, 2006). Both coincidences and apophenia are natural phenomenon. Designers’ choices can increase the chance for these two phenomena to occur in order to surprise and intrigue players. However, players are not always the main targets of the designers’ choices. Indeed, some of them are aimed at bystanders (non-participants of the game) and seek to intrigue them, invite them to participate, or increase their well-being. Increase the jen ratio of a particular place. McGonigal (2011) provides successful examples of ARG s aimed at increasing the jen ratio of a particular place. The jen ratio is a mathematical measure of the well-being in a given public or semi-public environment such as a metro station, a bus stop, a supermarket, or a museum. This increase depends on several factors: time and positive and negative interactions in a given environment. The higher the ratio is, the happier and the safer a person is supposed to feel and the more attached she will feel to this environment. Increasing the jen ratio by performing acts of kindness was, therefore, the mission given to players in one of the sessions of Cruel 2 B Kind (2006). In this game, players were tasked to eliminate other players in a city-based

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Doom-like game. However, instead of using factitious weapons, players were supposed to perform acts of kindness. In other words, players used a special type of “ammunition” : instead of bullets, they “shot” compliments, greetings, or nice words at each other, thus making it necessary to be polite and kind in order to increase their score. The mechanisms of the game encouraged “misfires” and even made them unavoidable. Designers of these games were fully aware that compliments were not only uncalled for, most notably about a bystander’s physical appearance, but they could also be considered as a kind of street harassment. However, according to McGonigal’s observations (McGonigal, 2011), the positive interactions were prominent compared to the negative ones. Although we remain skeptical of this conclusion due to the unavailability of a detailed study of the methodology and results concerning these observations, we suppose that implementing techniques to increase the jen ratio in a heritage site could facilitate the education mission of cultural institutions, especially museums, for occasional visitors. These visitors represent around 40 percent of the global population but only half of the total number of museum visits, while regular visitors, who represent only 12 percent to 15 percent of the population stand for the remaining half (Hood, 1994). Increasing the jen ratio in museums could appeal to occasional visitors who first and foremost seek a social activity in a place they feel at ease in. It would lead them to consider these places as fun and entertaining instead of solemn, passive, or boring and, subsequently, increase the frequency of their visits. Besides the above features, cultural alternate reality games retain some characteristics that make them unique, as detailed below.

Cultural alternate reality games (CARGs) Cultural alternate reality games (CARG s) refer to ARG s created for a specific purpose: forming an educational interface between the public and artwork to most notably support a cultural event, provide alternative cultural tours and enhanced visits, promote historical cultural heritage, and change the image of a cultural institution. In our research, we analyzed a selection of ten existing CARG s.

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Many more CARG s exist and some are created every year. However, we only selected CARG s for which we could find sufficient information to describe precisely: the virtual and physical spaces of the game, the relation between players, the nature of the content created/generated by players whether immaterial or material, the missions were given or puzzles solved. In alternate reality games, because of the use of transmedia storytelling, this information is dispersed through several medias: webpages (e.g., characters’ blogs), social networks profiles, YouTube accounts, press releases, player-created wikis, specific websites, etc. In some cases, some of these medias are not accessible anymore (expired domain names, deleted websites). CARG s were created to: Promote an event. These CARG s are orchestrated before or during the event. Their storyline encourages, and sometimes requires, players to attend it. CARG s created for this purpose include Eduque le Troll (Henry Jenkins’ conference on transmedia storytelling at the Pompidou Center, France, 2012), Cherche Tom dans la Nuit (European Night of Museums, France, 2011) and [In]visible Belfast (Belfast Book Festival, Ireland, 2007). b. Offer new ways to visit a heritage site or museum. These CARG s aim to maximize the length of the visit and to increase the attention given to the artworks. In this category, we put The Miracle Mile Paradox (Los Angeles, USA , 2012), Ghosts of a Chance (Smithsonian American Art Museum, USA , 2008). c. Teach pupils about historical cultural heritage and sciences. This type of CARG complements school lessons. Therefore, they are supervised by teachers and orchestrated with a limited group of selected players. Games made for this purpose include The Arcane Gallery of Gadgetry (Learning about the Historic Patent Office of Washington, USA , 2011) and Vanished (Smithsonian American Art Museum, USA , 2011). d. Change the image of a cultural institution before public’s eyes. A cultural institution, such as a library or a museum, generally uses this sort of CARG to give the public a more convivial and less austere image of its related practices. In a.

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this category we recall The Mystery Guest (Finksburg Library of Carroll County, USA , 2010), Find Chesia (Finksburg Library of Carroll County, USA , 2009) and Blood on the stacks (Coates Library, USA , 2007). Two main reasons led to this selection. First, to fully analyze the games, it was essential to retain enough information about their progress and characteristics. This limitation brought us to put aside several games that were not sufficiently documented, particularly concerning their real-world aspects. Second, we selected games with various purposes, target audiences, organizers, and storyworlds.

TABLE 9.1 Selection of ARGs Purpose

Name of the CARG

Year

Eduque le Troll, Georges Pompidou Center, (F)

2012

Cherche Tom dans la Nuit, European Night of Museums, (F)

2011

[In]visible Belfast, Belfast Book Festival, (IR )

2011

Offer new ways to visit a heritage site or museum

The Miracle Mile Paradox, Miracle Mile area, (USA )

2012

Ghosts of a Chance, Smithsonian American Art Museum, (USA )

2008

Change the image of a cultural institution before public’s eyes

The Mystery Guest, Finksburg Library of Carroll County, (USA )

2010

Find Chesia, Finksburg Library of Carroll County, (USA )

2009

Blood on the stacks, Coates Library, (USA )

2007

The Arcane Gallery Of Gadgetry, Historic Patent Office of Washington, (USA )

2011

Vanished, Smithsonian American Art Museum, (USA )

2011

Promote an event

Teach pupils about historical cultural heritage and sciences

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This selection shows the richness of cultural domains of CARG s. Their production is at the crossing of different domains and professional backgrounds: artists, curators, game designers and developers. Indeed, the conception of CARG s must, on the one hand, enable cultural institutions to reach specific objectives mentioned above. On the other hand, a CARG must fulfill the expectations of visitors: social interaction (Falk and Dierking, 2000; Heath et  al., 2001; Laurillau and Paternò, 2004); activity or interactivity (Davallon, Gottesdiener, and Le Marec, 1999); artistic creation and collective creation (Fourmentreaux, 2006; Lambert, 2003). CARG s possess suitable assets to potentially fill these expectations. As anti-escapist games and games that enable players to “do things for real,” they can engage players in rewarding activities, including (co)creation. For example, in the CARG Ghosts of a Chance, players were required to create several artworks that were registered as museums artifacts and presented in a temporary exposition. Some players also attended anthropology workshop during which a professional anthropologist taught them to deduce several basic information about a human skeleton, such as its sex. In another CARG , Vanished, pupils learned and applied the scientific method to some problems concerning various scientific fields. Apophenia and coincidence could let players build a feeling of connection to the heritage site or artworks. Ultimately, the creation of efficient and appealing CARG s must take many factors into account due to their complexity, because they are both cultural learning tools and alternate reality games. Designers need analytical tools, such as typologies, to reduce this complexity and to have a synoptic view of a wide range of possibilities of the design space (cf. Zagal and Bruckman, 2008). In fact, as in other design fields (e.g., architecture, health care, etc., Kuziemsky, Borycki, and Brasset-Latulippe, 2010), a typology provides a whole set of data for processes, information and factors related to a specific field.

Our typology to describe CARGs Many authors have highlighted the lack of standardized and precise vocabulary to describe games and their structure (Church, 1999;

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Elverdam and Aarseth, 2007; Zagal and Bruckman, 2008; Zagal et al., 2005). These authors also mention the need to develop design tools such as typologies in order to help designers to create games. This lack of tools have both theoretical effects on game studies researches and on game designers. For example, Zagal and Bruckman asked college students taking game classes to participate in an exercise of a formal description of video games to complete an ontology of games. Future professionals in the field, familiar with games, these students faced difficulties describing games and lacked vocabulary to do so. Participating in the ontology development and thus working with a tool composed of strict semantic categories had positive learning outcomes concerning the vocabulary (Zagal and Bruckman, 2008). Two main observations are behind our proposition of typology for CARG s. First, most description tools created to this date are not suitable to describe and classify CARG s such as the genrebased classification widely adopted for marketing purpose or the Game Purpose Sector (GPS ) model to describe the serious dimension of serious games (Alvarez, Rampnoux, Jessel, and Methel, 2007). Indeed, they cannot help designers to describe the specificities of ARGS as cultural learning tools, characterize the extension and blurring of their boundaries (Gentes, Guyot-Mbodji, and Demeure, 2010), or detail the alternate reality they set. Secondly, most are structured with subjective criteria to ensure internal and external validity for this type of methodological tools (Elverdam and Aarseth, 2007). We have built our reflections on Aarseth, Solveig Smedstad and Sunnanå (2003) and Elverdam and Aarseth’s (2007) open-ended multidimensional classification model of games. Among the reasons that lead to choosing this typology for our proposition is the fact that this open-ended model allowed adding, modifying, or rejecting individual dimensions without compromising the integrity of the whole model (Elverdam and Aarseth, 2007). Second, this typology helps to describe games of any type, as varied as Chess, Volleyball, and World of Warcraft (i.e., games played in various spatial, temporal, and social configurations.) Elverdam and Aarseth’s original classification is composed of eight meta-categories, each of them containing up to three dimensions: 1) Virtual Space; 2) Physical Space; 3) Internal Time; 4) External Time; 5) Player Composition; 6) Player Relation; 7) Game State; and 8) Struggle.

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FIGURE 9.1 Typology of cultural alternate reality games.

In developing our typology, we first identified meta-categories that were not adapted to CARG s. Thus, we rejected the seventh meta-category that described how the game state could be saved in a particular game. We also rejected the third category. This decision was based on logic: as ARG s and especially CARG s are intimately bound with reality, it is impossible to interrupt a game, save it, and load this game state before a new playing session. For the same reason, there is only one time frame in ARG s, controlling the passing of time and its related laws: reality. Time in ARG s defers from many video games in which time passes on a different scale (i.e. every minute, in reality, corresponds to 8 minutes in the game world) and with different laws (i.e., ability to pause time). Second, we added two meta-categories (see Figure  9.1) to characterize both the cultural aspect of these games and the alternate reality of CARG s: “Immaterial Content” and “Material Content.”

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Each of these meta-categories includes three dimensions: the “game content” offered by the puppet masters respectively immaterial and material that significantly contribute to the narration (e.g., “call to actions” are not considered game contents); the “player generated content,” and souvenirs. This last dimension identifies the significant tangible and lasting aspects of the game such as a collector object won during the game (material souvenir) or a virtual remnant of the player’s activity in the game (immaterial souvenir). We then inserted dimensions to characterize expansions and blurring of the boundaries, essential to CARG s. To this end, we used the three available categories describing time and space: External Time, Virtual Space, Physical Space. In the latter, we added a dimension “Environment Dynamics,” mirroring the one existing in Virtual Space: “Environment Dynamics.” This dimension describes the type of modifications, if any, a player can make in the physical space of the game. As the modification of the player’s real environment is not totally free, only two values are included in the physical space version of “Environment Dynamics,” “none” and “fixed.” In the ARG Cherche Tom dans la Nuit, designers could not modify anything (“none”). In the ARG Ghosts of a Chance, players were invited to create artwork on a specific theme given by curators. Though they could also be considered “User created content,” these artworks were to be sent to the museum. Museum workers then recorded the players’ creations following the same procedure as for any museum piece (McGonigal, 2011). These works were then the subject of a temporary exposition. This particular case illustrates how a player’s creation can change the environment of the museum. We created a new meta-category to describe the social frame of the game. It includes dimensions: “role” and “perception of the performance frame.” Adding these dimensions to Elverdam and Aarseth’s (2007) original typology was necessary to describe the relation between players, actors/performers, and non-players. Indeed, their original typology described the player composition (single player, multiplayer, teams, etc.), the relation between them (can it change in the course of the game?) and how it affected the challenge of the game (i.e., was the challenge set by an adversary or not?). However, as pervasive games, ARG s blur their social boundaries making it necessary to describe the role of nonparticipants (people who are not taking part in the game and, often are not aware of its existence) and non-player participants (puppet

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masters and in-game characters embodied by actors). Thus, the “perception of the performance frame” is particularly important for ARG s that include a dramatic performance aspect in the game. Benford et al. (2006) identified two different strategies to describe the blurring of the social boundaries of the game (i.e., the performance frame). The first one covers a situation in which the social boundaries of the game appear to the player as wider than the real boundaries. In this case, players tend to consider as performers/actors, people that are not at all involved in the game. An example of this perception, though not in a cultural context, can be found in several events during the ARG Go Game sessions. A team indeed reported having mistaken a hotel worker as an actor hired to help them in their mission (McGonigal, 2003). The second strategy covers a situation in which the social boundaries appear narrower than the real ones. It comes with the incorrect feeling that controlled spaces, game items, or performers are not part of the game. Along these two strategies, we added two others we called “Both,” in case both mentioned strategies are getting used successively and “Identical.” The latter covers situations in which designers decide not to create ambiguity between players and nonplayers thus not blurring the social boundaries of the game. This strategy was used in children-oriented CARG s such as The Mystery Guest (Finksburg Library of Carroll County, 2010, USA ). In this game, Twitter accounts were presented as an initiative of the Finksburg Library and YouTube videos were posted using the official account of the library. The purpose was to help children and their parents identifying game elements. We also created two dimensions in the “Struggle” meta-category to describe a key component of ARG s: the control exerted by the community of players on the scenario, either locally with “Local Player Agency” to point out that players’ actions have immediate consequences, or globally, with “Global Player Agency,” to stress that players’ actions have some long-term effects. For instance, in the ARG Ghosts of a Chance, players’ actions had long-term consequences on the scenario, while in ARG s Cherche Tom dans la Nuit or Eduque le Troll, the story ended the same way regardless of players’ actions (“Global Player Agency” value is empty). Having developed the typology described here, we applied it to our corpus of ten different CARG s. We noticed how time could be described with only one meta-category (External Time) instead of

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the two proposed in the original typology. This is a specificity of ARG s that CARG s inherit. In other types of pervasive games, both the External Time and Internal Time meta-categories are necessary to describe the passing of time. It reflects the temporal expansion of CARG s boundaries: the game time is the real-world time and no control can be exerted on its passing. Moreover, the “perception of the performance frame” of the analyzed CARG s gave us insights about design choices made by cultural institutions. For example, most of the analyzed CARG s did not implement social ambiguity although it is considered an asset and a source of satisfaction and interaction for players. We also noticed that the CARG s lead by the Smithsonian American Art Museum such as Ghosts of a Chance and Vanished, were among the few that enabled the players to engage in creative or scientific activities. Ghosts of a Chance is of particular interest in this context since it enabled players to create artworks that were officially recorded as museum pieces and displayed in a temporary public exposition. As a description and classification tool, the typology is used to analyze existing pervasive games and especially CARG s. Our typology describes formally many aspects of CARG s and thus, helps to point at the key differences between them more precisely than a genre-based or purpose-based classification. For example, Ghosts of a Chance and The Miracle Mile Paradox are both CARG s aimed at offering new ways to visit heritage sites or museums. Though they share the same purpose and genre, they are distinguished most notably by the player-created content. Ghosts of a Chance required players to create artistic objects and send them to the museums while the material content created by players of The Miracle Mile Paradox (cardboard signs used during a protest) was done on the players’ initiative. With more than 60 values distributed in 24 dimensions, our version of the typology allows a great variety of combinations and thus, enables users to precisely characterizes games.

Conclusions and future works ICT offer a constant challenge to cultural institutions and designers. Technology literate publics have important expectations related to

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contents and interactivity: activity, creation, and social interaction for occasional visitors as well as learning and discovery activities for more regular users. As for cultural institutions, their mission is, among others, related to educational and informational objectives. In this context, CARG s, influenced by both pervasive computing and ubiquitous paradigms and by media convergence, would seem to be a suitable answer to both cultural institutions and the expectations of visitors of both types. This chapter aimed to define CARG s. They are a complex cultural apparatus, whose production requires interdisciplinary work between groups with different specialties. In the cultural sector, the aim is to ensure interdisciplinary work between specialists of games and cultural institutions in order to help the understanding of a CARG , explain its structure and characterize them. We extended an existing open-ended multidimensional typology of games to adapt it to CARG s. Our typology enables ARG s designers to describe several extensions of the boundaries of the game: social expansion, spatial expansion, and temporal expansion. At this stage, the typology has a descriptive purpose. Nonetheless, it is a preliminary step, necessary to identify and categorize the characteristics of this kind of games. Indeed, our aim is to use it to develop a tool to improve the design of CARG s. In fact, many authors highlighted the need for some methodological tools for the game designers (Elverdam and Aarseth, 2007; Zagal et  al., 2005). Our proposal is a semantic tool, like an ontology. This typology is not only a necessary step towards a specification of a conceptualization (Gruber, 1993), but helps to determine a shared formal description of concepts and the relations between them (Borst, 1997; Szilagyi, 2014). In this context “shared” means that the community of stakeholders diffuses and reuses it. This semantic tool will be used in a web-application that will help designers and cultural institutions to share and talk about CARG s, helping both to find a mutual understanding and a shared vocabulary. For cultural institutions, it will also help them grasp the various possibilities of these kind of games and their benefits. Indeed, to date, ARG s have been used as learning tools with satisfying results (Connolly, Stansfield, and Hainey, 2011). In a constructivist view, where the mediation of human action through artifacts is the crucial moment of personal development (Cole and Cagigas, 2010; Engeström et al., 1999), we argue that ARG s can

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serve as levers for developing human beings and society. As interactive forms for increasing access to cultural information, ARG s can be a part of cognitive tools for development. However, they also retain specific assets, such as ambiguity, coincidences, and apophenia, that are necessary to engage and stimulate interaction between people (Dansey, 2008; Gaver, Beaver, and Benford, 2003; McGonigal, 2003; Montola, 2007; Bellotti, Ferretti, and De Gloria, 2005; Reid, 2008; Benford et  al., 2006). Moreover, ARG s’ link with reality makes them a perfect tool to stimulate the artistic creation and give a more concrete aspect to scientific knowledge and answering visitors’ expectations. By designing a typology of CARG s, our aim is to help designers and cultural institutions establish interdisciplinary work and especially to illustrate to cultural institutions what they could get from the use of the types of games.

References Aarseth, Espen, Solveig Marie Smedstad, and Lise Sunnanå. 2003. “A Multidimensional Typology of Games.” In Level Up Conference Proceedings. University of Utrecht. http://www.digra.org/wp-content/ uploads/digital-library/05163.52481.pdf Alvarez, Julian, and Damien Djaouti. 2010. Introduction au Serious Game. Questions Théoriques. http://www.questions-theoriques.com/ produit/2/9782917131084/Introduction%20au%20Serious%20game Alvarez, Julian, Olivier Rampnoux, Jean-Pierre Jessel, and Gilles Methel. 2007. “Serious Game: just a question of posture?” In Artificial and Ambient Intelligence convention (Artificial Societies for Ambient Intelligence) (AISB (ASAM i)), Newcastle upon Tyne, UK , April 2–4, 2007, 420–26. http://www.aisb.org.uk: The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour. Bannon, Liam, and John Bowers. 2001. “Report. On. Start-up Workshop for ‘SAFE ’ Project. Introduction.” Rapport de Workshop CID -183, SHAPE IST 2000–26069 Workpackage 4 Deliverable D 4.1. http:// cid.nada.kth.se/pdf/CID -183.pdf. Bellotti, Francesco, Edmondo Ferretti, and Alessandro De Gloria. 2005. “Discovering the European Heritage through the Chikho Educational Web Game.” In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment, 13–22. INTETAIN ’05. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/11590323_2.

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Benford, S., M. Flintham, A. Drozd, R. Anastasi, D. Rowland, N. Tandavanitj, M. Adams, Row J. Farr, A. Oldroyd, and J. Sutton. 2004. “Uncle Roy All Around You: Implicating the City in a Location-Based Performance.” Proc. Advances in Computer Entertainment (ACE 2004). Benford, Steve, Andy Crabtree, Stuart Reeves, Jennifer Sheridan, Alan Dix, Martin Flintham, and Adam Drozd. 2006. “The Frame of the Game: Blurring the Boundary between Fiction and Reality in Mobile Experiences.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 427–36. CHI ’06. Montréal, Québec, Canada: ACM . doi:10.1145/1124772.1124836. Björk, S., and J. Holopainen. 2005. Patterns in Game Design. Charles River Media Game Development Series. Charles River Media. Bogost, Ian. 2011. How to Do Things with Videogames. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bonsignore, Elizabeth. 2012. “Designing Alternate Reality Games.” In CHI ’12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 911–14. CHI EA ’12. New York, NY: ACM . doi:10.1145/2212776.2212863. Bonsignore, Elizabeth, Derek Hansen, Kari Kraus, and Mark Ruppel. 2011. “Alternate Reality Games as a Platform for Practicing 21st Century Literacies Defining Alternate Reality Games.” International Journal of Learning and Media 18 (Tech Report HCIL ): 1–34. Borst, Willem Nico. 1997. “Construction of Engineering Ontologies for Knowledge Sharing and Reuse.” Enschede: Universiteit Twente. http:// doc.utwente.nl/17864/ Breslin, John G., Alexandre Passant, and Stefan Decker. 2009. The Social Semantic Web. 1st ed. Springer Publishing Company, Inc. Bruner, J.S. (1972). Nature and Uses of Immaturity. American Psychologist, 27(8), 687–708. Caillois, R. (2001). Man, Play and Games. Chicago, IL : University of Illinois Press (Original work published 1958). Church, D. 1999. “Formal Abstract Design Tools.” Game Developer 3: 28. Ciolfi, Luigina, and Liam Bannon. 2002. “Designing Interactive Museum Exhibits : Enhancing Visitor Curiosity through Augmented Artefacts.” in Bagnara, S., Pozzi, S., Rizzo, A. and P. Wright (eds), Proceedings of ECCE11, European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, Catania (Italy). Cole, M., and Cagigas, X.E. 2010. “Cognition.” In M.H. Bornstein, ed., Handbook of Cultural Developmental Science, 127–42. New York: Taylor Francis Group. Connolly Thomas, Mark Stansfield, and Thomas Hainey. 2011. “An alternate reality game for language learning: ARG uing for multilingual

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motivation.” Computers and Education 57(1): 1389–415. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.01.009. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Kim Hermanson, 1995. “Intrinsic Motivation in Museums: Why Does One Want to Learn?” In Public Institutions for Personal Learning: Establishing a Research Agenda, American Association of Museums, 67–77. Leicester Readers in Museum Studies. John Falk, Lynn D. Dierking. Dansey, Neil. 2008. “Facilitating Apophenia to Augment the Experience of Pervasive LARP s.” In Breaking the Magic Circle Seminar. Finland. http://eprints.port.ac.uk/4724/ Davallon, Jean, H. Gottesdiener, and Joëlle Le Marec. 1999. “Les cédéroms de musées, vers de nouveaux rapports du public aux œuvres?” In Arts et multimédia: l’oeuvre d’art et sa reproduction à l’ère des médias interactifs, 2 de Esthétique: 135–48. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. Dena, Christina. 2008. “Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games.” Convergence (14), 1, 41–57. Dena, Christina. 2009. “Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments.” School of Letters, Art and Media Department of Media and Communications Digital Cultures Program University of Sydney. http://ciret-transdisciplinarity.org/biblio/biblio_pdf/Christy_ DeanTransm.pdf Dinehart, Stephen. 2015. “Transmedia Storytelling Defined.” Narrative Design. http://narrativedesign.org/2011/01/transmedia-storytellingdefined/ Elverdam, Christian, and Espen Aarseth. 2007. “Game Classification and Game Design: Construction Through Critical Analysis.” Games and Culture 2 (1): 3–22. doi:10.1177/1555412006286892. Engeström, Y., R. Miettinen, et al., eds. 1999. Perspectives on activity theory. New York: Cambridge University Press. Falk, J.H., and L.D. Dierking. 2000. Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning. American Association for State and Local History Book Series. AltaMira Press. http://books. google.fr/books?id=ar1WgzGgj8YC Fourmentreaux, Jean-Paul. 2006. “LES DISPOSITIFS DU NET ART ENTRE CONFIGURATION TECHNIQUE ET CADRAGE SOCIAL DE L’INTERACTION .” Techniques et Culture, no. 47. http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00109109 Gaver, William W., Jacob Beaver, and Steve Benford. 2003. “Ambiguity as a Resource for Design.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 233–40. CHI ’03. Ft. Lauderdale, Florida: ACM . doi:10.1145/642611.642653.

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Gentes, Annie, Aude Guyot-Mbodji, and Isabelle Demeure. 2010. “Gaming on the Move: Urban Experience as a New Paradigm for Mobile Pervasive Game Design.” Multimedia Systems 16 (1): 43–55. doi:10.1007/ s00530-009-0172-2. Giovagnoli, Max, ed. 2011. Transmedia Storytelling: Imagery, Shapes and Techniques. Pittsburgh, PA : ETC Press. Gruber, Thomas R. 1993. “A Translation Approach to Portable Ontology Specifications.” Knowl. Acquis. 5 (2): 199–220. doi:10.1006/knac. 1993.1008. Hawkey, Roy. 2004. Learning with Digital Technologies in Museums, Science Centres and Galleries. https://telearn.archives-ouvertes.fr/ hal-00190496 Heath, Christian, Dirk Vom Lehn, Jon Hindmarsh, Paul Luff, and Jason Cleverly. 2001. “Crafting Participation Interaction with and around Artistic, Mixed Media Artefacts.” IST Project 2606. Heath, Christian, Paul Luff, Dirk Vom Lehn, Jon Hindmarsh, and Jason Cleverly. 2002. “Crafting Participation: Designing Ecologies, Configuring Experience.” Visual Communication Vol. 1 (1): 9–33. Hindmarsh, Jon, Christian Heath, Dirk Vom Lehn, Luigina Ciolfi, Tony Hall, and Liam Bannon. 2001. “Social Interaction in Museums and Galleries.” DC Project 26069. Hood, Marylyn G. 1994. “L’interaction sociale au musée, facteur d’attraction des visiteurs occasionnels.” Publics et Musées 5 (1): 45–58. doi:10.3406/ pumus.1994.1036. Huizinga, Johan. 1955. Homo ludens; a study of the play-element in culture. Boston: Beacon Press. JafariNaimi, Nassim, and Eric M. Meyers. 2015. “Collective Intelligence or Group Think?: Engaging Participation Patterns in World Without Oil.” In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and #38; Social Computing, 1872–81. CSCW ‘15. New York, NY: ACM . doi:10.1145/2675133.2675258. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Media Studies/Cultural Studies. New York, NY: NYU Press. http://www.amazon.com/Convergence-Culture-Where-Media-Collide/ dp/0814742815 Kiefer, Peter, Sebastian Matyas, and Christoph Schlieder. 2006. “Learning about Cultural Heritage by Playing Geogames.” In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Entertainment Computing, 217–28. ICEC ’06. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/11872320_26. Kuziemsky, C.E., Borycki, E.M., and Brasset-Latulippe, A. 2010. “A typology to support HIS design for collaborative healthcare delivery.” In Proceedings of the 2010 ICSE Workshop on Software Engineering in

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Health Care, 29–38. ACM Press. http://doi.org/10.1145/1809085. 1809090 Lambert, Emmanuelle. 2003. “Multimédia et médiation culturelle: Récréation, re-création de(s) sens?” MEI. Media et information JEUX, MEDIAS, SAVOIRS (no.18): 181–90. Laurillau, Yann, and Fabio Paternò. 2004. “CoCicero: Un Système Interactif Pour La Visite Collaborative De Musée Sur Support Mobile.” In Proceedings of the 16th Conference on Association Francophone D’Interaction Homme-Machine, 101–8. IHM 2004. New York, NY: ACM . doi:10.1145/1148613.1148628. McGonigal, Jane. 2003. “A Real Little Game: The Pinocchio Effect in Pervasive Play.” In DiGRA Conference 2003. Pays-Bas. http://dblp. uni-trier.de McGonigal, Jane. 2006. “This Might Be a Game: Ubiquitous Play and Performance at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.” University of California, Berkeley. http://avantgame.com/McGonigal_THIS_ MIGHT_BE_A_GAME_sm.pdf McGonigal, Jane. 2011. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. New York: Penguin Group . Mead, George H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society, edited by C.W. Morris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Michael, Despina, Nectarios Pelekanos, Isabelle Chrysanthou, Panagiotis Zaharias, Loukia L. Hadjigavriel, and Yiorgos Chrysanthou. 2010. “Comparative Study of Interactive Systems in a Museum.” In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Digital Heritage, 250–61. EuroMed’10. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. http://dl. acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1939603.1939626 Moles, Abraham. 1967. Sociodynamique de La Culture. Mouton Paris— La Haye. Montola, Markus. 2005. “Exploring the Edge of the Magic Circle: Defining Pervasive Games.” In CD-ROM Proceedings of Digital Arts and Culture 1–4. Copenhagen, Denmark. Montola, Markus. 2007. “Tangible Pleasures of Pervasive Role-Playing.” In Situated Play: Proceedings of the 2007 Digital Games Research Association Conference, edited by Baba Akira, 178–85. Tokyo: The University of Tokyo. http://www.digra.org/dl/display_html?chid= 07312.38125.pdf Montola, Markus. 2011. “A Ludological View on the Pervasive MixedReality Game Research Paradigm.” Personal Ubiquitous Comput. 15 (1): 3–12. doi:10.1007/s00779-010-0307-7. Montola, Markus, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern. 2009. “Philosophies and Strategies of Pervasive Larp Design.” Larp, the Universe and Everything, 197–222. http://knutepunkt.laiv.org/2009/

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book/PhilosophiesAndStrategiesOfPervasiveLarpDesign/ [accessed October 5, 2016]. Nieuwdorp, Eva. 2007. “The Pervasive Discourse: An Analysis.” Comput. Entertain. 5 (2). doi:10.1145/1279540.1279553. Parry, R. 2007. Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change. Museum Meanings. Taylor & Francis. https:// books.google.fr/books?id=PaHNw21jb1gC Piaget, Jean. 1954. The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Basic Books. Reid, Josephine. 2008. “Design for Coincidence: Incorporating Real World Artifacts in Location Based Games.” In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts, 18–25. DIMEA ’08. New York, NY: ACM . doi:10.1145/1413634.1413643. Robertson, Venetia Laura Delano. 2013. “Of Ponies and Men My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the Brony Fandom.” International Journal of Cultural Studies, January. doi:10.1177/1367877912464368. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. 2003. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. Stewart, Sean. 2006. “Sean Stewart—Alternate Reality Games.” June 11. http://www.seanstewart.org/interactive/args/ Szilagyi, Ioan. 2014. “Technologies Sémantiques pour un système actif d’apprentissage.” Université de Franche-Comté. Tallon, L., J. Bowen, J. Bradburne, A. Burch, L. Dierking, J. Falk, S.F. Fantoni, et al. 2008. Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience: Handheld Guides and Other Media. AltaMira Press. Loïc Tallon and Kevin Walker (eds). Weiser, Mark. 1999. “The Computer for the 21st Century.” In SIGMOBILE Mob. Comput. Commun. Rev. 3 (3): 3–11. doi:10.1145/329124.329126. Zagal, José P., and Amy Bruckman. 2008. “The Game Ontology Project: Supporting Learning While Contributing Authentically to Game Studies.” In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on International Conference for the Learning Sciences. Volume 2, 499–506. ICLS ’08. Utrecht, The Netherlands: International Society of the Learning Sciences. http://dl.acm.org/citation. cfm?id=1599871.1599933 Zagal, José P., Michael Mateas, Clara Fernández-Vara, Brian Hochhalter, and Nolan Lichti. 2005. “Towards an Ontological Language for Game Analysis.” In Proceedings of International DiGRA Conference, 3–14.

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CHAPTER TEN

Sociability by Design in an Alternate Reality Game: The Case of The Trail Elina Roinioti, Eleana Pandia, and Yannis Skarpelos

In 2008, Greece entered an epoch of extended economic deprivation, political instability, and acute humanitarian crisis. These socioeconomic circumstances and the insecurity they provoked, seemed to also affect the nation’s dominant ideologies. Neoliberalism showed its ruthless facade, fascism presented itself as an antiausterity political proposal, and the horseshoe theory—the idea that the political left and political right are actually closer than their rhetoric suggests—dominated the official political discourse. During this time, a new narrative seemed to gain ground, asserting the enslavement of people via biological means. Supposedly, people were forced to accept harsh austerity measures, eliminating any trace of reaction or revolution. According to believers, the citizens were being affected by “chemtrails,” long-lasting trails that ensue during the flight of certain aircrafts, spraying dangerous biological agents to 259

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control the masses and/or the weather as part of a covert biological or chemical warfare (Smith, 2013). Even though the chemtrail conspiracy theory is not new, it started to spread like wildfire among specific groups, especially after the rise of certain political parties like the Popular Orthodox Rally and the Golden Dawn, which entered the parliament during the crisis and which have, in some ways, publicly defended these allegations by posing official questions in the Greek Parliament concerning these aerial trails. Conspiracy theories reveal a tendency of the public to question the power and authority of the political elite, becoming an important aspect of the contemporary political culture (Oliver and Wood, 2014) and thus, an inspiration for game designers. According to Flanagan (2013), “games are highly relevant to the twenty-first-century imagination” are deeply connected to their era, playing with the endless sociohistorical possibilities available. In this context and as part of a university project, we as a team of PhD candidates and university students along with actors, a director, and a music composer, decided to design a political alternate reality game that would incorporate the chemtrail conspiracy theory, called “The Trail.” According to the narrative of the game, the chemtrail theory proved to be real with a high-class Masonic network controlling people via chemtrails, preparing themselves for the arrival of Cthulhu. The value of collaboration was central in the narrative of The Trail, conveying the anti-social pathogenicity that conspiracy theories produce in general. The Trail evolved online and offline. It was a low, close to nobudget project that despite its very low cost, managed to create a sense of sportsmanship and rivalry and a strong drive to see it through by its players. Social media and specifically Facebook groups helped us to produce and sustain a collaborative gaming environment, where the two teams could meet every day and solve each mystery. At the end of the day, both teams were taking part in an undeclared war between good and evil that would eventually determine the fate of the world.

Storyline The story of “The Trail” focuses on the investigative research of a prominent scientist, Dr. Melissandros Mandragora. After noticing some abnormal activities in the ecosystem of the village he grew up

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in, he gathered some of his colleagues to examine whether the chemtrails, which were spotted over that area, had negative effects on the environment. His investigations led to Erevosky, an air-spray company responsible for spraying a chemical substance that could allegedly cause violent outbursts and aggressive behavior. The scientist and his colleagues managed to uncover the conspiracy of some powerful people, including members of the government, journalists, and other prominent members of society. This Group secretly aimed to make the world reach a state of rage that would ignite all sorts of rivalries, quarrels, and antagonisms. Such a state of fury aimed to serve as a distraction to conceal their even darker endeavors to awaken the Great Old One, Cthulhu.1 Despite their efforts to hide their plans, they made a fatal mistake. The sudden disappearance of the lead investigator Dr. Melissandros Mandragora, was the catalyst that, finally, brought together a determined group of people (the “Shujaa” which is Swahili for hero) that needed to act as one to solve the mystery and stop the evil Group’s plan and their accomplices (the “Waliochaguliwa” which means chosen in Swahili) aiming to bring forth the end of the world.

Designing The Trail: a sociability framework We designed The Trail focusing on a threefold goal: first, attracting people and luring them into a world of mystery and corruption; second, involving these individuals within two rivalry groups that were unaware of each other’s existence up to a certain point in the game; and third fostering competition among them by initiating two opposed missions that only one of the teams would be able to complete successfully.

First phase: an introduction Our primary concern was to engage people with different game capitals (Consalvo, 2007), to silently guide them through an introductory game mode, while at the same time, aiming for a low quitting rate.2 According to our playing intention questionnaire,3

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almost half of our players (51.52 percent) claimed to be casual gamers, whilst 24.24 percent answered that they consider themselves heavy gamers and another 24.4 percent not gamers at all. Their games of preference were tabletop games (96.97 percent), mobile games (48.48 percent), video games (42.42 percent), party games (45.45 percent) and street games (36.36 percent). Alternate reality games were almost unknown to most of our players. Learnability and the orchestration of an assisting stage where players will not only get acquainted with the narrative frame of the game, but also learn the rules of the game, prevailed during this first phase. This aforementioned training, which generally takes place in video games through tutorials, hints, and help systems (Therrien, 2011), referred to a slow pace and easy transitional stage between social media channels, and an open online channel of communication with one of the main characters (a game agent) of the fictional universe of the game.

Second phase: uniting In the second stage of the game, the players were divided into two opposing teams that were unaware of each other’s existence and each team had to gradually adopt a shared identity. In the case of The Trail, developing a team spirit culture was an element that the game narrative itself demanded. Similar to Slim Whitman’s “Indian Love Call” in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!,4 the cooperative work of an unselfish group of heroes/players was the only thing that according to the game narrative could stop the ancient evil to invade the earth. Based on the data and the personal preferences answers that we collected through our playing intention questionnaire, the players were pre-assigned into two rivalry groups—Shujaa and Waliochaguliwa. The questionnaire included humorous questions such as what would be the players’ favorite superpower, their weapon of choice, and their one wish for humanity in an attempt to determine their preference to assume the role of the hero or the villain. Like in role-playing games, assuming specific roles for a period of time demands a level of devotion. In this context, the player intention questionnaire gave us the opportunity to create more sustainable groups and thus preserve the collectively constructed fantasy world (Fine, 1983) of The Trail.

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FIGURE 10.1 Players of the game interacting.

Designing two different paths during the first phase of the game, we managed to drive the players to their corresponding digital group at the beginning of the second stage (which was a closed Facebook group). At this phase, group formation and the emergence of a shared identity coexisted with a scavenger, puzzle-solving game mode. Here, the players learned about the backstory of the events, met strangers, received a mysterious package (Figure  10.1), and learned how to organize their collective actions and communicate among themselves.

Third phase: the rivalry In the third, final phase, the game acquired the fast pace of an adventure, requiring higher levels of devotion from the players (logging in more often, keeping track of clues, etc.) and a higher level of in-group organization (setting a shift schedule to monitor the flow of information). At the same time, the players faced another kind of challenge: they learned not only that another group of players existed, but also

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that they had an antagonistic mission to accomplish if they wanted to prevail. A video hidden inside a photo with the method of stenography, informed both teams about the conspiracy and their role in it. This narrative twist had a tremendous game effect: each team now had its own narrative (a visible identity and a specific mission), its own alliances (game agents on their side), and different challenges to accomplish (Figure 10.2). In this context, we had to generate different game scenarios flexible enough to adapt to the players’ actions. An important factor that we also needed to take into consideration during this design process, was that the two

FIGURE 10.2 “We are spraying you” written in a sidewalk and photographed by members of the Waliochaguliwa team, as part of their to-do list, just before the final ritual.

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FIGURE 10.3 Last phase of the game at Ledra theater, just before the end of the game or maybe the end of the world. teams that were interacting with the game world of The Trail were never meant to meet each other, not until the grand finale. The game finale—depending on whether the evil ones won and managed to wake up Cthulhu or the heroes managed to stop them— was totally dependent on the players. Based on the game script, whichever team managed to accumulate all the magical objects, gather all its members, and was first to arrive at an old theater and do its own ritual (Figures 10.3 and 10.4), would be the one to win. In reality, both of the teams proved equal, so they had to physically confront each other via a street game variation of rock, paper, scissors.5 Playing with the classic concept that good coexists with evil, the two groups had to fight and eventually lose or gain players, depending on who won each round. In a way, that was a playful visualization of the eternal battle between good and evil.

The concept of sociability The term sociability has acquired different interpretations over the years. Specifically: a)

Sociability as an everyday communicative intersubjective practice that promotes social cohesion. With regards to

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FIGURE 10.4 The final ritual.

alternate reality games, sociability is approached through collaboration, participation, and engagement (Grain et al., 2008). Ducheneaut et al. (2004), adopting a more game design point of view, used the term sociability and specifically the expression “sociability by design” in order to define the kind of social gaming architecture that promotes online casual human relationships. Their research focused on the cantinas, specific social areas inside Star Wars Galaxies and the kind of social and spatial practices that take place there. b) Sociability as a term synonymous to social intelligence and social adaptability (Gilliland and Burke, 1926). As Vernon mentions, social intelligence is “the ability to get along with others, social technique or ease in society, knowledge on social matters, susceptibility to stimuli from other members of a group, as well as insight into the temporary moods or underlying personality traits of strangers” (Vernon, 1933: 42). Originating from social psychology and specifically from the psychometric tradition, social intelligence or sociability refers to an empirical index

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that relates to the response time that a human being requires in order to adapt to changing circumstances, his/hers body and facial gestures, etc. (Kihlstrom and Cantor, 2000). Sociability, as the associations that people form, the freeplaying, interacting interdependence of individuals. (Frisby, 2002). Towards a more sociological approach, sociability according to Georg Simmel, is the kind of interaction that people form as if they were equals—without class, age, or race interfering their communication or their playful tendency to please others. It is a play-form sociation where personal interests and selfishness, are unacceptable. (Wolf, 1950). d) Sociability as how human-human interaction occurs online (Preece, 2000: 70). On a more human-computer interaction approach, sociability can be defined as the systemic technological design that sustains and permits an online community to emerge. According to Preece (2000), we can identify three basic elements that we need to take into account when we design an online space of interaction: purpose (why people participate); people (actors as the voluntary members); and policies (formal and informal rules that regulate people’s behavior). c)

In order to validate the social engineering of The Trail, we are going to critically investigate and evaluate the process of group formation that took place during a week of interaction with the fantasy world of the game. Sociability is thus interpreted here as game design strategy aiming to the formation of effective online goal-orientated groups.

Group dynamics According to Forsyth (2010), a number of people qualify to be referred to as a group if they are joined together by collaborative tasks, if they share a living space, have strong emotional bonds, and, in many cases, are brought together through a network of friendships and antagonisms. At the same time, Stohl and Walker (2002) list the characteristics of collaborative groups giving emphasis on the collaborative and communicative aspect, which transcends organizational borders, time, and space limitations and

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the fact that their reproduction and growth may continue despite the existence of a strong leading figure. In order to understand the kind of connectedness that may occur in a game, we have to keep in mind that the game genre itself and thus, the respective game mechanics, define in a way the kind of groups that are to be formed, i.e., massively multiplayer online games are based on hierarchical groups that more often than not display a military attitude (Prax, 2010). In this context, Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) players are first drawn together either by selfinterest (to achieve goals that a player alone cannot) or mutual interest (to collectively conquer targets with substantial benefit to everybody) (Shen et al., 2009). These primal aggregations voluntarily acquire a strict vertical structure, in which successful leadership and management are the keys for the effective function of the group. Players’ different cultural background, the different time zones (Siitonen, 2009) and game motivations (Yee, 2007), are some of the challenges that a MMORPG leader must face in order to turn a handful of individual players into a fearless guild. In the case of the alternate reality games, the academic discourse resolves around the formation of a collaborative community (Bonsignore et al., 2012) instead of a group, giving priority to social network values and collective intelligence, whilst community design is regarded as “the act of creating new metaphors for collective experience in real life” (McGonigal, 2005). In The Trail, the concept of group instead of that of community proved to be more analytically useful due to its intrinsic structural dichotomy in terms of narrative and design and the consequent division of the player base into two small-scale, separate, independent, but opposed to each other, teams. But how people act as members of a group is also a subject of inquiry. Specifically, social psychologists would argue that people do not behave in the same way when they act individually in comparison to when they act as members of a team. Tajfel suggested a continuum of human behavior ranging from interpersonal behavior to intergroup behavior and referred to it as “acting in terms of self” versus “acting in terms of group” (Turner and Reynolds, 2001). Wieber, Thurmer, and Gollwitzer (2013), argue that there are two prominent theories in social psychology that address the challenge of group behavior. First, according to Tajfel and Turner (2013), groups have a psychological existence—not a bodily one, like individuals; this allows people to interact with it and within it. Second, the outcomes of a group’s interactions are attributed to the group as a meaningful unit of empirical analysis. (Tajfel and Turner, 2013).

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By extension and in order to empirically define groups, researchers (Kozlowski and Bell, 2003) have focused on aspects such as categorization, communication, influence, interaction, interrelation, interdependence, structure, shared identification, and common tasks and goals. According to Hogg and Terry (2001), categorization reduces uncertainty about behavior in varied social contexts and selfenhancement means that people tend to favor the members of their group stemming from each person’s need to think about himself/herself in a positive light, thus evaluating their performance and that of their group subjectively. Understanding the social influence processes in a group, namely the behavioral changes of the group members caused by other people within or outside the group, has proven to be an essential part of group dynamics research (Forsyth, 2010). In the case of The Trail specifically, leadership as theory and practice will be used as an indicator of intergroup relationships. A leader may act as a distributor of resources, a representative of the group regarding the in-group and out-group relationships, an embodiment of the group’s beliefs, ideas, and a coordinator of group activity (Breckler et al., 2006). Moreover, the term compliance will help us define in-group relationships and explain behavioral processes inside the group. According to Breckler, Olson and Wiggins (2006) conformity is a more general concept that refers to any change in behavior caused by another person or group and compliance describes the change in behavior that is requested by another person or group. Compliance in an online formed community is extremely important because it can encourage resource contribution (Ren et al., 2011). In the case of The Trail, groups were goal-oriented and for that reason, members’ contributions were crucial for the smooth continuation of the game. When researching group dynamics in both the Shujaa and Waliochaguliwa teams, we came across some of the designer claims suggested by Kraut and Resnick (2011), specifically that goals need to feel important to group members, that group members are more likely to respond to a request if they like the requester, and that social engagement is important when a response to a request is needed. Therefore compliance in The Trail was researched with respect to the designers’ requests and the leader(s) requests regarding team members’ contribution. As soon as players entered their groups, an identity bond was formed among the players based on the team’s common purpose

270 ALTERNATE REALITY GAMES AND THE CUSP OF DIGITAL GAMEPLAY

and topic of discussion. As a result, some mutual commitments (like communicating via the Facebook group and sharing information within the team, a topic we will address later on) were established early in the formation of the teams. These commitments become norms when accepted by most members of a team and as social contracts, promote cooperation. For members of task-oriented teams, such as Shujaa and Waliochaguliwa, quick and effective decision making was extremely important. Compliance to the designers or teammates requests and conformity to the influence of the team were often necessary for problem solving and successful task completion in the designated amount of time. Because, conformity and compliance within a group may enhance group performance by minimizing process loss, it was important to research their impact on group dynamics in both teams.

Research method Since Facebook groups were the communication and coordination hub for both our teams, we used qualitative and quantitative content analysis to study transcripts of our two online collaborative groups in order to study the group dynamics that occurred during The Trail. Our analysis of the game was based on the variables of leadership and compliance as they were theoretical described in a previous section. Text data were coded into explicit categories drawn from our theoretical model, while prior formulated, exclusive, and equally valued empirical indicators were produced in order to maximize the reliability of the text identification from the coders. In order to formulate these indicators6 we studied patterns of play and game design strategies from well-known ARG s like Conspiracy For Food, The Beast, or Year Zero, taking also into account the design choices that we made for The Trail—for example, during The Trail, time was a significant factor pressing for immediate actions, so checking progress, was an important indicator for a potential leader. Thereby, the variable of leadership was defined based on the four categories of Breckler et al.’s theory and specifically: a) Distributor of resources; b) Representative of the group; c) Embodiment of the group’s ideas and beliefs; and d) Coordinator of group activity. Each category involved specific indicators (see Table 10.1). The variables

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of compliance on the other hand, were based on Kraut and Resnick’s theory and included three indicators for compliance, and three for non-compliance (see Table  10.2), specifically: a) Compliance to Requests from designers and agents; b) Compliance to teammates; and c) Compliance to leaders and: a) Non-Compliance to Requests from designers and agents; b) Non-Compliance to teammates; and c) Non-Compliance to leaders. Non-compliance is important in group dynamic analysis, because when it provokes discussion and aims to address an issue, indicates involvement and mindfulness (Vaughan and Hogg, 2014) and for that, is worth further investigation. Finally and regarding compliance towards the designers, the specific indicator is translated to compliance to the flow of the game without undermining the authority of the game agents. The collection and organization of data occurred after the end of the game and the unit of analysis consisted of each post. In this context two tables were created scoring each player’s in-game performance, based on his/her degree of online interactivity (posts, comments, likes, etc.) and his/her responses to in-game events (i.e., how a person responded to a challenge or how he/she participated to the distribution of resources, etc.). Every player was codified in order to protect his/her anonymity, while his/her interactions, choices of action, and participation to the collective problem solving, were measured based on the frequency of their appearance. Each player received a final score for leadership, compliance, and non-compliance. Two researchers did the coding, whilst in cases of disagreement or whenever a message contained an ambiguous meaning, a third coder was added to the procedure. The small sample size played an important role to our methodological choices. Through this analysis we managed to reverse this methodological weakness. In order to interpret players’ actions and ascribe deeper meaning to these quantifiable results, we used qualitative content analysis (see Table 10.3). As Sale et al. (2002) have mentioned, quantitative and qualitative analysis study different aspects of the same phenomena, thus the implementation of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) upon the same data will allow us to shed light on specific aspects of the game. Grounded theory is a systematic iterative qualitative method that allows us “to construct theories ‘grounded’ in the data themselves” (Charmaz, 2006),and it refers to coding qualitative data or as Charmaz mentions, attaching labels

272

Final Score

Co-ordinator of group activity

Embodiment of the group’s ideas, beliefs

Representative of the group

Distributor of resources

Leadership for the Shujaa team (Table 1)

TABLE 10.1

Checks progress (time relevant)

79

3

16

4

Reminds of the goal and endgame

Assigns tasks, asks/offers help

9

12

Refers to the team’s common identity and goal

Interacting with any new member/anyone addressing the team

5

6

Asked for know-how and solutions

Offering to represent the team

24

P.1

Offering know-how and solutions

Indicators

36

1

7

2

2

4

2

3

15

P.2

24

0

2

2

3

1

2

2

12

P.3

13

0

4

1

1

2

0

0

5

P.4

7

1

0

1

1

1

0

0

3

P.5

7

1

1

1

0

1

1

0

2

P.6

8

1

1

0

1

2

1

0

2

P.7

8

0

0

1

2

1

1

1

2

P.8

3

0

0

1

0

0

1

0

1

P.9

SOCIABILITY BY DESIGN IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY GAME 273

TABLE 10.2 Compliance for the Waliochaguliwa team (Table 2)

P.1

P.2

P. 3

P.4

P.5

P.6

P.7

Compliance to requests from designers/agents

4

6

0

3

3

5

2

Compliance to requests from teammates

3

0

0

12

4

7

6

Compliance to requests from leader(s)

0

1

7

0

0

0

0

Final Score compliance

7

7

7

15

7

12

8

Non-compliance to requests from designers/agents

0

5

0

0

0

0

0

Non-compliance to requests from teammates

1

4

2

1

0

0

0

Non-compliance to requests from leader(s)

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Final Score noncompliance

1

9

2

1

0

0

0

to segments of data and making comparisons with other segments of data (Charmaz, 2006: 3). In this way, social patterns and characteristics of social life are being exposed through conceptualization and constant comparison. In this context, the management of players’ identity (players as heroes or villains versus players as members of the “real” reality), the specific roles they assumed, and the conceptualization of game space per se, were investigated in depth through open and axial coding (Udo, 2005). Axial coding in turn, is an inductive and deductive coding process that helps to reveal the underlying relationships between the categories and the subcategories that emerged via open coding.

274 ALTERNATE REALITY GAMES AND THE CUSP OF DIGITAL GAMEPLAY

TABLE 10.3 Qualitative Analysis. Shujaa Team (Table 3)

Text

Codes

The ultimate lord of evil is our enemy. Hahaha

Recognition

Subcategories

Category

Enemypresence

Identification We and the No idea! But the Others company is with the bad guys that are spraying us Later on I will upload Collaborating Uniting all the photographs I Organization gathered, for everybody to see Fellowship I will mentally be there with you, with Absence Inspiriting the power of 1756 telepathon! Shujaa team will rock the world!

Becoming one

Empathy Team spirit

Being part of

I am really happy guys! I was sure that you would make it! You are heroes! We won!

Collective Identity

Analysis Two different groups Groups, being complex and diverse are difficult to categorize. Nevertheless, Cartwright and Zander (2006) noted that groups tend to fall naturally into two categories: planned groups, formed

SOCIABILITY BY DESIGN IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY GAME 275

on purpose by their members or an out-group authority, and emergent groups that are formed spontaneously and become a team because their members keep interacting with each other over time. In the case of The Trail, the designing team opted to divide the participants into planned groups that we watched evolve into emergent groups. Both teams formed their groups with the purpose of taking part in and, if possible, winning the game. The predefined name of their groups were the first element around which they started to build their own collective identity:7 We are the chosen ones. *thrilled* Male, member of the Waliochaguliwa team, Facebook Group, 01/04/2014 Leadership in Shujaa team proved to have a vertical structure. Specifically, there was one player with the highest score (score 80), leading the way and working towards prompting the other players to solve the puzzles and complete the tasks. Offering knowhow solutions (24 points), interacting with every new member addressing the team (via tagging on Facebook) (12 points) and assigning tasks (16 points), made him a leading figure for the hero team; a person to which the members systematically asked for help, information, and insight. Following from a distance (gathering a total of 36 points), another player collaborated closely with the leader, forming a nucleus that dealt with each day’s challenges and tasks. The Shujaa team seemed to be mostly dependent on the leader and his few “lieutenants.” The rest of the team consisted mainly of followers that enjoy watching the game unfold and offered a comment now and then without taking initiative or responsibility for the game continuation. The leader was highly involved, cooperative, and compliant to the requests of the other players. He was never questioned, so disagreement seldom arose in the team. The other players mainly interacted with the leader and seemed to validate his proposed course of action. Taking into account these measurements of compliance we proceeded to understand the way this team established its in-group rules of conduct and attempted to explain why the leader was so important for that team. Based on our results of our quantitative and qualitative research regarding compliance to the requests of the leader and

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teammates, the Shujaa players chose to conform because they reckoned that their leader was more tech savvy than they were and turned to him for problem solving. The followers assumed that the leader was competent and effective and because they didn’t want to reveal their shortcomings, they conformed to his suggestions. Their assumption that the leader knew something that they did not, that was informational conformity (Martin and Hewstone, 2010) in the group, resulted in their putting their trust in their leader because they mistrusted their judgment and wanted to prevent mistakes from being made. Qualitative analysis showed that the Shujaa team didn’t seem particularly interested in the existence of an opposing team, mentioning their opponents in a matter of fact way, as if their antagonism was of little consequence and would be dealt with accordingly and in due time. In the same way, the construction of their collective identity was based on the bonds that they created and the roles they assumed online without being influenced by the existence of competition. In the dialogue below we are witnessing the leader restoring in-group balance by reminding another player and thus everyone in the team that competition and thus the existence of the others, wouldn’t alter their game experience: Player: Really, what does it mean that there is another team? Leader: That we are not “playing” alone Player: That’s what I thought. It’s whoever finishes first. I have to admit that I am lost among clues. Are we moving step by step or is there a big picture that we need to know and I have somehow lost it? Leader: Both, but there is no reason to worry about that. The most important thing is for all of us to have a great time. Dialogue between the two leaders of Shujaa team, Facebook group, 04/04/2014 The Waliochaguliwa, on the other hand, had another modus operandi. They had a higher level of involvement within their group that resulted in shared decision-making, as the same indicators of leadership applied to a broader circle of members of the “Waliochaguliwa” team rather than to only one person.

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The leading role in the Waliochaguliwa team was shared among a group of people who interacted daily, exchanged ideas, made decisions and bonded for as long as the game lasted. Since there was a quite large group of people taking action and sharing thoughts, that left little for the rest of the team members to do. So players within the leading group took turns in leading the team according to their expertise and availability. Based on qualitative data, the Waliochaguliwa team displayed the following distinctive quality: two of the leading members embraced complementary roles. The first one seemed to occasionally doubt his teammates, challenged their decisions and offered his compliance very reluctantly. Additionally, his non-compliance score was higher than the compliance, especially regarding the non-compliance to requests from teammates indicator. His behavior though, did not infect the structure and well-being of the group, on the contrary, his high engagement and his tendency to offer solutions made him an important member of the group8 and thus earning the role of the Teaser of the group and not of the Saboteur. The other member and actually the second in rank leader of the group, assumed the role of the “instigator,” reminding everyone the existence of the others, the need to prove themselves better and faster than them, fostering competition, and finally, strengthening their own collective identity even when his team lost the final act’s street game and he was left being the only one to remain faithful to the evil ones. The fact is that while we are in the search of understanding what to do, we shouldn’t forget that at the same time there are others that will try to stop us. Male, member of Waliochaguliwa, Facebook group, 05/04/2014 Generally, the team showed high level of compliance to requests made among teammates and a high level of consensus when it came to strategizing. The Waliochaguliwa team was extremely task-oriented and showed competitive behavior. They were acting strategically and seemed determined to win. As they had their “eyes on the prize” most of the time, their norms as a team involved efficacy and

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swiftness, so most members showed signs of normative conformity, which means that it was important for them to “fit in” as worthy members of Waliochaguliwa and so, they seldom disagreed. Team cohesion was important to them so peer pressure was a strong determinant against disagreements. The Waliochaguliwa seemed to adapt effortlessly and quickly to the requirements of the game and involved more people in the decision-making processes. Qualitative analysis showed that the minute the team was informed of the existence of competition, their goal was to “search and destroy,” because contrary to the Shujaa, they realized that in the end only one team would be winning and they acted upon achieving exactly that.

The social game space of The Trail The Trail highlights how ARG s constitute a genre where reality becomes a potential playground, blurring the boundaries between digital and non-digital experience. Pervasive gaming, as a term that refers to all these games that expand the so-called magic circle in terms of time, space, and sociality (Montola et al., 2009), emphasizes the inhabitation of the current world via a game narrative that ultimately overflows the everyday life, all the ordinary things, and all the familiar places. This kind of playful experience incorporates a type of new urbanism where play becomes central and reality becomes enriched with virtual content (Waern et al., 2009). Following this flow of symbolic interaction from digitally to reality, pervasive games seem to prioritize in terms of living space, reality over virtuality. Our qualitative findings showed that moving back and forth from reality (real-life missions and tasks) to digitality (the return to the crime scene tactic i.e., return to Facebook group and describe everything to teammates) created a time and space continuum, in which reality had the last word. Specifically, this aforementioned flow seemed to be interrupted when ordinary real obligations popped up altering in a way the game experience. For example, the players discovered through a web radio show the time and place where the final ritual would take place, but there were a few of them that couldn’t attend the gathering because they were working. Upon realizing that the end of the game was near, they didn’t hide their frustration:

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Damn! I can’t come tomorrow, I am working Male from the Waliochaguliwa, team, Facebook group, 04/04/2014 and the rest of the team didn’t hide their disappointment: Couldn’t you ask a colleague to cover your shift, even for a couple of hours? Pleaseee . . . Female from the Waliochaguliwa, team, Facebook group, 04/04/2014 Facebook groups as the digital headquarters of both teams proved to be of great analytic value, with both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, from our perspective, the so-called puppet masters, these Facebook groups became our own panopticon. Using game agents, i.e., fictional characters that serve the plot by introducing new evidence and keeping the pace of the game, and at the same time game masters, i.e., people assuming the role of a player, we had a 24 hour access to the player base, giving us the opportunity to monitor and moderate the game. The closed Facebook group had the advantage that it wasn’t visible to the opposite team but at the same time, the players could see one another, including the identity of the game agents; the latter proved to be an extra fun factor (players snooping around their personal Facebook pages, sending friend requests, searching and finding details of their personal life that we had planned in fake websites, etc.), but at the same time gave the players a vague feeling of being watched: I just realized that I am holding the key for the resurrection of Cthulhu. Christopher Rambo how much money would you give me to continue the procedure? I accept offers. Male player from the Waliochaguliwa group, holding an important game asset and addressing via tagging a game agent. Facebook group, 03/04/2014 As we mentioned, in the research of sociability from a computerhuman interaction, digital social spaces produce formal and informal policies that moderate online communication among their

280 ALTERNATE REALITY GAMES AND THE CUSP OF DIGITAL GAMEPLAY

members. Formality stems from the guidelines that the designers impose, whilst informal rules result from the very same online community. Specifically gaming communities produce “built-in social facilitators, norms through which they negotiate social action” (Taylor, 2006: 33). In our case, both of our groups, explicitly produced a spontaneous, thus instrumental, code of conduct that helped to collectively analyze and examine evidences and clues: whenever a player found a clue or participated in a real-life mission, they used the Facebook group to present the evidence (the most common procedure was to photograph in a forensic way every evidence and uploaded them in the group, see Figure 10.5). Last but not least, Facebook groups where more than a space of daily meeting among peers that shared a common goal, but became a general space of socialization. For example, players of Shujaa and Waliochaguliwa shared information about theatrical plays, personal

FIGURE 10.5 Presenting the evidence.

SOCIABILITY BY DESIGN IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY GAME 281

projects, and board games. After the end of The Trail, the players of Shujaa started their own chain of games, with improvised riddles and social teasing. In some cases their riddles were adjusted to the context of The Trail: Professor Mandragoras [sic] was a world traveller. During one of his trips, his plane crashed and vicious cannibals arrested him: “Professor Mandragora you are in deep trouble! But we will let you choose the way you wish to die. If you say to us something true we will fry you and if you say something false, we will boil you”, said the cannibals. The professor said something that on the one hand made them angry but on the other, they had no other choice than to let him go. What was it? A riddle from a male player from Shujaa team, Facebook group, 06/04/2014. It is worth mentioning, that during these improvised riddles, game masters and in some cases, members of the game design team, also participated in these spontaneous challenges, expanding in this way the fabric of the previous gaming group. Even for a short period of time, the goal-orientated closed group of Shujaa gave its place to a much more open and free-play group.

Conclusions Designing an alternate reality game was a great challenge, especially when addressing an audience unfamiliar with these types of experiences. Analyzing The Trail in terms of group formation and group dynamics, demanded a flexible research model that could integrate our small sample size. Using indicators derived from the experience that other alternate reality games had to offer us, we created a score-based model of quantifiable content analysis data. Qualitative content analysis was also applied in order to unveil the deeper meaning of players’ choices and actions. In most cases both quantitative and qualitative findings were supplementary and qualitative in particular, provided us possible explanations and commentary on the scores. Alternate reality games are transmedia narratives based on team work, collective intelligence, and collaborative problem solving. As

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game designers it is our responsibility to provide the best possible experiences and in order to achieve that we ought to evaluate and re-examine our design choices. Our research showed us that The Trail successfully integrated two opposed teams, gradually developed through different design stages, whilst the Facebook group as a digital space of collaboration proved to be effective to our goals. The Trail is an example of a self-produced, low-budget alternate reality game and how to provide a manageable but intense game experience. For the record, the good won the evil and both of the teams requested a sequel.

Notes 1 The Cthulhu Mythos is found in the work of H.P. Lovecraft and has inspired many pen and paper role-playing games. 2 Our quitting rate, i.e. the percentage of players that didn’t manage or for any reason, decided not to continue to the second phase of the game, was about 20 percent. 3 Months before the official launch of the game and through The Trail’s official Facebook page, we sent a questionnaire to those who explicitly expressed a desire to participate in The Trail. The reason for this choice was that we wanted to get acquainted with our game base and secondly, to separate them into two rivalry groups based on their answers. 4 In Mars Attacks! (1996), a science fiction B-movie parody by Tim Burton, the Earth is being invaded by Martians and the only thing that can stop their intrusion was Slim Whitman’s “Indian Love Call.” 5 Rock, paper, and scissors had in-game magical significance. 6 For using indicators as part of quantitative analysis see Randy et al. (2014). 7 Members of online gaming communities usually start to create and adopt collective references, producing in this way their collective identity. See Pearce et al. (2011). 8 That particular person received the highest grades in the leadership scale.

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Kihlstrom, F. John and Cantor, Nancy. 2000. “Social Intelligence.” In Handbook of Intelligence, edited by Sternberg Robert, 359–97. Cambridge University Press. Kozlowski, Steve W.J., and Bell, Bradford S. 2003. “Work groups and Teams in Organizations.” In Handbook of Psychology (vol. 12): Industrial and Organizational Psychology, edited by Walter C. Borman, Daniel Ilgen and Richard J. Klimoski. New York: WileyBlackwell: 333–75. Kraut, Robert E. and Resnick, Paul. 2011. “Encouraging Contribution in Online Communities.” In Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-based Social Design, edited by Robert E. Kraut and Paul Resnick, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 21–76. Martin, Robin and Hewstone, Miles (eds). 2010. Minority Influence and Innovation: Antecedents, Processes and Consequences. Hove: Psychology Press. McGonigal, Jane. 2005. “Alternate Reality Gaming: Experimental Social Structures for MMOs.” Paper presented at the Austin Game Conference, Austin, TX, October 26–28. Montola, Markus, Stenros, Jaakko, and Waern, Annika. 2009. Pervasive Games Theory and Design. Taylor and Francis. Oliver, Eric and Wood, J. Thomas. 2014. “Participation, Collaboration and Spectatorship in an Alternate Reality: Game Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion.” In American Journal of Political Science, 58(4): 952–66. Pearce, Celia, Boellstorff, Tom, and Nardi, Bonnie A. 2011. Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Prax, Patrick. 2010. “Leadership Style in World of Warcraft Raid Guilds.” Paper presented at the First Nordic DiGRA—Experiencing Games: Games, Play and Players, Stockholm, Sweden, August 16–17. Preece, Jenny. 2000. Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Randy, Garrison D., Anderson, Terry, and Archer, Walter. 2014. “Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence, and Computer Conferencing in Distance Education.” In American Journal of Distance Education 15(1): 7–23. Accessed: August 6, 2015. Ren, Yuqing, Kraut, Robert E., Kiesler, Sara and Resnick, Paul. 2011. “Encouraging commitment in online communities.” In Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-based Social Design, edited by Robert E. Kraut and Paul Resnick, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Sale, Joanna E., Lohfeld, Lynne H., and Brazil, Kevin. 2002. “Revisiting the Quantitative-Qualitative Debate: Implications for Mixed-Methods Research.” In Quality & Quantity, 36: 43–53. Shen, Cuihua et al. 2009. “The Formation of Task-Oriented Groups: Exploring Combat Activities in Online Games.” Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, Volume 04. Accessed: August 8, 2015. Siitonen, Marko. 2009. “Conflict Management and Leadership Communication in Multiplayer Communities.” Proceedings of DiGRA 2009: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory. URL: http://www.digra.org/wp-content/ uploads/digitallibrary/ 09287.36215.pdf Smith, Oliver. 2013. “Chemtrails and Other Aviation Conspiracy Theories.” The Telegraph. September 24. Stohl, Cynthia and Walker, Kasey. 2002. “A Bona Fide Perspective for the Future of Groups: Understanding Collaborating Groups.” In R. Frey (ed.), “New Directions in Group Communication,” Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 237–52. Tajfel, H. and Turner, J.C. 2013. “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior.” In Wieber, F., Thürmer, J.L., and Gollwitzer, P.M. “Intentional Action Control in Individuals and Groups.” Taylor, T.I. 2006. Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Therrien, Carl. 2011. “‘To Get Help, Please Press X’: The Rise of the Assistance Paradigm in Video Game Design.” Paper presented in Proceedings of DiGRA Conference: Think Design Play, Utrecht School of the Arts, Netherlands, September 14–17. Turner, John C. and Reynolds, Katherine J. 2001. “The Social Identity Perspective in Intergroup Relations: Theories, Themes and Controversies.” In Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by Rupert Brown and Sam Gaertner. Blackwell Publishing. Udo, Kelle. 2005. “‘Emergence’ vs. ‘Forcing’ of Empirical Data?” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 6(2): Art (27). URL: http://www. qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/467/1000 Vaughan, Graham M. and Hogg, Michael A. 2014, Social Psychology. Australia: Pearson. Vernon, E. Philip. 1933. “Some Characteristics of the Good Judge of Personality.” Journal of Social Psychology, 4: 42–7. Waern, Annika, Montola, Markus, and Stenros, Jaakko. 2009. “The 360 Illusion: Designing for Immersion in Pervasive Game.” In Proceedings of CHI’09: International Conference on Computer-Human Interaction. Boston, April 4–9: 1549–58.

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Wolf, Kurt H. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Chicago, IL: The Free Press. Yee, Nick. 2007. “Motivations of Play in Online Games.” Journal of Cyber Psychology and Behavior, 9: 772–5.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ingress: A Restructuring of the ARG or a New Genre? An Ethnography of Enlightened and Resistance Factions in Brazil Thaiane Moreira de Oliveira

On November 15, 2012, Google1 announced the release of its newest game, Ingress, through a video-teaser that ran all over the world.2 The game’s main narrative is presented in a 2-minute long video: European scientists discovered a mysterious energy, invisible to the naked eye, which was influencing individuals’ behavior. Google’s investment in this game has won the minds of more than seven million of gamers around the world (Takahashi, 2014). Ingress allows players to explore and be part of a virtual in-game world through an app on mobile devices, using the real world as a giant board game. The app traces the players’ geographical locations 288

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and movements in-game. The goal of the game is to “capture” certain locations within the game interface. These “portals” allow players to collect “Exotic Matter” (XM ). Players must work together with other members of their factions generating fields that enable the collection of precious “Mind Units” (MU ) from this XM . With a continually evolving, open-ended storyline that changes and has major in-game events, Ingress encourages players to work together on large-scale “operations” that can often include more than a thousand portals spanning thousands of kilometers across different states. This gaming genre blurs the boundaries between real, virtual, and fictional worlds. Such permeability is innate to pervasive games (Weiser, 1991). Addressing a ubiquitous computing trend, in which technologies could be part of everyday life in an “invisible” manner, Weiser developed two principles which we are able to observe in contemporaneity: the first principle addresses the device and its adaptation in dimensional terms; the second principle refers to the capacity of technologies to infiltrate themselves into everyday life, to a point that users no longer notice their presence. Weiser’s assumption applies to the idea that technology is everywhere, integrated into the actions of human beings. As he affirms: “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They intertwine themselves with the fabric of everyday life until they become indistinguishable.” Following the release of the ubiquitous computer3 IBM introduced the expression “pervasive computing” to the informatics vocabulary in 1998 (Hinske et al., 2007). In order to understand the nuances of Ingress, it is important to draw attention to the principles that differentiate ubiquity and pervasiveness. Anne Galloway explains that pervasive computing corresponds computers’ ability of “fitting in” in human being’s everyday life, to the point that computers become “invisible” (Galloway, 2004: 384–5). The concept of ubiquity, on the other hand, refers to the omnipresence and integration of computers in physical spaces, as Mattern points out: While Weiser sees the term “ubiquitous computing” in a more academic and idealistic sense as an unobtrusive, human-centric technology vision, industry has since coined the term “pervasive computing” with a slightly different slant: Even though its vision is still to integrate information processing almost invisibly into everyday objects, its primary goal is to use such objects in the

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near future in the fields of e-commerce and web-based business processing (Mattern, 2001, s/n). In 2001, digital games started to utilize pervasive technologies as part of their mechanics and the first alternate reality game (ARG ), The Beast, was released as part of the marketing strategy of the film A.I. – Artificial Intelligence (Szulborski, 2005). As ARG s generally have a fragmented central narrative, their structure involves different communication tools—such as emails, social media, SMS , websites, mobile telephones, etc.,—that are utilized by players to solve puzzles and investigate mysteries to move ahead inside the transmedia narrative (cf. Oliveira and de Andrade, 2010). As discussed elsewhere in this volume, a fundamental premise of ARG s is the notion that This Is Not A Game (TINAG ): the players pretend that they’re not playing a game in order to maximize their own ARG gameplay experience (McGonigal, 2003a). TINAG serves as a useful reminder of the limits of the boundaries of what is reality and what is fiction; it reflects the immersion of players in the diegetic universe created by the ARG . The suspense of the storyline and curiosity it provokes guides the cadence of the experience (Baroni, 2006). Temporality4 and TINAG maximize the experiences of players allowing them to surpass the boundaries between reality and fiction. Considering the role of TINAG and ubiquity, we must question: is Ingress an alternate reality game? This question will drive the remainder of this chapter. This chapter will discuss the notions of reality and fictionality within Ingress, examining interviews, by email and Google Hangouts, with Brazilian players who participate in the Google+ Ingress Brazil community. Their perspective illustrates gaming relationships both in-game and out of game. Ultimately, the focus of this chapter is to discuss how ARG aesthetics relate to Ingress, and how the fusion between reality and fictionality is constructed from a player’s own experience. For this, this chapter is going to first explore how Brazilians players understand the ARG genre with regards to Ingress. Then, based on the participant-observation, I am going to discuss the dynamics in Ingress regarding the boundaries between fiction, reality, and immersion. It will also explore aspects of the game including competition, collaboration, sociability, and interaction between the physical and digital world inherent in this type of pervasive game.

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Ingress Is Not A Game, or is it? With ARG s as a kind of pervasive game, they encompass a style of play that come from long traditions, based on previous experiences, and dependent on established social conventions. According to Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola (Montola et  al., 2009: 40), “many ludic media products are considered alternate reality games because they appear to be similar to other media products already recognized as alternate reality games.” In considering the basic principles of ARG s, it is important to consider if Ingress is an ARG or simply an appropriation of the characteristics of established pervasive games? Some people describe Ingress as an ARG (Gannes, 2012; Graves, 2014; Hulsey and Reeves, 2014); others affirm other modalities, such as a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG ) with Augmented Reality technologies (Atem et al., 2014; Desmet, 2015). There is no official genre description of the game by NianticLabs. But a description on Google Play Store says: “Is it only a game? It is a Council of Investigation full of cryptic clues and secret codes waiting for you.”5 This vagueness of definition is a reflection of the mix of genres that make up the game, configuring an emerging pervasive games genre. In this way, Ingress can be considered an Augmented-Reality Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Location-Based Game, not just an established ARG made by Google (now owned by Alphabet Inc.) and NianticLabs. Such multiplicity of opinions over the game’s genre reflects itself in the very discourse of the players, who define Ingress as made up of a variety of genres (sometimes, with mixed-up definitions) in responses to interviews about the game. These interviews were conducted by email and Google Hangout. Participants responded to an invitation made in the Brazilian Ingress Community on Google+. When asked how they define Ingress’s genre, many of their answers mirror those of players below: The game is able to entertain and, at the same time, break the boredom of the everyday life. It also awards you with good physical exercise. Player GUILHERME ANSELMO, Enlightened

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The game is extremely open-ended and filled with possibilities. It is not just a pastime. It is anything the player wants it to be. Each player can choose the best way to enjoy the game. Player MARCELO AUGUSTO, Enlightened Ingress allows an immersion into the game, where the player is a faction agent and has to position himself physically in specific locations where he interacts with game elements. Ingress’ game board is the whole world!!! Player ALEXANDRE MATIS , Enlightened We can perceive that the game has very peculiar characteristics that make it practically impossible to define within a single genre or category. But there are a series of close aesthetics and affordances (Gibson, 1986) that act upon the player’s agency (Murray, 2003). These players enact roles within the imaginative construction of the narrative and its immersive processes (Ermi and Mäyrä, 2005; Arsenault, 2005). For example, it is common for in-game rivalries between factions to go beyond the game world (Juul, 2005). These can take the form of infiltrating the discussion groups of the rival factions as described by Enlightened player Bruno da Silva. According to the player, there are many cheating practices within Ingress such as creating fakes accounts for discovering the plans of the rival faction. Similarly some players act as spoofers, falsifying their actual position when playing the game. According to the player Erlon Souza (Enlightened), Brasilia, the capital of the country and which concentrates the Brazilian parliament, is where there is the highest amount of spoofs. Such cheating was described by another player, Robson Junior (Enlightened), who said the Brazilians have a “bad fame” in online game communities because of these kinds of cheating practices and because excessive teasing and trolling is a common behavior from Brazilian players. This behavior is described as “HueHueBr” (Fragoso, 2014) as a griefing performance that builds from comedy of ambiguity within multicultural environments and from the carnivalesque tone of some Brazilians players. The griefer, according to Jakko Stenros (2010: 40), is an alternative way of framing the play. Looking at this from a frame analysis, “the griefer is not playful within the rules, or in the relation to the rules, but he is in a parallelic mindset while interacting with other players.” According

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to Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky (2003: 218) a griefer is a player who derives his enjoyment not from playing the game, but in breaking the pleasure of the play of a game in other players. It is noteworthy that the difference between Brazilian social classes and Internet access is a matter that outlines the players profile in Brazil. Despite showing an increase of mobile telephony and teledensity, the number of access via prepaid phone with low Internet speed is still prevalent in Brazil. According to the survey conducted by Anatel, the Brazilian telecommunications regulator, in April 2016, the prepaid accesses totaled 182.4 million (71.13 percent of total) and post-paid, which allow Internet access unlimited or high range was 74.0 million (28.87 percent). For comparison, a study released in 2014 by Akamai Technologies, an American technology company, shows the average speed of broadband Internet in 54 countries. Brazil, tied with Vietnam, scores a 2.9 Mbps, the ninth worst in the world. As pointed out by the player Erlon Souza, “this game is made for a rich public, spending money and mobile data with fun and security risk is a discouraging factor.” The security is one of the examples that appears as a question between the players sometimes. One example is the accident that occurred in Brazil, on January 13, 2014, which gained the attention of local media (Teixeira, 2014). Distracted while playing Ingress, 16-year-old Brazilian, Gabriel Cavalcante Carneiro Leão, was run over by a bus in the Tijuca neighborhood, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This unfortunate accident is not the only example of how the everyday world can influence the game world in this kind of production, which is based upon interacting with the dynamics of urban space. There are countless cases of reports of players that were stopped by police officers who found their activities—loitering in unusual places, taking pictures with cellphones—very suspicious. These cases illustrate how the borders between reality and fictionality are permeable, causing social, temporal, and spatial expansions (Montola et al., 2009). Such aesthetic configurations in Ingress’ game design act upon the TINAG phenomenon (McGonigal, 2003a, 2003b), the player agreement around the real and the fictional worlds. Such transposition of the TINAG premise to other genres is a peculiar phenomenon that can point towards ways to restructure ARG s. To this extent, it is important to discuss how ARG aesthetics relate to Ingress, and how the fusion between reality and fictionality

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is constructed from the player’s own experience. In exploring this, I conducted interviews with Brazilian Ingress players to understand how the experience of traversing the boundaries of reality in this particular game genre constitutes itself.

Ingressing into game dynamics Ingress’s gameplay is strongly based on competition and territorial conquest. Within the game, players could accept the strange new “exotic matter” energy and utilize it, that way joining the “Enlightened” group, or they could join the “Resistance” group in defense of humanity’s freedom against the mind control of the newly found energy. Through making this initial choice, the Augmented Reality application, installed on mobile devices, presented the virtual world—the energy invisible to the naked eye— and the players acted according to their chosen group’s directions. Players are compelled to compete against their rival faction to capture and connect virtual portals situated in many public places around the world in order to control the planet in the name of their team. The virtual portals within Ingress are located in statues, culturally significant buildings, and works of art. Bringing one’s mobile phone within the same proximity as one of these locations opens a portal. And by triangulating portals across more than three locations a field is created. These fields are triangular shapes and represent a dominating area of the human mind (Mind Units). Players can also propose new portals by taking a picture of a public construction, marking it on Google Maps, and sending it to the Ingress development team, who will decide if this suggestion will be heeded. This basic claiming of portals and creation of fields constitute the basic play of Ingress. Upon downloading the Ingress application freely from mobile marketplaces, the game guides players through a brief tutorial. A new player’s first decision is to decide whether to be part of the Resistance or become one or the Enlightened. This decision affects one’s experience playing Ingress; if the majority of the participants in a new player’s region are members of a rival faction, his or her gameplay consists of warfare in which the objective is to take over the largest quantity of space that was previously conquered by the

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other group. If the player’s faction is the predominant faction in his or her region, the competition goes to the back burner, and the main goal becomes cultivating and protecting a group’s conquests, defending them from the rival faction, and acting, above all, in the collective efforts during unexpected enemy attacks. This competition, according to Bay-Hinitz et al., (1994) can create a strong individual motivation to watch the enemy fail. The player Alexandre Matis, a fado musician, of the Enlightened faction, described one of the biggest Brazilian operations, in which five Brazilian cities were captured: Porto Alegre, Florianópolis, Curitiba, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro, with players gathering 250 million MU s. There was a bigger one from my friend “Russia” (Paulo Breim) but they were connected fields. His was bigger in extension. But smaller in MU s. He scored 200 million and I 250. Mine was the biggest field in MU s by layer, but on the same day the Resistance had planned an operation. They took down mine and beat my record. They made 350 million. It was impressive the coincidence of their timing, because my plan had 6 months of articulations and theirs had many months of planning too. And both of us decided to make them come true on the same day. ALEXANDRE MATIS , Enlightened Competition in this game goes beyond the goal of making the other faction fail, it is also about beating a player’s own records and his group’s too, in certain cases. Still, competition here is seen as healthy and maintains the game’s players from not going beyond the game world. Such observation matches what player Thiago Lopes states: I’m an agent of the Resistance, and I enjoy the way we compete. It’s healthy, I’m the enemy of a green agent (Enlightened) and in real life he is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met! This type of game design goes beyond competitive strategies. It provides a structure that fits cooperative practices between the faction’s agents. Positioned in opposition to competition, the cooperation is commonly associated with a self-esteem boost and the desire to be accepted in a group (Madden and Slavin, 1983). This cooperative-competitive structure forges bonds focused on one

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common goal: to win. In other words, cooperation is still focused on capturing more portals distributed around public spaces, leading players to gather in Google+ communities in order to organize attack strategies. However, the cooperation between players goes beyond the game. Images of collective plays, as projected on their devices’ screens that illustrate their team’s colors (either blue or green), are displayed in the online communities as if they were works of art to be appreciated not only by their faction’s mates, but by all players. Returning to our categorization of Ingress, it is important to note that utilizing elements from the physical space as part of the game itself, Ingress is considered an example of a pervasive game. According to Schneider and Kortuem (2001), pervasive games can be treated as games that can gather in themselves two distinct logics: 1 2

the ubiquitous, location technologies, and the live action role-playing games (LARP s).

McGonigal (2006) defines ARG s and pervasive games as games that concentrate the focus of their players on some kind of device (as an example, some locative media device), which becomes fundamental for the outcome of the game. Other authors, such as Montola et  al. (2009) use the expression “pervasive games” to designate a category of games based on the Weiser paradigm, as previously discussed at the beginning of this chapter. For these authors, since the adjective “pervasive” relates to the notions of infiltration and penetration, these games point to the fusion of the virtual with the physical, usually urban space. This fusion occurs alongside a fluid alternation between the limits of reality and fictionality. Pervasive games are essentially collective,6 both regarding the in-game sociability, as well as through mechanisms of sharing videos and pictures in website and gaming forums. Peers can follow individual performances in gameplay within these games. However, the uncertainty of Ingress’s genre is due to the aesthetics used in the narrative that runs parallel to the game. This narrative explains that NianticLabs—a startup company owned by Alphabet Inc. (previously Google) created the application—is part of a much bigger project, called the Niantic Project, that goes back even as far as the Second World War. Niantic acts in and out game, being part

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of the real and fiction at the same time. As described in the Niantic unofficial Wiki community resource operated and updated by players: In an out-of-universe context, the organization behind the leaks is NianticLabs, a division of Google previously responsible for the creation of Field Trip, a geo-aware “guide to the cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you.” Two weeks in to this ARG , NianticLabs released their second application, Ingress. This massively multiplayer augmented reality game sees players in two factions fighting for territorial control of the planet, focused around real-world monuments and landmarks designated as “portals”. The Niantic Project ARG and Ingress serve as complements to each other in the full story behind the Niantic Project.7 Within the game’s fiction, there is a dispute for knowledge regarding XM that continues nearly three year after the game release. This XM is only seen through technological devices related to Shaper Mind Virus. After experimenting with this new kind of matter that possesses the capacity to influence individuals’ minds, the National Intelligence Agency sent out a team of investigators to work on the Niantic Project. It is at this point in the game’s lore that the lab developed a way to utilize the sensors and antennas in smartphones to complement their satellite observational database of the world’s concentration of Exotic Matter. These smartphones could not only observe the XM but also to manipulate it from portals located in certain historic buildings and landmarks. This is where the Ingress game comes in. It is in the separation between the pervasive game (Ingress) and the Niantic Project narrative that we find the boundaries between the two and also where they are inextricably tied to each other. The dissolution of permeable boundaries8 (Nieuwdorp, 2005) is not limited to reality or fiction. This boundary is seen in the game, where two spheres of the same universe converge on Google’s productions. Eventually the narrative and game crisscross as players conquering of portals gain and uncover passwords that can unlock additional items in Ingress. This occurrence is called an anomaly in-game. According to the Niantic unofficial Wiki community resource operated and updated by players, these events are planned

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by the Ingress team and are normally called XM anomalies9(B) Rnormally called XM anomalief civic engagement. gagement with mobile technologies and play within schools. ted learning, lit and involve the two opposing factions fighting for dominance of a certain area for a couple of hours. The rules tend to change from event to event. The winning faction, apart from getting an extra bonus usually in the form of one-use passcodes, also determines changes in the story and alignments of story characters.10 According to an interview conducted with players, this dissolution of boundaries is not all that important: I look at the news and I follow them just for the sake of knowing what’s going on. But I’m more like a field agent . . . (giggles). Yes, I think it’s possible to separate, because the game’s storyline isn’t directly connected to the gameplay. MARCIONEY, NX , Enlightened No, I don’t follow the narrative too deeply, because the information isn’t focused in only one place, there are many profiles/entities that make it difficult to understand all of its details. But I do follow it lightly just to understand the latest happenings inside the scanner. MARCELO AUGUSTO, Enlightened The gameplay and the narrative can be separated, the game offers that possibility. It’s like the story of the fisherman, the surfer, and the deep-sea-diver: all of them know the sea very well, but in very different ways. There are players that choose to focus only on capturing portals around them for no specific reason, others choose to take part in state-wide and nation-wide actions in defense of mankind, they create intelligence groups and recruiting cells (those are RPG players), and there are those that watch every new post from the NIA in search of codes to crack, they ask questions to characters in their G+ pages, they provide support . . . THIAGO LOPES , Resistance Such a schism shows a clear separation between the two games, Ingress and the Niantic Project, where the narrative is unrolled. It is starting from this split that this chapter will now attempt to discuss

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the social dynamics specific to these games and the genres that are pertinent to them.

Ingress’s social dynamics To weave together a few considerations regarding in-game social dynamics, I engaged in participant-observation of the Ingress Brazil Google+ community, which had 1,140 members at the time of the study. Additionally, I also targeted another Brazilian community in Google+ that had the same name though it had less activity and fewer members (only 300). During the study’s period, from 2013 to 2015, I purposely tried to participate in these groups as little as possible. I attempted to participate in these spaces more as an investigator than as a player, while still interacting in the respective channels of communication in each group. Such positioning goes along with the principles of participant-observation outlined by William Foote Whyte: Participant-observation implies, necessarily, a long process. Many times the researcher spends countless months in order to “negotiate” his entrance in the area. An exploratory phase is, therefore, essential for the ulterior development of the research. Time is also a pre-requisite for studies that involve understanding behavior and group-action: to understand the behavior of individuals and groups it is necessary to observe them for a long period and not in a single environment. WHYTE , 2005: 320 According to this definition, I felt that two years of sporadic interaction and dense observation of the game’s communities was necessary. In addition to this observation and analysis of other international Ingress discussion communities, I also conducted indepth interviews through direct messages, instant messaging applications, and emails in June, 2015. The interviewees were chosen based on accessibility and availability in engaging in long informal conversations—one of the principles proposed by Whyte (2005: 301). Specifically, we focused on the level of participation of the subjects in the communities about game information sharing. All of the interviewees could be considered “enthusiasts,” according

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to categorization made by 42 Entertainment, a known producer of pervasive games and ARG s such as Why So Serious?, Year Zero, and I Love Bees.11 One of the distinctive aspects of the explorations of both the international communities and the Brazilian communities, pertains to the social and functional dynamics of these communities.12 In the three-day-period after the uncovering of a new clue or after a new video from one of the game characters was posted online, the Niantic Project narrative surfaced across discussions between players. During times when there was no new information about the narrative, the content of the communities’ posts followed the same structure found in the Brazilian community: print-screens of portal conquests, help requests regarding the game’s mechanics, scheduling of meet ups, and other pertinent information about playing Ingress. In one observation in February 2013 of an international Ingress community that counts more than two hundred thousand members from all over the world, one of its players voluntarily contacted us through email, in response to a posting about immersion in the Ingress.13 In his own words: I have a strong mind and am very alert so even though I know Ingress is not a game I have shielded the energy source, have never felt immersed, and have been on foot by myself during all times of the night. I believe there is so much more to know about XM and Dark Matter. I also believe that although the top people in the lab that have been sworn to secrecy know a lot more than we do about what’s going on they still are not even at 50 percent of truly understanding. I have been blessed with strong intuition and will not doubt it. I believe even though they have not fully figured out this super energy they are coming up with a better plan than they have had over the last year, which was to set phones to two different frequencies and get as many people as possible to see what happens when these frequencies are used in different ways. I know they have learned valuable information but still can’t match the outlet of XM . Therefore, the XM energy is getting stronger. I am sure you’re aware that humans have energy in us and some of us channel it differently and have better control over our batteries: our brains. I would love to receive any information I can get and understand this information stays with

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me. I am also willing to be of assistance even if that means putting my life in jeopardy. Like I said I have great intuition so I know I will hear from you, special agent. Player TOM RIPPERT 14 This personification is very typical within ARG s, in which players represent an identity other than themselves. We perceive this form of representation as part of the imaginative immersion as proposed by Laura Ermi and Frans Mäyrä. It is necessary to understand the “immersion” as a phenomenon that involves the wishful thinking of entering the game world. According to Ermi and Mäyrä: We call this game experience dimension, in which a person becomes absorbed with the stories and the world, or starts to feel or identify as a game character, imaginative dimension. This is the area that the game offers the player the opportunity to use their imagination, to create empathy with characters, or to simply enjoy of game’s fantasy. ERMI and MÄYRÄ , 2005: 8 For the authors, games with characters and storylines where players have more possibilities of identifying with something are more likely to appeal with this imaginative dimension. Dominic Arsenault (2005), in turn, proposes a restructuring of the model conceived by Laura Ermi and Frans Mäyrä, trading the concept of imaginative immersion for fictional immersion. For Arsenault, imaginative immersion is too broad and it would be conditioned to a fictional immersion. Imaginative immersion is fundamental to the process of playing an ARG or any other game genre in which the gameplay happens through role-play. Role identification as well as the mental process of imagination are both part of “pretending” and aren’t just for maximizing one’s experience within a game. In other words, to make the experience of playing an ARG complete, it is part of the gameplay to weave a fictional agreement in which players pretend that the story is real in order to increase the immersive experience. Such behavior is understandable within the social dynamics of ARG s from the TINAG premise. That is, by pretending the game is not a game allows players to achieve a maximized experience

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(Oliveira, 2011). Far from any kind of passivity, this intentional choice, which Murray (2003) calls “active creation of belief,” is the fuel for the immersion into a fictional environment: When we enter in a fictional world, we do more than just suspend our critical faculties; we also exercise a creative faculty. We don’t suspend our doubts as much as we actively create a belief. Because of our need to experience immersion, we focus our attention on the world around us, we use our intelligence more in the sense of strengthening, instead of questioning, the veracity of that experience. MURRAY, 2003: 111 Therefore, in light of the different approaches exposed here, we can perceive that the activity in favor of the player’s own immersive experience brings them to a constant intentional cognitive adjustment15 in order to keep them closer to reality inside the fictional environment. Otherwise, their immersion would condition them to “drown” in diegesis. Jacques Aumont (1993: 248) considers the diegesis “a fictional world that has its own laws more or less like the laws of the natural world, or at least with variable conception that it has.” As noted by Marie-Laure Ryan, “the ocean is an environment where we cannot breathe; to survive immersion, we must bring oxygen from the surface, to stay in touch with reality” (Ryan, 2001: 97). This direct contact with reality is a mediation of cognitive adjustment elaborated by the players throughout the course of their immersive-pervasive experience that can last for months. During this period, the gradual contact with the “magic circle” is subordinated to the “ordinary world’s” time frame. This “magic circle” is based on Johan Huizinga’s (1980) premise that games have their own spatial and temporal universe that defines the boundaries of the game world and the rest of the world. The players, even if they are not controlling the gameplay, while outside of the in-game space, in the ordinary world of their concrete lives, voluntarily think about ways to solve a puzzle or post a new hypothesis about the game in a discussion forum. Such common behavior is the reflection of a certain verticality of the genre. The pretending of what is the game originates with its producers as shown through the game design’s aesthetics. But this does not happen in Ingress, except in rare cases, like Tom Rippert’s previous

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statement. The low frequency of this type of behavior shows how much Ingress moves away from traditional ARG s, despite sharing similar aesthetics. A common goal of many ARG players is to discover who the puppet masters are, who make up the game designer base, and who are the companies or products that created the game. That is: who is behind the curtain that separates the player from the fictional universe? This initial inquiry by players typically coincides with the development of the resolutions of the first puzzles, which allow an intuitive mapping of the bulk of the narrative. However, such resolution does not happen in Ingress. The affirmation that the game is, in fact, a game—that is, that it is a work of fiction—is very apparent in how the company describes the game and not just a layman’s mistake. Since its beginning, it was known that Ingress was a Google production. This was announced in various media during the release of the game, breaking the main premise of TINAG .16 Maybe one of the biggest mysteries for both players and for non-players of Ingress was the reason behind such investment in a game. Although Google, as a notable search engine company,17 was accused of monopoly by the European Union,18 the company is not in need of an advertising strategy to promote itself at this point. In this sense, many conspiracy theories surfaced around the existence of Ingress as a product. One of the main theories is that the game is being used as a form of 3D data gathering, a technology not yet developed by Google (Carney, 2012). It is believed that the material collected by the players in their portal capturing, as well as their suggestions for portal spots based on historic landmarks, could be ways that Google/Alphabet Inc. can increase its database. Some have speculated a future interaction of the game with Google Glass, opening up an increase of sales of the device. There are even theories that, by providing an interesting experience, Google/ Alphabet Inc. “shields” itself in their community of consumers from continuously collecting personal data based in surveillance, which later can be sold to other companies for commercial means (Hulsey and Reeves, 2014). Since it is presented as game, is Ingress a variation of ARG s that is forging the path toward a new genre? This question can only be answered after other productions follow the same model in the hopes of constituting a new paradigm.

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However, Ingress’s innovative characteristics on top of an ambitious narrative project that uses the world as a game board, completely changes the relationship of the players with the Google/Alphabet Inc. brand: It’s cool that the brand is expanding its work field. The game is free and it has no ads (which are things that can be quite annoying). They thought about the health of their players, who need to move around the city to add points to their scores. Player GUILHERME ANSELMO, Enlightened I already knew Google as a great, innovative company, and they came to reassure that with Ingress. The game offers a good experience, although there are bugs and a slowness to approve new portals and in some actions by Niantic favouring secondary goals in the game. But it is definitely a game that lives up to Google’s standards. Truly innovative!!! Player ALEXANDRE MATIS , Enlightened We can conclude that what is important for most players is not the game’s genre. There are other elements that are more relevant than the reproduction of dynamics and social rules inherent to a random game genre. Competition, collaboration, sociability, interaction between the physical and digital world, friendship between faction members (and between factions), and even “an excuse to get off the couch and go practice physical activities,” were some of the answers obtained in our interviews that point to the value players gain from Ingress.

Final considerations Through ethnographic participant-observation from 2013–15, this study explored how Brazilian players comprehend the relationship between narrative and a fictional world in permeable spaces in Ingress. I observed during this period that the aesthetics of ARG s were appropriated by this game, not only in its Niantic Project narrative, which is developed in parallel and intertwined to the main game, Ingress, but also in the very definition of the genre. This verticality also refers to the behavior of the players who pretend the

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game is reality, and not fiction, in order to maximize their experiences. However, if we consider that, in every moment of the game it was announced as a game, the TINAG principle is compromised. Ultimately, we observed through the applied methodology that the genre question is not essential for the gaming experience itself. This is crucially different from what happens in most ARG s, where rules for social dynamics are well defined. Therefore, we can infer that what seems to be most important for players are other practices that seem to contribute more to the construction of the player’s experience than the ones that surround ARG s.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank all the players who participated in this research. Special thanks to the players Erlon, Maurício, and Matis, who were always on hand to assist with this research.

Notes 1 Now Alphabet Inc., a holding company created to centralize the control on all Google divisions. As this chapter was written when the company was changing the patent, we will use both nomenclature to refer to the organization. 2 See the video-teaser in the YouTube Google Channel: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=Ss-Z-QjFU io 3 Ubiquitous computing, also called pervasive computing, is a term used to describe the omnipresence of information technology in daily life. 4 As temporality we understand as the perceived time and not the physical event of the time as a provisory state governed by fiction. 5 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nianticproject. Ingress&referrer=utm_source%3DI ngress%26utm_medium%3D website%26utm_campaign%3Ddownload 6 Collective Games constrain players to adopt a team behavior, based on the respect to the game and social rules. 7 Available at: https://niantic.schlarp.com/start 8 Permeable membranes refers to a concept that explains how the real and fictional world are diffused in pervasive games.

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9 Available at: https://niantic.schlarp.com/investigation:apps:Ingress:events 10 Almost all characters has a profile in Google+. Too see the complete list of the characters, access: https://niantic.schlarp.com/ investigation:characters#flint_dille 11 http://www.42entertainment.com/work/randomactsoffusion 12 Despite the focus of this research being in Google+ Ingress Brazilian communities, some inserts were carried out in the general community Ingress players, which has 211,000 members. https://plus.google.com/ communities/103803967875500436831 13 Since it was not required for the player to identify himself, I decided to keep his anonymity. 14 Fictitious name. 15 I.e., the creation of belief, suspension of disbelief, attentional enhancement, perception, and fictional immersion agreement, among others, can be considered cognitive choices made by the player during the act of playing a game. 16 http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/06/google-promises-a-unified-socialand-mobile-game-platform/ 17 According to Romero Rodrigues (2013), Google dominates 96 percent of the Internet searches in the Brazilian market. 18 Based on the report by the Economy section of OperaMundi, published June 21, 2015. Available at: http://operamundi.uol.com.br/ conteudo/noticias/40142/uniao+europeia+acusa+google+de+abuso+em +controle+de+motor+de+buscas+na+internet.shtml

References Arsenault, Dominic. 2005. “Dark Waters: spotlight on immersion.” In Proceedings of Game on North America International Conference. Eurosis-ETI . Atem, G.N., de Azevedo, S.T., and de Oliveira, T.M. 2014. “Produção de sentido e modos de presença nos espaços da cibercultura: pervasividade e proxemia no jogo de realidade aumentada Ingress.” Ghent: Eurosis-ETI . Aumont, Jacques. 1993. A imagem. Campinas: Papirus. Baroni, Raphäel. 2006. La Tension narrative: suspense, curiosité et surprise. Paris, Seuil. Bay-Hinitz, A.K., Peterson, R.F., and Quilitch, H.R. 1994. “Cooperative games: A way to modify aggressive and cooperative behaviors in young children.” Journal of applied behavior analysis, 27(3), 435–46.

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Carney, Michael. 2012. “Google’s Ingress is more than a game, its a potential data exploitation disaster.” In Pando, November 9. Available at: https://pando.com/2012/11/19/googles-Ingress-is-more-than-agame-its-a-potential-data-exploitation-disaster/ Desmet, Nicole. 2015. “Ingress ‘Agents’ Seek Portals in Burlington.” In Seven days: Vermont’s independence voice. June 3. Available at: http:// www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/Ingress-agents-seek-portals-inburlington/Content?oid=2641345 Ermi, L. and Mäyrä, F. 2005. “Fundamental components of gameplay experiences: analyzing immersion.” In Proceedings of DiGRA 2005 – Changing Views. Digital Games Research Conference. Utrecht: Utrecht University. Fragoso, Suely. 2014. “ ‘HUEHUEHUE ”BR ? BR ?’ The carnivalesque griefing behavior of Brazilian online gamers.” Culture, Technology, Communication, 167. Galloway, Anne. 2004. “Intimations of Everyday Life: Ubiquitous Computing and the City.” In Cultural Studies, vol. 18, no. 2–3. Gannes, Liz. 2012. “Google Launches Ingress, a Worldwide Mobile Alternate Reality Game.” All Things Digital. Last modified, November 15. http://allthingsd.com/20121115/google-launches-ingress-aworldwide-mobile-alternate-reality-game/ Gibson, James. J. 1986. The ecological approach to visual perception. New York: Psychology Press. Graves, Stephen. 2014. “NianticLabs’ John Hanke: alternate reality games are the future of storytelling.” In Stuff, October 11. Available at: http://www.stuff.tv/features/niantic-labs-john-hanke-alternate-realitygames-are-future-storytelling Hinske, S., Lampe, M., and Carsten Magerkurth, C.R. 2007. Classifying Pervasive Games: On Pervasive Computing and Mixed Reality. Volume 1. Aachen, Germany, Shaker Verlag. Huizinga, Johan. 1980. Homo Ludens. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Hulsey, N., and Reeves, J. 2014. “The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Google, Ingress, and the Gift of Surveillance.” Surveillance & Society, 12(3), 389–400. Juul, Jesper. 2003. “The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness.” In Proceedings of DiGRA 2003. Utrecht: Utrecht University. Juul, Jesper. 2005. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press. Madden, N.A., and Slavin, RE . 1983. “Mainstreaming students with mild handicaps: Academic and social outcomes.” Review of Educational Research, 53(4), 519–69. Mattern, Friedemann. 2001. “Pervasive/ubiquitous computing.” Informatik-Spektrum, 24(3), 145–7.

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McGonigal, Jane. 2003a. “This is not a game. Immersive aesthetics and collective play.” In Proceedings of 5th International Digital Arts And Culture Conference. Melbourne. McGonigal, Jane. 2003b. “A real little game. The performance of belief in pervasive play.” In Proceedings of Level Up. Digital Games Research Conference. Utrecht. McGonigal, Jane. 2006. This Might Be a Game: Ubiquitous Play and Performance at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Tese de doutorado em Filosofia pela. University of California, Berkeley. Montola, M; Stenros, J; Waern, A. 2009. Pervasive Games: Theory and Design. Oxford: Morgan Kaufmann. Mulligan, J. and Patrovsky, B. 2003. Developing Online Games. An Insider’s Guide. California: New Riders. Murray, Janet. 2003. Hamlet no Holodeck. O futuro da narrativa no ciberespaço. São Paulo: Itaú cultural; UNESP. Nieuwdorp, Eva. 2005. “The pervasive interface: tracing the magic circle.” In Proceedings of Changing Views. Digital Games Research Conference. Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2005. Oliveira, Thaiane. 2011. “Isto não é um jogo: Configurações cognitivas no processo de se jogar um Alternate Reality Game.” 146 f. Thesis (Master in Communication) – Postgraduate Program, Arts and Social Communication Institute, Federal Fluminense University, Niterói. Oliveira, T. and de Andrade, L.A. 2010. “Um jogo de realidades e ficcionalidades.” Ciberlegenda, Rio de Janeiro, no. 22. Operamundi. 2015. “União Europeia acusa Google de abuso em controle de motor de buscas na internet.” Economy Section. June 21. Available at: http://operamundi.uol.com.br/conteudo/noticias/40142/uniao+euro peia+acusa+google+de+abuso+em+controle+de+motor+de+buscas+na+ internet.shtml Rodrigues, Romero. 2013. “Pela neutralidade nas buscas de internet.” Folha de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, ed. 763, September 4. Available at: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/opiniao/2013/09/1336604-romerorodrigues-pela-neutralidade-nas-buscas-de-internet.shtml Ryan, Marie-Laure. 2001. Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Schneider, J. and Kortuem, G. 2001. “How to Host a Pervasive GameSupporting Face-to-Face Interactions in Live-Action Roleplaying.” In Position paper at the Designing Ubiquitous Computing Games Workshop at UbiComp. 1–6. Stenros, Jakko. 2010. “Playing the system: using frame analysis to understand online play.” In Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology, 9–16. ACM .

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Szulborski, Dave. 2005. This Is Not A Game. A guide to Alternate Reality Gaming. Santa Barbara (USA ): Active Media Group. Takahashi, Dean. 2014. “Google’s mobile game Ingress enables 7M players to create user-generated missions.” In VentureBeat.com. September 25. Available at http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/25/ googles-mobile-game-Ingress-enables-7m-players-to-create-usergenerated-missions/ Teixeira, Carlos Alberto. 2014. “Google game player dies after being hit in Tijuca.” In O Globo Newspaper, February 11. Available at http:// oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/tecnologia/jogador-de-game-do-googlemorre-apos-ser-atropelado-na-tijuca-11571559 Weiser, Mark. 1991. The Computer for the 21st Century. In Scientific American Ubicomp Paper, 265(3), 66–75. Whyte, William Foote. 2005. Sociedade de esquina: a estrutura social de uma área urbana pobre e degradada. Trad. Maria Lucia de Oliveira. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2005.

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Conclusion Antero Garcia and Greg Niemeyer

Wild experimentation There’s this notion that every time a new piece of technology is invented, it takes us a really long time to figure out how to use that tech to tell good stories. This is historically very true and repeated. The time between the invention of the printing press and the first novel was [. . .] over 100 years. The invention of the motion picture camera to the modern sitcom is 75 years. Over and over again, it takes us a while to figure it out. And it’s not that we’re sitting around just waiting for time to elapse, we’re trying a billion different things and most of them are failures and a few of them are big successes and we grab what’s great about those and move on to the next thing. I think alternate reality games are one of the big successes but we haven’t arrived yet. We’re on that pathway towards the way the twenty-first century wants to tell stories, the way to use this new invention. We’re still in that wild experimentation phase. ELAN LEE , Story Forward, 2014 Right now, alternate realities are steadily creeping into mainstream culture. The sense of playfulness and engaging narrative is seen in 311

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the wildfire-like spread of Pokémon Go and Escape Rooms (Nelson, 2015) as means of popular engagement. Likewise, as the number of Ingress players continues to grow and more popular novels are taking narrative routes that engage readers in new modes like Cathy’s Book (Stewart and Weisman, 2006), The Silent History (Horowitz et  al., 2014), and The Pickle Index (Horowitz, 2015), engagement with alternate realities—the deliberate layering of fiction on top of the real world—is becoming more and more a part of how stories are being told and played. These shifts are not simply speaking to how we play games differently but how stories are being told differently. As such, the means by which we interact with one another and with media as both participants and producers is being altered. This is the new reality of the “wild experimentation” that Lee describes. Alternate reality games are unbounded: individuals can play them anywhere and everywhere. However, in order to do so, one needs the codes of power and social capital to do so. The discussion of the magic circle in ARG s is not simply a cut or dry argument of whether one exists in this genre of gaming. It is instead a larger ontological consideration: ARG s don’t possess a magic circle that externally shields play from broader society; the circle is a layer. Like Plato’s Theory of Forms (1992), there is an ideal state or form of the natural world on which our actual world is modeled. What we see of the world through ARG s is another projection of reality onto a not so ideal world. As Montola et al. (2009) note, “Pervasive gamers inhabit a game world that is present within the ordinary world, taking the magic circle wherever they go” (19). Discussing ARG s in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, descriptions of clandestine meetings, of faux-sneaking into or out of public spaces, of sorting through a mélange of multimedia texts are all a part of the typical fare within the genre. Indeed, much of what is at the heart of ARG s has been a pith of narrative truth waiting to be unlocked over time. However, from these initial gestures toward a new genre and mode of play also comes the need to acknowledge what Dyer-Witherford and de Peuter have described in video games as “actual power in the context of Empire” (2013). As perhaps one of the most widely played context of ARG s presently (particularly as a blueprint and frame on which Pokémon Go was developed), Ingress is a useful lens through which to understand the intersections of ARG s, power, and capitalism. Questions of how

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space, power, and agency interact within pervasive gaming continue to shift as the genre extends beyond simply advertising products. In light of how ARG s are shifting in their current, adolescent development, we conclude this volume with four questions for individuals studying, designing, and playing ARG s now and moving forward: 1 2 3 4

Are we using the right tools for studying ARG s? What is learned within ARG s? What is fiction and what is real in ARG s? Are ARG s fun?

Research tools for ARG s: studying the digital in the wild Thus far, researchers have only tepidly looked at ARG s in light of how participatory media may change how we interact with each other and with digital entertainment. ARG s have largely been held in a quarantined speculative space. However, as these games become more accessible to players and academics, now is a time ripe to further explore this gaming genre from an academic perspective. Looking at the numbers of participants when The Beast was taking place, Montola and Stenros (2009) challenge what active participation looks like. As a marketing campaign, the number of people The Beast attracted that were reading about the game are just as valid a metric of participation for corporations as those people actually playing. As such, we must consider what our stance as researchers and players and designers dictates about the needs of ARG designs. What success looks like is dependent on the outcomes one is seeking. The McLuhan (1964) notion that the medium is the message, is a useful reminder of how the modes of play in ARG s can guide social participation in capitalist practices. To what extent are our actions as players and researchers complicit in extending the reach and power of larger companies? Does our scholarship of ARG s and other forms of pervasive play instantiate unintended consequences that mire battles toward equity from otherwise marginalized populations? Within educational research, Django

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Paris and Maisha Winn (2014) have argued for contemporary “Humanizing Methodologies” when looking at issues of educational equity. Along these same lines, gaming research must consider how our actions as a community amplify and sustain research that guides equitable engagement, participation, and humanization in the real world of ARG play. If ARG s are engaging reality as their game space (von Borries et al., 2007), our community of researchers must contend with the inherent role that these games impress upon the study of digital play and participation at large. In traditional game studies and— more recently—platform studies (Montfort and Bogost, 2009), the emphasis is on the software and coded experiences that are mediated via technological tools like mice, keyboards, controllers, and headsets. The space for gaming studies is often historically bounded by discrete tools and systems. ARG s, however, are another beast entirely. Our methods are ones that must reach more broadly into the spaces of sociology and anthropology (not just of virtual worlds such as those more recently explored by Boellstorff, 2010; Boellstorff et al., 2012; Nardi, 2010). The methodologies of interacting with participants in these spaces—how we observe, measure, and interpret—are guided by a critical lens of grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser and Strauss, 1965). In this light, the tools for studying ARG s must simultaneously take into account the humanizing needs of our research coparticipants as well as extend the empirical repertoires of social science research so often taken up by other disciplines. This updating of methodologies in gaming studies is likely a glacial shift that will ultimately help legitimize the field as part of broader social science research in the eyes of the broader academic realm.

Learning within ARGs: the myth of the educational ARG Across the chapters in this book, it is helpful to note that the myth of the education ARG is one that we, as a gaming community, need to challenge. ARG s—like games more broadly—are inherently instructional. As you play—whether through meandering and stumbling across transmedia artifacts, discussing the strategies with

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a collaborative of other players, or actively producing media and content in response to ARG challenges—the processes of engagement are about acclimating to the challenges set forth and making sense of the data provided; the design of an ARG is pedagogical. In deliberately education-focused ARG s, the outcomes are often more intentionally focused on academic measures of success alongside narrative resolution. Kurt Squire, for instance, considers the contextual nature of ARG design (2010), emphasizing the need for “Place-Based” ARG s. Looking at a case study with a group of secondary students, he describes how, “For Ms. Jones, students conducting an investigation in the field more fully situated the investigation; students were literally put out in the field in the role of investigators, situating them both in the physicality of the space and in their roles as investigators” (2584). This situating of identity and place in Squire’s educational ARG is a less opaque reflection of ARG play at large. With players embodying roles and often working in place-based contexts, ARG s are a means to highlight player agency. As players interact and flex their power within ARG s, they ultimately see how these skills can be transferred beyond the realm of a game. In doing so, ARG s illustrate how games have real consequences. They are media that connect people with environments and infrastructure. These connections are usually governed by myriad rules and media. In everyday, non-ARG experiences, a key question for interacting in society is if an individual feels like she or he has the agency to engage at a civic level with rules and society. Many social structures—laws, conventions, stipulations—cast individuals as passive agents in society or are not clearly delineated. These rules are opaque and so most civic infrastructures remain opaque. A game creates transparent mediations in which people do have agency. And of course, once you have agency, even in imaginary contexts, you remember that feeling. You can map that feeling as a demand or positive expectation onto non-mediated or non-transparent or too static situations where you don’t feel like you have agency. Agency transfers from the imaginary to the real. What is exciting when considering the context of ARG s is that the experience is mapped out onto the real world. The virtual world in many video games is the actual size of the world one engages in within ARG s. Like Borges’s description of a map that is the exact size of its subject (Borges, 1999), in-game agency is often the same as real-world agency.

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In considering the role of games in sustaining and developing agency, we can look at games as supporting identity through self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985). Building on understandings of intrinsic motivation, Deci and Ryan note three basic needs for a healthy, individual growth: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Gaining positive feedback about one’s competence on any given task increases one’s motivation. Likewise, developing personal relationships with others guides one’s selfidentity. Finally, the sense of choice and control over one’s actions guides one’s self-motivation. By participating within an ARG community, players receive feedback, build the necessary positive relationships, and control their own playing choices in ways that only grow their feelings of agency and self-worth. We add, here, the role of curiosity. If ARG s are built around a moment of intrigue in the form of a rabbit hole, we can see this aspect of intrinsic motivation as one that provokes a choice: does a player choose to investigate the thing she or he is curious about? Such choices drive autonomy from the very instantiation of ARG play. There are many more structural contact points. Playing in or around a specific geographic location, for example, means that players can attach their feelings of agency to that site. Similarly, from this same stance, players can really build persistent relationships, as McGonigal describes with the Cloudmakers’ community during The Beast (2003). The triumvirate of environment, infrastructure, and people becomes a flowing ecology where the media that connect them gives the players agency. Player identity and agency in ARG s is always a process of acquisition, development, and performance. Regardless of one’s expertise within ARG s, they remain a powerful context for continual learning, reflection, and application of in-game content knowledge and out-of-game gaming proficiency.

What’s real in ARGs: Slipping across binaries Considering how gaming teaches agency, the boundary between real and fiction has always been a loose spectrum rather than a firm binary in ARG s. An ARG can feel more real because participants

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have agency. Perhaps players continue to engage in these spaces in order to not have to face real life crises. Continuing our look at McGonigal’s (2003) discussion of the Cloudmakers, she notes that they took on “a game-play mindset” as “an appropriate and productive way to confront the stark reality of 9/11.” For players such as these, the alternate world offers more choices than in real spaces. Unlike in video games where “There is generally a clear-cut split between the fiction and rules of a game” (Juul, 2005: 57), ARG s thrive in sustaining an osmotic relationship between reality and fiction. As semipermeable boundaries, fiction bleeds player agency into reality and reality bleeds real life events into fiction. When running The Black Cloud with high school students in South Central Los Angeles (Niemeyer et al., 2009), a student attributed a local earthquake to the main antagonist within the game, a sentient cloud named Puffy. The real world became a canvas on which to construct new narrative threads. Two common questions that emerge around ARG s are: Which reality is the alternate? And what is it an alternative to? However, in looking at the permeability of the boundary between reality and fiction, the idea of the ARG can be flipped: rather than question what is real and what is alternate, we can see both of these forces within the game constructing a new reality: the game becomes an engine that generates new modes of living and seeing the world. In her chapter about Ingress, Oliveira shares interviews conducted with various members of the Brazilian Ingress community. Talking with player Tom, he notes: I have a strong mind and am very alert so even though I know Ingress is not a game, I have shielded the energy source, have never felt immersed, and have been on foot by myself during all times of the night. I believe there is so much more to know about XM and Dark Matter. I also believe that although the top people in the lab that have been sworn to secrecy know a lot more than we do about what’s going on they still are not even at 50 percent of truly understanding. There are a couple of ways we can interpret Tom’s discussion of how real Ingress is and his vigilance to this narrative and commitment as a player. On the one hand, we can guess that Tom is playing the game and is pretending to believe in the fiction, thus adhering to the

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TINAG conventions so standard in ARG s as covered extensively throughout this volume. On the other hand, there is a possibility that Tom is not pretending and, in doing so, is playing Ingress because of an implicit belief that he is actually not playing. And how are we to know? It is through Oliveira’s qualitative research—asking Tom about his commitment to Ingress—that we get this statement of belief in the game. At what point are we able to understand what is real even within player conceptions of ARG s? To this extent, what is our moral responsibility when engaging in the social contract of playing a game? What kind of responsibility do we, too, hold as gaming researchers and as designers? Perhaps Tom’s comment here reveals ARG s function like an extended game of poker; designers and players alike are to keep a straight face and to keep their narrative cards close to the vest: neither one willing to make the call. Or perhaps ARG s are like the game of Red Light/Green Light, with a race to advance to a determined resolution while also occasionally halted in stasis by interruptions and interactions between player and designer. The narrative, to Tom, then, is to play within the space carved out by NianticLabs and Google. Just as they create boundaries for play and simulacra, so too does Tom confine his statements within the game. Is Tom still playing Ingress when he says “I know Ingress is not a game”? In considering the implications of cheating in video games, Mia Consalvo notes that games “increasingly follow us around” (2007: 190). This pervasiveness of pervasive games creates a complicated relationship between players like Tom and the “truth” within and about ARG s. Continuing her analysis, Consalvo writes, “I believe that while games are experiences we integrate into our daily activities, and there is no game space that’s easily walled off, there are rules and rewards that apply to games, and these do form a boundary of some sort” (190). Though Consalvo notes that she is able to make choices and exert agency in ways that games encroach upon her life and vice versa, the fluidity of boundaries in ARG s is a sliver thinner than what she describes. Likewise, Juul (2005) explains that within video games, “Rules and fiction compete for the player’s attention. They are complementary, but not symmetrical” (121). The asymmetry of reality and fiction in ARG s does not hew to the same competition that Juul describes. Likewise, the boundaries that Consalvo notes are also more evasive in appearance

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in this genre. As such, what’s real in ARG s? Phenomenologically, everything that players experience (regardless of designer intentions) is real. The boundary is merely an excuse by which designers can guide how agency is assumed and developed.

The future of ARGs: looking through the kaleidoscope of the imaginary Continuing the discussion of reality and fiction, Montola et  al. (2009) note, “There cannot be a game world without the ordinary world” (19). Now that we have seen the non-binary relationship between these two layered spaces, we must consider the possibilities of ARG s in future work. We need to knock down the role of “or” in ARG s. Spaces are all encompassing; there is little that is either inside or outside the magic circle, like Schrödinger’s cat, our scholarship must assume all states exist. Returning to the folklore tale of Br’er Rabbit discussed in this volume’s Introduction, does falling down that rabbit hole stifle or liberate? It does both. These are stories that could guide understanding of an experienced oppression and they allow those engaging with the narrative to own the contexts of their engagement in similar experiences. Like contemporary ARG s, folk tales like those of Br’er Rabbit are starting points for questioning and owning the story. One’s agency is not in the telling or mediation of the story but simply in the fact that it is a story and it offers reflection on one’s everyday life. This point guides ARG scholarship moving forward. In describing the looking across real and fictional contexts, McGonigal (2003) says this kind of play “required developing a kind of stereoscopic vision, one that simultaneously perceived the everyday reality and the game structure in order to generate a single, but layered and dynamic world view (3).” We can imagine ARG s function like kaleidoscopes through which one can re-view the world in a new way. Not an augmented reality that temporarily offers a portal for viewing, an ARG is a means of re-seeing what is already present in a new way. Adopting the Russian concept of ostrananie, ARG s take the familiar everyday world and—through some simple conceits—makes them look strange and unfamiliar. This allows participants in ARG s to do things they’ve never done

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before or think they can’t do because they have forgotten that they cannot be done. This new way of seeing the vibrancy of the otherwise familiar world is transformative and rich. Players make themselves from within a fiction the person they aspire to become. This new person slowly emerges from the game. The future of ARG s is an ever changing one in which mainstream practices pick up the kaleidoscope of the imaginary, give it a simple twist of the wrist, and allow the possibilities of real-world change to be seen from our collective engagement with social storytelling.

Finding the fun Though there has been some theorizing of what we mean by “fun” and how to proactively design for it in games (Koster, 2004), the role of “fun” is largely misunderstood. In how we look at the unraveling of and discovery of narrative and self within ARG play, we argue that “fun” is found in the agency and identity that playing creates. As a meaningful and participation-based alternative to largely control-based social interactions, ARG s invite new modes of human interaction and self-discovery. This process of supporting self-identity is what, ultimately, translates into fun. Solving puzzles, collecting information, positing theories for moving forward within a game: these are instantiations of one’s individual choices being validated by both peers and self. J.C. Fredrich von Schiller (1795) noted the formative role of play and gaming in the making of a socially democratic work: “A human only plays when he takes his place as a human, in the full meaning of the word, and he is only completely human when he plays.” When play highlights one’s autonomy, it becomes easier for players to choose to live in a way that is guided by autonomy and agency. Schiller points to the broader social implications of play and we can see how a fun-based approach to life redefines what our world is. Suddenly, our cities become places of empowerment and autonomy as a result of our ongoing understanding of them as places of play, discovery, and uncertainty. They are spaces that we can take control of. ARG s remind us that we have the freedom to reinvent ourselves and determine our future; we become who we want to be.

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References Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Celia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor. 2012. Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Borges, Jorge L. 1999. Collected Fictions. New York: Penguin. Charmaz, Kathy. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis. London: Sage. Consalvo, Mia. 2007. Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. Cambridge: MIT Press. Deci, Edward and Richard M. Ryan. 1985. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York: Plenum Press. Dyer-Witherford, Nick and Greig de Peuter. 2009. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Glaser, Barney and Anselm Strauss. 1965. Awareness of Dying. Chicago: Aldine Publishing. Horowitz, Eli. 2015. The Pickle Index. Cazadero, CA : Sudden Oak Books. Horowitz, Eli, Matthew Derby, and Kevin Moffett. 2014. The Silent History. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Juul, Jesper. 2005. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: MIT Press. Koster, Raph. 2014. A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media Inc. Montfort, Nick and Bogost, Ian. 2009. Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. Cambridge: MIT Press. McGonigal, Jane. 2003. “ ‘This Is Not a Game’: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play.” Proceedings from Melbourne DAC 2003 Streamingworlds Conference Proceedings. McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge: MIT Press. Montola, Markus, Stenros, Jaakko, and Waern, Annika. 2009. Pervasive Games: Theory and Design. New York: Morgan Kaufmann. Nardi, Bonnie. 2010. My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Nelson, Noah. 2015. “ ‘Escape Rooms’ Challenge Players To Solve Puzzles To Get Out.” Youth Radio. October 20. http://www.npr. org/2015/10/20/450239655/escape-rooms-challenge-players-to-solvepuzzles-to-get-out

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Niemeyer, Greg, Garcia, Antero, and Naima, Reza. 2009. “Black cloud: patterns towards the future.” Paper presented at the Proceedings of the seventeenth ACM international conference on Multimedia. Paris, Django and Winn, Maisha T. 2014. Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Inc. Plato. Republic. 1992. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co. Squire, Kurt. 2010. “From Information to Experience: Place-based Augmented Reality Games as a Model for Learning in a Globally Networked Society.” Teachers College Record, 112(10), 2565–602. Stewart, Sean and Jordan Weisman. 2006. Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233. New York: Running Press Kids. Story Forward. 2014. 057: I Love Bees Creator Retrospective. Audio. Story Forward: ARG s, Apps, The Wild West of the Web . . . and Beyond. http://www.storyforwardpodcast.com/2014/08/14/057-lovebees-creator-retrospective/ [accessed April 12, 2015]. von Borries, Frederich, Walz, Steffen P., and Böttger, Matthias. 2007. Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture, and Urbanism: The Next Level. Basel: Birkhäuser. Von Schiller, J.C. Friederich. “Aesthetische Erziehung.” 1795. http:// gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-3341/16 [accessed November 15, 2015].

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES June Ahn is an Associate Professor at New York University, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development (PhD, The University of Southern California). He was the director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland. His research focuses on the design, implementation, and study of learning technologies for STEM learning, online education, and blended learning. Burcu S. Bakiog˘lu is currently working as a Senior User Experience Researcher for software. She received her PhD in Comparative Media at Indiana University, Bloomington (IN ) in 2009 and completed her Postdoctoral research in New Media at Lawrence University. Her areas of interest include new media, participatory culture, virtual worlds, gaming, and the digital rights movement. She has published widely on griefing and governance in virtual worlds. Elizabeth Bonsignore is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland’s iSchool and Human-Computer Interaction Lab. Her research focuses on the design of technology-mediated social experiences that promote new media literacies, arts-integrated science learning, and participatory cultures for youth. She is particularly interested in the role that multimodal narratives play in helping under-represented youth engage in life-long learning. Angela Colvert is Senior Lecturer in English Education at the University of Roehampton, London with particular expertise in using digital games to develop children’s literacy. She has been involved in the development of award-winning educational games, including the Bafta-nominated Teach your Monster to Read and completed her PhD research into alternate reality games (ARG s) in education at University College London (UCL ), Institute of Education (IOE ). She has created and taught courses on educational 323

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ARG design for trainee teachers at Roehampton, and is an executive member of the UK Literacy Association. Diane Dufort is Graduate Assistant in Information and Communication Sciences in the Multimedia and Computer Sciences department at the University of Franche-Comté (Master Multimedia Product and Services, University of Franche-Comté). She is also a PhD Student in the ELLIADD laboratory based in the same university. Her main research interests include cultural heritage, pervasive games, and learning activities in cultural heritage sites, alternate reality games, and transmedia storytelling. Her teaching topics include transmedia storytelling, serious games, persuasive games, persuasive design, and user experience design. Kathryn Kaczmarek Frew is a PhD Candidate in the English Department at the University of Maryland-College Park (M. Ed., College of William and Mary). Her research focuses on the impact of technology on reading and the materiality of texts. Antero Garcia is an assistant professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Prior to completing his PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles, Antero was an English teacher in South Central Los Angeles. Through work focused on increasing equitable teaching and learning opportunities for urban youth through the use of participatory media and gameplay, Antero co-designed the Critical Design and Gaming School—a public high school currently open in South Central Los Angeles. He has written numerous book chapters and authored five books including Doing Youth Participatory Action Research: Transforming Inquiry with Researchers, Educators, and Students; Pose, Wobble, Flow: A Culturally Proactive Approach to Literacy Instruction; and Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom. Melissa Gilliam MD, MPH is the Ellen H. Block Professor of Health Justice at the University of Chicago where she is a doctor, researcher, and administrator. Dr. Gilliam is the founder and director of Ci3, an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Chicago addressing the social and political determinants of adolescent sexual and reproductive health using innovative methods such as games, design, and narrative. Derek Hansen is Abell Professor of Innovation in the School of Technology at Brigham Young University (PhD, University of

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Michigan). His research and teaching focus on Human-Computer Interaction. Specifically, he studies and develops novel social technologies and games designed to benefit society in the domains of STEM education, citizen science, exercise promotion, and healthcare. Alan Hook is a Lecturer in Interactive Media, and Researcher in New Media and Play in the Centre for Media Research at Ulster University (MA Creative Technologies, Salford University). His teaching and research focus on play as a form of interaction and how participation in games and transmedia texts effects and shapes behavior both in and outside of the game. Patrick Jagoda is associate professor of English and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. He is also a co-editor of Critical Inquiry and co-founder of the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab and the Transmedia Story Lab. His books include Network Aesthetics (University of Chicago Press) and The Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer (co-authored with Michael Maizels, MIT Press). Jagoda has also worked on several projects related to digital storytelling, transmedia game design, and new media learning. For more information, see: http://patrickjagoda.com/ Stephanie Janes completed her PhD in Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2015. Her thesis focuses on the function of promotional alternate reality games in marketing campaigns for contemporary Hollywood cinema. She has published on this topic in Arts & the Market and Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. Stephanie has also contributed chapters on ARG s to Besides The Screen: The Distribution, Exhibition and Consumption of Moving Images (eds. Virginia Crisp and Gabriel Menotti Gonring) and The Politics of Ephemeral Digital Media: Permanence and Obsolescence in Paratexts (eds. Sara Pesce and Paolo Noto). Broader research interests include promotional materials, digital gaming, digital marketing, audience research, and media fandoms. Calvin Johns received his PhD from the anthropology department of the University of Texas at Austin in 2015. His previous graduate work encompassed philosophy, comparative religion, and cultural studies. Calvin’s current research probes alternate reality gaming among other genres of public play to ask questions of affect, distributed cognition, new materialism, and cultural production. Outside his academic pursuits, Calvin works as a game designer,

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CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

creating and publishing tabletop games and gaming events through a company he founded, Anthropos Games. Kari Kraus is an Associate Professor in the College of Information Studies and the Department of English at the University of Maryland (PhD, University of Rochester). Her research and teaching interests focus on new media and the digital humanities, digital preservation, game studies and transmedia storytelling, and speculative design. She was a local Co-PI on two grants for preserving virtual worlds; the PI on an IMLS Digital Humanities Internship grant; and, with Derek Hansen, the Co-Principal Investigator of an NSF grant to study alternate reality games (ARG s) and transmedia storytelling in the service of education and design. Her latest transmedia work—in partnership with Brigham Young University, Tinder Transmedia, and NASA —was likewise funded by the NSF. Kraus has written for The New York Times and the Huffington Post, and her work has been mentioned in the Atlantic, Baltimore Public Radio, Huffington Post, and Gamasutra. Peter McDonald is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the methods that are used to interpret games and play as reflective of the broader culture in which they develop. He is also a graduate fellow at the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab. Greg Niemeyer is the craigslist endowed chair Professor for New Media at the UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice. He teaches media innovation and seeks to better understand how people form communities through communication. His critical practice includes museum exhibits, interactive performances, game design research and media innovation patents. Thaiane Moreira de Oliveira is PhD in Communication and Assistant Professor of the Postgraduate Program in Communication and Media Studies at Federal Fluminense University (Niterói/Brazil). She develops applied research related to pervasive games with social and commercial purposes, with a project of international cooperation with Uppsala University (Sweden) on pervasive play for empowerment. She is a leader of the Research Group on Narrative and Social Transformation, which has a proposal to investigate the audience practices in the creative industries. Eleana Pandia is a media psychologist and a PhD candidate at the Communication, Media and Culture department at Panteion

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327

University. Eleana is researching the way adolescents interact online, the construction of virtual personas, and virtual body representations in social media. She is a collaborator of New Media Lab of the Communication, Media and Culture department at Panteion University and is interested in online storytelling, psychoanalysis, and human-technology interaction. Anthony Pellicone is a PhD student at the University of Maryland’s iSchool and Human-Computer Interaction Lab (MLS , University of Maryland). His research focuses on how people share information, learn, and socialize in online spaces dedicated to games. Currently he is studying the way that players perform play through online streaming sites, such as Twitch.tv. Elina Roinioti is a sociologist and a game researcher. She is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication, Media and Culture (CMC ) at Panteion University and her research interests are in the area of game space, online socialization and play and culture. She has been involved in various R&D programs and over the past few years she has been designing digital and hybrid games for educational purposes and participated in several national and international game festivals. She is a scientific collaborator of the New Media Lab (CMC ) and member of The Games Philosophy Network. Yannis Skarpelos is associate professor at Panteion University in the Department of Communication, Media and Culture, where he teaches courses in Visual Culture, Visual Communication, and Multimedia Storytelling. He received a PhD degree in Communication and Cultural Management at Panteion University. He is Director of the New Media Lab and member of the Board of the Cultural Management postgraduate program. Ashlyn Sparrow is the Learning Technology Director of Game Changer Chicago (GCC ) Design Lab at The University of Chicago. She is an experienced game designer with a passion for creating interactive worlds and telling deep and meaningful stories. As the GCC Lab Director, Ashlyn works closely with researchers and faculty to lead in the development of serious games, interactive learning experiences, and digital media art with youth and for youth. Federico Tajariol is Associate Professor in Communication and Information Sciences at the ELLIADD Laboratory, University of

328

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

Franche-Comté, France. He has been trained in communication and interaction design, he completed a PhD in Cognitive Sciences (University of Grenoble) and worked at Orange Labs as social science researcher. He teaches pragmatics, user experience design and design methods at graduate and undergraduate level. His research concerns the design and the evaluation of digital services to support human activities, such as sharing information after a disaster, creating pedagogical documents, and designing alternate reality games. Jeff Watson is Assistant Professor of Interactive Media and Games at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (PhD, USC ). His work investigates how game design can enable new forms of storytelling, participation, and learning. He is a Director at the Situation Lab, a research laboratory that studies and designs creative situations, and is an associate faculty member at the USC Game Innovation Lab. As a designer, Jeff has consulted and produced commissioned work for a variety of institutions and companies, including UNESCO, Intel, BMW, Boeing, the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Tiltfactor, Take Action Games, and the Worldbuilding Institute.

APPENDIX — NODES

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330

INDEX

42 Entertainment, 108, 117–18, 122, 126, 300 Aarseth, Espen, 137, 246, 248 Accessibility, 5, 187, 190, 193–5, 202 Action, political, 33, 39, 47, 49, 51–2 Actor-network theory, 221–4, 226; see also Latour, Bruno Affective economics, 114–16 Alphabet Inc., 291, 296, 303–4, 305 n.1; see also Google Alternate reality games (ARG s) aspects, common, 190–1, 200, 238–42, 312 cultural see Cultural alternate reality games (CARG s) definitions of, 1, 8–11, 73, 132, 134–5 design see ARG design and the digital, 19–21 educational, 79, 87, 101, 314–16; see also DUST future directions, 21–2, 319 as a medium, 5, 63–4, 73 as not games, 189–90 origins, 10–11, 17–19 play materials, 135–6 predecessors, 18–19 promotional see Promotional ARG s real consequences of, 315 reasons to study, 212

research methods, 313–14 storytelling, 2, 311–12 studies of, 56–8 as texts, 58–60 as transgressive, 136–7 as transmedial, 85, 100–1 Ambiguity, 151 n.4, 238–40 Analog virtual worlds, 218 Andersen, Michael, 112 Anderson, Michael, 62 Anti-escapism, 238 Apophenia, 240 ARG design; see also Replayability educational, 155–6, 175–9 limits of, 187–8, 192–3, 200 and players, 67 rules-based, 196, 202, 205–7 tiered, 194 trends, 15 Arsenault, Dominic, 301 Art of the H3ist (AotH); see also Promotional ARG s background, 131–2, 139 Coachella disaster, 144–50 ending rewrite, 133 fiction, 133–4, 139–41 interactive storytelling, 138–9, 143, 148–9 live events, 141–3 reality blurring, 143 transparency as marketing, 121–2 331

332

INDEX

Assemblages, 220–1 Aumont, Jacques, 302 Authorship, 157, 178–9 Badges, 92–3, 96–8 Baran, Paul, 27, 329 Beast, The; see also Cloudmakers, The; Promotional ARG s ambiguity in, 239 design principles, 10–11 legacy, 14–15, 17 player relations, 118, 151 n.3 as promotional, 11–12, 151 n.2, 313 and TINAG , 12, 111, 151 n.3 Black Cloud, The, 15–16 Blurring, of reality see Reality blurring Boellstorff, Tom, 215 Bogost, Ian, 21, 204, 237 Bourriaud, Nicolas, 67 Brazilian telecommunications, 293 Bronsnan, Steven, 70–1 Butler, Judith, 214 Caillois, Roger, 190, 235 Castranova, Ted, 61 Cathy’s Book, 91–2, 312 Cherche Tom dans la Nuit, 243, 248–9 Cities, 2, 4 Cloudmakers, The, 7, 15, 65, 118, 151 n.2, 191, 194, 316; see also Beast, The Co-authorship, 110 Co-design, 82–3; see also DUST Coincidences, 241, 245, 252 Collective intelligence, 6, 37, 58, 64, 110, 191, 195–6, 238, 268, 281 Communities, 2, 4, 63–5, 68, 207, 315–16 Complementary fallacy, 231 n.1

Compliance, 269–71, 273, 275, 277 Consalvo, Mia, 318 Conspiracies, 36, 260–1, 264, 303 Conspiracy for Good, 57, 66, 69 Crawford, Chris, 200 Critical literacies, 156, 175, 177–8 Cruel 2 B Kind, 241–2 Cultural alternate reality games (CARG s) creation reasons, 243–4 and cultural institutions, 245, 251 definition, 234–5, 242 typology, 245–52 Cultural institutions, 235–6, 245, 250–1 Cultural literacies, 156, 165–6, 176 Cultural probes, 33–4, 38–9, 52, 220, 223; see also Gaver, William DARPA Network Challenge, 195 Data intensity, 200–2, 204 De Certeau, Michel, 2 De Peuter, Greg, 312 Dena, Christine, 119, 135 Derren Brown: Apocalypse, 70–1, 73 Dewey, John, 189 Diegesis, 302 Digital citizenship, 4 Digital virtual worlds, 215–18 Dragon’s Lair, 201 DUST badges, 92–3, 96–8 design, 81–5, 88, 90–2, 99 as educational, 87, 89, 97–8, 100 goals, 80, 94, 101 narrative-gameplay tension, 85–7, 95–6, 100–1 overview, 80–1

INDEX

player incentivisation, 92–4, 96–7 Dyer-Witherford, Nick, 312 Eco, Umberto, 68–9 Education, as leisure, 189 Educational ARG design, 155–6, 175–9 Educational ARG s, 79, 87, 101, 314–16; see also DUST Elverdam, Christian, 246 Ermi, Laura, 301 Ethics, 58, 65–7, 69, 72–3, 117, 120; see also Hoaxing Fabrications, 214–15, 225–8, 230 Fairclough, Norman, 173 Fans, 113–14, 121, 206 Flanagan, Mary, 260 Folklore, 18–19, 319 Frame analysis, 79, 84, 101, 221, 224–6; see also Goffman, Erving Frames, 224–5, 248–9 Fun, 95, 122–4, 242, 279, 320 Galloway, Anne, 289 Game Changer Chicago Design Lab (GCC ), 32, 35 Gamejacking, 113, 127 n.4 Games, definitions of, 189–90, 212–13, 235 Games, political, 35–7 Gaver, William, 34, 238–9, 252; see also cultural probes Ghosts of a Chance, 239, 245, 248–50 Go Game, 240, 249 Goffman, Erving, 79, 211, 221, 224–6; see also frame analysis Google, 288, 291, 297, 303–4, 306 n.17; see also Alphabet Inc.; Ingress

333

Greek economic crisis (2008), 259–60 Grounded theory, 271, 273 Group psychology, 267–9 Hall, Alexander, 39 Hanso Foundation see The Lost Experience Heidegger, Martin, 229 Hillis, Ken, 215, 217 Hills, Matt, 114 Hoaxing, 119–20, 214, 218, 227; see also Ethics Hockey, as a game, 203–4 Hook, Alan, 107, 110, 120 Huizinga, Johan, 13, 61, 132, 235, 302; see also Magic circle, the I Love Bees, 17, 22, 36, 110, 122 Immersion; see also Magic circle, the; Reality blurring; Suspension of disbelief; This Is Not A Game (TINAG ) in The Beast, 12 as choice, 302 definition, 8–9 fictional, 301 imaginative, 301 importance of, 115, 125 in Ingress, 292, 300–1 maintaining, 63–6, 111, 124 and pupper masters, 59–60, 119 Indices, 217, 220, 229–30 Information ambiguity, 239–40 Information and Communication Technologies (ICT ), 234, 236, 250–1 Information theory, 18–19 Ingold, Tim, 231 n.1 Ingress; see also Google appeal of, 304 as ARG , 290–1, 293–4, 303–4 capitalism, 312 cheating, 292–3

334

INDEX

conspiracy theories, 303 difficulties defining, 292, 296–7 and economic class, 293 gameplay, 294–6, 298 immersion, 292, 300–1 narrative, 296–8 Niantic Project, 296–8, 300, 304 NianticLabs, 291, 296–7 overview, 288–9 as pervasive game, 296 reality blurring, 293, 302–3, 317–18 social dynamics of, 299–302 TINAG , 303, 305 [In]visible Belfast, 234, 243–4 Jameson, Frederic, 35–6 Jen ratios, 241–2 Jenkins, Henry, 20, 115, 125 Johann Sebastian Joust, 204 Juul, Jesper, 10, 14, 318 Katz, Jack, 45 Kockelman, Paul, 228 Kortuem, G., 296 Kozinets, Robert, 108 Kress, Gunther, 167–8 Kudzu, Ian, 130 LastResortRetrieval.com, 140–1; see also Art of the H3ist (AotH) Latour, Bruno, 211, 221–4, 231 n.1; see also Actornetwork theory Leadership, 228, 268–72, 275–6 Learning, 7, 49, 87, 89, 101, 189, 225, 236; see also Cultural alternate reality games (CARGs); Educational ARGs Lee, Elan, 22, 111, 135, 311–12

Leeuwen, Theo van, 167–8 Lifeworlds, Inc., 219–20 Literacies critical, 156, 175, 177–8 cultural, 156, 165–6, 176 operational, 156, 176–7 Live action role-playing games (LARP s), 35–7, 296 Lost Experience, The, 57, 59–60, 62, 64, 66 Ludic markers, 65–6, 72 Magic circle, the; see also Huizinga, Johan; Immersion; Reality blurring; Suspension of disbelief; This Is Not A Game (TINAG ) ARG s lacking, 14, 61, 132, 312, 319 definition, 13, 61, 302 in LARP s, 36 and pervasive games, 13, 278 in promotional ARG s, 124 as temporary autonomous zone, 7 Massumi, Brian, 216, 223 Mattern, Friedman, 289–90 Mäyrä, Frans, 301 McCormack, Derek, 216–17 McGonigal, Jane anti-escapism, 238 apophenia, 240–1 on The Cloudmakers, 316–17 collective intelligence, 6, 37 design, of ARG s, 67 jen ratios, 241–2 learning in ARG s, 6 meta-pleasures, 61 pervasive and ubiquitous games, 237, 296 on playing ARG s, 32, 319 stereoscopic vision, 9, 319 TINAG , 7, 12, 112, 120

INDEX

McLuhan, Marshall, 313 Meta-communication, 60–1, 64, 144, 146, 150 Meta-pleasures, 61 Mighty Fizz Chilla, The design, 159–63, 166 modality cues, 165–9, 171 narrative, 157–8, 168, 170–2 participant discourse analysis, 172–3 planning, 158–9 play of, 163–4 players, directing, 173–5 TINAG , 165 Miracle Mile Paradox, The, 243, 250 Monopoly, 212–13 Montola, Markus ARG s, 57, 237, 291 pervasive games, 9, 13, 237, 291, 296, 312 pyramid of participation, 6, 194, 313 reality and fiction, 319 reality gaming, 69–71 Murray, Janet, 8, 302 Mystery Guest, The, 244, 249 Narrative-gameplay tension, 85–7, 95–6, 100–1 Narratives branching, 200–1 distributed, 192 as frames, 86–7, 92 immersion, 8 playful, 61 and process intensity, 202 in sports, 203 trickster, 18 Netnography, 108 Niantic Project, 296–8, 300, 304 NianticLabs, 291, 296–7 Nodes, 183, 329

335

Operational literacies, 156, 176–7 Ostrananie, 319 Pareidolia, 240 Paris, Django, 313 Participant-observation, 297 Participatory culture, 2, 7, 191 Participatory design, 82–3; see also DUST Peirce, Charles S., 217 Performance ARG s as, 2, 37, 59, 124, 228 art, 34, 68 belief, 62–4, 112, 135 frame, 248–50 in LARP s, 36 of narrative, 61 social structures, 214 TINAG , 112, 126–7 Pervasive computing, 289, 290 Pervasive games, 9, 13, 237, 278, 291, 296, 312 Phillips, Andrea, 7, 66, 151 n.4, 207 Platform studies, 314 Plato, 189, 312 Play, 5, 13–14; see also Magic circle, the Play, transgressive, 132–3, 136–8, 149–50 Players agency of, 4, 315–16, 319 ambiguity, 5–8 as collaborative group, 267–8 as a collective, 194–5 constituting games, 1, 191 dedication, 193–4 incentivizing, 92–4, 96–7 and participants, 225–8 as spectators, 193–4 transgressive play, 136 as unpredictable, 47–8, 67

336

INDEX

Pokemon Go, 4, 311–12 Political action, 33, 39, 47, 49, 51–2 Political games, 35–7 Political power, 4–5 Political thought, 33 Preece, Jenny, 267 Procedures, 21, 196, 200–2, 204, 206 Process intensity, 188, 200–6 Promotional ARG s corporate sponsorship, 116–18, 125 fan communities, 113–14, 125–6 Intellectual property (IP ), 110 puppet masters, 17 real-world events, 122, 126 self-transparency, 120–2 TINAG , 107–9, 113–15, 117–18, 122–5, 127 n.3 Puppet masters (PM s); see also Art of the H3ist (AotH) definition, 15–16 as designers, 16–17, 59, 67, 73, 133, 194, 248 player relations, 73, 118–19, 132, 191, 241, 303 in promotional ARG s, 17 roles, 6, 15–16, 59–60, 63, 190–1 Puzzles communal solving, 64, 73, 107, 196 and fun, 320 and narrative, 58, 86 as rabbit holes, 35 tiered, 194 Rabbit holes ambiguous, 239 definition, 15, 60, 190, 316 hypothetical lack, 72 as interfaces, 62

problems with, 15, 319 this book, 23 Raymond, Eric, 207 Reality blurring; see also Immersion; Magic circle, the; Suspension of disbelief; This Is Not A Game (TINAG ) aesthetic, 60–3, 120, 124, 238–9 frames, 224–5, 248–9 ludic markers, 65–7 materials, 135–6 phenomenology, 316–18 Reality Ends Here emergent sociality, 205–6 gameplay, 196–200 overview, 188–9 rules enforcement, 204–5 as sport, 202–3 Reality gaming, 69–71 Reality television, 223–4 Reid, Josephine, 241 Relational art, 67–9 Relevance, as socially grounded, 13–14 Replayability, 20, 187, 190, 193, 202, 206 Rogue, 201 Rules, 14, 111, 132, 150, 190, 201–5, 213, 235, 315, 318 Ryan, Marie-Laure, 302 Saitta, Eleanor, 36 Salen, Katie, 13, 19, 137, 190, 204, 206, 211–13 Salter, Anastasia, 11 Schiller, J. C. Friedrich von, 320 Schneider, J, 296 Searle, John, 212–14, 221, 224 Second Life, 215, 217 SEED community formation, 50–1 creation of, 36–7

INDEX

as cultural probe, 34–5, 38–9, 46, 50, 52 design of, 37–8, 44 hierarchies, inversion of, 41–4 narrative of, 39–40 play style, 44–6 player demographics, 41–2 player-designer interaction, 49–50 politics, 33, 47–8 reality of, 31–3, 46–9, 51–2 and TINAG , 42 Self-determination theory, 315–16 Selfies, 219 Semiotics, 217, 228–9 Shannon, Claude, 19 Simmel, George, 267 Situationism, 192 Sociability, 265–7 Social institutions, 212–15, 218, 221, 225 Social intelligence, 266–7 Solveig, Marie Smedstad, 246 Spectral, the, 216–17 Squire, Kurt, 315 Stacey, Sean C., 137 Stenros, Jaakko, 291–2 Stereoscopic vision, 9, 319 Stewart, Sean, 1–2, 8, 10, 135, 151 n.2 Stewartson, Jim, 193 Storytelling, 311–12 Sunnanå, Lise, 246 Suspension of disbelief, 36, 61–2, 64, 79, 112, 114, 116, 306 n.15; see also Immersion; Magic circle, the; reality blurring; This Is Not A Game (TINAG ) Sustainability, 187, 190, 193–4, 202–3, 206 Szulborski, Dave, 11, 15, 18, 111, 120–1, 123, 127 n.3, 138, 218

337

Tajfel, H., 268 Temporary autonomous zones (TAZ ), 7 This Is Not A Game (TINAG ); see also Immersion; Magic circle, the; Reality blurring; Suspension of disbelief aesthetic, 57, 62–3, 111–12 The Beast, 12, 111, 151 n.3 breaking, fun of, 122–5 corporate sponsorship, 116–17 definition, 7, 63, 79, 85, 111 design principle, 12, 14 difficulties, 112–13, 117 educational benefits, 165 ethics, 119–22 as frame, 225 Ingress, 303, 305 McGonigal on, 7, 12, 112, 120 The Mighty Fizz Chilla, 165 origins, 111–12 performance of, 112, 126–7 popularity, 113 promotional ARG s, 107–9, 113–15, 117–18, 122–5, 127 n.3 puppet masters’ role, 118–19 pure, 120 SEED, 42 this book, 23 ubiquitous computing, 290 Urban Hunt, 120 Thrift, Nigel, 33–4, 52, 219–20, 223 Tiravanija, Rirkrit, 68 Toying, 229–30 Trail, The background, 260 compliance in, 269, 273, 277 design, 262–5 fiction, 260–1, 264–5 goals, 261 leadership, 269, 272, 275–7 methods for studying, 270–1

338

INDEX

player group analysis, 274–8, 281 players, 262 sociality, 278–81 Trail-heads see Rabbit holes Transgressive play, 132–3, 136–8, 149–50 Transmedia storytelling, 2, 20, 58, 66, 87, 187, 207, 238, 243 Trickster narratives, 18 Turner, J. C., 268 Ubiquitous computing, 289, 305 n.3 Ubiquitous games, 237 Unfiction forum, 109 Urban Hunt, 120 Vanished, 245, 250 Vem grater, 70

Vernon, E. Philip, 266 Virtual, the, 216–18, 223, 227–9 Virtual worlds, 215–18, 220, 230 Waern, Annika, 57, 65, 69–70 Weiser, Mark, 96, 289, 296 Weisman, Jordan, 135, 151 n.2 Why So Serious, 109, 116–18, 122–3, 126, 300 Whyte, William Foote, 297 Wilson, Douglas, 204 Winn, Maisha, 313 Woods, Stewart, 61 Year Zero, 37, 39, 53, 122, 189, 270, 300 Zerubavel, Evictor, 13–14 Zimmerman, Eric, 13, 19, 137, 190, 204, 206, 211–13

339

340

341

342

343

344