TRANSMEDIA
PERFORMANCE & PLAY
Rhythma Kapoor
Seminar Week 7
CONTENTS
 Case study- whysoserious
 ARGs
 Case Studies
whysoserious
Whysoserious
The campaign centred on the web
 branched out over mobile
 mail
 flash mobs
 scavenger hunts
 casual games
 user generated content
 collaborative narratives and streaming video.
 Whysoserious
Harvey Dent Vs. Joker’s army
CTAs: Joker cards found in comic shop
Participation: Ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com
Emails registered. When achieved sufficient numbers, they eventually
revealed…
Rabbit Holes: "Jokerized" $1 bills are
found that lead to Whysoserious.com
CTA:
Whysoserious.com
– a recruitment site
for ‘goons’
CTA: RorysDeathKiss.com, challenging participants to take photographs in
clown make-up by major national landmarks in groups.
RABBIT HOLES:
THE CAKES Sent to locations (apparently bakeries). Once there, participants are
to pick up a package left under the name "Robin Banks."
The package is a cake with a phone number on it. By calling the number, a phone inside the cake will ring. After digging into
the cake, the participant will find an evidence bag with a cell phone, Joker card, cell phone charger, and a note:
“Good work, clown! Keep this phone charged and with
you at all times. Don't call me, I'll call you...eventually.”
Results
• Over 10 million participants - 75 countries = highly effective and
engaging entertainment/marketing campaign.
• 50m Google searches for The Dark Knight and more than 55,000
videos tagged The Dark Knight on YouTube.
• By July 18, 2008, The Dark Knight website reached 1.5 per cent of
entire users of the internet, the site had 5,270 sites linking to it
• Blogsphere.com shows 106,299 blog posts on the launch day of the
film alone.
• On July 18, blogpulse recorded a peak of 1.307% of all blog posts on
the web.
• Some of the YouTube videos have received more than 4 million
views each and generated hundreds of thousands of comments.
What are ARGs?
 An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative
that uses the real world as a platform, often involving
multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that
may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.
 The key thing about an ARG is the way it jumps off all
those platforms. It's a game that's social and comes at
you across all the different ways that you connect to the
world around you.
Transmedia Project Development
Story
Experience
Audience
Business
Model
Platforms
Execution
Transmedia Project Development
Story
Experience
Audience
Business
Model
Platforms
AR fits here
Execution
Story Model Comparison
Single-platform (movies, nonsandbox video games, books)
 Clear boundary (or “magic
circle”) separating story from
non-story
 Story contained within a single
medium or artifact
Multi-platform (ARGs,
transmedia stories)
 Blurry boundary separating
story from non-story
 Story told across many media
artifacts
 Progression through the
narrative orchestrated by
authors or algorithms
 Progression through the
narrative negotiated among
multiple authors and playerparticipants
 Story as channel
 Story as layer
Approaching ARGs
 How might the story be best served with this platform?
 What experiences can I create?
 What content can I deliver?
 How does it fit within the storyworld?
 What business model opportunities are there?
 What audiences will be excluded/ included?
ARG– when, where, how?
Home
Away
Home
Tablet
Tablet
Public screen?
WHY ARGs?
 Call-to-action
 AR marker (offline to online)
 Narrative (video, animation, audio)
 Add interactivity to non-interactive media
 Provide contextual story
 Exploration
 Provide contextual content
 location-based content
 Provide audience with tools
 gaming
 role-play
•[ARGs] are designed experiences with a strong potential for emergent, that is
to say unexpectedly complex, group play and performance.
•They are distributed experiences: distributed across multiple media,
platforms, locations, and times.
•They are embedded at least partially in everyday contexts and/or
environments, rather than in marked-off gaming contexts and spaces. They
prefer to adopt everyday software, services and technologies rather than
exclusively gaming-platforms.
•They have the effect of sensitizing participants to affordances, real or
imagined. That is to say, they increase perception of opportunities for
interaction.
•Many, if not most, of their distributed elements are not clearly identified as
part of the experience. Thus active investigation of, and live interaction with,
both in-game and out-of-game elements is a significant component of the
experience.
•They have the effect of making all data seem connected, or at least plausibly
connected.
•They make surfaces less convincing. Underlying structures are what matter.
•They establish a network of players who are in the know. They intentionally
involve or engage others who are, at least temporarily, in the dark.
Jane McGonigal
•They inexorably create community.
This Might Be a Game, 45
What ARGs are out there?
The whole
world is our
platform…
Movies
Signs
Graffiti
Word of
mouth
The whole
world is our
platform…
Movies
Phones &
Answerin
g
Machines
Instant
Messages
Graffiti
Signs
The whole
world is our
platform…
Word of
mouth
Events
Postcards
Theatre
Instant
Messages
Word of
mouth
Hoaxes
Books and
comics
Phones &
Answerin
g
Machines
Graffiti
The whole
world is our
platform…
Movies
Signs
Single
player
games
Email
Postcards
Technotoys
Events
Adverts
Wikipedia
Theatre
Movies
History
Books and
comics
Phones &
Answerin
g
Machines
Installatio
n art
Signs
Graffiti
The whole
world is our
platform…
YouTube
Twitter
Word of
mouth
Email
Multiplayer
games
Single
player
games
Events
Hoaxes
Letters
Postcards
Technotoys
Software
Instant
Messages
Blogs
(see * above)
CASE STUDIES
The Beast and ilovebees
First wave of ARGs, 2001-2004
The Beast – A.I. Promo (2001)
elaborate Murder Mystery played
out across hundreds of Web sites,
and utilizing email messages, faxes,
fake ads, and voicemail messages
The Beast ARG
The Beast ARG
Another example:
I Love Bees
 Used to promote Halo 2
launch (2004)
 Elaborate narrative and
radio play
 Infiltrated the real world
 Large Audience
(thousands of players)
World Without Oil (WWO) was a serious
alternate reality game in 2007,
a massively collaborative simulation of a
global oil crisis, it set the model for using
a net-native storytelling method
(‘alternate reality’) to meet civic and
educational goals.
WWO invited people from all walks of life
to contribute “collective imagination” to
confront a real-world issue: the risk our
thirst for oil poses to our economy,
climate and quality of life.
It was a milestone in the quest to use
games as democratic, collaborative
platforms for exploring possible futures
and sparking future-changing action.
wwo
ARG: TRUTHABOUT MARIKA
Swedish alternative reality game. They used TV, newspapers, the web, live events and kind of
took over the whole country for a few weeks. The premise was a fake event, but it was treated as
real, and people engaged with the story in a sort of ambiguous way, not knowing for
sure what was real, what was fake, what was conspiracy, etc. Such a fictional trope is often part
of ARG work, and many would date it back to Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre’s radio
adaptation of H.G.Welles’ WAR OF THE WORLDS in the 30’s.
MUSIC ARG: YEAR ZERO
YEAR ZERO is an ARG that involved fans of the band Nine Inch Nails at concerts by
leaving USB drives in restrooms. Those who activated the files contained therein on a
computer got instructions that involved them in launching the viral game, which
depicts a theocratic dystopian future, the subject of the album.
GLOBAL CAUSE: CONSPIRACY FOR GOOD
Global ARG called Conspiracy for Good, sponsored by Nokia. There were extensive live events
that contained clues that could be retrieved via mobile augmented reality technologies, as well
as many other events. The fictional elements, especially those about
the evil corporation, were quite elaborate. There was a real-world charity in Africa that benefited
from the activities as well.
HEADTRAUMA
SHORT FILM ARG
COLLAPSUS
COLLAPSUS was a documentary film on Dutch television that was expanded into a
broader transmedia experience that integrated game-play, global mapping, animation
and other elements. Won the best interactive film award
at the SXSW festival in 2011.
WEB:TAKE THIS LOLLIPOP
Interactive Live Facebook Connect Experience
Take This Lollipop is a cinematic website created in HTML 5 that requires users to launch
Facebook Connect and authorize the use of content in the account, which is integrated into a
creepy, serial killer type short film. http://www.takethislollipop.com/
The cinematic experience of “Lolllipop” is startling because it embeds images, maps, names
and facts extracted from your Facebook account into the movie seemlessly.
ARCADE FIRE
LEVERAGES HTML 5VIDEO
The Wilderness Downtown. http://thewildernessdowntown.com/ : Indie Rock Band Arcade Fire, working with
filmmaker Chris Milk, released a song “We Used to Wait” produced with HTML5. Users enter the zip code of the
place they lived as a kid, and the video incorporates street scenes grabbed via Google Map Street View feature.
Milk has a slew of experimental video/web projects on his site, including the 2012 FWA Best website (voted by
fans), another collaboration with a band, this time Danger Mouse. http://portfolio.chrismilk.com/
3 DREAMS OF BLACK
WebGL/Chrome Project
USING Google Chrome’s browser for
leveraging the power of Web GL technologies.
Users can generate their own “dreams” by drawing on the landscape provided by the site or vote for
their favorites.
LEVERAGES HTML 5VIDEO
AIM HIGH is a web series about a teenaged spy. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1730374/ “Viewers log on via
Facebook” and by giving permission, become part of the story. https://www.facebook.com/AimHighSeries
BECKINFIELD
Beckinfield (2011) – User submitted videos tell the story of a town
Beckinfield is a new site that creates a story world, e.g., a mythical California town, and a storyline that
comes from the site, but the unfolding of the story is created by users who upload videos to the site
that they have made in characters. The originator is an actor who had been helping fellow actors
upload “audition” type videos to YouTube, and yearned for a way to let actors use their improv skills to
further their careers. The site’s platform company, Theatrix, hopes to license the software to other
content companies who want to leverage their experience. They call it “mass participation television.”
http://www.beckinfield.com/
Urban-based exploration game: ACCOMPLICE
The Accomplice is an urban-based exploration game/theatre piece, launched in
NY http://accomplicetheshow.com/details-ny.php and now in Los Angeles
http://www.accomplicetheshow.com/details-hollywood.php
ANAMERICAN STORY
ETHAN RUSSELL ebook (2012):“It’sYour
History:HelpWrite It”
Rock photographer and music video director Ethan Russell http://www.ethanrussell.com/index.htmlhas just
published his “illustrated” memoir “An American Story” that features copious photography, videos, and a
companion website that is seamlessly integrated into the narrative. He tells me the iBook version on the iPad is
the best user-experience. It’s also available for the Kindle, Nook, etc. http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/
ethan-russell-american-story/id531762062?mt=11
The website allows users to post their own reminiscences of the historical timeline events itemized within
Russell’s nonfiction book. He intends to release these user contributions in subsequent versions of the ebook,
which he titled version 1.0.
NEXUS HUMANUS
2011:Nexus Humanus from Michael Grant
a web-based story world for his next story, which is focused on a
mind-control organization. http://nexushumanus.com/
REMEMBERING 9/11
Clark’s GMD Studios created an interactive experience with the Smithsonian to
remember 9/11. Simple, text and image-based. http://conversations.si.edu/
EDUCATIONAL: ROBOT HEART
Educational transmedia experience for kids
Group work 5
 Complete the prototype of your ONE TM story world
extension, which you will use in your final project.
 Publish on CB & upload on BB.
 Comment on at least 2 stories.
 GROUP TOOLS!!!