Meaningful Play 2010: ARG/transmedia panel

Alternate Reality Games: Interdisciplinary Designers, Designing Interactions
Meaningful Play
October 22, 2010
Michigan State University

Narrative
Marc Ruppel

links, Paths and Play
What can an understanding of narrative contribute to ARG design? What can an understanding of design contribute to the narrative of an ARG?

Narrative situates play; design segments narrative across platforms and modes

How do design and narrative work together?

How do design and narrative work together?
Specificity from open-endedness

Links, Paths and Play
Personal Effects: Dark Art (2009)

‘Each medium has its weaknesses: print doesn’t have the immediacy of video … video doesn’t have the mystique and intimacy of audio … audio’s soundscapes can’t beat the arresting impact of a photograph. They all excel in delivering compelling content and emotion, but in different ways. So why not combine them?’
-JC Hutchins, author of Personal Effects (2009)

‘…if those are media or better ways to convey information in your story, then by God toss a link inside your book to send people to that website or medium so they can experience that so that you're not wasting words trying to articulate something that could just as easily or more easily or more emotionally convey a narrative impact in other media.’
-JC Hutchins, author of Personal Effects (2009)

‘It’s an unexpected wish come true to be collaborating with the team at Smoking Gun Interactive, the first developers I've encountered who really understand the difference and potential marriage between narrative and game - between storytelling and total immersion. I'm going to get to work closely with them, writing narrative pathways that carry readers through the universe of the game world. We'll all be writing for and stealing from one another, developing plot points, set pieces, and characters that have both stories in the books, and purposes in the games. Players who have read the books will have a richer game experience; readers who play the game will come to understand the stories from the inside."
-Douglas Rushkoff, on the subject of design in the ARG X

Links and paths?
Language of networks
A ‘path’ in network terminology is a sequence of edges (or links)

Metacortechs:

The Beast:

What is a narrative pathway?
How does it impact (or, how is it impacted by) design?

What is a narrative pathway?
Since links in an ARG often prompt us to synthesize multimodal content, migrate to a different site and combine it with the information there, links = migratory cues

Migratory cues [def.]:
linkscomposed of content from one site in a transmedia/ARG network that points to content and promotes movement to another site in that network

Most ARGs traffic in direct cues, i.e. website URLS, phone numbers, and other related means of directly engaging one medium in another
A narrative pathway in an ARG is a series of migratory cues that create and mark navigation through a fictional universe

If we understand narrative pathways in terms of networks, we can plot these cues and the sites they originate in as links and nodes. In other words, we can visualize these pathways as elements of both design and narrative navigation.

X:

X:
GN at cue juncture GN after cue
X ARG

The LOST Experience:

Kress (2003): ‘reading paths’  shift from page to screen = ‘new page’

But as ARGs remind us, we also need to look for reading paths in the network structures of multiplatform expression

InterAction
Beth Bonsignore

A few distinctions…
Categories from: 2006 Alternate Reality Games White Paper. International GameDevelopers Association.

Interaction challenges
“Game Design as Narrative Architecture….” - Jenkins
Connect story bits across multiple modes of communication
Provide a means to traverse across reality & fiction
Embed puzzles & activities into story bits

Interaction challenges
“What is the vacuum that I create that allows that story to be told ?” -Ecklund
Enable/Encourageparticipation & collaboration
Participation Architect, Community Liaison
Enable personal expression
Player-Designers: Opportunity for Participatory Design?

Parallel Worlds
Historical figures communicating across space & time
Leaving messages (and artifacts) for posterity
Secret societies whose members may act as stewards of these messages and artifacts
Design Case: AGOG
Arcane GalLery Of Gadgetry

Design Case: AGOG

Design Case: AGOG
1861
1877
1836

Design Case: AGOG
1861
2010
1877
1877
1836

Design Case: AGOG
1861
2010
1877
2010
1877
1836
colletegravure@gmail.com

outreach
Georgina Goodlander

Smithsonian American art museum
In FY10 (Oct 1, 2009 through Sept 30, 2010):
47,583 people attended 551 public programs. Regular programs include:
Family Days
Lectures
Musical Performances
Gallery tours and talks
Film screenings

In Fall 2008…
Half of our visitors were visiting the museum for the first time
Adults alone or in groups were the predominant visitor configurations
The average visitor age was 44 years
“Activities and things for children to do” did not rate as highly as museum exhibitions, collections, and interpretation
We didn’t do anything for teens

What’s in a name?
Smithsonian American Art Museum (museum name)
National Portrait Gallery (tenant in common)
Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (building/concept name)
Historic Patent Office Building (building name)
Smithsonian Institution (institution name)
National Gallery of Art (former museum name)
National Collection of Fine Arts (former museum name)
National Museum of American Art (former museum name)

Arg as Public program
www.ghostsofachance.com

Arg as Public program
“If someone had told me about a program which would leave 15-year olds discussing art with the same animation they show for sports and movie stars, I would not have believed them!”
10th Grade Group Leader
“I felt like I was living in National Treasure. The best museum experience ever” -10th Grade Player

Building communities
“An internet collaborative art display in a national museum?
Is it me, or is this very frigging cool!”
“What Ghosts of a Chance did well was invite participants to take part in the exhibit – essentially becoming part of the exhibit themselves.”
“[Ghosts of a Chance] was really refreshing and definitely gave me a sense of community with the people who were coordinating the event and the other people participating in it.”

Arg as branding

Ideas for the arcane gallery of gadgetry

Visuals
Rachel Donahue

Aesthetics
Color scheme
Font set
Icons and symbology

icons
www.urgentevoke.com

layout
Presentation
Narrative
Missions and Attributes

Immersion vs. Interface
www.exoriare.com

missions

integration
Kari Kraus

Design Methods & the Counterfactual Imagination:Joints or Faultlines in Reality (Ruth Byrne)
Cognitive patterns & principles
Counterfactual thinking underlies the invention of new members of a category
It underlies creation of new ideas by combining concepts
People often imagine counterfactual possibilities to the most recent event in a series
Diagnostic aspects of a concept may be those that are least mutable (e.g., the prickly spines of a cactus)

The Counterfactual Imagination
Joints or faultlines in reality (Ruth Byrne)
Our ARG research suggests that these joints exist across multiple semiotic or sensory domains
Relationship between fiction and reality often constructed metaphorically

“Reality shimmers with glimpses of counterfactual alternatives”~Ruth Byrne, The Counterfactual Imagination
Counterfactual thinking underlies the invention of new members
of a category
Arcane Gallery of Gadgetry
Rejected Patent Models

Prehistoric cave paintings: required an ability “to move back and forth” between reality and make-believe.
~Paul Harris, The Work of the Imagination

Arcane Gallery of Gadgetry: Kairograph
Counterfactual thinking underlies creation of new ideas by combining concepts

Cathy’s Key (Jordan Weisman, Sean Stewart)

Chronicles of Narnia: The Wardrobe

KidsTeam: Working with Found Objects

Ghosts of a Chance: Player-Created Artifacts

Thank you!
Marc Ruppell
@marcruppel / mruppel@umd.edu
Beth Bonsignore
@ebonsign / ebonsign@umd.edu
Georgina Goodlander
@bathlander / goodlanderg@si.edu
Rachel Donahue
@sheepeeh / donahrm@umd.edu
Kari Kraus
@karikraus/ karimkraus@gmail.edu

Meaningful Play 2010: ARG/transmedia panel

by Kari Kraus on Nov 07, 2010

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Meaningful Play 2010: ARG/transmedia panel — Presentation Transcript