In part 2 of this series on storytelling in the Halo universe, I check in with the puppetmaster of a grassroots ARG named “Bzzt!“.  Mike Morgan, aka ‘Dagoonite’ began creating his ARG long ago, and after some growing pains it was soon launched and picked up at the HBO forums and Args.bungie.org.

Before it settled down, players had discovered some controversial elements that prompted some debate — Mike opted to have his story purposefully contradict some established Halo canon in order to tell the story he wanted to explore. Over time, his team had also dwindled to just himself, making running it practically a full time job. The focus of his project was a story- and dialogue-driven experience centered around a Spartan named F484, and allowed the community to interact with some characters. All this unfolded in parallel with a narrative timeline of events occurring in the future.

I chat with him below about his experience as a first-time puppetmaster, a Halo fan, and about storytelling unofficially within the Halo canon. Mike is a passionate writer – his detailed responses are certainly a testament to that!

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First, can you briefly summarize what your ARG was about?

The UNSC Theseus comes to an uninhabited star system to build an unmanned space station, reportedly to listen in on Insurrectionist communications.  However, two crew members are in a hold when a mysterious explosion is going on, and appear to have disappeared.  On one datapad is some basic information on F484, an Orion IV.  (This setting’s version of Spartans, effectively.)  When the Captain questions HIGHCOM about this, he’s given a stern “none of your business.”  Soon after, an ONI operative contacts the Captain, “leaking” information to him about F484.

As time goes on, strange things continue to happen, with fortunately fewer deaths.  As the story of F484 unfolds, the crew’s own stories become apparent: a survivor of an incident hundreds of years in the past; a woman all too familiar with [post-traumatic stress disorder]; an unorthodox but idealistic XO; a marine engineer who has SPECOPS in his blood; a poor guy who just wants to run his RPG despite claims that he’s lost it; and more, if you read closely enough.

As things begin to get serious, the ship receives a supplementary AI from ONI who is less than helpful.  Though through the quick thinking of the Captain and the history of his own AI, the ONI AI calms down and becomes a valuable member of the crew.  Together, they achieve extremely limited communications with the forces disrupting their ship, and appease them.  This comes as the truth is revealed about F484, how he (almost) single-handedly wins the Human-Covenant war, and even the true mission of the ONI operative that’s been in contact with him.

A short synopsis that doesn’t answer much, but a more detailed version would take quite a while to go through.

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What was it that inspired you to create this type of interactive fiction?

Halo, naturally, especially [Eric] Nylund’s books.  But explanations like that are a dime a dozen. I got turned onto ARGs with The Beast, the ARG for the movie AI.  Since then, I’ve always been a passive participant.  I either didn’t have the technical skills to solve a puzzle piece on my own, or somebody would post an answer to it before I did, so I pretty much kept quiet and enjoyed the stories.

The wonderful Enkidu ARG and ilovebees were two other great inspirations. A good fusion of two things that I love: ARGs and Halo.

The wonderful Enkidu ARG and ilovebees were two other great inspirations.  A good fusion of two things that I love:  ARGs and Halo.  How could I not love it?  I’m a sucker for a good story, what can I say?  Halo Fanon also inspired me quite a bit.  I’m hesitant to share most of my work for various reasons, but to see so many people working at it and interacting…  It was an oddly huge inspiration.

I’ve done plenty of roleplaying, both at a table and online.  I was an AST for White Wolf’s moderated chats for some time, and am both a participant and a room-level moderator for a chat-based roleplaying site.  I don’t mind interaction, and enjoy the challenge of working with somebody else to tell a story, especially when that story can change greatly in no time flat.

I’m hesitant to share most of my work for various reasons, but to see so many people working at it and interacting… It was an oddly huge inspiration.

Lastly, the desire to stick my neck out.  I want to be a full-time writer.  The only way that I’m going to become better at the craft is to do things that I haven’t done before.  To push my limits and see what I need to work on, or discover that I can do something that I wasn’t sure of before.  This project was one way for me to do that.

Perhaps the most important thing, though, was that I had a story that I wanted to tell.  Several stories, actually.  This was an effective way for me to tell a lot of stories at once, in a way that people might enjoy.

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How did your story come about? How much did you plan ahead of time, and how much was written dynamically as the community interacted with characters and played through?

I was playing Reach and was a little dissatisfied with certain aspects of the story.  As usual when I have this problem, I started thinking about how I would have done it differently.  That started with my tag, F404, as the main character.  That mutated into F484 (4+8+4 = 16, 1+6 = 7) and the F404 became a bit of a joke.  But as I worked, I realized that I needed to go back further than that.  All the way back.  With that, I sat down and started to write the story of F484.

This started with research.  Reviewing the books and the games.  Analyzing everything that I could on Halopedian.  I don’t even want to try and count the hours spent researching.  With that, the story of Chair (the ONI contact) virtually wrote itself.  When I got to the end, I raced back and rewrote sections to give subtle hints as to her relationship with F484.

And then, when I adapted the whole thing for the HBO forums and it went live, I tossed most of that right out the window.

While I had some people reviewing that, I went back and started to work on the story of the crew.  I created a core cast of characters that “interesting” things would happen to, what their motivations were, and how I could work in more nods to the community.  From there, I wrote out a basic set of scenarios and interactions, taking breaks only to edit the core story of F484.

The character of Raschad was created from all the time I’ve dealt with people who suffered from PTSD.  I saw how they could appear to the average person to be a normal member of society, but yet they could be terribly haunted by it.  It also helped to have a different viewpoint; all of the ship’s cast were written as people who had come after the Human-Covenant war.  I liked the idea of there being somebody there for whom the Rainforest Wars meant as much to as the H-C war meant to the rest of the crew.  He was actually kind of bitter about that, though the circumstances for him to address it never came up in the game.

And then, when I adapted the whole thing for the HBO forums and it went live, I tossed most of that right out the window.

Ask any RPG game master and they’ll tell you that people do crazy stuff that you can never anticipate.  It happened before the game even went live.  I created Hive, fleshed out Helen, and watched as the players proceeded to do things that I could never have anticipated.

I’m glad I had that core work done, even if most of the crew stuff was rewritten on the fly.  Scenes were shuffled (with some meant for early on appearing late in the game and visa versa), deleted, or completely mangled beyond recognition.  Almost every aspect of the crew portion went through at least partial editing during it.  A great deal was rewritten completely.

Surprisingly, the base Chair stuff stayed the same.  I added supplementary communications with the emails and other communications, but a great deal came from one of three drafts of the script, the majority being the first draft.  Though it was more rough, it was also the most familiar to me, and would lend itself to the fastest adaptation.  Because when you’re hammering out replies as fast as you can, familiarity is vastly important.  I also found that the roughness worked for the character of Chair.  With who she really was, reliving all of this was hard on her.

Of the crew stuff, I’d say that in the end 70% was written or rewritten within 48 hours of it being posted.  Of the Chair stuff, only about 10% in total was written dynamically, but part of that number comes from the sheer amount of text that was in the total Chair stuff.

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There are some elements of your story that don’t quite jive with official Halo canon. Can you expand on your choice to take some creative liberties? What are your thoughts on working within the Halo canon?

Perhaps the most important thing to me was showing this man who had been all but destroyed when made an Orion quickly degrade, while the players knew that it was happening to all the Orion IVs.  That it wasn’t the Covenant that was destroying them, but the fact that their bodies had been pushed farther than they could handle.  It’s a potent thing to me, and perhaps the most interesting aspect of a super soldier program.

The most interesting aspect of a character in my mind isn’t what they accomplish, it’s what they fail at. Or accomplish despite their flaws. I like to see people fall and get back up. Emotionally, physically, spiritually, seeing people get back up is really what makes me feel for a character.

Of course, Spartans don’t have this problem.  They’re perfectly balanced, assuming that they survived the augmentation process in good enough condition to graduate.  That has never sat well with me.  Though some of the supplemental information has shown that this isn’t quite the case, I never really felt that it was handled with the horror necessary.  Honestly, that’s the core of the entire story that I wrote.

The most interesting aspect of a character in my mind isn’t what they accomplish, it’s what they fail at.  Or accomplish despite their flaws.  I like to see people fall and get back up.  Emotionally, physically, spiritually, seeing people get back up is really what makes me feel for a character.  In real life, all of us are broken in our own ways, but we push forward.  I like to see that in fiction as well.  Therefore, I had to break the Spartan II program.

However, I tried to make all of the changes make sense within the Halo universe as best I could.  That was one of the initial rules: none of this is actually broken, don’t fix it if you don’t have to.  For example, I considered making a small tweak to the Rainforest Wars but decided against it.  On one hand, it’s so far back that it would hardly make any ripples.  On the other hand, what would be the point?  Better to work within the confines given me than not.  Besides, outsmarting your constraints can be fun!  Even if they are self-imposed.

In the end, I kept the changes as minimal as possible, and let those major changes leave their ripples.  The first was that the Orion program was never shut down.  This would negate the Spartan program completely.  The second was changing the dates of the Human-Covenant War.  I achieved this by having the Elites smarten up a little bit early and turn against the Prophets.  Unlike in canon, the Prophets were caught by surprise with this, causing a much quicker shift.  Without the truth about the Halo array, however, they continued on with business as usual.

Some people may think that I threw around changes willy-nilly. This was as far from the truth as possible.

Was changing the dates so important?  Yes, but not for reasons that anybody ever realized.  Nobody did the hard math or caught subtle clues that I threw out there.  Maybe they were too subtle.  It’s a risk that you run in a project like this.  One that I didn’t fully appreciate until I was up and running.

Each change was debated, and only after analysis of the canon version.  Many “ripples” were negated entirely because I could see how things would end up the same.  Some were caused by the necessity of it not being a game — that which makes a compelling video game plot does not necessarily make a good writing plot.  (Again, much credit goes to Nylund.)

This is how things like Myung, the Guide, and Monitors being rebooted every so often came into being.  I still haven’t had a chance to read Cryptum, so I had to take a logical approach to the Forerunners as I saw them.  Since then, I’ve learned that some of my guesses were off course, but I tried as best I could.  I tried to have the Forerunners have, I dunno, foresight?  (Yes, you may beat me for that.)

For the events on the ship, I just tried to make a slight and general progression in technology.  Seven years for a Smart AI became 25.  (Another seven reference.)  I found something to do with Smart AIs who had thought themselves to death.  That sort of thing.  Changes, yes, but more of a sense of progress than anything revolutionary.  If a game happens 60 years after the canon end of Halo 3, it has to show some sort of progress in technology.

Some people may think that I threw around changes willy-nilly.  This was as far from the truth as possible.  Believe me, each change was agonized over for far longer than I’d like to admit to.

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Are you an active Halo community member? Do you play online often?

I play Reach almost every day, but rarely multiplayer.  I’m not very good, so I stick to what I’m best at: single player and firefight.  (Best implying that Heroic didn’t take me a week to pull off.  Which it totally did.)  That and I guess I’m still stuck in the days where you said “Good game” at the end of a match.  I try to be a polite guy, and I suppose I expect others to be as well.  When they aren’t, I tend to become very discouraged.Since the ARG finished, I’ve been getting into more community-driven games.  Honestly, I really enjoy them.

I regret having been so quiet. I’ve already made some friends, and have gotten to play with some amazing people. People seem to actually read what I have to say

But the community beyond just the games?  I love it.  I’ve lurked on HBO since before Halo 2 came out.  I was unemployed when ODST came out, and I clung to HBO for information and the chance to live vicariously.  There’s so much talent within the Halo community in so many diverse ways.  There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by that I haven’t been able to find something entertaining put out by the community.  Be it forum posts or videos, or reviewing costumes and playing flash games, or even the fan fiction, the community never ceases to amaze me.

I never really said much though.  Two posts, I think, before Bzzt.  If memory serves me correctly, they were both about the Enkidu ARG.  I’m not much of a forum guy, and the chats were kind of…  I had the feeling that it’s where the cool kids hung out.  I usually have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the initial interaction by somebody else.

Now?  I regret having been so quiet.  I’ve already made some friends, and have gotten to play with some amazing people.  People seem to actually read what I have to say and not start out with the insults — a huge change for a guy who used to write stories for the most hostile and abusive site on the internet.  I really wish that I would have started talking in the community sooner.

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What were some of your favorite moments during Bzzt’s run?

I wish you could hear me laughing as I read this.  Since “the whole thing” is an awful answer that’s horribly overused, I’ll break it down by category.

Jaded: The day after it finished.  I came home from work exhausted.  I looked longingly at my bed and realized “Oh, hey, I can go to bed now if I want to.”  And I did.  And a full eight hours of sleep never felt so good.  As much as I loved Bzzt’s run, it did a number on my sleep.

Gleeful: Every single time that somebody said that they didn’t care if it was canon or not because they enjoyed the story.  That’s when I knew that I wasn’t wasting my time and my chest puffed with pride.  I’m not fragile, but I occasionally like to know if I should keep going or not.  I think we all like to know that our work is appreciated.

Amazed: The moment when people started researching real-life military protocols to use as ammunition against Helen.  Wow.  Above and beyond the call of duty?  A little bit, in my opinion.  Appreciated?  Greatly.  I felt that I had to change the game a bit in order to accommodate that level of dedication.  There was supposed to be greater fallout from that situation which I kind of smoothed over.

Jaw, Meet Floor: When a certain player wrote a certain speech to the crew.  I know that the player didn’t think that it was going to cause that big of a stir when he wrote it, but there’s one speech that completely changed the game.  It made me take every plan that I still had for crew mutiny and toss it right out the window.  It was that point that the character of the Captain completely solidified for me.  Looking back and reading it, it may not seem like much, but at the time it was a total game changer.

I’m man enough to admit I cried.

Though the sleep deprivation probably helped with that.

Content: After the game ended, I chatted with the players, the people who put up with my madness and inability to spell.  I liked hearing back from the people who participated and enjoyed it.  It was like sitting around with a bunch of old friends…  on the internet.  And to think that some of them are still writing stuff about it.  It completely blows my mind.

Awww: I kept on expecting people to break up Raschad and Wolfe.  They didn’t.  Yes, the two were eventually going to be separated, but not immediately.  Every time they were allowed to spend some more time together, I felt my heart grow a size.  I’m a sucker for romance, and I’m always glad when players foster it.

Endgame: When it ended, the players did some things in-character that were…  unexpectedly sweet and touching.  They reached out to F484 and Myung in a way that I didn’t expect.  They honored Helen, and comforted Hive.  That last day will always hold a special place in my heart.  The things that they said they believed the Captain would do were magical to me.  I’m man enough to admit I cried.  Though the sleep deprivation probably helped with that.

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Can you describe some of the challenges you faced in the execution of this ARG?

The ARG was supposed to be rather…  different.  It’s own website, an internal “email” system for communication with Chair, daily reports, everything needed to really make you believe that you were the captain of the UNSC Theseus.  The transcripts were supposed to be actual audio logs.  There was supposed to be limited machinima involved.  Hidden pages, puzzles, a separate website for a Prowler where you had to use the puzzles to find pages, images, a subplot about a computer tech aboard the ship trying to figure out what was going on…  The works.

To make a long story short, all of that fell apart.  I don’t blame anybody; I doubt that most people knew the scope of what I was asking when they signed on.  Even the voice actors.  Which is fine, honestly; I’m used to rolling with the punches.  It’s when I do some of my best work.

My poor netbook! It wanted to kill me! I had Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Notepad, WordPad, OpenOffice, and Widows Media Player open all the time.

After moving it to the forums (and then the ABO forums) I had brand new challenges.  I moved up the interaction quite a bit, since players no longer had a database to search.  So I had to rewrite most explanations to fit from Hive’s POV.

The name Bzzt comes from Hive’s unique method of communication, prefacing each paragraph with a variation of Bzzt that indicated the importance of his message.  (Thank Louis Wu for that — my name for it was always Orion IV.)  I’ve described him in different ways, but I think the best description is of a person who desperately wants to be liked so he tries to be helpful any way they can despite being a little on the innocent side.  Writing for Hive was an unexpected challenge because of this, but I enjoyed it greatly.  I think he’s my favorite character.  He’s like a little kid that just happens to be the brain of a space ship.  Maybe the heart of it, too.

One major unexpected challenge was that I honestly (mistakenly) expected players to catch onto the fact that this wasn’t canon early in the game.  I tried various ways to reinforce this, but with limited success.  I had to teach players their limits without stating the rules, and I mangled it on occasion.  I learned a lot from it, and know how to handle it better in the future.  I hope.

One of the “star” characters was Raschad.  I wanted to make a tragic guy who came off as completely normal at first glance.  A bit of a jerk at times, but an all around good guy who wanted to help out people.  Sure, he got some of the best lines, but I also had to reel him back a lot.  With the lines being the facade that he wore, I couldn’t make them too natural.

In one bit of stupidity on my end, I never made it clear that the Captain could request people report on their fellow crew members or talk to them in depth.  (“Hive, send this person this message and return their response.”)  I had various things written up for all the “star” characters, I had both shifts of the bridge staff, and a lot of really good stuff that never got used.  One thing that would have come to light had the Captain asked around was that Raschad never gave the same background information twice.  I had some extremely good stuff about McAllister, the XO.  I still regret not doing more with her, but I misjudged what the audience wanted in that regard.

(And no, I’m not sharing these, because they’re perfect for recycling into other things.)

Another challenge was a purely technical one.  My poor netbook!  It wanted to kill me!  I had Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Notepad, WordPad, OpenOffice, and Widows Media Player open all the time.  I kept begging it to last just a little bit longer.  It pulled through, but even after a format I don’t think it’s forgiven me.

The greatest challenge, however, was staying a step ahead while still, you know, sleeping.  At one point I was getting about three hours of sleep a day, just so that I could get stuff typed up in advance.  I had tons of flow charts, if/then statements, record sheets, and notes that I updated constantly.  An offhand comment could cause me to have to change three things.  Everything rippled, and not in obvious ways.  One time, as I was typing out a lengthy post, somebody said something that made me delete it all immediately.

And I loved it all.

All in all, this was perhaps the most all-around challenging project that I’ve ever done.  And to think that I’m not opposed to doing it again.  I might need therapy.  I wonder if there’s a real-life version of Dr. Muldoon…

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How big was your team? How did you communicate and plan out the content?

In the end, it was only me.  All of it.
Tip:  Don’t do that!  You’ll kill yourself!

I had a great crew of people helping me. Psychologists, physicists, engineers, military personnel, people in various medical fields, historians, a politician, a sociologist, an environmental historian who works for lobbyists…
But, sadly, in the end it was just me.

In the beginning, though, I had a great crew of people helping me.  Psychologists, physicists, engineers, military personnel, people in various medical fields, historians, a politician, a sociologist, an environmental historian who works for lobbyists…  There isn’t one aspect of the story that I didn’t talk with somebody over in some form.  There were aspects of the story that never made it to the public eye that were discussed and researched in rather great detail.  The research that went into it was insane.  My third biggest project yet, in terms of research.  I wanted it to feel as real as possible.

The people who reviewed the story for me were also wonderfully helpful.  They caught that my spell-check somehow turned Corps into Corpse, amongst many other things.  (I kant spel.)  Serdar Yegalup offered me so many story insights despite not actually being into either video games or ARGs.  So much, in fact, that I have to call him out by name.  The fact that he doesn’t do any of this stuff actually helped out a lot.  When he responded to one draft that it almost put him in tears, I knew I was doing the right thing.

Some of the people brought in for voice acting and image editing helped out greatly even after they bowed out for various reasons.  The machinima crew were also very responsive, even if we were never able to coordinate.

I was making notes and rambling plans out loud during a haircut.

But, sadly, in the end it was just me.  Which saves me a lot of trouble on the communication part, but the whole “life” part kind of went to the wayside for longer than anticipated.  My roommates can tell you, the few times they saw me I was constantly muttering to myself trying to plan out the next two steps.  One of my coworkers is a beautician, and she will attest to the fact that I was working on Bzzt as she was cutting my hair.  Think about that a moment.  I was making notes and rambling plans out loud during a haircut.

Man, I wish I could have had somebody else manage it for at least an hour or two every day.

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How pleased are you with how your story and this project played out?  Would you do it again?

Mistakes were made.  Lessons were learned.  And I had a blast.  The term “labor of love” gets thrown around more often than it should, but it’s true.  You don’t put so much of yourself into a project like this if you don’t love it and believe in it.  You laugh, you live, you learn, and you have fun with it.

If I could go back and do it again, would I?  Do you have a time machine handy?

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Have you created anything like this in the past? Do you have any plans for future projects?

An ARG?  No.  But I write constantly.  A short a day, sometimes it only qualifies as flash fiction.  Sometimes I write multiple stories a day.  Sometimes I’ll devote a week or more to writing something bigger.  There are places where I’m relatively well known, but I don’t share most of my work; more that I keep my ideas for bigger projects.  I love writing, and I’m always paranoid that the well will run dry.  So far it hasn’t.  I hope to keep it up.

F484 is still out there, and his story isn’t done.

As for future projects, I’ve currently got a good foundation for a sequel in mind.  F484 is still out there, and his story isn’t done.  I’m still debating if I should go for it, though.  I’d like to do this one properly, but if everything fell through again, I’m not sure if I could bring myself to do it.  I’m desperately trying to get published or get a job writing for the industry, and that takes a lot of time and effort when you have to build up the courage to send the email.

Of course, I also have ideas that are more canon.  If I had the finances/skill, I even have a very short Halo-related fan-film I’d like to make. (And a Bzzt! one too, of course!)  So who knows?  I might do any number of projects next.

Bloomington, Indiana was ground zero for ARGFest 2011, and it was arguably the most successful fest to date. The most prominent thing I always seem to come away with from this annual event is this: Community. In the words of J.C. Hutchins, “People, man. People.”

Indeed, this conference/fest (or rather, “fest-o-con”) is filled with wonderful people, who come together in an environment that promotes equality and mutual respect and admiration for creative talents and inspirational ideas. Players and creators co-mingle, learning from each other, and often meet for the first time in person people only acquainted via a series of tubes.

Players learn how creators of ARGs and other experiences they’ve enjoyed actually think, and are given an opportunity to thank, and heck, even acquire autographs, of those people they admire. Puppetmasters and newcomers to the field have an extremely valuable opportunity to play games and chat with players – the people for whom they create their games, art, and stories.

This is what makes ARGFest tick.

People.

From panels and sessions composed of professionals and players (or players who have become professional creators…or even professional players) – to general social interaction and pure enjoyment of the venue and city in which the fest takes place.  Below is an overview of what I took away from this year’s ARGFest.

The Hutch

This year, I had the pleasure of finally meeting J.C. Hutchins. I first came across ‘The Hutch’ in late 2008 when he began blogging enthusiastically about a silver briefcase he received in the mail. This mystery “silver case” was quickly discovered to be part of an ARG executed for the video game FEAR 2. At that time, he seemed to me a super-mega-popular-celebrity-blogger with an infectious joy for excitement and stories and a healthy love for people, and I’d followed his antics ever since.

After meeting him this weekend at ARGFest – that perception has not changed. J.C. is a professional author and creative storyteller, with a demonstrated genuine love for people. He attended ARGFest to grace us with a keynote speech which he titled “Getting to Good”, in which he describes his years from college to today and the lessons he learned as someone who wanted to create things. His keynote hit me on a very personal level – I felt his passion, and his childhood and youth experiences struck a chord; how his life as a youth who often spent time alone shaped his perception of the world and the importance of story, and of people. His closing remark for those working their way up the ladder as a creator of stuff struck home: “You won’t be alone. If there anything this community has taught me, it’s that you’re not going to be working alone.”

That’s the key element to this community, as JC put it – “the incredible value of collaboration, playing nice with others”. So often fledgling creators are left wondering if what they’re doing, if the type of stuff they’re creating will be accepted and gain an audience, if their vision will be understood, if they can make a living on it. Or as players, we often find ourselves surrounded by people who don’t “get” what we do or what we love. Yet when we’re able to come together and form an oft-cited “hive mind”, something happens – not just an intellectual sharing of knowledge and experience, but a personal encouragement and inspiration, a whole greater than the sum of its parts. We are not alone; neither as players nor creators, and ARGFest really is an embodiment of this community mentality.

After the fest concluded, I and a number of other stragglers had the pleasure of having one last meal with him, and on his way out, he continuously emphasized how happy and thankful he was to be able to spend time with us. JC is indeed a celebrity of his own right, but he treated everyone else like the celebrities. That’s an inspiration, and if only everyone thought like that, one can only imagine the types of things we’d be able to create together.

Check out JCHutchins.net for more about his past work and collaborations.  J.C. Hutchins left an indelible impression on us with his keynote speech – you can watch it below.

The ARGish Inquisition

Through previous years, a tradition took hold in which an individual would act as a “Grand Inquisitor” – an evil character who opens the floor for questions during or after panels and speaker sessions, typically in a nefarious, challenging manner, asking the tough questions, and getting the ball rolling.

This year, Andrea Phillips took on the role, and gave it a twist… she’d hoped to play a kinder, gentler inquisitor. Where previous inquisitors (including the likes of Elan Lee, Brian Clark, and Steve Peters) entertained by instilling in speakers and panelists a nervous fear of the upcoming questions, she would ask the difficult questions in the manner of a sort of genuine curiosity.

However, whether it was her subdued evil demeanor, or the fact that all she made any audience members who had a question don a nefarious black wig, Andrea shared: “I was sure I’d be the mildest Inquisitor ARGfest has ever seen, but in fact I found depths of cruelty I hadn’t realized were there.”

Andrea did a wonderful job as Grand Inquisitor this year, clearly putting much thought and effort into her role! You can follow her musings and writings at DeusExMachinatio.com.

Curation? A 4DF first

At previous fests, the ARG museums were organized by the likes of Dav Flamerock, Agent Lex, and Konamouse. With past organizers not in attendance this year, however, I was asked if I’d be willing to step in to head up the display. After brewing on it for a while, I opted to take the step.

Then it got real… The fest that is. Taking on the museum with only a few weeks to spare, I didn’t want it to be a half-brained last-minute fest component. I have a great respect for the creative talent that’s poured into artifacts created for use in many ARGs and marketing campaigns — It’s only fair to put a solid effort into displaying that work as an inspiration to other creators.

So, in moving forward, I opted to extend the museum with an additional element. I’d initially intended to have QR codes provide a detailed outline about each project on display, a sort of mini-IMDB purely for this ARGFest museum. But, as the weeks before ARGFest turned into days, there simply wasn’t enough time to build the entire system and catalogue all the details I’d envisioned.

In the end, I focused on a trivia element for the museum, providing for attendees a chance to have a bit of fun, test their past knowledge, and encourage a little more appreciation and exploration of the artifacts others had created. The mobile web-based trivia system ended up being a great success.

There was even an…unexpected intrusion. Some other evil inquisitor hatched a plot to infiltrate the museum and trivia game in a fit of vengeance, having been replaced by this year’s kinder inquisitor. It appeared, however, that this “Evil inQuisitoR” hatched his QR plan a little too late, and thankfully no ill came of it. Let that be a lesson to envious inquisitors looking for vengeance – it helps to launch your plans while there are still curious eyes exploring the exhibits, and less drowsy, sleepy-eyed late-night partiers who’ve already done their fair share of exploration. ;)

At the conclusion of the sessions, 5 winners were announced and given bragging rights for their ARG knowledge – Dee Cook, Daniel Van Gool, Kyle Woollums, Eric Kays, and Jim Senderhauf. Prizes included a selection of topically related books including:

• “This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming“, by Dave Szulborski
• “This is Not A Game“, by Walter Jon Williams
• “House of Leaves“, by Mark Z. Danielewski
• “Codes, Ciphers, Secrets and Cryptic Communication“, by Fred B. Wrixon
• “Chasing the Wish“, comic book by Dave Szulborski based on his ARG of the same name

Unfortunately my time at the fest ended up more focused on the museum than the sessions, but it was a fun and a rewarding experience. I was honored to be asked to take on the task, but my thanks must go out to all those who donated items for the museum display and trivia prizes, as well as helping with many trivia questions – it would not have been a success without you.

On Hospitality, Hustling, Herman and a Silver River…

While half of ARGFest is composed of panels and sessions, the other half is a social and gaming mixing pot. Other elements include FestQuest, a hospitality suite, and the straggler’s supper, but there may also be anything from collaborative mystery solving to late night drinkering at local establishments.

One element that seems to have become a tradition are Rock Band sessions in the hospitality suite. It’s quite a spectacle when a packed room erupts along with a drumset and two guitars in a chorus of Still Alive. The hospitality suite is the hang out during periods between scheduled events, and especially in the evening while people trickle away for what few hours of sleep remain each night.

The sessions this year were opened with an entertaining game from Awkward Hug (creators of Must Love Robots and Socks Inc.) called Wisconsin Hustle. This is a mobile game that’s set to release in winter 2011, but was brought to ARGFest for play-testing in card form and, well, for pure entertainment. Suffice to say, many retro dance moves made a reappearance, and the game got rave reviews from attendees (though no one ended up pantsless).

Another thing people have started doing in recent years is geocaching. Having been geocaching for two years now, I made the effort to get out and around the venue area, as did a few others who have taken up the hobby. Bloomington boasts a fairly active geocaching community, and Indiana University is peppered with caches around campus – including one named for Herman B. Wells, “Hangin’ with Herman“. I visited this one with SynthBio, and we had a bit of… fun with Herman. Geocaching is also a great way to appreciate the area and even learn a bit more about its history.

What better type of meal at an interactive storytelling/gaming conference than an interactive restaurant? A crowd of us hit up the HuHot Mongolian Grill for dinner on Saturday night. At the Grill, you fill a bowl of ingredients of your choosing to hand off to the grillers who literally circle a sizzling slate, tossing and cooking up your meal in front of your eyes as you wait, and making a show of it. And it’s also Delicious!

In addition to the social elements, gaming, discussions, sessions and panels on ARGs and transmedia, often there are puzzles included in the festivities. This year was no exception, although much of the puzzling seemed to be well focused on one particular piece from fellow Canadians Stitch Media. In the same manner as last year, Evan Jones included a puzzle in the ARGFest program. An apparently simple puzzle taunting attendees to solve it — a few lines of poetic phrases, emblazoned with Stitch’s logo. …were it so easy.

A number of us pored over the puzzle, drawn in by its intricacies and stubborn mysteries. We researched, tested, played, folded, poked, drew, scratched, and tore our hair out over the course of the weekend. All to no avail. Eventually, with the fest drawing to a close, we were nudged ever so slightly in the right direction, until it finally clicked, and we saw glorious freedom from its shackles! That puzzle is here reproduced along with the hints for your likewise inevitable discombobulation.

Socks and Cogs: FestQuest

This year’s FestQuest was organized by Studio Cypher‘s Ian Pottmeyer. It began Saturday at 1pm a couple of blocks from the venue. We set off at staggered time in a number of teams, following clues that took us from location to location around the university, with puzzles ranging from mathematical riddles to cryptic decoder rings to maze-like instructions told to us by Ian-himself-disguised-in-drag.

Teams set out at scattered times, but it was my team that ended up at the destination last. Not without reason, of course! With the intended access to a segment of the quest unexpectedly locked, we still opted to go for the full experience, so we circled around the building for another access point into an underground tunnel spanning two buildings on the campus. We were glad we did, but it also allowed another team to pass us. Nonetheless, much entertainment, brain teasing, and hijinks were had in this year’s FestQuest.

In the end, it was another raging success with many heartily enjoying the experience. Many props to Studio Cypher on a well-planned and executed scavenger hunt.

Other memorable moments

On Friday night I had an intriguing chat with Reed Berkowitz (@soi) regarding his perspective on the nature of fiction and reality. Reed spoke on the Saturday morning in a session entitled Reality As a Story-telling Medium.  He had some very intriguing and philosophical views on the perception of reality, truth, and fiction, and his session prompted a good amount of questions.

Martin Aggett of Remix Fiction launched a new project at ARGFest through the ARG Museum. The Martin Aggett Story chapter 1 ran in parallel to ARGFest, and included a black briefcase display incorporated into the museum. Some elements of his launch plans were met with a few minor hiccups though, which he discusses at opengamedesign.com.  But hey, who could avoid examining a mysterious briefcase in the environment of mysteries that is ARGFest?

In heading across the border on the way to ARGFest, I also learned a lesson for future border crossings with a large luggage bag of random collected items: Don’t say you’re going to a “convention” and setting up a “display”. That equates to products and sales at the border crossing guards. Also, document and itemize all items in print for easy perusal when questioned, including a detailed outline of what you’re actually doing, and for whom. (Who merely ‘attends’ an organized event, but helps with an element of the event itself, voluntarily, with no monetary gain?)

Final thoughts

There is a growing group of us who would be excited and willing to prepare a proposal for ARGFest Toronto 2012 – any thoughts?  Where would you like to see ARGFest next year?

For photos from ARGFest Bloomington, check out this flickr group!

Below are some of the sessions from the weekend as videos or in slide form. Thanks for Remix Fiction for recording and making videos available on Vimeo:

• Lance Weiler’s Videocast
• Drew Davidson’s session, ARGs in Education
• John Maccabee’s session, Transmedia Patter (part 2)
• Ian Pottmeyer’s session, Let Your Players Play
• Slides from SociaLens’ Taming the Butterfly

Now, if you dare, continue on to page 2 to relive ARGFest vicariously through a collection of tweets that went out from attendees over the weekend!

When I was child, my best friend Greg and I went through a stage of imaginative paper-based adventures — sure, we occasionally played “cowboys and indians” and whatnot, and we played with toys and action figures, instilling life into Star Wars figurines (I even vaguely recall a Star Wars lunch pail!) — but this was different. This was actually a very simplistic, childish sort of ‘game mastering‘.

I can’t remember how it actually started, but this was what we did for fun: We each took turns designing mazes on paper, secretly, on our own time, and then we’d sit down and take turns pretending to be trapped in each others’ mazes, exploring and trying to escape by saying where we wanted to go or what we wanted to do.

If I was the one exploring, I’d only see a portion of the map – whether it was obscured by a piece of paper with a hole cut in the middle that he’d move around to follow where “I” went, or whether he actually drew the maze as I moved around. But as I explored, as I turned each corner, opened a door or entered a new area, something new would happen – I might discover some treasure, a special item, some crazy mysterious object, or have to face an enemy and decide what to do. Whatever happened after I made my choice was decided by him.

The levels we designed for each other would typically be very simple (we were kids after all), but we loved the fun of exploring, interacting with other, and making decisions on the fly knowing that the results really were made up as we went along – that’s what made it fun.

The more we played, the more adventurous our games got, the more our levels ‘matured’ as we tried new things. The environments became labyrinths, forests, or space ships with intricate maps and structures. We’d start writing little introductory stories to lay out a mission or some task that had to be accomplished. I remember designing out levels of buildings, with secret rooms and interesting items to find, pick up and discover. We even built in ‘triggers’ where, for example, we’d note that somewhere on that map a door or hole in a wall might now be open if they picked up a particular item or flipped a switch somewhere else.

As a child, this was our game-like way of storytelling, of having fun, and it was a unique sort of adventure for us. This type of gameplay was of course nothing new – it’s a basic form of what’s known as table-top role playing, where a game-master (GM) creates a world, and leads other people, friends or acquaintances, in a game of exploration with characters the players design and improve within the guidelines of the environment defined by the GM.  Every action and decision is interactive between the player and the GM, and the story itself might unfold over the course of a day, weeks, months, or more.

It’s also the basic structure of role playing games (RPGs) – where a player controls an avatar of sorts, and explores a storyworld, discovering its story and seeing their character grow and change dynamically with every decision they make and encounter they face.

As I grew older and migrated to computers for gaming, that form of play translated to computer RPGs – text-based dungeon crawlers (like Zork), early internet Telnet environments (like the Muddy Waters MUD), and classic graphical RPGs (like the Bard’s Tale trilogy).  One thing remained the same for me, however – it wasn’t the idea of role-playing that I loved as much as the act of discovery. Any game that had a complex story or an environment ripe for exploration, I set out to map. Whether it consisted of rooms I connected as nodes and lines on paper after exploring cardinal directions in text, or whether it was a map of walls and doors sketched on grid paper – I simply had to discover and explore, to visit every nook and cranny, find secrets, uncover the whole story.

Today, when I look back at those games I first played as a child on a piece of paper, I realize that the passion I had for exploration and discovery has translated into what many today call alternate reality games (ARGs).

While both ARGs and RPGs both generally consist of core narratives, ARGs do have a clear distinction from RPGs.  In a role-playing game, the player enters the realm of the story in the form of a character or avatar; you play that role and explore the storyworld within its reality, revealing the narrative and building your character. In an alternate reality game, it’s the other way around – it’s as if the characters in the story are “playing the role” of real beings in our reality.  Where in an RPG, the Game Master effectively throttles how we role-play a character in their world, in an ARG the Puppet Master (PM) defines how the characters play their roles in our world.

And yet, the PM still has the final creative word on how the story plays out. They decide what narrative is uncovered, what characters exist and how they interact, what events will, can, or might happen, and to what degree the players influence the story. But, by its very nature of playing out in our reality rather than in a relative sandbox of a defined world environment, it means the results of every action and decision made by the player are essentially decided live by the PM. As a result of this interaction, the story that the player takes away from an ARG can potentially be far more personalized – not based on the decisions of the character they role-play, but based on their decisions in the real-world, on themselves, now an actual part of the story.

For myself, I also find it interesting that my childlike love for exploration and discovery, for mapping out environments and worlds, has translated to the ARG genre.  If the world of an RPG could be mapped out on grid paper, then the ARG equivalent could be described as the ‘trailhead’ — a timeline trail of interconnected events and assets laying out the route that the player, or players, have taken through the experience, through the open-ended exploration of… well, a real-world series of ‘nodes’, as the story is revealed.

For me, that love for world-mapping has taken shape in the form of the wiki. That eventually led to the creation of Wikibruce.com – the resource I set up for ARG players, providing a platform to ‘map out the story-world’ as it were; to document discoveries and retrace stories as they’re uncovered – stories created by the puppet-master as their games progress.

I was never really one for “role” playing, personally (heck, I can count the times I’ve dressed up in a costume with three fingers). And even in ARGs I’ve recently begun taking more of a back-seat when it comes to interaction and ‘play’ (mostly due to lack of spare time).

But this, really, is one of my attractions to the ARG genre — I don’t have to play some version of me that isn’t me. I can just be myself (with a tiny bit of suspended disbelief, or rather performance of belief).  If you think about it, it’s actually the PM that ends up playing more characters roles in an ARG than the players themselves.

If I were to define an Alternate Reality Game, from my perspective it would be something like this:

An ARG provides an experience for both the discovery and creation of a dynamic story, in real-world time, that interacts with and incorporates its audience and elements of their real life within its narrative – from its beginning through to its end.

This is, to me, the most appropriate description of an alternate reality game or what I, here at 4DF, refer to when I say four-dimensional fiction.

The hallways and mazes once drawn in pencil on paper are now city streets; the items once picked up to the inventory now show up in the mailbox; the hidden items once discovered are now retrieved from GPS-located dead-drops; the puzzles once solved to unlock doors are now encoded messages in personal email or cell phone voicemail; the crazy mysterious objects are now physical, tangible artifacts from within the story itself; characters encountered while traveling down a street may now maintain blogs and have social profiles – and who knows, they may actually be encountered out on the street…

It’s my childhood pencil and paper games of discovery and adventure translated to 21st century real-life story-based entertainment — whether I am the one exploring the maze, or the one secretly drawing out the levels.

The Lost Zombies Ning community is still alive and thriving at lostzombies.com and you can reach Skot Leach through his website at skotleach.com. This case study was originally posted by Skot at the Transmedia Artists Guild forum.

One day, you sit down to watch TV, and catch a teaser trailer for a movie not scheduled for release for another year. It catches your eye, but you inevitably move on.

The next week, you receive a bulky piece of mail containing a hardcover book… you don’t initially recognize the author, or the company that sent it, but the topic interests you. As you open it, a piece of paper drops from its folds on which is written an email and phone number with a note asking you to contact the author by either method.

You’re curious, so you call the phone number and hear a recorded message from this person, who outlines their desperate situation and asks for help.

At this point you wonder where it came from. Out of curiosity, you start checking around. A quick google shows that the author doesn’t seem to exist, nor does the company. But you do find that the book and author are related to an upcoming movie, and you remember the teaser that caught your attention last week – the author’s name is familiar now, and you recognize their face.  Now you’re excited. For whatever reason, the lead character in the movie just contacted you, personally, and they need your help – a series of events are unfolding, right now, today, this week.

Enticed, you dig a little deeper… in doing so, you discover websites that reveal more about this character, this company, and the recent events that prompted them to contact you, and why. You find other people online who’ve been contacted as well, so you chat with them to find out what they know, and team up with them moving forward.

Over time, there are puzzling situations that you have to resolve, other characters you need to talk to, interact with and influence in your strive towards various accomplishments and resolutions, discovering more and more of the story as it plays out.

You’re taken places – nearby locations for secret exchanges of information, or for real-world tasks to be carried out. You watch videos, find clues in commercials, record and share videos denouncing an antagonist’s propaganda, even crowd-source a solution to a problem on your cell phone, with a bit of augmented reality thrown in… Your ongoing curiosity in this amazing story drives your enthusiasm. Your interaction and teamwork with others doing the same forms bonds and friendships, and a community of fans.

You become immersed in the story so much that when it ends and you’ve saved the day, you cheer and celebrate with your community and your friends!

Oh yeah, and there was that movie you wanted to see too… You wonder if or how your actions helping this author and the company had an influence in that story. Now you have to see the movie (and with friends, especially other people with whom you’ve shared the experience)!

You go and see the film. On screen you spot the actual location you visited to receive top secret information from the company that sent you the package. Then the person who asked you for help, the lead character in the movie, references the mystery that you just helped solve!

Your experience, the story you helped to complete over the course of a few months, connected you with a grander set of events – you became a part of the movie.

Shortly after the movie airs, Amazon shoots you an email recommending a novel that’s soon to be released – an autobiography written by the fictional author as their followup to their other book, the one you received in the mail.  You want it.

Being a comic book fan, you’re excited to hear about a series soon to be released centered on the company that sent you the package; about its rich history, chronicling many of its past …’mishaps’. You want it.

You’re at the local toy store one day, and you see a bobblehead – of the author. It makes you chuckle. You want it.

A year down the line, with this property still going strong (it’s now a thriving universe with a history, many developed characters, events, and stories you’ve come to follow and enjoy), a sequel to the film is announced… along with a video game spin-off on the gaming console you own. You want to immerse yourself in them, and discover what other exciting experiences the universe has to offer. You note their release dates.

Then, as you sit down for dinner, tuning into the latest episode of the TV series continuation that launched a few months ago, you get a phone call.

You recognize the voice.

It’s the author… the real person is talking to you. They’re called you because they remember how you helped them last time.  Your help is needed again.

They ask you, and you say yes.

(followup articles, links, and commentaries appended)

Can someone tell me what on earth “transmedia” means these days?  As an ARG enthusiast, traditionalist, and one who’s previously done some developing behind the scenes, I’m here adding my voice to the antitransmedia chorus.

Back in “the day” (mere years ago), there were these things called “Alternate Reality Games”. I remember them – potentially amazing experiences that involved their audience, told engaging stories, presented puzzles and games that were fun and actually made sense within their contexts, and allowed players to search and discover. These things were also somewhat subversive – they never actually said they were fictional, but we all knew they were anyway.

Sometimes they’d tie in to a movie, and we ended up choosing to see it; or a video game, and we ended up choosing to play it.  Or maybe they were just for fun, and we ended up making friends, forming communities.

Then word got out.  Slowly, more people heard about them, and more and more people wanted to make them, to try new things, provide unique experiences. Then we saw variations that focused more on one thing than another, like the puzzles, or the narrative, or interaction, or centered on a specific platform. They came up with variations on names that would better describe those experiences.

As Jeff Watson stated recently in an article reflecting on ARGs and the issue of accurately labeling the entertainment genre:

The boundaries between gameplay and storytelling, single-platform and multi-platform, real and virtual, author and audience, are all disappearing as we speak. It’s all fiction. Someday we’ll just leave it at that.

But soon these things really started to go mainstream… discovered by the kind of people who wanted to ‘embrace and extend’, as it were.  Some wanted to claim a label for what they produced, some simply wanted to help define the genre by providing a more descriptive and accurate label. It came to the point that ARGs in the traditional sense were now a sort of sub-set of a quickly widening and muddying genre of storytelling and/or gaming and/or marketing. We now had what Sean Stacey termed “Chaotic Fiction” – chaos, indeed.

Here are a few sample terms adopted over recent years by creatives in this media space:

Alternate Reality Game, Reality Game, Alternate Reality Events, Chaotic Fiction, Connected Entertainment Product, Cross-Media Promotions and Distributed Narratives, Cross-platform Experiences, Entertainment Experience, Experience Design, Extended Reality, Full-Media Entertainment Experience, Immersive Brand Marketing, Innovative and Immersive Social Entertainment, Interactive Marketing Solutions, Media Integrated Gameplay, Participation Drama, Pervasive Media, Search Opera, Story Game…

…or even, as jested by Steve Peters – a “Pervasive Entertainment Experience” (PEE)

But the term that ultimately caught on was “transmedia storytelling”. Short and sweet, to the point. It took the experience that Alternate Reality Games had come to represent, and provided a name which was more flexible and wide reaching; more simplistic, and generally a friendlier term to throw around for new cross-platform media experiences. Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, defined it in his article Transmedia 101:

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.

Well, what we’re discovering now is the effect that this definition has had by excluding a limited scope for an “experience”. What was once a single story told or game played out across multiple media platforms has mutated into this (now shortened) buzzword “transmedia” (which is an adjective, by the way – not a noun) wherein a storyworld containing many stories can be told or experienced across multiple platforms.

It seems like these days a lot of the “transmedia” attention is given to projects that really take place only on the web, as classic multimedia (audio, video, graphics, perhaps some social networking), and are generally promotional material for some new product within an existing IP, or franchise – thus, a component or extension of the greater experience that is the transmedia franchise. They may or may not tell a story. They may or may not be interactive. They may or may not even be fun.

Where’d the ARG go?

In 2010, the Producers Guild of America adopted the position “Transmedia Producer” into its vocabulary. Here, the PGA explicitly states:

A Transmedia Narrative project or franchise must consist of three (or more) narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe on [multiple] platforms

A “Transmedia Narrative” now seems to support any experience – as long as it consists of multiple connected stories, and utilizing multiple media.  …But is this not simply the making of a franchise?

The growing backlash at this diminishing of actual story-telling in lieu of franchise-developing is becoming apparent.  In a random tweet that began a slew of responses in what could be called an anti-transmedia movement, Steve Peters of No Mimes Media demonstrated that there’s a quiet subset of people who really don’t prefer ‘transmedia’ as the defining term for what they do on the smaller, story-sized scale.

Gawd I’m learning to hate the term transmedia more and more. Pretentious, pompous, not fun or entertaining. There, I said it. :P
~Steve Peters

Even Felicia Day, an actress and the creator of the web series The Guild, which now spans and incorporates multiple media, had this to say on “transmedia” at a SXSW 2011 panel (or listen, in answer to a question at ~51mins: mp3/src):

It’s just a really stupid word, and people use it because they don’t know. I just hate it. What does it mean? It means nothing! Listen, transmedia is any comic book that ever became a movie before the internet. [...] Anything is transmedia.

Dee Cook at Workbook Project even described the “transmedia” content at SXSW 2011 (where it was a boiling hot topic) in this way:

…the most overused and under-understood [term] of the conference… Most of the “Transmedia” panels just didn’t seem to get it – there was no takeaway, there was a lot of gobbeldygook, and in one bizarre case, there was a futurist who seemed to be discussing how in 6-10 years we will all be watching programmed television.

After SXSW, Steve went on in another series of ranting tweets (read the full exchange here):

Telling ONE story on multiple platforms is NOT the same as telling many stories in the same universe on multiple platforms…  By that definition, the earliest example of Transmedia is the Bible: stories, live events, plays, meetups, music, swag….  and if that’s the case, Transmedia is NOT SOMETHING NEW at all!

Transmedia SHOULD mean ONE SINGLE story on multiple platforms, not MANY stories in the same story world on many platforms

Franchising is NOT Transmedia. It’s FRANCHISING

Indeed, ‘transmedia’ by its current definition is not providing anything new – or original. It’s been around, really, since the beginning of human history, both intentionally and unintentionally!

Let’s start with some comments on current entertainment, such as Mythbusters…

I’d argue that MYTHBUSTERS is a very successful non-fiction #transmedia property: tv, web, books, science kits…
~@fossen

We certainly can’t forget Star Wars! Or Indiana Jones!

So far, the most successful transmedia franchises have emerged when a single creator or creative unit maintains control over the franchise. Hollywood might well study the ways that Lucasfilm has managed and cultivated its Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises.
~Henry Jenkins, MIT Technology Review, 2003

And He-Man! (Or any property with action figures!)

From the beginning they thought of stories as resources out of which they could create their own fantasies, as something which shifted into the hands of the audience once they had been produced and in turn as something which was expanded and remixed on the grassroots level.  In that sense, the action figure is very much the harbinger of the transmedia movement.
~Henry Jenkins, He-Man and the Masters of Transmedia

Religion!

Rachel Wagner highlights several significant similarities between religion and transmedia, which are “complex, multimedia streaming worlds,” where, “a story is spread across multiple media platforms.” The central story-world is a key component of both transmedia and religion.
~drmeinstein.com, on Rachel Wagner’s “Making Belief: Transmedia and The Hunger For The Real”

The Bible!

For me, transmedia is more the choice of the author(s) for how his/her vision is experienced: it’s a means.  Stories have been transmedia forever. The Bible, for example, has been made successful as a transmedia project, from its creation myth to its world-building, and to its re-imagining and further transmedia exploration in such stories as C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles.
~Howard Goldkrand, director Dexter

Another, much older example of transmediation versus adaptation might be found in a somewhat unexpected place: the stained-glass windows of cathedrals. [...] hymns, sermons, artifacts, and, perhaps most spectacularly, enormous stained-glass windows. Are these transmedia extensions? One might argue that since a parishioner could first experience the story of Genesis through a rose window, then Exodus through a sermon, then Leviticus through hymns, and then Deuteronomy through paintings, the Bible has always been a transmedia franchise
~Geoffrey A. Long, Transmedia Storytelling, 2007

Your Life!

The array of media tools through which to “present ourselves” is already ubiquitous, and constantly expanding. Social networks, personal blogs, microblogs, digital cameras, location-based social applications [...] With every status update and photo upload and location check-in and “like” we click, we are producing an endless stream of new “entry points” into our personal narratives. [...] In the digital age, transmedia isn’t simply the default for how we experience entertainment, it is how we experience the story of our lives.
~Jenka Gurfinkel, Your Life is a Transmedia Experience

By the current trending definition of “transmedia”, I believe it is safe to conclude that Everything is transmedia – Everyone is a transmedia property.

Your mom is Transmedia.

So really, what’s the point of “transmedia” if everything is transmedia anyway?  What happened to the good old multi-platform-story?

In the essay “Do You Have A Big Stick“, Dr. Christy Dena clarifies this apparent polarization of transmedia productions, defining them as a “collection of mono-medium stories” (eg, a franchise), and a “collection of media that tells one story” (eg, an ARG).

Let’s get back to the basics.

“Transmedia” is not new, and it’s probably not going away. So we should encourage people once again to tell stories, to make compelling, entertaining, educational experiences that play out wherever people are at in their own lives (using whatever platforms and media they use regularly), or even better – make an effort to create experiences that encourage people to make the world a better place.

@GuyGonzales:
Most exciting aspect of transmedia is its focus on great storytelling over business models. Without good stories, there is no business.
Even marketers jumping on the transmedia bandwagon as the new shiny are focused on the power and value of a good story.

Just like legends or stories passed on through generations over a campfire, the best productions are the ones that focus on this. They’re successful in the long term not because of their business model or financial gain – marketing for a product is irrelevant and temporal! - but because the people who willingly immersed themselves in them chose to continue their legacy, because they loved the experience and wanted to continue to tell other people excitedly about it.

Bring back the Alternate Reality Game!

Thankfully, Adrian Hon from Six to Start provided a positive outlook and some insight into the “hype curve” at SXSW 2011 in his talk “Project 314: Putting the ‘Game’ back in ARGs“.

Additionally, the new Transmedia Artists Guild (TAG) is an advocacy group of experience developers and creatives who work in this media space.  From the About page:

The explosion of the internet and mobile platforms have put tools of media creation into the hands of people that previously couldn’t reach a wide audience.  Many have refocused from more traditional media channels to work in this new space. For lack of a better name, much of this work is being called “transmedia.”

The TAG forum is a great starting resource for those interested in producing transmedia experiences, to communicate and interact with passionate developers who create them both for a living and just for fun.

Now, all that said, I don’t mean to imply that anything developed under the “transmedia” umbrella lacks anything by default.  There also have been a number of quality projects, entertainment properties, and marketing campaigns that have been executed recently, along with a number of great ARGs that have returned to the roots of the genre.  And, I can personally accept and understand the use of “transmedia” as a term on the franchise level, if it’s indicated as much. I can grok Star Wars, Star Trek, The Matrix, and Halo as transmedia franchises.  But I think we need to bring focus back on the story-telling experience moreso than the franchise developing.

In the end, the “transmedia” label itself has certainly helped creators and enthusiastic newcomers grasp the concept and importance of synergy across platforms within franchises, properties, and single stories, providing a standard for consistency and encouraging a strive for quality storytelling in our modern social media world.

And that’s a Good Thing.

Followup discussions:

Some other great articles posted, weighing in on this topic:

• Mar 21] Steve Peters: The Transmedia Hijack (or how Transmedia is the New Dihydrogen Monoxide)
• Mar 21] Nine Bargiel: I Am a Transmedia Producer
• Mar 21] Tara Tiger Brown: Transmedia: post 1 of 5
• Mar 22] Silverstring Media: Last Thing I’ll Say
• Mar 24] Brooke Thompson: Love It or Hate It… Defending Transmedia
• Mar 25] PlayThisNext: Transmedia Thinking
• Apr 25] Brooke Thompson: Transmedia is Killing Hollywood is Killing Transmedia
• Apr 26] Brooke Thompson: Rebooting Transmedia
• May 2] Brian Clark: Reclaiming Transmedia Storyteller
• May 18] Steve Peters: What the hell *is* Transmedia?
• May 18] Andrea Phillips: WTF is Transmedia?

Additional interesting articles that discuss transmedia development at various levels:

• Q&A with Matthew Cullen of Mirada on transmedia and storytelling at JWTIntelligence
• Allison Norrington at Wired UK: Transmedia Tales and the Future of Storytelling (2009)

Structural analyses:

• Stitch Media chimed in with what I think is a very appropriate and accurate diagram of what we are currently including in the “transmedia” discussion, one of the best and simplest I’ve seen so far:

• The above diagram inspired me to write a followup article providing an individual’s walkthrough of a transmedia production on this scale: Transmedia Storytelling: A sample experience
• Another excellent analysis of this media space was published by Rob Pratten at Workbook Project – Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started (2010)

UPDATE April 11, 2011: I’ve created a diagram geared more towards the confusion that seems to be caused by the Producers Guild of America’s “Transmedia Producer” credit. As an attempt to visualize the distinctive qualities of different productions, this depicts much of the structural differences between transmedia on a single experience scale, and a franchise scale. (click to enlarge)

Another followup diagram I made illustrates the type of general creation in this media space, but without the vagueness of the “transmedia” term. (click to enlarge)

UPDATE May 2, 2011: Brian Clark of GMD Studios posted a response article (on Facebook) summing up much of the situation, confusion, and controversy in the discussion surrounding “transmedia” in the context of storytelling and franchise – read it here: “Reclaiming Transmedia Storyteller“. His article has spawned an immense discussion. (Facebook login required)

UPDATE May 18, 2011: Steve Peters of No Mimes Media once again chimed in with another effort at clarification and trying to understand this confounding debate about “Transmedia”, with “What the hell *is* Transmedia?“. He offers this definition of “transmedia storytelling”

Transmedia storytelling is telling a single story spread beginning-to-end across multiple platforms.

Generally speaking, an ARG’s story stands on its own in historicity – in the players’ memories and documentation of in-game actions and interactions. One of the trade-offs to the flexible interaction of an ARG experience is that it is by nature playable only once. But what if the creators of an ARG, without the agenda of having it promote a brand or product for an existing IP, actually intend to package the resulting story as a product itself? In a sense, the final product would have a distributed authorship.

A new project called The Black Helix, which launched today from The Design Zoo, intends to do just that. Their project, funded, by the Northern Ireland Arts Council, asks players to “become part of an unwritten story”.

The Black Helix is scheduled to run for four weeks, beginning with a mysterious kidnapping, and culminating in a live “role playing event” — everything that happens in between (player choices, character interactions, perhaps photos and/or footage) will officially become the story.

Once the ARG is complete we will be publishing the story as what we believe to be the worlds first crowd sourced ARG novel/story. The player’s alias names, information, research and sub plots that develop over the period of the game, will all be integrated into the final story to create a unique transmedia book that all players will ultimately feel truly part of.

According to the ‘Zoo, the final publication will be available online.  The only questions that come to mind when formulating a crowd-sourced project like this is how issues such as player privacy or even resulting profits are handled when the creators of the content are now independent of the production organization.

Would players take issue with their personnas (online or real world) being used in the reproduced story, or will they welcome the opportunity to be immortalized?  Regarding the “realism” of an ARG, would it be feasible to provide a waiver to sign beforehand allowing yourself to be used essentially as a character in the final tale, without legal repercussions?  If this sort of final production becomes a trend, will the players begin seeking ROI?

The Black Helix does have a terms & conditions form for perusal, and the sign-up process asks for an alias which is “required to be part of the finish book”. As they say, IANAL. Nonetheless, I believe The Black Helix is a project worth keeping an eye on (or playing!).  I’m very interested to see how the final product will be packaged.

More project details available via Wikibruce.

Keep your eyes on this one!

UPDATE!

The Black Helix has launched. And with it, the kidnapping: