If I remember correctly, my post was about how the readings seem to lack acknowledging the sociological issues. It was also in response to candiluu comments about The Game. With the ARG is it moving towards a complete immersion of the user? Is there a way for a user to differentiate between the ARG and reality? What happens when the ARG becomes reality?

Argh…so mad that the post isn’t here! >_< If I can recall everything I’ll make another posting with more details. Many apologies.

That isn’t to say that the game is bad or worthless. It just wasn’t for me. I did appreciate the effort to make the series seem to coincide with the real world. It blurs the line between fiction and reality, as most would say. I would say that reality is reality, but it makes fiction seem more like reality.

There are some alternative reality games, which are referred to as “happenings” or “power plays,” that I don’t claim to understand at all. For example, today at 12:30 PM, dozens of people went to the food court at NorthPark Center, used bananas as if they were cell phones, then ate the bananas. A friend of mine participated, and when questioned about it, he didn’t have any idea what the point was! Why do it, then? I don’t know. To see something out of the ordinary? If there was ever a game that you play just for the sake of playing it, this is it.

The response of the Shove group after Push jumped the shark (“It’s not over!”) is both funny and sad. The lingering effects of the game are interesting. For the most part, it could be similar to reading a long book (although it would perhaps be less interactive.) In “This is Not a Game,” the gamer guide claimed that after the endgame, one is “waking up as if from a long sleep. Your marriage or relationship maybe in tatters. Your job may be on the brink of the void, or gone completely.” This isn’t really new. Lots of people become immersed with literature and the escape provides an interesting pastime, during which all sorts of things could happen. The difference here would be real time involvement. Just as you surf the web in your work, play and so on, these games use the same everyday effects (websites, faxes, telephone conversations, etc) that are used in reality. If played by a person with a psychotic disorder, it might take a while to bring her/him back!

As a content creator, I wonder how all of the cleverness of a puppetmaster could be used for creating games involving nonfiction or some other educational devices. An example would be remediation of documentary films. If Ken Burns came up with a Civil War ARG, I’d read it. There’s no doubt that he came across thousands of documents that could not be included for purposes of length. All of that other information could entertain for months. Placing it on the web with viral marketing could increase the gameness of the game. If the information is proprietary and it has enough nodes, I could see this as another way to create nonfiction film.

Once again, technology and enterprise have outpaced the consumer. It will be interesting to see how this use of technology plays out.

With flash mobs, it may be easier to get involved. (If you hear about one forming and find instructions, that is.) The flash mob also seems more isolated, not part of some bigger story. From the McGonigal paper, flash mobs also appear as just one small part of a bigger ARG. McGonigal even describes a part where the players misinterpreted instructions and in turn functioned as a flash mob performing and acting out those instructions.

For me, I don’t feel like I could get hooked on ARGs. I like more stop-and-start types of stories, where I can join at my leisure. Like Eloy stated, players and join and drop at any moment. That may be true, but the experience of the game would most likely be different based on participation.

Recently I acquired the soundtrack to one of my favorite films of all times, “Fellini’s 8½”, and as I listened, I couldn’t help but noticing how wonderful and surreal life appeared to be simply by embedding into my reality this music that I have long associated with a certain story and visual imagery. Everything I experienced in the following days was perceived through the lens provided by the particular frame of mind created by this music. And I cannot begin to tell you how peculiar life seemed once I got my ears into the soundtrack of Woody Allen’s “Bananas”.

This almost inconsequential paragraph with which I began is not entirely different from the accounts given by individuals devoted to alternate reality games (the word devoted is not used lightly here), although their experiences are amplified by the inclusion of a story or a mystery (to decipher) and real life tasks to perform within the frame of the fictional story. And this is the factor that I believe is essential in the success (or rise) of this kind of entertainment, by allowing people to participate directly in a fictional puzzle, by presenting them with opportunities to perform in real life, as they would if they were characters in a movie, they become more involved in the game, with the difference that they are not really playing a character other than themselves. However strange or fantastic the story is they will remain as they are (whatever they are is a whole different issue, and it informs the type of game they choose to play), that is human beings devoid of any supernatural powers, other than their brains, everyday tools, and their capacity to interact or come together with other individuals to generate solutions.

Whether or not this kind of games could be used to generate changes in a society (the kind of changes society consider as useful or beneficial) is an interesting question; let’s say for sake of the argument there’s the game of solving hunger in a determinate country, is it appropriate to consider someone else’s real suffering a game? By means of playing a game are we closing in on the gap that separates us from feeling empathy with individuals with such problems or are we adding yet another layer to distance us from the problem at hand? And ultimately, will this matter if indeed the hunger-game in the example accomplishes a real and satisfactory solution?

What intrigued me the most about McGonical’s article entitled “‘This is not a game…” is the idea that people really think that ARG’s aren’t games. If they aren’t games, what are they? And couldn’t someone argue that all of life is in fact a game? Is it possible that nothing is more than a simple game controlled by unknown entity? This leads to discussions and questions about faith, which I won’t get into here, but it’s in some ways hard to discuss where reality begins and ends without discussing faith as it really depends on what a person believes in.

I happen to think this idea is a bit far-fetched and that ARG’s are in fact games. They may be more like the children’s game ‘Mother May I’ but as long as some entity is providing guidance—albeit absent guidance—and people are following the instructions, albeit ‘playing the game,’ then it’s a game. This question may be impossible to answer, but I think it’s worth looking into where the quote unquote real world begins and ends as it pertains to game play. What makes a game a game?

Even to the casual observer, it is evident humanity’s proclivity to team-up and follow orders is a blessing and a curse. This innate tendency to organize around a set of expectations propels civilization to achievement, occasional destruction, empowerment and restriction. Hopefully, an educated populous makes wise choices, not only from self-interest, but also minimally from an ethical appreciation of the community at large. OK, we know all that, the point is people have also been joining groups and activities for fun for a long time. Include in that list rituals, festivals, parades, sports and all manner of participatory events. We can speculate that throughout time these events are always sponsored by governments, special interests and enterprises of all kinds, realizing people like to join groups, belong to groups, act in groups and that these activities sustain the group in powerful ways. There have always been “puppet masters” and there has always been at least a translucent “behind the curtain,” opaque to the extent necessary to support the desired experience. Marketing, so to speak, has also always been a part of sponsored group events, promoting ideas, group loyalty and commerce. What is new is leveraging digital technology, enabling groups to form around common tastes for entertainment across political, geographic and demographic boundaries and accomplishing this in record time with minimal investment.

The power to create strong emotional ties to virtual organizations was demonstrated by comments from the Cloudmakers following the 9/11 disaster, ARG participants from a game created to promote a movie. What is striking about this is to realize that almost anyone can now instigate a global movement from anywhere with little investment. If the narrative they create is compelling enough… “to make people believe is to make them act.” This fact must be keeping civic leaders up a night, but rather than worry about an evil genius manipulating an over-medicated and over-mediated populous, is it not our right to use the digital tools at our disposal for the “pursuit of happiness?” (I say yes it is, but let us hire some guys at DHS to watch our backs regarding the evil geniuses, and then form some citizen groups to keep an eye on them.)

Anyway, my one question for next class is about the interesting deniability element that reportedly enhances the game. Certainly solving a mystery is a big part of these games, but “the curtain” also seems to afford the sponsoring organization some legal distance. One of the instructions for pervasive play described in The Puppet Master Problem demonstrated the unpredictability inherent in these mob gatherings. Is the curtain a deliberate attempt to distance a sponsor from unintended consequences? Do the puppet master companies function as a shield against responsibility for the sponsors?

If the social agency and empowerment could be taken several steps further, as McGonigal suggests, to make real-world differences through social and political action, what kinds of real differences could be made in the world? Could some group devise a TING that would inspire the collective action of a group to end world hunger, create world peace, or some other altruistic goal that would actually improve the world in a way that politicians seem to be incapable of or unwilling to do? It seems that it would be necessary to present and produce the project in such a way that people don’t really know what they are working toward, some key factors of the Beast, highlighted by McGonigal, were that there were “a series of digitally distributed clues and narratives that seemed to be some kind of a game, but one without clear rules, objectives or rewards.” What would it take to produce a game that would in the end actually help people in some meaningful way? Who could pull off the production of a project like this? Would it really be possible to inspire people to do good on a grand scale. Or could the collective project be internally motivated, such as the gamers “Think Tank,” dedicated to addressing “corruption and waste in U.S. federal government spending” truly produce tangible real-world results.

I would think that beehive mentality is a real concern—it reminds me of the Cyborgs of StarTrek—if the collective mind can be used for good, it could also be used for bad. What if our government or some other government began playing (from behind the curtain) these types of games? It’s a scary thought.