A good friend of mine, Jenni Powell, who was the Production Assistant at LG15 when I was conducting my fieldwork is starting her new Web series: Bump in the Night. Enjoy!

I finally got around to posting my presentation at the MLA 2009 with Christy Dena and Marc Ruppel: Re-Negotiating Narrative: Emergent Storytelling in Art of the Hei3t. Here are the slides:

Here’s a million dollar question: What is an ARG? I don’t know how much ink has been spilled or how much digital space has been used to describe what it is. So, did we figure out what it is yet? Well, sorta… kinda… not really… I wasn’t all that surprised when the link to Mariano Tomatis’s essay entitled “Rennes le Chateau” hit my inbox as one of the Google alerts for ARGs. I must say that his mission, that is, his attempt at connecting new genres and phenomena to its predecessors, long before these concepts were even born, is a close one to my heart. In my own research, I try to dissipate the aura of newness around emerging media and trace the continuities between these media and the traditional ones.

Indicating that he will provide a different analysis to the Rennes-le-Chateau phenomenon, Tomatis claims that many modern phenomena can be better interpreted as complex ARGs, created for economical purposes and/or personal pleasure.” I respectfully disagree. Even if we haven’t really settled on what an ARG is, we have identified some parameters for it. And, his case study, the Rennes le Chateau phenomenon, ain’t one of those.

A Brief History:

Rennes le Chateau phenomenon, as he explains it, relates to a Catholic priest, Berenger Sauniere, who lived in Rennes le Chateau in the late 19^th century. His popularity mainly comes from being a central figure in many of the conspiracy theories surrounding Rennes-le-Château which emerged from the speculations based on several pseudohistorical documentaries. Many elements of these theories were later used by Dan Brown’s best-seller, The Da Vinci Code, in which the character Jacques Saunière is named after the priest. Legend has it that, while renovating his parish church in 1891, Saunière found ancient documents relating to a great historical secret. These theories suggest that, through his possession of these documents, Saunière was somehow able to gain much more wealth than would be expected of a parish priest. Following Saunière’s death in 1917, the priest’s source of wealth became an intriguing mystery that invited all kinds of speculations. He was said to be paid vast sums of money by the Catholic Church to buy his silence on a secret that would have seriously jeopardized the church’s standing, such as the claim that he had discovered the grave in which Christ had been buried, implying that Christ had not ascended to heaven after all. Tomatis explains that in the absence of solid documentation about any treasure found by the priest during the 20th century, a number of manufactured documents, artifacts, and apocrypha appeared. The most famous example is the false documents donated to the French National Library in Paris by Pierre Plantard (who claimed to have inherited them) and Philippe de Cherisey.

Tomatis suggests that the core reason for manufacturing of these “historical” artifacts and documents is to suggest “alternate” versions of history which was more romantic and “interesting” than the so-called “correct” version of the story accepted in the academic circles. In these versions, the priest, Sauniere, was described as a member of secret societies, a wizard of old Egyptian cults, and the area itself was full of hidden tombs, chests full of treasures and clues, all linked through complex geometries, anagrams, and mysterious inscriptions.

Explaining that an ARG is the idea of implanting false clues and documents in reality while pretending them to be real, Tomatis considers the Rennes le Chateau phenomenon to be one of the earlier ARGs, a precursor if you will. In fact, he successfully identifies the puppet master, rabbit hole, and curtain in the Rennes le Chateau phenomenon explained above. Moreover, he mentions that, since the false documents and made up artifacts were presented as “authentic,” the legend also upheld the famous ARG mantra,“This is not a game” (TINAG). In other words, it did not behave like a game or provide an overtly-designated play space or rule set to the players.

While I commend Tomatis’s efforts of searching for the roots of what we perceive as new phenomena, I consider the main premise of his argument to be flawed.

Although the games that mix reality and fiction have been (mis)labeled as “alternate” reality games, as Szulborski explains in This Is Not a Game, ARGs don’t attempt to immerse the player in the artificial world of the game. Szulborski further clarifies that instead of creating alternate realities, a successful ARG immerses the world of the game into the everyday existence and life of the player: “The Alternate Reality Game does not really want the player to think of the game world as an alternate reality at all, but that the ultimate goal is to have the player believe that the events take place and characters exist in her world, not in an alternate reality at all, thereby effectively erasing the magic circle (31). Therefore, Tomatis’s claim that the legend is an ARG because it designed to create alternate versions of history is an incorrect conjecture.

What makes Tomatis’s argument untenable is that he bases most of his case on the representation of the fake documents as real. This assumption implies that the players, because the game claims not to be a game, believe that the game is indeed real. Jane McGonigal, in “A Real Little Game,” makes a pretty good case that players don’t really believe that the game presents reality of any sorts, but that they *perform* the belief that it is reality, or pretend that they believe it is reality. Thus, they make sure that reality surrounding the game isn’t breached despite the overwhelming evidence, as in the case of the Beast. The reason for this persistence is that, not because they are gullible, but that, as long as they all pretend to believe the game is real, the experience continues. So one might ask, then, did the people who were engaged in the legend surrounding Saunière willingly suspend their belief and pretend to believe that the world suggested by these manufactured documents were in fact real? Or, did they genuinely think that the legend was real which would ultimately make it a hoax? I submit that this is one of the reasons why Tomatis identifies all the elements of ARGs in these legends surrounding the priest except the players. Because, clearly, that there were none. People who were trying to solve the mystery surrounding Saunière were thinking that they were genuinely involved in uncovering the truth… not about a game, rather, about a real incident that happened decades ago.

Furthermore, ARGs present their clues as authentic only within the context of the game, not outside of it. In other words, ARG players never believe that the clues are authentic outside the magic circle that is successfully merged with daily life in pervasive games, such as ARGs, but that they choose to pretend so that the experience continues. In the phenomenon that Tomatis describes above, however, those who are actively engaged in solving the mystery assume that the clues are real.

A quick consideration of the points mentioned above, reveals that, while the Rennes-le-Chateau phenomenon is an intriguing case, it cannot be considered to be an ARG.

This is the continuation of the previous blog post.

Lonelygirl15 started very similar to an ARG: it never admitted that it was a show. Everything on the Internet that was associated to primary actress Jessica Lee Rose was deleted (included her MySpace account), Rose was not allowed to even leave her apartment for days lest someone recognized her. As a matter of fact, whether or not the videos were real vlogs was the most important puzzle that the audience had to solve within the next subsequent three months after the show began. Other actors/actresses were introduced “as if” they were a part of the audience of Bree’s videos. Considering this, it is not surprising that LG15 was initially considered to be an ARG by its fans… excect that the creators of the show had no idea about what an ARG was. Similar to the way in which Orson Welles used the new technology of radio to grab an audience for his “War of the Worlds,” the three creators (Miles Beckett, who was a doctor; Mesh Flinders, a struggling film-maker; and Greg Goodfried, a practicing attorney) wanted to explore the narrative possibilities of Internet technologies while creating a community-based show that would elicit collaborative storytelling.

The efforts of the LG15 team to hide and prolong the mystery of the show ultimately failed due to the witch-hunt style investigation subsequently conducted by its fans. As early as the second or third video, Goodfried explains, fans commented that the videos were “fake” and implied that Bree was an “actress.” One fan who went by the handle Mike discovered that the domain name of the phony fan site was registered prior to the first video posted on YouTube, thereby challenging the veracity of the video diaries. Claiming that this whole venture was a put on, probably to promote some upcoming movie or television show, Mike declared that “[e]ven this website is a fake,” and questioned the authenticity of the fan site: “If this site truly was a ‘Tribute to Lonelygirl15’ and a true fansite, then tell me, why was the domain registered over a month *before* the first lonelygirl15 video was posted on YouTube? I think this site belongs to whoever is behind this whole promotion.” Mr. Grieves further noted that the site was registered on the same day as her MySpace page and Yahoo! e-mail address was created (on March 12). But when Grant Steinfeld (who was known as Bukanator in the LG15 forums) grew tired of running the site and dropped out of the project, fans set up their own site devoted to LG15, which soon attracted more than a thousand members. In August 2006 another fan discovered and posted the trademark application by Goodfried, which seemed to indicate that these videos were at least in part a commercial venture. Then, in September 2006, three tech-savvy fans, working together, set up a string on the e-mail address that was being used by “Bree”; the operation netted them the Internet address of a computer at Creative Artists Agency, the Beverly Hills talent agency where the team was being represented. Early September 2006 the creators of the show had no choice but to reveal the fictional status of the videos, but declined to reveal the identity of Bree. On September 12, 2006, Matt Foremski from Silicon Valley Watcher, while searching Google’s cache of online sites, found the actress’ old version of her MySpace page, which had been deleted on account of LG15 and identified her as Jessica Lee Rose.

Although it was long suspected, the “confirmed” fictional status of Bree’s blogs elicited much outrage among some of its fans. While some were ready to accept it for what it is—mere entertainment (and a good one at that)—others felt cheated and betrayed by Bree because they took her plight for real and offered their heart-felt advice to whom they thought to be a young girl in distress. Comments accusing her as a “fake” lasted for months and some fans even posted their own videos on YouTube expressing their anger and disappointment at being treated like idiots.

BlackArrowTera, for example, posts her own video expressing her outrage and notes that there are fans of these vlogs who are trying to be like this girl: “I’m gonna think she’s real. I’m gonna say she’s real. And, I am gonna believe that because… How could someone… how could someone make that up?  How could someone make up a girl who worships Satan??? I mean, this is kinda just something wrong. This is insulting to people. I will keep watching Lonelygirl because I think it is an interesting developing story and I wanna see somehow, maybe they mess up… So to the creators, your videos are inspiring to people… but why can’t Bree come up… I mean Jessica Rose, I’m sorry… Why can’t Jessica come out, sit in front of her little camera and say, this is not real, you guys shouldn’t think this is real, and, if you do think it is real, do not… cause people I… I’ve already met some people who are trying to base themselves off this girl that she’s not even real. She’s not even real and she’s trying to get people to be…her.”

As late as 67th or even the 82nd video, some viewers (possibly those who have not been following the series as carefully as others) had no idea that Bree was not real. Sensing that this was a bit “screwed up,” byoung tells others that he “went to the california state police earlier today. They were totally unhelpful and acted like ther wasn’t anything they could do until a serious crime was committed. crime prevention my butt. and they kind of made fun of me. funny thing was, i made them let me talk to their commissioner, and he was wearing a ring that looked like one of those letters bree had from that weird alphabet.”

Even the discussions in academic circles expressed disappointment of “being had.” Miles, a commenter on danah boyd’s blog, apophenia, contends “I am glad that there is a new art form being born, but there is an element of deception here, that [I] find unforgivable. Fool [m]e once, shame on you. I would rather say, [f]ool me once and you’ll never make any money from your film making. I think it would be really hard for Jessica Rose to now try to make her way into a real acting career, because her start was in a fake career. It’s not a respectful way to become an actor. Which I believe is a matter of craft more than making the temporary splash.”

This initial fan reaction to being duped is actually symptomatic of a yet deeper concern about the platform of YouTube or, more broadly, the Internet in general: developing the media literacy necessary to critically evaluate content presented to us through emerging media platforms. As surprising as this may seem to us today, the extreme reaction to LG15 suggests that YouTube users mostly (albeit implicitly) considered what is being posted on YouTube as “real.” So in a sense, with LG15 YouTube users developed a critical perspective towards the platform that they may not  already have prior to the. The video posted by thepoesm, “Authenticity on the Tube,” problematizes this concern by gathering some of the fan and media responses to LG15 and the assumptions we have about YouTube while raising interesting questions about authenticity on the Internet. For some, authenticity is so crucial to YouTube that a fan declares: “Me, I think they should be punished, they should be suspended, the producers of Lonelygirl should be thrown out of YouTube, at least suspended for at least a year.” In one of the television interviews with Miles Beckett, the interviewer rationalizes the fan reaction by claiming that the “[v]ideos on YouTube are perceived as being, sort of the real deal, unless they are identified as an ad specifically.” Another irate fan confirms what the interviewer asserts and insists that “YouTube is not for fake stuff. It’s for real stuff. If it’s not for real, you should come out and let everybody know.” Yet another fan demands that we should“[g]et rid of the fakes, get rid of the liars.” Noting that “we are all producers,” “Authenticity on the Tube” goes on to show other video bloggers who emerged as a result of YouTube and raises valid questions about one’s “real” environment, history, and identity. By asking “which you is the real you?” the video suggests that, even in the absence of an elaborate production team, we do not represent our “real” selves on YouTube, that creativity does not always replace reality, and that “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”

Sparki, a commenter on danah boyd’s blog, expresses her surprise at people getting upset about LG15 being staged implying that it has something to do with the media literacy that we have developed as a result of Reality Television: “I find it interesting that people are upset that the LG15 thing was staged. Have we become so bent on voyeurism thanks to “Reality Television” that just being presented with fiction ticks us off?” She continues to make the same point as “Authenticity on the Tube” and notes that even the homemade videos have also something staged about them, just like Survivor and any other Reality Television programs.

No doubt, these types of reactions happen in ARGs as well, but less so… As Jane McGonigal explains, players take pains to maintain the illusion. The reaction that comes up in ARGs mostly comes from outsiders who do are not in on the game and who don’t actively participate in the game. So they, too, see a video of a hopeless boyfriend seeking help for her lost girlfriend… and they take it seriously. In other words, they are not in the “magic circle” a concept that Johan Huizinga formulated. In Homo Ludens, claiming that play is distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration, Huizinga contends that play creates temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart, and all play has its rules that are binding and allow no doubt (10-11). These temporary worlds constitute what Huizinga refers to as the magic circle. While Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman explain in “This is not a game: play in cultural environments,” that inside the magic circle special meanings accrue and a new reality is created defined by the rules of the game, they are quick to note that some games work at erasing the boundaries of the circle so that space of play becomes indistinguishable from ordinary life (16). Accordingly, McGonigal defines these types of games as pervasive games and they are primarily mixed reality games that use mobile, ubiquitous and embedded technologies that create virtual playing fields in everyday spaces. ARGs according to her, belong to a subset of these games called immersive games because denying its game status these games take place in the player’s world not in a separate place. Accordingly, Dave Szulborski, one of the important figures in the field who (unfortunately) passed away recently, explains that ARGs don’t attempt to immerse the player in the artificial world of the game, but that a successful ARG immerses the world of the game into the everyday existence and life of the player. The Alternate Reality Game does not really want the player to think of the game world as an alternate reality at all, but that the ultimate goal is to have the player believe that the events take place and characters exist in her world, not in an alternate reality at all, thereby effectively erasing the magic circle (31). Given the erasure of the magic circle, it is not surprising that those who wander inside it take things for “real.” Perhaps the biggest difference LG15 and ARGs is that there was no magic circle created to begin with. The creators never envisioned the show to be a game, their fans did. In a sense, fans created a magic circle around the show that they perceived to be real. However, even in ARGs there are rules of conduct: Puppet masters, for example, can’t act as characters and post on unfiction forums which are considered to be sacrosanct spaces for players. A strict separation between game designers and players are observed. Failure to do so, results in getting banned from the forums. For instance, earlier this year one puppet master befriended several members of the community in character. The result was an outrage equally as dramatic as the one that erupted in LG15. My answer is what I tell my students who question whether or not Lolita was a real story: “Does it really matter?”

Last couple of days I’ve been reading some of Jane McGonigal’s work and I am quite intrigued by some of the conversations that she engages in. While I am finding out interesting backstories of some of the ARGs that are considered to be milestones in this still-yet-to-be defined field, I am observing interesting parallels and differences between these games and other cross-media works that I wrote on in my dissertation. For those of us who are not familiar with the marvelous world of ARGs (Alternate Reality Games), here’s a brief primer on the topic: ARGs are an experimental gaming genre that blurs the lines between reality and fiction by conveying a fractured narrative through Web sites, text messages, snail mail, phone calls, and even real-life interactions. Of course, the reality is that no one really agrees on any particular definition as the genre is currently being defined as we speak, but whatever people see it to be, there are a few things people agree on: that its mantra is “This is not a game” and that the first ARG was the Beast produced to market Steven Spielberg’s that upcoming movie AI. Not that ARGs try to pass themselves as “real,” but that its mantra implies that the genre denies its “game” status. Dave Szulborski, one of the important figures in the field who (unfortunately) passed away recently, explains that ARGs don’t attempt to  immerse the player in the artificial world of the game (as… say some of the Massively Multi-Player games or virtual worlds try to do), but that a successful ARG immerses the world of the game into the everyday existence and life of the player. The Alternate Reality Game does not really want the player to think of the game world as an alternate reality at all, but that the ultimate goal is to have the player believe that the events take place and characters exist in her world, not in an alternate reality at all (31).

So… this brings us to an interesting juncture… We have players who get used to looking for puzzles, clues, and unusual events in their daily lives even after the game finishes. This is primarily because ARGs, by definition, do not take place in a “space apart,” and as a result, lack a clearly defined “magic circle”… So much so that players may end up having difficulty adjusting to real life after the game ends. The moderator for Cloudmasters (which was the group of players that participated in the Beast), Andrea Phillips, writes a “recovery guide” after the Beast ends: “You find yourself at the end of the game, waking up as if from a long sleep. Your marriage may be in tatters. Your job may be in the brink of the void… You slowly wake up to discover that you’ve missed the early spring…yet now, here we are, every one of us excited at blurring the lines between story and reality. The game promises to become not just entertainment, but our lives” (qtd. in McGonigal “This Is Not a Game”).

According to McGonigal, the immersive power of ARGs lead the players to be seen by others (who are the “sane” bunch, I assume) as people who are the “credulous lot” and the game to be considered as a “schizophrenia machine” because it encourages to view everything suspiciously and look for clues everywhere in the hopes that these clues may lead to some obtuse puzzles. McGonigal rightfully asks: “Really?” and questions whether the testimonials regarding the effects of these games should be taken at face value. She asks whether the players genuinely believe in the realness of the game or the game-ness of the real… In other words, are they really believing or affecting credulity? (“A Real Little Game”) Thus, McGonigal makes a distinction between “make-belief” games and “make-believe” games. While she views the former as the actual belief of the “realness” of the experience, she notes that the latter is the performance of belief to ensure the continuation of the experience. Of course, for a group who is smart to track down the most obtuse clues and solve the most complicated puzzles, the former proves to be unlikely.

Accordingly, in “A Real Little Game: A Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play,” McGonigal notes some of the outstanding efforts by the players to *not* remove the curtain between the puppet masters and the players. At the time, the game designers and its sponsors stonewalled the press which was questioning the game’s association with Spielberg’s movie, A.I. Elan Lee, one of the designers of the game, explains that they had to push it as an experience that never admitted that it existed. In order to explain the voluntary surrender of the players to the pleasure of the narrative and game, McGonigal accounts several incidents that could have been potentially disasterous for the game. Although the game was clearly set in 2142 AD, the players were not bothered by this “slight” incongruity. According to Lee, none of the players presented much of a resistance in any of the premises the designers set forth. To top it all, there were mistakes that the game designers  made that could have seriously jeopardized the  continuation of the game. For example, someone, by using the “WHOIS” lookup query, discovered that all of the game-related Web sites were registered under the same name (an oversight which wouldn’t be made today). While the designers anticipated that this discovery would irrevocably shatter the illusion that the Web pages are independently created, owned, and maintained and put an end to the game, the announcement (which was made by a player) was met with anger and resistance by others who feared that experience would end. Later on, players discovered that the Microsoft corporation was behind the Beast because the domain names were registered under people affiliated with Microsoft (Elan Lee being one of them). And as one of the players explains “Ahh, Microsoft is trying to control our minds… But you know, I am OK with that.” According to McGonigal, players actively chose to ignore the rupture in the game reality and continued to play “as if.” McGonigal quotes from some of the players: “Let’s put aside the fact that perhaps, under the surface of the game lies an unsavory plan to get the majority of the players to purchase additional software, game players, books, and DVDs.” Despite the fact that  designers at times knowingly made errors to see who would take the bait and publicly out them, they were surprised to see that no one took the opportunity. Even when one of the players hid a piece of information that was needed to solve one of the puzzles, other players acted quickly to come up with solutions that would allow them to solve the puzzle anyway without any puppet master intervention.

The eagerness of the players to continue the experience despite the fact there are obvious clues that it was a game posits an interesting contrast to some of the other cross-media experiences that have occurred. Forget about cross-media… As a society, we seem to be infatuated with the question “Is this real?” For instance, when I am teaching literature classes, I am sometimes surprised to see some naive questions that come up or comments that are made in class discussions. When I was teaching Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, for example, my students were outraged: “This is disgusting!” “How can this be…” “Is this for real???” My response has always been “Does it really matter whether it is real or not?” But even then, some of my students were still reluctant to let go of their cultural baggage to “experience” this outstanding novel. Because Humber Humbert *is* a pedophile…  Looking back at the research on LG15, I also see a stark contrast between how the fans of LG15 reacted to having figured out that Bree never existed and that everything was a show put forth by a group of producers who weren’t even a part of a big corporation and the Beast which was put forth by a beast-like corporation like Microsoft. I intend to investigate why that may have been the case in my next blog post…

This is the continuation of my previous blog post.

As I was reading on how Hollywood affected the development of television, the example of Disneyland stuck out as a successful experience that was designed using the emerging technology/medium at the time: television. And, no, I am not talking about the park, of course that is a part of it, but I am mostly talking about the television series that Walt Disney started with ABC at the time. As an independent producer who didn’t leave Hollywood behind while entering the television business, Walt Disney created the first full-scale successful integration of movie and television production in Hollywood. Disney’s primary goal in entering the television business was to produce the first Disney TV series that ultimately advertised the upcoming Disneyland park that was scheduled to be built in Los Angeles. Television served to create a both economic and cultural phenomenon that exceeded the boundaries of any single medium. By releasing a plethora of merchandising and promoting the upcoming park on television, Disney created a program that integrated advertising and entertainment, Of course, this is nothing new for us since we are used to television shows being promoted by ARGs, being bombarded with a bunch of plastic Yoda’s during the release of the Star Wars prequel, or having comic books of Matrix to read in between films… What is remarkable is when it happened. Right now internet or online games are being used to promote upcoming television shows or films, then, as the new technology, it was television that was promoting entertainment parks and films.

Television gave Disney unparalleled access to family audience (which was the target audience to begin with) and served as the primary exhibition site through which the development of the Disney empire was being broadcast. Not only did Disney showed/recycled his entire Disney archive from the beginning, thereby acquainting his audience with the myth of Disney (“It all began with Mickey. The story of Mickey is the story of Disneyland”), but also he was showing his audience how the park was developing. Through this show, the studio educated its audience to perceive continuities between the programs and allowed them to see certain parts of the production process, like the DVD extras that we have today. Ultimately, Disney’s movies were subsumed into an “increasingly integrated leisure market that also included television, recorded music, theme parks, tourism, and consumer merchandise (Anderson 135). It even timed the release dates of its features coincide with simultaneous promotion on the television program. In other words, Disney successfully mounted an empire on this first television series. In this sense, Disneyland created a much more successful experience than the Matrix franchise that has been the showcase for transmedia storytelling but hasn’t been as successful as it could have been. The last two movies didn’t receive much positive reviews and the MMO was lame at best, not sure about the other parts of the franchise…

Lately I’ve been reading up on design, particularly Experience Design. The very concept is becoming so intriguing to me and, as a result, I started to evaluate my way of thinking. Actually, the interest started during my research on Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). ARGs are alternative forms of storytelling that incorporates a lot of puzzles and game elements and, as a result, allows its players to experience something out of the ordinary. Also used in marketing campaigns in promoting feature films, videogames, cars, and other new products, ARGs are an experimental gaming genre that blurs the lines between reality and fiction by conveying a fractured narrative through Web sites, text messages, snail mail, phone calls, and even real-life interactions. This is the general definition… which hasn’t been totally decided on yet. But whatever it is, it is an “experience.” Designing the experience of these games is a great challenge for the puppetmasters or those who are behind the curtains developing the game as it unfolds. During my research, one of the people I met (whom I’d like to say have become my friend since), recommended that I MUST read Experience Design by Nathan Shedroff. Well things got in the way, I had to finish my dissertation, submit articles, defend, apply to jobs, go to conferences, etc… At any rate, I finally found the time to actually order the book three weeks ago.

The book is designed really well. It is (of course) printed on glossy paper like a coffee table book, has a very attractive and modern cover, the typography is carefully arranged and played with (which reminds me of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Katherine Hayles’ Writing Machines), and has lot’s of interesting pictures/designs on every page that are relevant to the topic being discussed… in brief, it is looks like an attractive read.

Here’s only some of the things Shedroff says about Experience Design…

Although the concept is as old as experiences themselves, the field Experience Design is relatively young. While noting that all experiences are important, he explains that some experiences are worth discussing, specially those that have elements that contribute to superior experiences that are knowable and reproducible, which makes them designable. I know, from having talked to some of the puppetmasters or game designers, designing experiences that are reproducible is the holy grail of making ARGs. Shedroff explains that we can learn from all experiences whether they are traditional, physical, offline, or online experiences. Experiences are foundation of all life events and, according to Shedroff, form the core of what interactive media have to offer (4). While many experiences are ongoing, most have edges that define their start, middle, and end, which help us differentiate meaning, pacing, and completion. At the very least, Shedroff states, think of experience as requiring an attraction (I assume this is the beginning, or trailhead for ARGs), an engagement (which defines the middle, or what the player has to do for the narrative to unfold, such as puzzle solving, picking up drops, etc), and a conclusion. The attraction is necessary to initiate the experience and can be cognitive, visual, auditory, or signal to any of our senses. And the book that I was holding in my hands, Experience Design, was designed to do just that. And so my experience of the book had started the minute I unwrapped it. The engagement has to be sufficiently different from the surrounding environment as well as cognitively important or relevant for the user to continue the experience. The conclusion must provide some kind of a resolution whether through meaning, story, context, or an activity that makes the experience satisfactory. An experience designer who does not pay much attention to the conclusion-whether through inattention to detail, boredom, or speed-has just wasted her time. According to Shedroff, all experiences must compete for the attention of the audience. Finally, he argues that what makes an experience so remarkable is that it challenges us to rethink the possibilities or confronts our beliefs and expectations (6). All of these conditions apply to all of the experiences we have had, so the rest of the book, while going into the details of designing experiences, brings up examples from our daily lives, both online and offline. Of course, designing an ARG is just that, designing a good experience that somehow leaves the players thinking for awhile. The interesting thing to me is that how emerging technologies are used to create these experiences. We are well-acquainted with how online/digital technologies are being used to design experiences: Second Life, visual thesauri, some Web sites, the Lost Experience are  all examples of these.

Although the book itself is designed to give you certain type of experience and successfully attracts (the beginning) the reader, I am not sure it is successful in continuing the engagement part. As a matter of fact, although i am planning on finishing the book, I still haven’t. Here’s why: while the book is designed beautifully, nobody ever  took the time to edit/proofread the manuscript. As a result, there are many spelling and some grammar errors. Am I being a stickler? Of course I am. Good design requires correct spelling/punctuation/grammar, I would think. And good editing is a sign of respect that the author shows towards the reader. When I read a student essay that’s not edited properly, I get the sense of sloppiness: “the student didn’t even take the time to edit the paper, she doesn’t care about my class.” When you blog/twitter/IM/e-mail a certain level of error is tolerated, for sure, even when a student is writing an essay it is tolerated. But not when I pay a book $35 and wait for it to arrive for a week… And that, right there, ended the experience for me. And I wonder… did Shedroff wasted his time like he says in the book?

If you have read anything within the past 5-6 years on new media, Web 2.0, user-generated content, YouTube, any recently released movies, aired television shows, and games then you have probably heard it. It is that magical word, “convergence” that everyone likes to toss around. You’ve also probably heard “transmedial” and “cross-media” as well. Marketing agencies try to implement it at every turn, entertainment companies swear by it, media scholars write about it. With the recent releases of smart phones, Blackberries, new HDTV’s that offer numerous services through the same device the word became extremely popular. Henry Jenkins’ book, Convergence Culture, is exemplary in discussing the cultural ramifications of this concept.

But what is most interesting to me is that the strategies that are being employed these days within the entertainment industry, were also employed in the 40’s and 50’s when television was first introduced as the “new” technology. Chris Anderson, in Hollywood TV: The Studio System in the Fifties, discusses how the cross-media tendencies that fostered a type of convergence culture existed even when radio and television were becoming viable marketing media. Unlike the master narrative that has been adopted by historians that depicts motion picture industry at odds with the broadcasting industries, Anderson explains that the boundaries that separate the two media is not as evident as some claim it to be. The differences between film and television is not based on the nature of media technology, the structure of media industries, or the attributes of media texts. When examined closely, these distinctions between media blur and become meaningless. Instead, Anderson argues, that the boundaries that separate the media in our culture are the products of discourse, including discourses generated by the media industries and that produced by scholars and critics. Here, Anderson quotes historian Carolyn Marvin in giving one of the most meaningful definition of what media are: “Media are not fixed natural objects; they have no natural edges. They are constructed complexes of habits, beliefs, and procedures embedded in elaborate cultural codes of communication” (qtd. in Hollywood TV 14).

The economic interests of the industries, especially that of motion pictures, mandated that a false separation between film and television be reinforced. Unlike the radio and television industries that relied on advertising and commercial sponsorship and thus were able to offer seemingly “free” entertainment, film industry had to justify its policy of paid admission and it did so by branding television as entertainment for the masses. Despite the convergence of the movie and television industries, a number of movies presented television as providing lower quality entertainment. Television, as depicted in these films, was a “false consciousness, a medium irredeemably comprised by its devotion to advertising” (17). But, according to Anderson, so did American cinema. In fact, American cinema has never strayed away from advertising as it integrated brands/shops/products within the narrative structure of movies that were being produced at the time.

But in reality, as Anderson notes, the general public was hard pressed to see the difference between the motion picture and broadcasting industries because of the many alliances between the two. For one thing, recognizing the promotional nature of radio and television, studios adapted successful radio shows to silver screen and promoted their shows in radio and television shows by having their celebrities appear in them. The interdependence of the media was quite apparent as the popular success of movies and radio in the 30s and 40s “depended at least partially on the fact that media were not isolated from one another but were perceived to be complementary as experiences in which stars and stories passed easily from one medium to another” (16). But more importantly, independent film producers who were locked out of the distribution outlets by the major film studios entered the television industry as an alternative way of conducting business. Disney, Warner Bros., David Selznik produced programming for television, and as they did so, consolidated the main framework of television programs by implementing Hollywood narratives and structures and which are called telefilms.

In addition, studios capitalized the promotional value of radio by allowing performers, songs, and story properties air on radio shows. As Anderson notes, while radio looked at Hollywood for programming, the movie studios began to cultivate stars and story ideas from radio. One of the first generation of telefilm producers, William Boyd, to tap into the growing postwar youth market, took advantage of television’s emergent position at the center of popular culture market and founded Hopalong Cassidy Industry that included a radio series, a comic strip, comic books, a popular fan club, and an array of licensed merchandise (51). We’re talking early ’50s here.With programs that exhibited cross media promotions, the distinction between advertising and entertainment was effectively erased… which brings us back to the beginning of this blog. How is this any different than the convergence culture that is said to be going on right now, you know, the one everybody is swooning over? In that respect, I appreciate the voices of scholars who insist on making connections with the past instead of heralding some kind of an absolute novelty.

David Thorburn’s and Henry Jenkins’ state in their introduction to Rethinking Media Change that: “the emergence of new media sets in motion a complicated, unpredictable process in which established and infant systems may co-exist for an extended period or in which older media may develop new functions and find new audiences” (2). The anxiety that was being exhibited then, is being exhibited now. It was feared that television would kill Hollywood studios. Instead, television appropriated the already dying studios and created different uses for them, such as producing television programming instead. These days, it is feared that emerging electronic technologies are going to phase out the book industry, newspaper industry, film and television industries. But instead of outright killing traditional media, Internet and electronic media are forcing them to change their functionality. Our anxiety comes from not knowing what it will change to. Of course, there will be collateral damage along the way. Same scenario, different actors… So we are frantically embracing new gimmicky terminology, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, viral marketing, interactive narrative, social media, without knowing what they really mean or even if they have a meaning. This terminology alleviates our anxiety of the unknown. We can continue to use these terms to market, distribute, and encourage consumption, just as television had done some decades ago, giving us a false sense of control over the uses of emerging technology which are unpredictable at best. In other words, as long as we can continue to do what we have been doing, albeit with new technology, we feel that we have some control of its unknown outcomes. The industry needs the term “convergence” to be this new way of marketing/branding products/stories/campaigns… even though it existed all along, just to conduct business as usual. But of course, people are going to use it the way they want to use it. Look at Twitter, who knew??? Not its creators, that’s for sure.

I know I haven’t written lately, mostly because I’ve been busy this year getting my life back on track . Defense, commencement, parents coming in, job applications, more job applications, article draft, revisions… And here we are. And no, my life is still not on track, but it is getting there. My summer was a big blur, not sure how it passed. Somehow during that time a lot of things/people disappeared from my life, some of them for good. But finally the graduate school approved of my format revisions, I had my page numbering in correct order, I had my acceptance page in the right place, I had my complete CV, a synopsis, etc… After numerous back-and-forths with the graduate division, the dissertation was finally approved in July. My only requirement was to get it bound and leave a copy to my department. It was only two months later that I had time to even consider it. I checked the site and it said that I can get my dissertation bound in Smith Bindery. I diligently copied its address, noted the phone number, checked their hours/days (which weren’t that long) and gave them a call. When I finally reached them, a lady answered the phone and asked several questions regarding the page count, title length, etc. When I asked her how much it would cost, she asked, “Are you sitting down?” Apparently, I wrote too much.

At any rate, two days ago I decided to take my dissertation to Smith Bindery. Apparently, it is a yellow little house that blends in and disappears into thin air in the middle of the town. When I finally found it, I was stunned. I was expecting something like IU Print House (which was nearby) but instead found this dingy little old house with a broken sign on its door that was barely visible, let alone legible. When I walked in I got a distinct smell of books, not the new kind, but the kind that I used to smell when I was browsing the used bookstores Istanbul. A smell of dust, paper, ink… This was a very old house with wooden floors that creaked as you waked and had a narrow stairs that went somewhere that I wasn’t able to see. In addition to books that were either already bound or were about to be bound, there were paintings, bunch of stuff, not sure what. I assumed the paintings were there to be framed.

As I rang the old-fashioned bell to ask for assistance, I marveled at the place. It was straight out of a Dickens novel, in the middle of the town, unnoticed, untouched, a historical landmark discovered perhaps mostly by graduate students who were trying to get their dissertation bound like me. The lady with whom I spoke on the phone appeared, I don’t know from where, there wasn’t enough room to move and said “Oh good, you found the place.” A very elegant woman with curly gray hair, seemed younger than she really was. I made a comment about the sign not being visible and she said that it was recently broken in half and she never got around to fixing it. I gave her my dissertation. She looked at the front page, shuffled the papers several times, first asked me where I got it copied and then asked me how I pronounced my last name. Then she looked at the weird “g” in my last name and said “Well that half moon on your “g” may be hard to find, not sure I have it,” hoping that I would say “don’t worry about it.” But I didn’t. It was an important part of my name and I wanted that to be there. I looked at her and I said “It took me four years to write this thing. The least you can do is to find me half a moon.” She understood. She probably understood how much effort went into writing that, how much grief, pain, and joy was involved in producing that, but she said “Well, it’s gonna cost you extra… six dollars. I’ll have to make this thing.” I didn’t care, by god I was going to have the half moon on my name as it was meant to be written. I thought to myself, I deserved it.

While she was filling out the paper work, which, by the way, was being hand-written on a carbon sheet of paper (something I hadn’t seen done in ages), she asked me the usual questions. Where was I from, how long had I been in Bloomington, was I thinking of going back, etc… All of which were extremely annoying questions that I normally tried not to engage in. I wasn’t one to make small talk, I just wanted to get the transaction done. But since she seemed like a very pleasant old-fashioned woman, I answered her questions politely.Then I started asking her questions because it seemed like it was the polite thing to do. She told me she had started working with Mr. Smith (by golly! there is a Mr.Smith, who knew?) since she was 17 in 1971 and she had been there since then. The bindery used to be located somewhere else, but was moved to this house even before she started working for Mr. Smith. I thought to myself, no wonder the place smells like used bookstore. She brought her drawer of leads to see if she had a half moon and started picking up each one to see if any of them would be used to make the letter. Apparently, she was making most of the binding and lettering herself, a process that took 8 weeks. As she handed me the carbon copy of the receipt, she informed me that not only she only accepted cash or check, but that she wanted at least half the payment up front. While I was writing the check, it dawned on me that this was the best check I had ever written. I said so as I handed it to her. She asked me how long I had been in the graduate program. I said twelve. When I was got up to head out the door, I said “It was nice doing business with you.” She asked, ” Are you staying here?” Another very annoying question that keeps coming up. I thought about it. Did I want to stay here? After twelve years, all the hardship I endured, all the papers I wrote, all the classes of taught, all the heartbreaks I had, all the friends I made, all the joys and disappointments I experienced, my answer was a definite no. I gained friends here, I lost friends here, I lost my first dog here, I went through numerous relationships here, I lived in numerous apartments here, I laughed here, I cried here, and now, I wanted a clean break. A new life: Control+Alt+Del. Twelve years ago, I had come to Bloomington from Istanbul with nothing but two suitcases, I left everything behind me, and now, I wanted to do the same. After some pause I told her probably not. “What are you going to do? Where are you going?” Again, I thought about it briefly. I had no idea where I was going and what I was doing. I said “Where ever the job takes me, I guess,” then blurted out a strategic phrase that I hoped would end the conversation: “I am weighing my options” which, of course, I had no idea what it meant. She looked at me long and deep, probably sensed the hesitance in my voice. Maybe she sensed that I didn’t believe in anything I had said. Maybe she realized that I was about to begin a new chapter in my life. After a brief pause, she said “You’ll be fine.” She didn’t just mean it as encouragement, but rather, as if she looked into my eyes and saw the ambition, persistence, and the desire to want more, or maybe she even saw my future, who knows? As I came out the door, I told myself “I’ll be fine,” and believed it. I was still was not sure if I what I had experienced there really happened or if the house really existed.

Update (Dec 10, 09): When I went back to pick my dissertation up, the place was open but she wasn’t in. After calling for her, I decided to pick up my dissertation and leave the rest of the payment on her desk. But I took some pictures of the place… Though I must say, the flash light totally kills the ambiance of the place

The front entrance with the broken sign on the side of the door.

Front entrance

Door from the inside

Interior

Interior stairs

Interior with bound dissertations in view. The thick one on the left-hand side is mine.

Interior

My dissertation and the trophy that my chair’s husband made for me: Don Quixote with a laptop that says “Second Life.” The summary of my dissertation

State of Play VI, which took place at the New York Law School on June 19-20, convened a group of outstanding scholars who conducted research on the study of various aspects of virtual worlds. The stated theme of this year’s conference, plateau, focused on the unexpected rise of the virtual worlds and multiplayer online games while posing the question of whether or not scholars have reached a limit in their understanding of virtual worlds while investigating if there are still useful questions to pursue. Having attended this outstanding conference and witnessed the vibrant discussions that took place, I can safely say, we have barely scratched the surface. Many questions that had been posed in the first State of Play are still in the agenda, albeit in different forms, and newer questions have arisen since then as a result of the changing cultural, political, and economical environments that have altered the use of virtual worlds.
As the keynote speaker, Raph Koster talked about his vision of the future of virtual worlds where one creates these spaces with the intent of democratizing the content creation. Of course worlds such as Second Life are already doing this. Users will not only be able to run multiple worlds simultaneously in their browsers under different tabs, but each world will face interesting and different legal, policy, and business challenges. He used Metaplace (his brainchild) as his personal attempt at experimenting with this vision. Other panels explored how governments could engage meaningfully with the citizens of virtual worlds; the legal issues and the economic challenges that arise in these spaces; cross-cultural interactions that take place in these environments; challenges of creating and maintaining youth spaces; security and surveillance issues that became extremely important because of the world-wide increase in terrorism; laws and governance of virtual worlds; and finally how to conduct a credible research in these newly forming environments. I would consider this a banquet of all things related to virtual worlds.
In addition to these panels, there was also “birds of a feather” sessions where participants gathered around to discuss their topics of interest (such as narrative), an in-world meet-up, called avatargame, that took place in Second Life, and a bunch of gaming stations that were set up in the hallway. Oh, did I also mention Thomas Malaby’s new book, Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life? I wouldn’t be lying if I said I was spoiled over the weekend…

Here’s a much more comprehensive coverage of the conference by Roderick Jones: State of Play: Security Seminar VI