What are alternate reality games?

that sounds even worse. Yes, apparently you have to get to Cairo by midnight. That doesn't but I have improv workshop tonight. That's it's too late. That's all improvise. UM. So you might be wondering what we were just doing. I was because we didn't talk about that before I started recording. I just sort of thought about it based on the topic that we picked for to right, the topic that was suggested by a listener. So let me read this and introduce is a brand new segment. Yes, ready,

it's listener tweets. Yes, this listener tweet comes from Emily, and Emily, aside from being totally awesome, said I think we need a podcast on alternate reality games, and I agree, Emily. So this is it. We're gonna talk about alternate reality games, which are a very interesting, sometimes peculiar, incredibly addictive form of gaming. It's also considered a form of marketing in

a lot of instances. Well, yeah, there are a lot of a lot of the alternate reality games that are out there are actually part of some sort of marketing uh strategy. As a matter of fact, the very first one I read about, the very first one. There was one that went before the major one, but there's one that's credited as starting off the entire uh fad. So but we'll we'll get into that first. Let's kind of try and explain what reality game is. This a little complicated,

all right. So you've got role playing games, and in role playing games, you take on the role of a character living in some other world and you try to have that character achieve certain goals and achieve certain tasks, um, in very in some format. Yeah, and um, the point of a role playing game is to imagine what it's

like to be that person. So, I mean, if you're playing somebody who may not be able to smell very well, and you get in a situation where everyone else might smell something deadly like you, yeah, but you totally don't notice because you can't smell well exactly, thanks, but I'm saying, you know, you have to imagine what it's like to be in that person's shoes, and so you might know. They might say the person who's running a game might say, you know, this deadly thing is waiting around the corner

for you know, what are you gonna do? And you have to go, well, you know, my character has no idea that that's there. What am I know? My character would walk through the door because he doesn't know what's going on, right, and everyone else is saying, no, leroy, no, he's back Lee Rod Jenkins. Um. Yeah. The so the idea behind a role playing game again is that you're playing a role and there are all yes, exactly, there are all sorts of role playing games there. You know.

Of course, Dungeons and Dragons is the one that that people bust out all the time because it was sort of the role playing game. Um, it was certainly played a very important part in my childhood. And then there's those you know, role playing games that they get you to do for a team building and you're, you know, company when the stairs and go. Okay, so you're trying to sell your car, right? Those are far more fun than No, okay, no they're not. No, they're not fun

at all. Please stop doing that. I used to work for a company that used to do those. Um yeah, I'm not proud of that. So alternate reality games, it's different. That's slightly different. Now. Alternate reality games what they do is they span two worlds. There's a fantasy world in which the game is actually kind of a real a real thing, all right, and then there's the real world where it's a game. It's yeah, that's the whole point of the alternate reality game. So let's say, let me

give you an example. I'll give you the example. The first game that really launched alternate reality games, which was commonly known as The Beast. Now. The Beast was part of a viral marketing campaign for the movie AI, the Kubrick Spielberg film with um, what's his face in it? Haley Joe Osmond? M Um, well, where's he been anyway? So Haley Joe Osmond playing this little robot character blah

blah blah. Really interesting. Kubrick's last film, uh, What got a lot of people interested in this movie, wasn't the preview, wasn't the poster? Well kind of wise, but for the reason Head gears, it's because there were little clues left behind that something weird was connected to this movie, and the the marketers kind of took a big gamble, uh and hoped that people would notice the weird stuff and that that would precipitate this alternate reality game. And it did.

If you looked at the poster, if you looked at the credits that were listed on the previews, you started to see odd little messages, and by putting it together, you began to find out that there was a murder mystery connected to this world that the movie is about. If you played a little bit longer, you would discover that the mystery exists in a world that's forty years after the main events of the film. AI all right, so, uh, you know that's the mystery inhabits this this fictional world old.

But as you start to play, you begin to have an impact on this fictional world, and ultimately you begin to be able to contact people within this fictional world and they can contact you, and you become an active participant in a game that again exists in a in a world of fantasy, but it's bled over into the world of reality to the point where some people playing the game might get a phone call or a text message or facts three in the morning and it would

have something to do with this game, and then by following the instructions or solving a puzzle, they would get further along and get one step closer to solving the mystery. So it's completely immersive. It is incredibly immersive in a way. It kind of changes your life into an action movie because you become a character who, through your actions, you can make a big impact on this this story, and it feels like you're suddenly in the Bourne identity or something.

It's amazing because you know, you get the feeling like you're really important. Yeah, you're no longer some person who's just saying they're looking at a computer. You're helping solve a murder. Yeah. Yeah, and I imagine it. It's no good for productivity either, probably not, And it was really not good from my product. Let's say that, all right, So let me let me give a few more um definitions before we get too far. So within the game, you have the people who are running the game, and

they're commonly known as puppet masters. Now, these are the people who know the storyline. They know the the route that the story is supposed to take that's important to note supposed to take, and they know the solutions to the puzzles that they are giving out, and they know what the next logical steps should be once you figure out the puzzle. So they're the ones running the game. They're kind of the game master or dungeon master that we would think of in a in a role playing game,

you have the curtain. The curtain is the the veil that covers the puppet masters, right, so it's essentially the the level of of obscurity the puppet masters put up so that players don't see behind the curtains see how the game works, and therefore solve the game unfairly. Actually, I heard UM. I heard I read as I was doing my research for this podcast that UM that curtain is is basically critical to the game and because otherwise, without UM, it basically has to take itself very seriously,

because otherwise the illusion is ruined. Even if even if it's not necessarily promotional vehicle as not tied, if it's just a game. If it if it stops taking itself seriously and you can actually see what's going on, it's it's a lot more fun if you take it, if you pretend that you're part of this work exactly, it's I would I would say that it's almost exactly the same thing as being able to enjoy a magic trick. Now, if you're watching a magic trick and you're enjoying it,

you know that there's a trick there. You know there's an lusion, there's some sort of misdirection, there's something going on that is tricking you so that the effect that's being achieved appears to be magical, but deep down you know that it's not really magic. And you could find out how it works, and then you might be able to appreciate the skill with which the magician executes the trick, but it's not magical anymore because now you know how it works. And the same thing with these games, once

you know how they work. Um, it's kind of like putting in a cheat code for a computer game. You you you know there's no challenge there, there's no art to it anymore. For you. It's just mechanics at that point. Um, not the most interesting thing to see, although I will say running one of these games has to be one of the most stressful, time consuming things I can imagine. Um.

I was reading a Sean Stewart's website. He was instrumental in creating The Beast, and he said it was extremely stressful because they were trying to come up with things on the fly and he was having to write all kinds of parts for all kinds of people, uh, you know, and they would they would give him a call and say, well, we need you know, uh, you know, this particular thing, and he's going, all right, well, I'll get on there.

He said it was very stressful, but it was kind of fun at the same time, because you know, it was all part of this big puzzle and they were sort of making it up as they went along because the needs of the game kind of well it turns out. It turns out just like role playing games. If any of you out there have ever run a role playing game, I'm not talking about playing, and I'm talking about being

the game master. You know that players have this nasty habit of coming up with plans that you never considered while you were designing the game. And what's worse is when you come up with a group of players who come up with a plan that should work, but you didn't think about it, and then you're thinking, okay, well,

i've got two choices here. I throw out my planned stuff because it no longer applies, and I run with what they've got and I just make up the rest on the fly, or I didn't eye them their plan, which in all fairness should work. Now, if you do the second choice, that really tends to upset players because they're they're thinking, well, now the stuff I do doesn't matter.

It's not that what I do affects the game. It's that I have to be led to a very specific linear path and if I stray from that, then the game does not progress. That's not much fun because really that's just you know, that's just trying to find your your path in a dark room. That's not a whole lot of challenge to that. It's just irritating. But if you do the second the first way, rather where you adapt to what the players say, that's a lot more

fun for the players. It results in going gray very early, or if you're me, losing your hair because I would say that was a contributing factor among several but yeah, yeah. Sean Stewart said that the players were often very quick and very clever with their responses, so they had to hard to stay ahead. Well that, yeah, that's the worst part is you come up with a puzzle where you're you're sure that's gonna take the players days to figure it out, and then they figure it out in a

matter of hours. But we'll get into that as well. I'll explain why that happens in a second. Uh. Some other interesting little um terms and I'm getting these, by the way, from Cloudmaker's dot org, which is where you can find the entire Beast. Yes, cloud www dot Cloudmaker's dot org. Slash trail will give you a full outline and description of the entire Beast storyline. And it is epic.

And I played in this game. This was and I was part of the cloudmakers um and the way some of the other terms they use, lurkers, that's that's the term for someone who is watching the game but not participating, but they're they're interested, they just don't either feel like they can contribute, or for some other reason they don't they don't want to contribute, so they just watch they're

just watching the developments and they're fat snay. But and there were times where I was more of a lurker than a participant, mostly because my skills just were not up to par with the puzzles. Um well, lurky here. Yeah, then there are rubber neckers. Rubber Neckers will participate in puzzles and they will try and solve things, but they don't want to take that extra step to become part of the game world. So they don't want to necessarily

register their phone number or their email address. Uh, they don't want to make a phone call or stand outside of a strip mall next to a pay phone and wait for that phone to ring so that they can get the next clue. Wh wouldn't you want to do that? What? I would say that, it's just, you know, that's a that's a step that some people just aren't willing to take.

And I'm sure you can't even identify with that. Collette. Well, there are no pay phones anymore, no, but back when they were, um so yeah, that like in The Beast or or I Love Bees is another one there were I Love Bees was the Halo two? Uh a r G fantastic a RG by the Way loved. I love Bees love the Beast too, I love I think both of those were amazing, amazing games. Um And like I said, it must have driven people crazy trying to keep those

up to speed. But they use things like payphones where at a specific time, if you were next to that payphone, it would ring and you would get the next piece of the puzzle. Um okay. Another term that cloudmakers use meltdown. Meltdowns are bad. A meltdown is when a game totally implodes because of some sort of problem, usually because one of the puppet masters has decided to reveal the curtain and show how the game works. Or it maybe that

perhaps the company that's behind the a r G has collapsed. Um, it may be that the person who is running the game has had a mental breakdown and no longer wants to do that. But at any rate, it's it's when a game goes away before its conclusion. And that's that's pretty traumatic for players because players get sucked up in

these worlds. They really want to, um to get to the conclusion, because I mean, you know, you're personally involved at this point, you feel like you're part of this bigger thing and therefore you want to see it to its conclusion and when it when it ends up collapsing, it's not satisfying at all. So that's a big issue. Hopefully, if you do play an a ARG it doesn't suffer meltdown because people get really you know, they're they're pouring

hours of their lives into these games. Uh. There's another term they use is rabbit hole, which is the initial thing that gets you into the game. Reference to yes, and it could be everything from a movie poster with an odd you know, there's like a phrase that's circled on it and you're thinking, why is that circled? Or it maybe that you're watching a preview and you see something flash on the screen really quickly and when you

slow it down you see that it's a website. Or it could be that you go to a website that someone has sent you a link to and it behaves oddly. It could be anything like that and uh, but it's it's the the hook that gets you into the game. Um. And then another great term, which this is not unique to cloudmakers, is steganography. That's the art of hiding a message in something else, and it could be anything. It could be hiding a message by using a specific color

pellette in a picture. It could be that you've hidden it in the HTML code for a web page. So uh, it's something that codebreakers have to pay attention to. I mean, people who who break codes for a living. Steganography, that's a that's actually a way of passing secret messages. It's spy stuff, which is also why this is cool. Yep, um yeah, I was just lost my train of thought.

Um yeah, I mean that's one of the cool things about, uh, these games is that these the game is broken down and there's so many different pieces and I think probably the Internet this is not the kind of thing that could have happened my before the Internet age, because there are so many other venues, uh, you know, websites and message boards and all kinds of online venues inside which you can you can really get involved where I mean the phone. You might before you might have the phone.

You know, you'd have print, um, but there just weren't as many opportunities for people to you know, uh, stick different messages out there. And that's one of those things. I mean, their videos and all kinds of things where they break down parts of the game, which just makes it that much more complex. Yeah, I mean there there are definitely precursors to a r g S, like scavenger hunts would be fun or geo cash ing or um, there are lots of you know, just various letter boxing.

That's another good one. Actually, letter boxing is probably one of the closer ones to a r g S. But the you know, the the a r G gets so complex and so involved that I think it goes beyond all of those. And like you said, the Internet is really instrumental, and that's also instrumental for the players being able to solve the puzzles, as these puzzles often are really complex, and then they're not just complex, but they're very specific as to the set of skills you need

to solve it. So, for instance, and I love bees, there were some puzzles that required you to have a pretty extensive knowledge of literature, which was awesome for me. I was like whoo, because I was a literal literature major in college, so um, I felt like I could really contribute to that one. But then there would be other puzzles where it would be a bunch of blocks and different colors, and I had no idea what it meant.

And later on we figured out that the different colors corresponded to different heights and that the boxes were actually a top down view of a city escape and if you decoded it and then plotted it in three D and rotated at ninety degrees so you're looking at the city, you would see a skyline. But I never would have figured that out, and I was just like colored blocks. Why okay, wait, no, two yellows are touching? Does that

mean something? No, it didn't mean anything at all. Um. But the reason why the Internet is important is that it allowed communities to spring up around these games, like Cloudmakers. Now, the cloudmakers were able to that almost sound like clown makers. Cloud makers. Clown Makers are totally different. Yeah, they all drive in the same car. They're annoying. Yes, so cloud Makers. This was a community community that sprung up around the beast.

And the nice thing about the online community was that you didn't have to worry if your skill set wasn't strong enough to tackle a specific puzzle, because you could be sure someone in that group had the skills. And as the group grew, it just meant that the the skills of the group increased. It's kind of like we suddenly became the most intelligent human being on the face

of the planet. You know, no individual person in that group was the most intelligent person on the planet, but collectively we made an incredibly difficult opponent for the puzzlemakers. The term that Cloudmakers used for it was the collective detective, because as a group we could solve any puzzle in a matter of hours, sometimes a matter of minutes after

it went live. There are people who had developed scripts to crawl the web and search for new material as soon as it went up, and so as soon as it went up, people are like, new puzzle, and then thirty minutes later it solved it, and then it was like, I can't believe the next part of the puzzle is not up, whereas the puppet masters are like, holy crap. We worked for two weeks on that, we have to get a new piece up now. So um yeah, I mean that it was an ongoing battle between the community

and the puppet masters. And the puppet masters, I have to say for both the Beast and I love Bees in particular, we're really good most of the time, and any opportunity for the people to participate and make contact with characters in the a r G made it even more special because it's suddenly felt like you really like, now you really have had an impact because you've talked to a real, live human being. And granted that real live human being is playing a character, but you feel

like you've just done something. There was a point in UH I think it was the Beast where there was a security guard in the Statue of Liberty and if you solved a puzzle, it would give you a phone number, and it was supposed to be it was the security guard's phone number. So the first time someone called the number, because we weren't sure it was a phone number at first.

First time, I was watching while this was happening. First time someone called it, they said the person picked up on the other end said it was the Statue of Liberty. I hung up because they freaked out. But then the next person called it and say they said it was the Statue of Liberty, and that the Statue of Liberty is closed on Tuesdays, but it's not really closed on Tuesdays. And it was through that that we began to figure out, oh, wait, this is the Statue of Liberty that exists in the

world of AI. So then we figured out, Oh, the security guard actually is a character, and we had to give him a pep talk and convince them to rush into another room and rescue another fictional character who was being tortured at the time. And because we did that, the one fictional characters saved the life of another fictional character,

and we all felt good about ourselves. Yeah. I mean, we didn't actually affect any real change in the real world, but because we felt like we had done something cool, we were like, hey, I saved someone's life. Not really, it was all in that game, but it felt like that. For the reason why I think these games are so addictive, you know, it gives you the feeling that you're really living out this adventure. Well, yeah, I mean, there have to be a payoff other than you find out something

about the movie. Right. Actually, you know, here's the other game is that the game continued after the movie came out, and in fact, there were a lot of people who felt, um, myself included. Now this is just an opinion, of course, that the game was superior to the movie, and um, the game actually got to the point where it started bringing up some really interesting concepts, like if robots had artificial intelligence. Uh, should we give them the right to vote?

And I you know me, I'm a you know I'm no, clearly not a robot. I was saying. I was gonna say, I'm I'm you know that that human rights you know, Pinko COMI liberals sort of type person. Uh, can you guess how I voted? Um? Uh no on the subject. Did I vote for robot rights or did I vote against it? Um? I'd have vote for robot You are wrong, sir. I argued strenuously that robots should not be given the right to vote. In fact, I argued that giving them AI in the first place was the wrong way to go.

You don't give a toaster the right to vote. That was my point. Yeah, and p I was not popular in that group. There were other people who agreed with me, and and I had a really long drawn out answer to that. That's the sort of thing these games inspire you to do is think about things that uh you normally wouldn't think about and then develop really long arguments about them. So uh so, yeah, it's definitely a time suck. Yeah.

I checked into Uh, I checked into it a little bit more, and uh, it's turning into something that people are studying in college. Um, there are books on Amazon and other places. Um, that's where I initially ran across them about creating arcs and you know all kinds of Um just it's it's apparently spawned this whole movement of people who are interested in, you know, creating new games

and trying to to do this. So I had the feeling that there's just going to be more of these in the future, whether they're you know, used as guerilla marketing techniques or just for the heck of it. Yeah.

I mean, we we've seen several other guerilla marketing techniques take place, like the wy So Serious game that was part of the Dark Night, or say Frenzied Waters which was part of Shark Week for Discovery that was kind of an a r G. It was it was a r G light, but it was it was still in the a r G arena because it blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. UM so yeah, I agree, we're gonna see them both us as viral marketing and we're

going to see them as a standalone gaming industry. I think now the question is whether or not you can find a way to create an a RG that people are willing to pay for, or you can monetize in some other way to make it worth your while, because otherwise you just have hobbyists who are, you know, enthusiastic and great people, but they are essentially giving their free time to create these things because without the money behind it,

you really can't support it for very long. Right, Yeah, it seems like it would be a big resource suck. Yet and I cannot imagine. I can't imagine running I could. I don't know that I could ever have it more than a puzzle or two ahead of where the players were, because I'd always be worried the players would come up with somethinging that again should work, but wasn't planned for, and you know, you need you would need help. I don't think this is the kind of thing that you

do by yourself. Run. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's really a cool idea if you are into role playing games at all, or scavenger hunts or that sort of thing. And sometimes they have other benefits like the why so serious?

I was so upset when they put up the coordinates for Atlanta because it was in the middle of the day, it was at a bowling alley, and I actually knew where this place was, and I wanted to go there because if you went to the place and put in a specific combination on a specific locker, you would get a custom Joker bowling ball and bullet ball bag. And you know, I was thinking, now that's something I want. And the problem was the coordinates went up in the middle of the day and went sort of how am

I going to get the hell out of here? And then within thirty minutes someone had taken pictures and said I found it, Like, Uh, you stupid students, students who have no job, U get off my lawn. Uh. You know, you know we have a lot of students listening. You guys are awesome. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the other ones. I'm talking about the ones who specifically go out and ruin my a RG. And if it was you, shame on you. Can I go bowling

with you? Because I totally want to see that bowling ball. It sounded so cool. Um, well that's that's a good primmer on a r G S. I think, yeah, yeah, it's um. Like I said, I think we're just sort of scratching the surface. I think it's gonna become much more popular in the years to go. There are a couple of places you can go to find out more about a r g S if you want to find any that are currently running. There's www dot a r g N dot com that's the a r g net argon,

and there's also unfiction. Unfiction is a that was Unfiction was where I first started through the Beast and I love bees, and then I also worked with the cloud cloudmakers. So uh, those would be the resources I suggest if you want to find out more, well, then that just brings us around too. A listener mail and this listener mail comes from Shane from Texas, and Shane says, Hey, guys, I'm a longtime listener of the show. I just have one small edition about the d d o S distributed

denial of service podcast. You guys forgot to mention that these type of attacks are highly illegal in the United States and can result in a big fine or even jail time. I think this is very important information and may even protect you guys from being sued for someone who quote unquote tries this at home. Keep doing your thing, Shane. That's a good point, Shane. We should have said don't try this at home. I thought it was you know, kind of obvious since we were talking about d d

o S A is being a bad thing. But then this is hot. Yes, this is true, so maybe we should say that, so Shane, we appreciate it. Yes, do not commit a denial of service attack on anyone or anything. It is not cool. Nope. And and the government may have something to say to you about it. And even for our foreign listeners, your government help may have something

to say about it. Yeah. And depending on who you do the d o S attack on, some very large men and very expensive suits may have something to say to you. In the back of a van and the helicopter. Yeah, the next thing you know, you're helicopter rides are cool, but not like that trying on some concrete shoes and alright, then I'm just saying I know some people in waste

management disposal. That's all I'm saying. Frankie big House, if you're out there, give me a cool right now, he is You're gonna go Yeah, you know, I really know, Frankie big House. No, I'm serious, I really Okay, I'll tell you more about that. That's okay. So the guys, if you have any questions, like how I know, Frankie big House, you can write really sorry about all that nasty stuff I said about you earlier. Yeah, I'm sure,

I'm sure you are. You can email us at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, and you can read all about various games and wastes to waste your time at how stuff works dot com and we will talk to you again really soon. For moralness and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the how stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you