Elan Lee on Designing Magnets: Connecting with Audiences in the Wired Age O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2008 Tuesday, March 4, 2008 Marriott Marina, San Diego, CA Notes by Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com -- http://en.oreilly.com/et2008/public/schedule/detail/1570 In the last few years, the entertainment industry has seen the birth of a new genre. An Alternate Reality Game is an interactive story that players explore with the tools of their lives. Narrative is delivered through real web sites (as seen in World Without Oil) instead of cinematics, players interact using their cell phones (as seen in I Love Bees) instead of joysticks, and rewards take the form of live events (as seen in Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero) instead of animated gold coins. This isn’t about watching heroes on TV, this is about being one. One of the key success factors to this new form of entertainment is its ability to connect with an audience. This connection is so strong that audiences have braved hurricanes to answer randomly ringing payphones, tattooed game logos on their bodies, and sent wedding invitations to game designers. This talk will look at Elan Lee’s experience in creating Alternate Reality Games, breaking them down into their component pieces, and exploring the vital audience connections formed in each project. -- ARG: * You're watching a TV show, the character picks up the phone and makes a call and your phone rings * What is this new art form? -- AI the movie: * We designed a world of faxes, emails, etc that let you "play" the movie * We called it a "Big Game" * At the end of the project, Elan got a wedding invite from a fan * Realized I hadn't made a game, I'd made a magnet -- What's a magnet? * Magnets push, pull and charge -- ARG: Cathy's Book (Pull) * YA book for girls * Created a MySpace page for the character * Demanded that they create a birthday * On her birthday, tons of readers sent in birthday notes * It's a magnet, it pulls people in -- ARG: I Love Bees (Pull) * MSFT had a project: Halo 2 * Halo 2 didn't need "marketing" * But MSFT wanted it to be a cultural phenomenon * Made a 6h radio drama that lived in Halo 2, inspired by War of the Worlds * They "broadcast" it over hundreds of thousands of payphones all over the world * Answering a payphone opens the story for the larger community * People showed up in costumes, parties to answer the payphones -- ARG: Edoc (Push) * A clothing company * Good looking clothes, every item has a secret (Edoc is CODE backwards) * Find secret by folding, infrared light, washing, etc * If you solve the shirt, you go to the website and a movie plays * One movie/shirt * The movies piece together a murder mystery, told exclusively through clothing * Started by designing an online story, but delivered the story offline by pushing it out through clothes * People who wear the shirts have a connection with each other * When they pass in the street, they have a story to discuss -- ARG: Last Call Poker (Push) * Promotion for an Activision game called Gun * Creative way to engage audience with the wild west * Haunted online Poker site * The more you played, the stranger your life got * Tombstone Hold 'Em was a game you could play in cemeteries * There are four kinds of tombstones: flat on top, pointy on top, statues, and curved on top, correspond to suits in cards * Final digit on any tombstone is its value: all tombstones become cards * Mausolea are face-cards, based on the number of interred people: 1 is Jack, 2 is Queen, more than 2 is King * Now you can walk in a graveyard and see all headstones as cards * Site encouraged people to go out to graveyards and try it * LOTS of people showed up at cemeteries, playing cards * This wasn't disrespectful * Cemeteries invited them in -- rules required players to clean up, be respectful * Inspired players to be engaged with their local graveyards * You could pick any two cards that you and your partner could touch at the same time whilst touching each other -- Charge: * Anyone who touches the project becomes a magnet themselves -- ARG: Nine Inch Nails Year Zero (Charge) * Trent Reznor wrote an album wanted it to be the soundtrack for an experience * Hid songs on flash drives hidden in concerts, clues in spectographic analysis of songs * Secret underground concert -- fans were brought to a secret location where NIN played, halfway through the wall fell down and they were invaded by a SWAT team * The album and game was a dystopian commentary on the increased trend to authority * Built a site called "Open Source Resistance" * Matchmaking service put people with a message in touch with people with a network * Any message you care about -- surveillance, oil crisis, infant mortality, whatever -- feed it to the site as poster, art, audio, video, whatever * Any network -- your blog, your college radio station, major motion picture studio * This turns people into magnets -- they all want to make more of whatever the game is about * Charging requires that you continue to charge -- Wedding invite chart: * Last Call Poker: 1 * AI: 3 * I Love Bees: 2 * NIN: Year Zero: 0 (but the logo got tattooed everywhere) -- Questions * You have to build a lot of stuff to make this work -- how can you make it easier? * ARGs don't exist yet, it's in its infancy. We've got a cool storytelling technique. In order to scale, the model has to change. It can't just be "let me use all the elements of your life to tell you a story." It has to be, "Let me look at all your channels (browser, phone IM, etc) and find a way to turn that channel on specifically for you." ARGs take all the work of movies AND all the work of video games. We need a mini-version. It requires a major shift. We're like early filmmakers who made films of stage plays with a fixed camera. We need to start moving the camera, remove the proscenium, etc. * Most common cause of failure? * Failure to charge. Viral content has a predictable arc: grows fast, sinks without a trace. Strong pull, strong push, but nothing happens at the peak, no repeated charge. No way for the content to convert more people into magnets to build a second curve.