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Before I go on… ARG = Alternative Reality Game – an interactive, cross-media narrative.  ARGs are cross platform games that explore storytelling in an interesting and non-linear way.  They tend to be used as a form of viral advertising, a way to get people involved and engaged in a product so they continue to support it.  However, as the genre grows, self-supporting ARGs are created which function in a similar way, but aren’t based on the back of another media product.

I was first introduced to these through a TV show – Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse which aired on the FOX network.  This show was pretty much doomed from the start, under the constant threat of cancellation but against all odds (and poor ratings) managed to get renewed for a second season.  To try and build some intrigue between the seasons and hopefully win more viewers, Fox launched an ARG.

This began with an email from one of the show’s characters to several prominent fans of the show who were active in the online community.  It contained links to websites that had been set up for companies and characters in the show.  From these, several personas emerged, said to work for the companies and they began to communicate with people via email and Twitter.  This led into a web of mystery where codes were gleaned from the sites which were then put into other sites to get messages from characters and so on… By this point, quite frankly I was lost but I continued to follow the story (via the wiki) with interest and it occupied me whilst I waited for the show to restart, keeping the world fresh in my mind.  A good summary of the basics of ARGs is here

My introduction came pretty late and there are hundreds of others ARGs, many much more successful and for bigger shows (such as the True Blood ARG) but they often link into the idea of a bigger world around a media product.  They tap into the childish urge to make up imaginary worlds around a toy or a place, changing the world to the reality we want.  They also tap into personal desire for knowledge and provide a sense of discovery.  And of course,  ARGs are a more interactive and “approved” way for fans to become involved in a form of fan fiction.   By letting fans become involved in an extended universe, they become much more invested in the product and more likely to continue to support it.

When the ARG comes before the product, much as with True Blood or “The Beast” (another successful ARG, for the film AI, involving 40,000 people) it acts as a sophisticated way to gain interest, involving users so much in the game that they might not even realise the product being promoted – “So sure, we were being hit by marketing, but it was really cool marketing that gave us something to talk about, something to enjoy.”  They can also act as an informal feedback, testing concepts on users during the game and then later incorporating them within the product.

ARGs provide value for both player and observer.  In my case, although I find them incredibly interesting, I tend to prefer to watch them from a distance, enjoying the discovery of clues and the solutions they provide, but never actually dedicated (or clever!) enough to become involved.  They do require a time investment that other games don’t need and constant revisiting to keep up with clues and solutions.  This does tend to create a niche club of users who have been there since the off, exploring and solving  and it can be difficult to join in the middle.

Despite this ARG niche, they are edging ever closer to the mainstream, as I realised when I saw an article in Metro about the latest ARG featuring Lewis Hamilton as an “art rescuer”.  This game is sponsored by Reebok and incorporates real world locations, clue following and online collaboration, along with..well Lewis Hamilton.  “Lewis Hamilton: Secret Life, is one of the most ambitious projects of its kind, building a multi-lingual community of players from every corner of the globe. Staged on a truly international scale the entire adventure will be played out in nine languages simultaneously.”

Although this game is just in its early stages at the moment, it seems like a sign that ARGs might be evolving to appeal to a broader range of people, something I will definitely be watching with interest.

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Task: A day in the life of a project assistant (me!) at Made by Many

Tools: Main weapons of choice -

• Lighthouse – The place to report bugs and errors that I find and assign them to people who hopefully can (and will!) fix them.
• Taskboard – this contains all the user stories in the past four iterations, who is working on them, how many points they have and what their status is.  It is an easy way for me to see which stories the developers have completed and need me to check.
• Gmail, Google Docs, a MacBook and a notebook.

Optional – copious quantities of coffee, post-its (to promptly lose), Spotify/we7 (prog rock all the way as you can see from my last.fm!), Twitter (TweetDeck is my client of choice) and Pages.

Plan of action
At the moment, I’m mainly working on a fairly large project – V.  My tasks are quality assurance (testing by any other name!) and requirements gathering, along with any other bits and pieces that come along.  I also work on other projects as needed, anything from helping to compile cool walls for workshops, to CMS population for new site launches.

However on this particular day in my life, I was just working on V and its next incarnation – vSchools.

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This time last year I was deep in third year project stress at university.  Given the guideline that we could do ‘anything’ there was initially quite a bit of mental flailing.  Finally however, I landed on an area of personal interest – memory, what it means to us and how it is changing in the digital age.

Why Memory?
Memory maketh the man – we are who we are thanks to our experiences.  They’re sometimes comforting, sad, traumatic and always make good anecdotes.  We obviously don’t carry all our memories in crystal clear form around in our head, but they’re there, lurking – all they need is a trigger to bring them out.

The old cliches of the smell of fresh cut grass awakening memories of never-ending, hot summer days or a song unleashing a flood of emotions about a long lost love are all true.  Sights, sounds, touch, smells are all powerful triggers for the mind.

Digital effects
More and more of these triggers are becoming digitised – Facebook albums, Youtube videos, blogs, libraries of music, the list goes on.  A simmering, unorganised mass of triggers, clues and  stimuli to wade through.  Brains remember all (in theory anyway), they just need the right trigger, the key to unlock a memory.  In the digital world, there is no focus to these, no way in except clicking aimlessly through Facebook albums and waiting for whatever memory hits first.

The project
Possessing a bad memory and an unshaken belief in the good of tech (Skynet aside…), I looked to technology to provide solutions to help my brain out.  This combined with a passing interest in my roots, vintage possessions and a childhood visiting too many museums, led to the first seeds of an idea.  Using objects as a trigger point for memories.  An idea I ran with to try and create something that would benefit not just me, but have real utility for a community of users and have the ability to grow and adapt to suit their needs.

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