ARGs and Sim Games

During the article group readings, I focused a lot of my attention on the ARGs and cooperative activity/ world building games. What I found so interesting about these is that groups of people were coming together to problem solve, trade information, and group up in order to advance in the games. Minecraft, for example, can be used as a place to build structures of fortitude for the players to remain safe in after dark, when the monsters lurk about. It offers a rewards system by making you hunt your own food and gather your own material, and then as you create stronger tools and weapons from them you can advance to the underground, find rarer and sturdier materials, and (if you actually play the plot of the game instead of fooling around like most do) defeating your enemies. Like in WoW, a lot of people find that all of this is easier to do when they create a world where they can work together, rather than playing individually. This simulation game takes a “real world” setting (with ARG elements) and teaches you about the strengths and weaknesses in the virtual world (enemies and natural disasters/ limitations, geographies and geographic materials, mana vs. melee) that you create.

There was, of course, the ARG that was played by film school students called “Reality” that was part card game and part social media, with different tiers of reward systems, but I think that Ashley will probably focus on that article because she talked about it during our presentation, so I leave that to her. As for things that I researched on my own, I am a long-time fan of ARGs, so I found the Twitter and YouTube page for Marble Hornets. A CreepyPasta that started on 4chan, MH is an ARG that was, unlike most ARGs, started by a group of college kids. While the most popular ARGs are put out by huge companies like Microsoft to promote movies and video games, the MH crew were film students who happened to enjoy the Slenderman photoshopped images that were circulating on the forums at the time, and they decided to take the idea of this fictional monster and bring him to life through a vlog. Other vloggers soon followed in the fashion, and as fans watched and collaborated in puzzle solving they also came to collaborate games based off of the vlogs, and some of the vloggers began to cross-over their series to change the game up and surprise their audiences. As for Marble Hornets, the team has become so well-known that they are currently co-scripting a film with the director of Paranormal Activity that is supposed to hit the big screens in 2015. On top of that they have created DVDs of the series, and one of the vlogger’s personal YouTube accounts was found and is so popular that I’m sure that he makes his wages solely off of the Marble Hornets fame. What amazes me about this small-time ARG gone viral is it shows that through the collaboration of many, great things can be achieved beyond the scope of the game. The vloggers and fans alike have met like-minded people on their journey via the ARG and befriended one another in love for their fandom.

I love ARGs a lot because they not only bring a social aspect to gaming, but they involve individuals into bigger problem solving scenarios and allow people to show what they’re talented at (hacking, cracking codes, etc.) and also learning from others who have different talents than they do (one huge ARG had messages in twelve different languages, so no one person could solve it alone). That sort of collaboration and effort put into a game is just fantastic.