A long time ago in an ARG far far away…

…a payphone rang. Quite a few payphones, actually. As an integral part of the award-winning I Love Bees Alternate Reality Game, a War-of-the-Worlds-esque radio drama played out on payphones around the world. Players drove miles, sometimes crossing international borders, sometimes braving hurricanes and even ridicule to be at a payphone at the appointed time in order to have a chance at answering it, unlocking story content for everyone online, and perhaps even getting to talk to an actual rampant AI from the future.

Are we but marketing sheep??

In another instance, people gathered in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to take part in an Anti-Robot Militia (ARM) rally. Puzzles were put together (literally), actors were interacted with, info was shared with those online, enduring friendships formed. All in order to lead online players to new websites to further the story.

Elsewhere, players descended on a cybercafe in Chicago, a shop in Las Vegas, a gazebo in Florida, all looking for a hidden CD-ROM full of scanned documents, photos, sound files. All in order to help find a distraught mother’s missing hacker son.

Why did people do this? Why did they spend their valuable time heading off to a place sometimes pretty far out of their way (maybe enduring border searches), to take part in what was, at least to many people, just a giant advertising campaign?

For the answer, look at what the above events had in common:

  • Unlock story content for everyone
  • Interact with story characters
  • Get information to provide to story characters to move the story along

You notice what’s missing from these examples? Stuff We All Get. SWAG. Tchotchkes. These folks didn’t go to all this trouble to just get a poster or a t-shirt. They did it for the story. And for the community. And for the fun. Sure, players love the SWAG (don’t we all?). but I’ve lately been witnessing numerous high profile incidents of, well, Swag Without Substance. And this is sort of alarming to me, as it seems like it’s becoming a trend. I’d almost say it’s becoming formulaic, but that’s for another post (watch for “The Six Steps that Make an ARG….Apparently”, coming soon to a blog near you).

A couple of months ago, while at the Transmedia: Hollywood panel at USC, a young man wearing a T-shirt from a current viral campaign approached me. He said that he was pretty heavily involved in this experience, and was finding himself pretty disappointed in that, while the events were cool (he had recently gone to a location to Do Something for the game), they didn’t mean anything as far as the story was concerned. He wanted to know what I thought about that, to which I suggested that maybe he contact somebody at the company behind the campaign. We did exchange contact information, and I told him I’d be interested to hear about his continuing experiences.

A few weeks later, I heard back from him. Here is some of his email to me, which I share with his permission, (with the details filed off):

Hi Steve,

This is [xxxx]; we met at the ‘TransMedia’ event at USC.  Sorry for how late this email is; but I’ve been extremely busy.  I’m still keeping up with the [xxxxx] ARG, and was at the [recent] event.  Did you hear about the event? About a 3rd down the page it talks about a question I asked …and how it was used [in the game]; which was pretty awesome.

But what I found disappointing was the fact that there was no benefit to physically being there!  I enjoyed being there, don’t get me wrong.  I liked [xxxx], and the [xxxx] was cool (but silly), but the whole event lacked meaning for the players.  A lot of people put in considerable effort to be there and it was all unnecessary.  We got some neat schwag, but no clues!  What do you think about this?

A cool point, though, was the sense of community.  I carpooled with 3 strangers down there and we all had a good time and got to know each other.  The guy who had the car got big [xxxx] decals and we acted the part; telling people it was an employee car and staying in character.  We ran into the director, producer, and 2 writers for the film and showed them the car.  So it was definitely a worthwhile experience, but I still think that if they are going to ask people to go to a physical location, it should be meaningful.

On a completely different note, the [xxxx] they handed out were from [a previous event] and still had the [xxxx] clues on them.  So my group wasted hours acquiring a [xxxx] and trying to communicate with others about the clues until someone pointed out we had wasted our time.

Anyway, what do you think about how they handled the event?

OK, first the good part: Notice the thing that *was* a success for him: The Community. He hung out with three people who began as strangers, but became friends through the shared experience. When an ARG or Transmedia Experience is done well, this is the major byproduct. I personally know of many enduring friendships (and even a few weddings) from ARGs  that took place almost ten years ago, myself included (the friendship part, not the wedding part).

But now, the not-so-good parts: The feeling that there was really no purpose in being at the live event, the lack of consideration for giving some sort of meaningful payoff for actually being there. He wanted new clues and information, something he could find and share with the community, only to be given leftovers from a previous event. In my response to him, I tried to address his frustrations by explaining how sometimes big-picture design decisions can take precedence over the individual player experiences they create. Weighing the “prize” against the effort, etc. can sometimes get lost against how much buzz and press something will create for a project. But in trying to defend it, I found myself getting frustrated as well. And I guess that’s the main rub for me.

Because it became very clear to me that if you’re not careful, your Player Interaction can become Player Exploitation.

And I don’t ever want to be guilty of that.

See, merely building huge machines that give away SWAG isn’t enough. There has to be a there there, ya know? Otherwise the experience ends up feeling hollow, like my friend’s above. Maybe it’s because I started as a player. All I know is that, too often, I’ve found myself being one of the lone voices trying to advocate for the actual people taking part in an experience, but I hope something like this post will spur discussion and maybe shift the pendulum a little, even though, to be clear, a lot of developers out there ARE getting it right (and hopefully you know who you are).

Now don’t get me wrong. Effective buzz and designing a good player experience and even SWAG don’t have to be mutually exclusive (the game The Art of the Heist not only had players meet up with a surreal German mime* on a boat, but also gave away Palm Treos to those who did). A big part of the reason for live events is to create press and buzz about the project (and by extension what it may be promoting, if anything).

But don’t lose sight of what the experience will be for those who actually show up to be part of this big spectacular thing. Don’t lose sight of the larger audience online who can’t be there in person. Give them something too. Best yet, let them be able to play a part in it, somehow.

Design your experience for your audience, first and foremost. Don’t design for buzz at the expense of the players, the fans, the deeply committed people who love what you’re doing so much they’re willing to put a lot of time and effort into being there. Because if they had a great time, they’ll tell everyone they know. They’ll blog about it. They’ll post pictures and videos. They’ll become truly engaged. They’ll become your biggest asset.

When things get to this point, The Industry likes to call these people Brand Evangelists.

I like to call them Happy. :)

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Photo courtesy of vteen’s Flickr.

*why do there always have to be mimes??