I regularly find myself defending alternate reality games, even though I never play them. They’re a weird, unpopular niche game that’s even more demanding and sometimes, absurd than massively-multiplayer online gaming. They attract a highly geeky – though otherwise diverse – audience, who bring commitment and laser-sharp brains akin to those of people who solve cryptic crosswords or play Nethack. ARGs aren’t for everybody. They’re probably not for me.
But I respect them, and I’m fascinated by them. Most people admire ARGs in theory rather than in practice. I guess that’s true for me, although I believe there have been successful ARGs. The Beast, I Love Bees, and Year Zero were by all accounts well-run and big hits. When we read about marketing ARGs today, and see a news story about some TV show or blockbuster film has an ARG attached to it, it’s easy to think these are cheesy, purely commercial ad campaigns meant to rile up a narrow slice of the fanbase and launched purely for the novelty of it. But reading about an ARG midway through is not the same as discovering it on your own – any more than seeing kids play Guitar Hero at the local BestBuy can compare with playing Rock Band drunk with your friends. ARGs are meant to be discovered through some lucky moment of serendipity, and explored through a process that ARG fans refer to as “falling down the rabbit hole.” You find a clue that catches your attention, you pursue it, and it leads you to somewhere strange and intriguing. If it doesn’t catch your imagination, there’s no point.
Personally, though, I don’t pay attention to the genre in hopes of finding a rabbit hole. I’m intrigued by it because it reflects a phenomenon that’s already happening in all media. ARGs are games that don’t fit in a game console, or on a board. They can take place across many platforms, including the real world. They shadow our reality and bleed into all the channels that touch our daily routines. And they’re not alone.
Back in the old days, people dug pop culture properties. You would read Spiderman or watch a movie or read a book, and your imagination would take over and immerse you in the world of this particular property. You would choose to believe in it: you didn’t expect Superman actually to fly by your window, but he took up about as much of your brainshare as if he could. (Occasionally, actually, you might pretend that it was real. I remember around age 13 trying to see if I was developing mutant powers like the X-Men. I wasn’t.)
So fast forward to the Internet age. Today, we interact with our favorite properties. And the characters aren’t just characters on a page, but imaginary friends. You can play as Spiderman in a video game, and you can also effectively hang out with his buddies or knock heads with his villains. The fact that fictional characters are also blogging, or running Twitter feeds – either in conjunction with a TV show, or just for yuks - or even talking with us, and posting on our blogs, and hanging out with us in virtual worlds, is a very small step forward from what we were all doing before that. Some of the people on Twitter who are most annoyed by ARGs also spend the most time talking about who they dated in Persona 4 and why. Do you really see a difference?
In the Brainysphere, some game bloggers are still annoyed that a few of us continue to interact with PixelVixen707, even though she’s been revealed as a character from an upcoming novel. And it is a little odd to talk games with someone who does not exist. But I guess it never threw me because it seemed so natural, in our ecosystem, for an imaginary person to be talking about these imaginary worlds and relaying experiences about something that was made-up, immersive, virtual and wholly fake in the first place.
The other problem with ARGs, of course, is that they’re usually tied to marketing and ad bucks. But so is everything. The Office is one of many shows that not only runs ads but deftly weaves in extremely heavy product placement. It pays the rent, and I’ve never heard anyone boycott the show over it. And usually a property is an ad for itself. People obsess over game-related merch. If you go by the old shorthand that a touring band makes more money off the t-shirts than the door, then the band effectively becomes an advertisement for its own line of clothing.
But ad money or no, I’m convinced this trend of imaginary properties and made-up people bleeding into every channel of our lives, interacting with us in every way short of standing right behind us and breathing in our ears, is just going to grow. Leigh suggested that this trend of people starting fake Twitter feeds is a meme that will, and should, flame out soon. She may be right about Twitter feeds like BahHumbugElf, but across all media, I believe the opposite. I think these imaginary friends are just going to root themselves deeper and deeper into our online lives.
And if I had to pick one reason I’m convinced of this, it’s because we all have to become such characters in order to fit ourselves online – a little smarter, a little funnier, a little brasher or moodier than we are in real life. The fictional properties we love are doing nothing more than meeting us right in the middle.
In regards to Pixelvixen707, I would have never found her if it wasn’t for people posting about her being outed as a ARG, so I never fell for the deception, but also over the interent you have to imagine the people that you are talking to. Few people on twitter use their real picture. I myself use my site logo. So being a fictional person doesn’t really matter, especially when they write quality posts. The ARG is over with, the book came out didn’t. Pixelvixen70 didn’t have to keep going, but she did.
I to comes down to how invasive you find the ARG to be. If you willingly participate in the game then yes you can accept it throwing bs at you. I guess when the ARG sneaks up on you and proports to be real that people find them offensive and its that dicotmy that get to people. When you say ARG, which version of them are you thinking of?
I remember years ago being super cheesed-off about the Blair Witch marketing campaign, because it seemed to feed the superstitions of people who didn’t need any help being stupid. Now I think I’d love it. Not sure what has changed exactly, except that I’ve become much less uptight.
But these days I’ve come to really adore works that skate the line between journalism and fiction — the dubious/distorted history of “documentary” films like F for Fake and My Winnipeg, the “found manuscript” gag of Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves. And I see ARGs as being something like those works, but in reverse. Rather than weaving apparent reality into a fiction to give it greater psychological credibility, they attempt to force the imagined reality into our solid world.
I can see people being disappointed/annoyed by fake Twitters or PV7, but on the other hand, if a single author is behind the work, then you have, in fact, had a genuine relationship with another consciousness…. Just not quite the one you thought.
Sometimes people talk about the technological “singularity” — the point at which self-designing or self-modifying machines will begin doing things their designers never anticipated. But I think we’ve already long since passed the point where technology could be used to create new emotional and social states that our limited ape brains aren’t really equipped to handle. So we end up either frustrated or in a state of bemusement. Fortunately, I guess, our ape brains are also endlessly curious, and that curiosity often trumps everything else….
Tasty piece Chris.
I loved the NIN ARG, that type of stuff creates his hardcore fanbase. I respect the creator and content so much more when it becomes art.
-Voyno
TheGameCritique – From what I understand an ARG is supposed to sneak up on you, and yet immediately be obvious as a fictional construct, usually because it’s so bizarre or genre-like – “We’re trying to stop alien spies, but we need you to help us by making ten phone calls and hanging out in a graveyard at these coordinates and … ” – that it never comes off as a hoax. At this point, the people who love ARGs are so wired into them that every clue is posted at the Unfiction forums as a possible “trailhead.” But clearly surprises and misunderstandings still occur.
Seth – Yeah, I agree with all that, except on one point: you mention that interacting with a fake Twitter or a puppetmaster means you’re in a relationship with “another consciousness” – but of course, you could be dealing with a dozen people who are all pulling together on that character. And the character could still work as well. I think the focus should really lie in the fictional character, not in the author(s). Otherwise, they’re really just a pseudonym or an alter ego for someone who’s probably getting too clever.
Voyno – Thanks man, and thanks as always for swinging by! I agree, Year Zero was an amazing way for Trent Reznor to reward his fans.
I was never bothered by the PixelVixen707 thing because I mostly consider operating a persona on the internet to be a kind of ARG in of itself. L.B. isn’t my real name, he’s a lot calmer and more polite than my real self, and he also talks as if he had wikipedia plugged right into his brain. The reality behind that apple is probably not what many people envision when they read me.
Personally, I adopt a lot of the habits and mentalities of pseudonyms from the 18th and 19th Century columnists. Mark Twain was a character Samuel Clemens created, a role he inhabited in public and in his writing that was wild and hilarious. Clemens, in reality, had a tragic life and used Twain as an escape.
I’m not sure people are all that different when operating online. Most of us take the time to be calm, think up eloquent responses, and dodge all the other weaknesses of our character. Why should someone who is making up a few other details or harping on a book be punished? How is it any worse than just selling yourself or some game you like a lot?
I’ll say for the record though that I don’t think it’s fair that she gets to make up some boyfriend who is an elaborate female fantasy of the ideal male though. I think I’m going to make-up a fake nerdy girlfriend who likes video games just to even it out.
I’m really glad you wrote this because I quite like Pixelvixen’s writing, ARG or no. And like LB says, we’re all playing up (or down) some or other aspect of our real world personality anyway.