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[AngriBuddhist]

Generic Video/ARG Discussion

[notgordian]

The integration of video happens quite often, to varying extents. The following games I'll mention used it as the primary story mechanism.

The most interesting one for me was Lance Weiler's "Beyond the Rave" project with Hammer Films. Hammer Films, in case you're not familiar with it, made a bunch of horror films a few decades back, and then dropped off the face of the earth for a while.

"Beyond the Rave" was played out almost entirely on MySpace, and actually utilized the resources there pretty well, and brought in a large following. By embedding secret messages into frames of the video, it created a low barrier for entry for players, as long as the online player allows for easy pausing. Weiler also did "Hope is Missing", which played out on both the now gone Stage6 platform and MySpace.

EQAL has also experienced with a lot of this stuff through their Lonelygirl15 series of videos.

Then there are the online series that attempted to integrate ARG components to their shows, to varying extents: Nowheremen (the seemingly unrelated followup to MTV's Room 401), Gemini Division (still running, as far as I know) and Hooking Up (HBO Labs experiment).

The biggest challenge facing all of these shows is really the same thing that faces ARGs in general: balancing the surface-level product with the extended experience. As a developer, you need to create a reason for people to want to invest the extra time and effort in the more active, lean-forward content while still ensuring that the people just watching the show get a full experience. And that's a lot harder than it sounds.

Questions to muddle through: are you going to have two versions of the product, one including the clues and one without? If the links are persistent, can someone play through the experience at least in part after the fact? How much of an audience do you anticipate having (and/or needing) for the various levels of engagement? What sort of skills in your playerbase would you be depending on for clues? And what purpose do you plan on the ARG portion serving (recruiting more fans, providing additional engagement for the current base, free press)?

Hope that either answered your question, or pointed you to where you can find the answers.

[AngriBuddhist]

Thank you for the response. I will dig into the titles that you mentioned.

Yes, we've already muddled through those questions. I know that answers are not required, but, in order...

The main product will be untouched, ARG exists through separate media based in main product's universe.
No.
Minimum requirements- 100, prefered- 10,000+.
Skills for clues- dependent upon final design, target would be mid to high, concept is 20/80 puzzles/creative skills and engagement.
All of the above.

Again thank you.

Any other feedback about the pros and cons of a video based ARG?

[Euchre]

A couple of examples of video being used in ARGs or other CF that come to my mind are the videos that were part of the Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles game and the viral videos and Slusho commercial contest in the Cloverfield experience. The former was just to convey story to the players, but did add some information and a LOT of entertainment value to the game. The latter were used as clues, then as a means of interaction with a very tangible reward for some players (a nice Alienware Slusho themed laptop). The whole key to internet video has been people's desire to be heard - by being 'seen' (figuratively or literally). It's hugely validating to become such a clear part of something bigger, and generates a lot of excitement. In the case of the Slusho contest, many who didn't enter still got a lot of enjoyment out of what the entrants produced (I know I did).

In the end I think a video element contributes best to an ARG if it makes it more accessible and elevates the importance of the player in the project.

[AngriBuddhist]