I had been watching the scariestthingieversaw.com as its been loading up a file on a DOS-like simulator for a few days now. At first I just let the thing sit on my desk top watching it load byte by byte agonizingly slow, until I concluded that in fact it was a count down timer so I could just tune back in a couple of days later. Interestingly some people out there calculated the day that the thing would be fully loaded.
This is part of an ARG (alternative reality game) for J.J. Abrams new movie, Super 8. If you haven’t participated in an ARG, you might be in for a surprise if you are the sort who likes real world puzzles and mysteries. Or maybe just in for a surprise to learn this is one way how story telling is starting to turn.
If it weren’t for movieviral.com I would never have, in a million years, figured out how to get the thing to the next clue. So if you are doing this kind of thing on your own, you’d probably mark it down as a #fail. If I got on to that DOS simulator site, and it never loaded, I would have likely put it down to how badly flash runs on a mac, and see you later. Had I not know the rules of engagement.
The rules of engagement tell you that there are puppet masters behind the whole experience, and for once we don’t have this simple problem solving model where everything is spoon feed to you.
When you know the rules of engagement of an ARG, you know that there is mystery and that it gets solved with the help of the community. That part of the engagement is trying to find out anyone else who knows what’s going on.
The strategy behind this is to engage your obsessive, diehard, early-adopter fans, the ones who love to be the first, the ones who are proud of geeking out to whatever content/problem solving, etc. that it involves and love to prove their knowledge and ingenuity.
Because these are the ones who are going to be talking about what they have learned to everyone they know. Why? Because it is often central to how they define their identity. Of course, the trick is to provide an experience so involving that there is actually something to boast about, or something interesting enough to share that will encourage this core to in turn spread the news to anyone who will listen.
It’s an interesting concept as technology is perfectly poised to present this kind of experience in a rich way where the collective works together. Puzzles, of course, are not for everyone. Sometimes the question is how can you make transmedia ARGs more accessible when the entire experience is somewhat inaccessible by design. Not only does the experience revolve around mysteries and solving clues, but that once it is experienced, you can’t really go back to it.
In other words, it’s an experience that is largely dependent on time. The DOS site was found because a trailer was “leaked”. Pausing on a frame towards the end of that trailer revealed the words (a clue) that lead to this site. Once solved, the DOS simulator site loses its mystery, and no longer has any value, (although it’s possible that you may need to return to that site for additional clues and evidence). When constructing an ARG, one needs to be cognizant of the money needed to develop these clues for this reason.
The trend of being the first to know is not new, of course. But the culture of social media which values breaking news real time, (twitter, blogs, etc.,) and devalues content of the past in some ways has placed being in the know at a premium, especially for people who publish. Just like the people you want talking about your transmedia project. ARGs capitalize on this.
So the energy behind the thing is really the buzz, the exchange of information, and the knowledge that the “puppetmasters” have a plan in mind. The question of accessibility may be a little misguided. Traditional thinking may lead stakeholder to insist on making an ARG more accessible so more people can be involved. There may even be hopes to make ARGs mainstream. But that is missing the point. Make a project by concensus, and you risk dumbing it down, and taking away those special properties that lead the early adopters to claim it as their own in the first place. It’s less remarkable when everyone is doing it. What you are really doing is activating your biggest advocates to create a word of mouth campaign. The ARG is merely the mechanism and the reward for doing it. Of course, it is key is to understand and capture the imagination of the right people.
What I like about ARGs is the transmedia elements that often bring in real life into the experience. At some point someone may need to go into the real world and discover something. The rest of us will be waiting to hear about it. A transmedia experience like this is a real indication of both acceptance of the fragmentation, and reassembling of content as a real world and story world experience.
Unlike trailers which sometimes oversell a movie, and leave you disappointed about the movie, ideally an ARG, and the surrounding conversation creates the rich story world that will actually enhance the movie experiences, and create a deeper and richer experience for audiences.
For more on the Super 8 ARG, check out Movie Viral posting on May 13, 2010. This ARG is just unfolding, so depending on when you read this, you may want to do a search to find the latest.


