Margie Benson

August 21st
10:13 PM

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LITERATURE INFLUENCES

My initial idea for an ARG was inspired by reading R. (Roc) Ogilvie Crombie’s book, Meeting Fairies: My Remarkable Encounters with Nature Spirits. In it he recounts in great detail his love of nature and grounding in science with conversations he’s had with nature spirits during his many walks in a Scottish garden. As a reader it is a compelling and immersive story, one that presents nature spirits as real, rather than imaginary beings.

To find out more about nature spirits I looked to Graham Harvey’s book Animism: Respecting the Living World. This is a book that defines the relationship between people and nature spirits as that of animism. He explains, “Animists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others.”

Following on, the next book provided me with a little more detail on the practice of storytelling traditions. R. J. Stewart’s Magical Tales: The Story-Telling Tradition outlines the importance of magical tales for spiritual health. This book provides a process for understanding and creating magical works that are far from fantasy fiction – instead it is about creating “an alternative way into the realms of imaginative or magical transformation”.

7:27 PM

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Creating an ARG

I’m interested in learning how to use interactive media to host narratives that carry multi-layered meanings as I believe richer, more colourful and more representative ways of knowing cultures can be presented. It is an interest I have pursued throughout my career in media, arts and tourism, but more diligently with my studies of Indigenous culture in film-induced tourism. Now I am interested in learning how design spaces using multi-narratives and multi-media can be positively used to disrupt the way one culture is seen and understood by another. One of the most frequent misrepresentations relates to relationships between people and nature. Often depictions of these relationships, which involve tales of non-human interaction, are portrayed as childlike. Stories of elemental beings – such as fairies and gnomes, or ancestral beings, who are seen in the form of inanimate objects such as water or rocks, are dismissed as fictitious. According to Harvey (2005) the belief in such a worldview is called animism. He explains that there are many cultures and individuals throughout the world who believe that humans “share this world with a wide range of persons, only some of whom are human” (Harvey, 2005 p.xi). To believe or not believe comes down to an individual’s worldview, that is, how one or multiple realities are seen and understood. Arguably the same concept of viewing and understanding a particular reality can be seen in alternate reality games. I’ve challenged myself to use my ARG to test this concept – to create an interactive game that in some way represents multiple realities.

A BETTER WORLD

I’d like to produce an ARG that encourages people to feel empowered to interpret the world as it makes sense to them. To have the choice to think without hidden constraints reflects a culture that values and respects difference. I believe this creates A Better World.

IT’S A CHALLENGE

Being pretty clear about what I want to learn, and how I’d like to go about it, has been relatively straightforward. The challenge has been trying to develop a mostly ethereal narrative into something tangible, set in real time, is interactive and of interest to players.

August 19th
1:52 AM

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Find the Future ARG

I’m new to alternate reality games, but even so I’ve pretty quickly come to realise how extensive they are in film, television series, and music. I’ve also noticed ARG’s are successfully used (or seemingly anyway) to extend or enhance audience participation, interpretation and customer loyalty.

Find the Future is one example. In May 2011 the New York Public Library launched this year long ARG with an invitation only event –a chance to be one of the 500 people chosen for its punchy game kick off event - Write all Night.

The creative director of the project is renowned game designer and researcher Jane McGonigal (I Love Bees) who along with husband Kiyash Monsef, credited as the story director, have delivered on the library’s goal to create a “space for active creation and social collaboration” (NYPL).

The setting and the timing of this ARG within the library and overnight lock-in, is an example of what Murray (1997) describes as immersive: “the sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality”. Even though the physical experience of Write all Night was limited to the select few, the event itself appears to have generated an immersive experience for online players that continues well past the one day event.

Those fortunate 500 to have been selected for Write all Night were tasked with a quest to find 100 objects within the library and collectively, write a book about those documents. This event, whilst most prominent, was actually the launch of the ARG itself. What follows throughout the rest of this year is the bulk of the game, coordinated by a central website at http://game.nypl.org. Here, players progress through a series of stages as they search the collection online, solve puzzles and find clues to complete quests using smartphones, library computers and the website. Once the quests are completed, the player has a published ‘artifact’ story. This type of result, that is more than simply participating or acting, and provides players with tangible results, is what Murray (1997) describes as agency.

1:44 AM

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Source

Find the Future at the New York Public Library Game Trailer (by findthefuturegame)