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ARGs and Hoaxing
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Slyfox
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Joined: 06 Feb 2004
Posts: 323
Location: Manchester, UK

 		ARGs and Hoaxing
No doubt this has been discussed elsewhere but I'd like to hear what we as a community feel about ARGs being regarded as a hoaxes and by association musty in some sense be a bad thing i.e. I believe that the consensus of opinion in general is tha hoax = bad. Almost every day someone posts at the WIBS forum that the 'in-game' sites are a hoax by GMD studios as if it's news. I find this astounding since 30 seconds of Googling could show this to be the case. Do you think the problem is the sense of betrayal people get when you discover something they thought was real is in fact a work of fiction? If that is the case will this anger diminish if the ideas behind ARGing became better known? Do many people in fact dislike the idea of being able to interact with a storyline? I think the idea must lie somewhere in these suppositions as no one ever feels it's necessary to point out the 99.99%+ of all novels, TV and movies aren't real. Anyone else got any ideas or opinions?
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:14 am
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Phaedra
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 		Well, for a lot of the ARGs that have gotten the most media attention, the idea of ARG-as-hoax is a little absurd. To quote from one of Jane McGonigal's papers, regarding the Beast:

Jane McGonigal wrote:
At first glance, it seems obvious that the Beast, the source of the foundational tales of immersive player credulity, should be entirely incapable of fooling anyone. Sean Stewart, a fantasy/science fiction author and lead writer for the game, always laughs when I ask him about players mistaking the Beast for reality. "The game is set in the year 2142 A.D.," he has reminded me more than once. "There are killer robots and sentient houses. How could anyone be confused?" [personal interview].

Elan Lee, lead designer for the game, agrees. According to Lee, the immersive experience of the game was always intended to be reflective and conscious, enjoyed on a meta-level. "It was a delicate balancing act to make sure the game and the meta-game worked in synchronicity," Lee said [personal interview]. Players were never meant to believe the "This is not a game" rhetoric, he explained, but rather to be baited by it. "It was obviously a game," Lee said.


The same, obviously, holds true for I Love Bees (AI FROM FUTURE HACKS CALIFORNIA HONEY BUSINESS'S WEBSITE!!!) or Last Call Poker (GHOST OF MILLIONAIRE HAUNTS POKER WEBSITE!!!) or games like Metacortechs (set in the world of the Matrix), and so on.

Even for something like The Blair Witch Project's advertising campaign, which, as I understand it, was rather ARGish, and in which, supposedly, people believed the story was real, it becomes a question of how much of the belief was performed. How many people actually believed, and how many were sending links to their friends and coworkers going "OMG check this out! How spooky!" when they knew themselves that it was fiction? For that matter, I remember hearing at the time that it was a fictional movie, but also hearing that there was so much hype because people believed it was real.

So I guess I wonder how much of that was just hype? On a personal, anecdotal basis, I do know some people who said they went into it believing it was a real documentary, but those people hadn't read or heard much about it; it was basically a case of their friends (who knew better) telling them "oh come with us to see this movie! It really happened."

There, obviously, one can point to a major factor in who was fooled and who wasn't: it seems like anyone who bothered to look into the situation at all realized it was a fictional movie. So does the ad campaign for Blair Witch even count as a hoax? The more I learn about it, the less convinced I am that it does.

Getting back to ARGs, it seems to me that the goals of an ARG versus a hoax are diametrically opposed. In a hoax, you are actively trying to fool people into thinking something is real. An ARG can't get away with that. An ARG isn't real, and its characters aren't real, and if you want players to be able to interact with the characters in a way that will advance the plot, they have to be willing to play along. Because if they challenge the characters to actually be real, the characters are obviously going to fail.

Tucker can either ignore all those posts claiming he's not real, or challenging him to provide proof of his reality, or he can confront them.

If he confronts them and tries to prove he's real, he's obviously going to lose, as he's not real. And losing means, essentially, ceasing to exist as a fictional character: "Oh, I'm just a character in a game? Crap." Where do you go from there?

So he has to ignore the posts. That's not as much of a problem as confronting them, but it does still put a wrinkle in the voluntary suspension of disbelief (or, to steal Jane's terminology, the performance of belief) that is a big part of what gives us the "reality" in ARG. If the players and the PMs start out with a tacit, winking agreement to behave as if this is not a game, at least in in-game situations like interacting with the characters, we can all put that aside and get down to the business of enjoying, and participating in, the story.

Games like ILB and the Beast do that immediately with their very subject matter. Of course it's not real. There's no point in saying "OMG THIS ISN'T REAL!!!" because everyone already knows that. WIBS, I think, tried to do that by having all the sites registered to GMD, but obviously since the subject matter of the game (missing man, mysterious painting) is more realistic, it wasn't quite as effective an acknowledgment of the game's fictional nature.

But, if you actually read the "OMG THIS IS A HOAX" posts on WIBS, you'll see that a lot of the posters, once they realize that everyone there knows it's a game, settle down and go "Oh, this might be fun!" so I don't think that the possibility of anger at being fooled is really an issue.

In some ways, the idea that some people think it's a hoax, but you know better, might be a draw in itself.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:22 am
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Pixiestix
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Joined: 26 Aug 2004
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Phaedra wrote:
So I guess I wonder how much of that was just hype? On a personal, anecdotal basis, I do know some people who said they went into it believing it was a real documentary, but those people hadn't read or heard much about it; it was basically a case of their friends (who knew better) telling them "oh come with us to see this movie! It really happened."


I realize this is a bit off topic, i will try not to steal too much time here. It was interesting that the real town of Burkittesville, Maryland was so over run with people right before and during the first movie's run who refused to believe that it was fiction {there were some people saying they could not get rights to use the kids original footage and had to use actors to recreate it even} that during the filming for the second movie they were FORBIDDEN to be anywhere near the town. Burkittesville Woods was TRASHED by these people. The second movie is supposed to be a slap in the face of the mass hysteria that occured around the first movie.
[/threadjack]
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:23 pm
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jamesi
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 		In a true case of irony, I am suspending my disbelief about this thread.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:45 pm
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addlepated
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jamesi wrote:
In a true case of irony, I am suspending my disbelief about this thread.

I don't believe this thread exists.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 2:12 pm
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Varin
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addlepated wrote:
jamesi wrote:
In a true case of irony, I am suspending my disbelief about this thread.

I don't believe this thread exists.


What thread? I don't see a thread.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 4:37 pm
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Axys Denyed
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Varin wrote:
addlepated wrote:
jamesi wrote:
In a true case of irony, I am suspending my disbelief about this thread.

I don't believe this thread exists.


What thread? I don't see a thread.


We should start a thread about this "missing" thread
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:39 pm
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chippy
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Axys Denyed wrote:
Varin wrote:
addlepated wrote:
jamesi wrote:
In a true case of irony, I am suspending my disbelief about this thread.

I don't believe this thread exists.


What thread? I don't see a thread.


We should start a thread about this "missing" thread


Obviously its been KI DNAPPED!1
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:49 pm
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enaxor
I Have No Life

Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Posts: 2395
chippy wrote:
Axys Denyed wrote:
Varin wrote:
addlepated wrote:
jamesi wrote:
In a true case of irony, I am suspending my disbelief about this thread.

I don't believe this thread exists.


What thread? I don't see a thread.


We should start a thread about this "missing" thread


Obviously its been KI DNAPPED!1


Time to AIM hkdl and ask for help in finding this missing thread.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 7:11 pm
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konamouse
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Joined: 02 Dec 2002
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 		But there really was stolen art work, and an Audi vehicle, and real people at the auto show!!!

Are you telling me that it was all an ARG HOAX????? Wink
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 7:18 pm
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colin
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Joined: 13 Oct 2003
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 		some people find a website, they believe it.
some people find a website, they questions it, they call it fake or a hoax
some people fins a website, they question it, they find out it's fake, they question why it's made, they start playing the game.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 7:35 pm
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SirQuady
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 		Wait, these aren't real? Shocked Silly
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:57 pm
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Kristofski Kabuki
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 		I should probably say a brief hello first, as I have been a lurker on these boards for a while (I'm writing my dissertation on ARGs) but haven't really posted yet. So:

Hello!

Anyway, on with the post proper...

Phaedra wrote:


If he confronts them and tries to prove he's real, he's obviously going to lose, as he's not real. And losing means, essentially, ceasing to exist as a fictional character: "Oh, I'm just a character in a game? Crap." Where do you go from there?



I was instantly reminded of the book Sophie's World when I read this (spoilers about the book ahead if you haven't read it but think you might). In the book, the world that Sophie lives in becomes more and more crazy, until she discovers that she is just a character in a philosophy textbook that a man is writing for his daughter's birthday. She eventually manages to escape the control of the "major", as they call him. I know that this kind of thing has been done in other places, but that's the only one I can recall right now. I just wanted to point out that just because a character's believeability in reality is undermined, that doesn't necesarilly mean that the character is over. In fact it can be an interesting plot device. Obviously this would have to be worked in from the beginning, as it would be a pretty major part (me and my friend's used to refer to the bit in Sophie's World where you found out the twist the "head f**k" bit, mainly because it started making you think that maybe you were just a character in a book someone was writing).
Anyway, I've said my bit and now I shall hence.
Kristofski x

PostPosted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 12:17 pm
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Pixiestix
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Joined: 26 Aug 2004
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Kristofski Kabuki wrote:
I was instantly reminded of the book Sophie's World when I read this (spoilers about the book ahead if you haven't read it but think you might). In the book, the world that Sophie lives in becomes more and more crazy, until she discovers that she is just a character in a philosophy textbook that a man is writing for his daughter's birthday. She eventually manages to escape the control of the "major", as they call him. I know that this kind of thing has been done in other places, but that's the only one I can recall right now. I just wanted to point out that just because a character's believeability in reality is undermined, that doesn't necesarilly mean that the character is over. In fact it can be an interesting plot device. Obviously this would have to be worked in from the beginning, as it would be a pretty major part (me and my friend's used to refer to the bit in Sophie's World where you found out the twist the "head f**k" bit, mainly because it started making you think that maybe you were just a character in a book someone was writing).
Anyway, I've said my bit and now I shall hence.
Kristofski x


I beg everyone to excuse me - i would have PMd but obviously, this is a guest... Also, i may be a bit on the dumb side {meds are fun}, can anyone dumb that response down? I've read it three times and am blank.
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Remember kiddles, bad PMs get the wrath of the Vulva Puppets
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 12:23 pm
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Phaedra
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Joined: 21 Sep 2004
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Pixiestix wrote:
Kristofski Kabuki wrote:
I was instantly reminded of the book Sophie's World when I read this (spoilers about the book ahead if you haven't read it but think you might). In the book, the world that Sophie lives in becomes more and more crazy, until she discovers that she is just a character in a philosophy textbook that a man is writing for his daughter's birthday. She eventually manages to escape the control of the "major", as they call him. I know that this kind of thing has been done in other places, but that's the only one I can recall right now. I just wanted to point out that just because a character's believeability in reality is undermined, that doesn't necesarilly mean that the character is over. In fact it can be an interesting plot device. Obviously this would have to be worked in from the beginning, as it would be a pretty major part (me and my friend's used to refer to the bit in Sophie's World where you found out the twist the "head f**k" bit, mainly because it started making you think that maybe you were just a character in a book someone was writing).
Anyway, I've said my bit and now I shall hence.
Kristofski x


I beg everyone to excuse me - i would have PMd but obviously, this is a guest... Also, i may be a bit on the dumb side {meds are fun}, can anyone dumb that response down? I've read it three times and am blank.


There's a character named Sophie.

Her world gets stranger and stranger.

Eventually she discovers that her world is strange because she's just a character in a philosophy textbook.

Eventually she manages to escape control of the author, becoming, I gather, "real."

Does that help? Smile
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 12:25 pm
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