The Future is Now - Scan this Picture

Hey there Friends and Neighbors!   One thing we like to do at Tales to Astonish is expose you the reader to new and awesome things.   Enjoy.

Mass communications is a world of fast moving theories and steady proven theorems.  Practices and procedures have been evolving over the centuries as fast as the technology around us advances.  The mass communications industry has to quickly adapt to the alterations in the landscape of consumer awareness.  Innovation is the key to survival in the business.  One of the most important ways to stay innovative is to captivate the audience.  Many techniques have been used over the years, some with great success and others have been equally abysmal as failures.  One of the most recent trends utilized by mass communication purveyors is the public fascination with games and puzzles.  More and more the population is looking to expand their standard consumption of media with a greater emersion into the subject; one way that has proven to be quite successful in this endeavor is the ARG, or Alternate Reality Game. 

            Historically speaking, games and extras have played an important part in the media consumption of our society for a long time.  The familiar crossword puzzle in the newspaper for example is a classic extrapolation of the use of this tactic.  While some may not buy the paper simply for the crossword puzzle, there exists a contingent of the populace that is drawn to the paper for the crossword every issue.  This type of emersion has also been seen in the form of free samples that would offer – at no extra charge – an example of what to expect from a product.  More than simply an advertisement consisting of pictures and descriptions, the consumer is exposed to the scent of some new cologne on a scratch off panel or a small package of the new flavor of cereal to taste what the ad offers.  Still another example of this offers the consumer a chance to learn more about a product or a chance to win a prize by inputting a code found underneath a bottle cap or hidden in a package of flavored tortilla chips.

            The marketers of today have more tools in their arsenal than ever before.  The newest weapon in the battle for consumer attention is the ARG.   Alternative Reality Games incorporate many diverse mediums into the game, even going so far as to utilize the entire real life world of the consumer.  As ARGology.com explains “Instead of requiring the player to enter a fictional game world, ARG designers attempt to enmesh the game within the fabric of the player’s real world by harnessing as many media technologies and interfaces as possible. By doing so, ARGs expand the frame for the game beyond the computer monitor or television screen, effectively making the entire world the “game board.”  

Alternative Reality Games have sprouted up over the past decade and are becoming more prevalent.  Whilst their roots are based in the classic methods, these new games utilize emerging technology and social engineering in fascinating ways.  The internet proliferation into our everyday lives makes this process much easier.  Game synergy is practically tailor made for marketing over the internet; since the outcome of the game can be fashioned Children were arguably the first to see this type of gaming used.  Children’s magazines and cereal boxes often would divert those lucky children who would correctly solve a riddle on the cereal box or magazine ad to a website with more information or a printable certificate. 

            Today’s Alternative Reality Games are much more complicated.  As complicated and diverse as the games may become, so too have the uses for such games.  Not simply games for entertainment’s sake, the newer ARGs are also force of marketing potential, political awareness and activism, advertising for products and finally an expansion for the fan culture of movies and television. 

            Marketing methods are extremely common place and are the most traditional gaming fashion.  Websites that are directed from pages may link players to participate in a game that features characters from a product’s marketing mix.  The winner of this game is often granted a coupon for a discount on the product.  More adventurous marketing ARGs grant statistics for continued, loyal patronage.  A key example of this is found in the smart phone apps that have become very common.   Apps like Foursquare, for example, allow users to log in on their phone to a virtual checkpoint at local businesses.  With enough check-ins at a particular venue, the player can become the “Mayor” of that business.  Other players can then check-in more often and oust the mayor to become mayor themselves.  The application itself offers no reward for becoming mayor, nor does it grant any benefit from playing whatsoever.  The businesses need not even be aware that they are listed in the app’s database.  Still, many businesses who have become aware of the trend offer bonuses or discounts to those who check-in and become mayor.  This marketing makes the whole world a giant scavenger hunt, offering participants fun and possible rewards from a simple game.  The marketing potential for this app has only been partially explored at the moment.

            Political awareness and activism is another method that has been explored by use of ARGs.  The World Without Oil ARG offered educational avenues for the players and was used by educators to expose students to a possible scenario.  “In May 2007, over 1,800 people combined imagination with insight to create World Without Oil (WWO), a realistic simulation of the first 32 weeks of a global oil shortage chronicled in 1,500 personal blog posts, videos, images and voicemails. Via these lesson plans, high school teachers can use this collaborative grassroots simulation to engage students with questions about energy use, sustainability, the role energy plays in our economy, culture, worldview and history, and many others.”  This activism was picked up and promoted by thousands of players who promoted the ARG without further prompt from the creators.  Faster than traditional methods, this game offered a new way to get the message out.  “The breadth and depth of content is staggering. Yes, much was generated by the game masters, but there are now 143,000 Google hits for "world without oil," the majority of which are player-generated blogs, live journals, photo pages, videos, you name it. On an early game week, week 14, I counted over 35 player-submitted photos, stories, and missions (actions to try to address the crisis). Overall, about 60,000 interacted with WWO resources during the game, 1,871 of whom actively contributed content.” Similar results were had to coincide with the release of the band Nine Inch Nails’ album “Year Zero” and the accompanying ARG.  This game promoted a dystopian view about the future.  “It’s this Orwellian ideology and unfolding Web mythology that has had NIN devotees salivating and provoked to play amateur sleuths. Fan sites like Echoingthesound.org andTheNinhotline.com, and even newly created Ninwiki.com, have been deluged with so many comments and regular updates on new findings, that they’ve had to shut down to increase bandwidth for brief periods at a time.” 

            The world of advertisement has seen use of ARG elements as well.  The bar code scanning technology has been around for some time; however, ARG creators have utilized it in a new way this holiday season.   The rise of smart phones has led to new applications being designed for the purposes of advertising games.  One such app is Scanlife, which is used to link print ads that incorporate a barcode to a website wherein consumers can witness video and greater amounts of information about the products advertised.  The Target stores have issued their annual holiday Toy Wishbook, of which several ads feature a small new form of barcode.  This code can be scanned using Scanlife or a similar app on their mobile smart phone.  When scanned, the user sees a video showing the toy in action.  This type of advertising greatly adds to the potential of any piece of print advertising by synergizing with the website.  Less space needs to be taken up with descriptions of the product, as the longer form video online can explain that.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, the video linked is worth a billion.  An ad that might have required the advertiser to take out a full page can be placed on a quarter-page.  This results in more bang for the buck for advertisers, as the costs are decreased all across the board.

            Movies and television are able to use ARGs to expose the viewers to much more than they were have been.  With costs for air time and controls put in force by the FCC and other organizations limiting content, every second of aired content must be scrutinized.  This is being challenged somewhat by the ARG market, however, as expanded content can be accessed through these ARG events.   A case study here can be made for the marketing that was used for the 2008 movie “The Dark Knight.”  Prior to the release of the movie, well before even the trailers hit, avid fans were treated to a game to see what was coming.  The ARG involved the Joker character sending puzzles and riddles for keen observers.  One such event happened around Halloween.  “The campaign to promote the new Batman movie started in May with a handful of Joker playing cards discovered in a California comic book store, and led to a massive email campaign to reveal the new face of the Joker. Later in July, strange dollar bills were distributed at Comic-Con that led 140 lucky participants on a scavenger hunt throughout the city of San Diego. Now, it appears the scavenger hunt has expanded on a national scale as participants are encouraged to solve a series of puzzles and send in photographs.”  Players were later given even more challenges as the movie premier became more imminent.  Another challenge was quite rewarding as noted when players were given addresses online; “Players quickly determined that the addresses were bakeries, strewn across the United States. At first, six addresses were attached to dirty stuffed animals hanging in the booth… Within five hours, all twenty-two addresses had been revealed, as players scrambled to each location to pick up the 'treat'…It was discovered that the Joker had left cakes at each bakery, and lo and behold, the cakes had phone numbers written on them in icing! Even more interesting was how, when the number was called, the cake itself rang! Players found that after digging furiously into the cake, there was an evidence bag filled with goodies - a cell phone and charger, a Joker playing card, and a note which instructed the person to call a different phone number.

Once all the cakes had been found and the phones had been used to call the new numbers, the game page opened to reveal the new Batman: Dark Knight movie poster, and another special treat - invitations to IMAX screenings in five cities (New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Toronto) on Thursday and Friday night, Dec 6th and 7th.”

            Marketing results have proven that these games are quite effective in the development.  Statistics for views and participation show a great deal of interest in ARG events.  As Christy Dena says “You don’t have an audience, you have audiences over different platforms.  Your audiences have different platform preferences; Use platforms contextually.”  Statistics for “I love bees” the Halo release ARG event show clearly the cultural usage of ARGs in graphical format.  ‘Based on the Halo fiction, ilovebees was an original radio drama that was deconstructed and delivered to consumers over an unlikely broadcast medium: ringing payphones. ilovebees was a giant multi-player, multi-platform story, immersing players in the world of Halo2 in the four months leading up to the title’s record shattering launch … 10,000+ participated in the pervasive missions (real world challenges) … 600,000 online players … ILoveBees.com logged 80 million hits …1 million+ tracked blog and forum posts and comments … Answered over 40,000 payphones in 50 states & 8 countries, over 4 months … Sold 2.38 million units [of Halo 2] in the 24 hours in the United States and Canada.”  

Alternative Reality Games are definitely going to play a large role in the future of Mass Media.  Of the ARG, ’I love bees’ a summary is noted “"I think it's a new form of interactive entertainment that is still in its infancy," Steve Peters, who runs ARGN, the leading clearinghouse for information and discussion about alternate-reality games, said of I Love Bees. "It's a new way of storytelling. We've had novels and movies, and these things kind of blur the lines of fiction and in some ways invade the real world." It is without a doubt the most revolutionary adaptation of technology in the mass media for the 21^st Century. 

Be Excellent to Each Other,

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~BAT