Name: Hans Klijn 29 June 29, 2019
Student nr: 11318163
Supervisor: Misha Kavka
Second reader: Markus Stauff
MA Media studies – Television and Cross-Media Culture
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Using an ARG to Create Liveness in HBO’s Westworld:
The influence of the gamified story on the viewer’s experience of the series’
temporality.
Table of contents
- P. 3: Introduction
o P. 4 Discover Westworld o P. 6 Methodology
- P. 8: Chapter 1. Theoretical Framework
- P. 17: Chapter 2. Liveness and temporality
o P. 18 Part 1 - Exploration phase o P. 20 Part 2 - Narrative phase o P. 21 Part 3 - Episodic phase o P. 27 Liveness
- P. 29: Chapter 3. Engagement and shared social reality
o P. 34 Engagement through immersion
- P. 37: Conclusion
Introduction
Series with incredibly complex narratives such as Lost (2004-2010, ABC) almost necessitate repeated viewings just to make sense of all the plot points that are branching out and tying together
throughout the story. Being able to record television series as well as buying the DVD box-set or now simply (re)streaming episodes on your television is not only a convenient way to watch television when you want to, but also to understand series’ narratives better. People once gathered on online message boards to make sense of the convoluted series of events that was shown. But not only did the narratives of the television series become more complex; they also expanded beyond the realm of television onto different media platforms. During the second season of Lost the show’s producers decided to not only have a story that was told through the television series, but to add additional backstory in different media. This backstory, which explored the background of a malicious company that was central to Lost’s plot, was told through websites, e-mails, phone calls, commercials, and flash mobs, among other media. The result was a fragmented story containing details of a fictional company which existed within the alternate reality established by the television series’ storyworld. This caused the viewers to become players in a gamified rendition of the narrative where they themselves had to find the fragmented pieces of the story and put them together. Participating in this Alternate Reality Game (ARG) was not necessary to follow along with the story told through the television series; its main purpose was to support the storyline that was told through the television series by expanding the storyworld.
Since the early 2000s many more television narratives have bled into other media. With its slogan
“It’s not TV. It’s HBO.” the subscription-based broadcaster HBO has portrayed itself as more than just
television. It lives up to this notion with complex narratives and characters, as well as elaborate marketing campaigns. For the series True Blood (2008-2014, HBO)and Game of Thrones (2011-2019, HBO) for example, the network launched marketing campaigns that spread across multiple media platforms where the audience could explore the storyworlds of the series and become immersed in them. These campaigns happened ahead of the airing of the pilot episodes, with the main focus being to create awareness of the stories and characters as these series moved into new territory for HBO with genres (horror and fantasy, respectively) that the network had not aired before (Bourdaa, 2014). Creating these moments of immersion into the storyworld through other platforms is
something HBO has kept exploring and expanding on since. For its series Westworld (2016-, HBO), which delves into yet another new genre for HBO, namely science fiction, a marketing campaign not
only preceded the pilot, but kept going throughout the series’ run. Ahead of its initial release the audience could explore the alternate reality in which Westworld was set through mostly online content, but as episodes began to be released new content would also be added to these online platforms. Analyzing Westworld and its use of the ARG offers a unique insight into the methods that are employed to stimulate the viewer to participate in the temporal flow of the series. In the case of
Westworld HBO operates on a weekly release model. By following this temporal flow, and thus
viewing episodes ‘live’, through both the TV series and the ARG the viewer is able to engage with the content in a much more immersive way. By offering quality engagement the audience is encouraged to become a live viewer and thus a loyal viewer.
Discover Westworld
Westworld is a science-fiction series that started airing on 2 October 2016. To date there have been
two seasons, with the second season’s finale airing on 24 June 2018. The series is set in the not-too-distant future in a theme park named Westworld that allows wealthy individuals to experience the old West. The theme park, which is run by the fictional corporation ‘Delos’, is inhabited by so called ‘hosts’, who are robots driven by artificial intelligence, but who forget what happened to them at the end of every day. Other than their 24-hour memory, they look and act like humans. The show deals with existential themes such as what it means to be human and when artificial intelligence could or should be considered consciousness. It does so by showing the viewer what the hosts undergo by being subject to both emotional and physical violence at the hands of part visitors. The hosts process this initially simply by having their memory reset every 24 hours, but this changes when some of the hosts become self-aware. This ability to remember the cruelty that they experience and becoming aware of the nature of their existence as robots in a theme park ultimately lead the hosts to revolt.
Similar to the ARG that accompanied Lost, the marketing campaign surrounding Westworld allowed to audience to explore the company that is central to the series’ plot, Delos Incorporated. From a few days before the pilot aired pieces of the storyworld became accessible through websites, the first of which was the Discoverwestworld website, which were quickly recognized by the audience as part of an ARG. While the audience may initially just have browsed the Discoverwestworld website and read about the park, a chatbot named Aeden soon prompted the visitors to ask some questions. A set of questions regarding, for example, how to get to Westworld or what activities visitors of the park can partake in lead to perfectly understandable answers. However, many people soon found that asking more critical questions about characters from the show, for instance, would lead to ‘error messages’ which were riddled with easter eggs. This in turn caused people to believe they were dealing with a
game rather than a non-interactive text. The easter eggs then quickly started leading people to hidden portions of the website which was aimed at consumers, as well as to a different website which seemed to serve as a platform for Delos’ business-to-business communication. The ARG allowed the audience experience what it might be like to be a prospective visitor of the park, or even a client of Delos Incorporated.
Even though the series is set in the future, about one or two centuries from now, the information on the webpages is framed as part of the present that the audience experiences. While the ARG is set in the ‘present’, the plot involves multiple timelines, although throughout the series there is much ambiguity as to which events belong to which timeline, as the story is not told chronologically and there are often no clear indicators which timeline is being shown. The timelines are complicated by the fact that the series features both human and host characters, the former of whom age and the latter of whom do not. The human characters are either guests, whom we follow as they visit the park, or employees of Delos, the company that owns Westworld. The audience rarely gets to see different groups of guests interact with each other, but they do see different groups of guests interacting with the same hosts in different scenes. Because hosts do not age, it is difficult to discern whether or not the guests are interacting with the hosts in the same timeline. A couple of notable timelines the series follows are, for one, the timeline in which William, who is married to the
daughter of James Delos, the founder of Delos Incorporated, visits the park for the first time with his brother-in-law. In another timeline we see the so called ‘Man in Black’, who is clearly much older than William and his brother-in-law, interacting with some of the same hosts we see William interacting with. Neither parties are shown interacting with other noteworthy human characters until the end of the first season, when the park’s former director greets the Man in Black as ‘William’ and we learn that William and the Man in Black are the same person a few decades apart. The show features many such reveals, where the viewer learns something that they thought happened in the present (the timeline furthest in the future, which runs parallel to the ARG) actually took place days, months or years earlier.
The television series’ ambiguity regarding its chronology is one reason for the complexity of the overall plot, as well as the sheer amount of narrative information that is put into each episode. With each episode the chronology of the narrative becomes a little clearer, as viewers piece together the information they are given to make sense of the puzzle that is the Westworld plot. This level of complexity is often met with a tendency towards binge-watching by the audience to be able to more easily relate the events from one episode to those of another (Jenner, 2014). Westworld, however, stimulates the viewers to watch the episodes when they premier by episodically adding new content
story by placing the television series’ present within the same temporality occupied by the audience exists.
Methodology
This thesis will explore how Westworld employs its ARG to stimulate the viewer to participate in the series’ temporality, both by viewing episodes of the show live, as they are aired, and by taking part in the ARG as soon as new content is added. The concept of liveness will first need to be defined in a way that relates to the current state of fiction television programming. The liveness that the audience of Westworld experiences is one that is spread across multiple media, relating not to that which is shown on TV, but to the temporal space in which the audience participates as a result of the airing of the series. While there is plenty of literature on both ARGs and on how we experience liveness through multiple platforms, there does not seem to be much research on how these can influence and even amplify each other. Therefore, I aim to answer the question, “How does Westworld employ its ARG to stimulate the audience to participate in multi-platform liveness?”
To research how the ARG affects the viewers’ experience of liveness, there first needs to be a theoretical framework to define what liveness is within the context of fiction television series as well as a definition of the ARG which shows how it differs from other online marketing campaigns. This theoretical framework will connect the historical concept of liveness from television studies to related concepts within the context of Westworld and its ARG such as immersion, as the ARG allows the audience to not simply witness or even interact with the story, but to participate in it. Through this immersion the viewer has more reason to engage intensively with the content. In order to do so the viewer will need to keep up to date with the temporal flow of the television series in relation to the ARG, as the online content is ephemeral. This immersive experience is part of what Henry Jenkins refers to as ‘affective economics’, which describes a shift towards quality over quantity in regard to customer engagement, stimulating brand loyalty (Jenkins, 2006). By providing the viewer with a higher-quality experience, the viewer becomes more engaged and thus becomes a more loyal HBO customer.
This will lay the foundation for a case study of Westworld, analyzing the ARG on the basis of audience accounts and using McGonigal’s study of I love bees as a model for my research as well as Veale’s study of the transmodal story of Homestuck. Both are case studies that feature a high degree of descriptiveness, which is required when studying ARGs as they are ephemeral and as a result most of the content that will be discussed cannot be revisited. McGonigal’s essay even consists mostly of a
front-to-back chronological description of the ARG. While I do not describe every detail of the ARG in this thesis, I do engage in quite elaborate description of the parts of the ARG I want to highlight, as much of it is no longer available.
The case study will be divided into two chapters. Chapter 1 will focus on redefining liveness with respect to the ARG, comparing the temporality of the ARG with that of the television series and exploring how they interact with each other. The second chapter will focus on engagement through the ARG, analyzing the way that the ARG shapes a shared social reality as well as creates immersive experiences. These immersive experiences allow the audience to participate in the story and to bring that story into the same present tense as the viewer, causing them to experience the present of the television series as their own.
While I did participate in some parts of the ARG that were available outside of the U.S. and kept up with some of its other developments through social media, the corpus will consist of other users’ descriptions of the ARGs after the fact rather than from the perspective of first-hand experience participating in the ARG. These descriptions will be pulled from online archives, most importantly Reddit, as the Westworld subreddit users have created an archive of everything they found and experienced while participating in the ARG. This is the primary dataset, because the websites related to the ARG have changed over time and most content that is discussed is no longer available to experience first-hand.
1. Theoretical framework
An ARG, as the name suggests, is a game that allows the audience to experience alternate reality, in this case of a television series. More specifically, contemporary ARGs are interactive works of fiction that consist of a cluster of mostly online content spread over multiple websites, blogs, images, audio files and other digital artifacts to create an immersive experience (McGonigal, 2008). Some ARGs do go offline for some portions; as ARGs have roots that reach to times well before the internet, such as treasure hunts organized by newspapers, their offline form is the original format from which they evolved into present-day online or multi-platform ARGs (Örnebring, 2007). ARGs are employed by broadcasters as marketing tools not only in the sense of getting people interested in the content in the first place, but also keeping them interested as the story progresses, producing loyal viewers who follow the narrative as it evolves, live.
Live television is a concept that has been redefined over the years, as television has changed. In her 1983 essay Jane Feuer calls liveness an ideology as well as the ontology of television. She starts by stating that nobody seems to be entirely sure of what “television” is (Feuer, 1983). Most scholars up until then had described it by stating how it differed from cinema, often focusing on the immediacy of television. While Feuer does not end up with a definitive conclusion of what this ideology might entail, she does lay down a foundation for what would need to be discussed in order to come to any conclusion. For example, Feuer coins the term “liveness” in this essay and states that it is a key way in which television is different from cinema, as the former can transmit events to viewers as they occur. Technical liveness, however, is not all that there is to television, as Feuer states that television might instead be better understood as a “collage of film, video and ‘live,’ all interwoven into a complex and altered time scheme” (Feuer, 1983, p. 15). She goes on to describe Good Morning,
America as a fragmented program, consisting of numerous segments that flow from one to the other,
where unity, flow and regularity are created by the show’s host. Feuer’s essay ends by raising more questions than it answers as it even questions the legitimacy of the articulation of the problem that is being presented stating: “Is the spectator positioned by the apparatus, or is the spectator relatively free, and if so, what permits us to analyze texts in the way I have done above, and why is Good
Morning, America so successful? Or perhaps this manner of articulating the problem is itself the
It does, however, pose an important question, asking not only “what is television?” but the underlying question of what needs to be asked more specifically to describe the ideology of television.
Feuer never gives a definitive answer as to what the ideology of television entails, and even though she coins the term liveness herself as an integral part of how television differs from cinema, she immediately questions whether liveness is the single defining term of the ideology of television. Instead, she opts to position this quality of being ‘live’ within a collage of multiple characteristics which are all entwined. Caldwell explores this further by speaking of the “ideology of liveness myth”, explaining that liveness is often understood as the determining feature of television within the realm of television theory. He instead posits that liveness can be better understood as one stylistic
element, a visual code that can be communicated to and understood by ontologically aware viewers. His understanding of liveness is limited to the immediacy of transmission, where the events that are shown on TV happen at the same time as they are transmitted, creating a sense of “being there” (Caldwell, 1995). Here Caldwell actively distances himself from the idea that liveness is integral to televisual ideology. His opposition to Feuer’s view of liveness is understandable, as the medium of television itself had also changed by the mid-1990s, when Caldwell was writing, since her essay was written before the introduction of VOD services which offered an entirely new mode of viewing and which indeed had no overlap with the immediacy of transmission that had defined liveness.
Similar to radio, television provided live information and entertainment to its viewers, as it is still capable of doing, but liveness does not necessarily define television any longer. As VOD and streaming were introduced to the television audience, ‘liveness’ as a technical aspect controlled by broadcasters and networks was slowly becoming a less integral part of the viewing experience, although this feature used to be integral to the television industry. The strength of live television, however, remained, that is, its ability to be both there on the scene as well as in your living room, the sense of “being there”. This is mostly true in regard to news television, where television transmission is felt as an immediate collision with the real (Doane, 2016). It is this liveness that initially clearly differentiated television from film, as a distinction rooted in its modes of production, rhetoric and address. Even when transmission is no longer technically live, liveness continues to be associated with certain qualities and characteristics, such as immediacy, presence, reality effects, intimacy and so on (White, 2004).
The way people consume television also keeps changing, and as a result the answer to the question of what television is must keep changing as well. As VOD services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu are on the rise, broadcasting companies have found themselves with some tough competition. These
streaming services offer a different mode of viewing to the audience, notably binge-watching, which has almost replaced the live television experience in some cases (Jenner, 2014). Jenner states that, due to fiction television series employing increasingly more complex narratives that reward on-demand binge-watching as viewers struggle to fully comprehend everything, audiences are moving away from the live experience and onto the streaming platforms.
It is important to note that binge-watching is not necessarily unrelated to liveness, as often streaming services such as Netflix will upload an entire season of an original series, which many consumers then wish to view as soon as possible. While fiction television might not have the sense of urgency that a news broadcast or sports television has, liveness still comes into play through the "water-cooler talk," where people discuss last night's broadcast together (Johnson, 2009). Something that is prevalent in sports television as well as in fiction television is the sharing of audio, video and other snippets of information on social media. Because of this, the water-cooler talk has moved from the actual water-cooler to the second screen. Johnson, focusing on sports, argues that broadcasting networks create a sense of community through this second screen by interacting with the audience through discussion of ongoing matches. Importantly, sports television has shifted to multi-platform liveness, sharing news stories online on the network’s website and social media, as well as on television, where the news that was earlier released online is complemented with commentary by television hosts and famous sportspeople. For sports television, liveness is highly relevant because of its newsworthiness, as every match poses the question, "who will win?," which is to be answered during the broadcast. Fiction television, even when an entire season is uploaded at once, has a similar form of newsworthiness as the audience goes online to discuss cliffhangers they were left with by the end of the season or even an episode. As audiences take to online platforms, the water-cooler talk moves to these platforms, shaping a multi-media environment in the "post-network era" where viewers have an individual experience while also creating a community through sharing and interacting.
Additionally, sports television extends to second screen apps, such as various social media platforms as well as network-owned apps like the ESPN app, which update the viewer with live information as the match is happening. The NFL, for example, offers a wide range of information, interaction and advertisements on their website, allowing the viewers to interact with the content live. This multi-platform approach is something that is very prevalent in sports broadcasting. New media multi-platforms offer extended information as well as complement the television screen, urging engagement with the online content as well as a return to the television screen, both participating in the live discussion through second screen apps as well as witnessing the events as they are being transmitted live to the television screen.
This multi-platform liveness can then be divided into two forms: online liveness and group liveness, both of which Couldry defines as liveness outside of the medium of television. Online liveness takes place on the internet through chatrooms and more recently various social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, where the audience can discuss whatever they are seeing on television with anyone and everyone on the platform through hashtags (Twitter), groups (Facebook) and subreddits (Reddit). Group liveness, by contrast, is experienced through mobile phones as people discuss media in group texts or other (group) chat apps such as Whatsapp (Couldry, 2004). These two forms of liveness Couldry describes essentially differ on the basis of platform functionality: online liveness encourages people to seek out the platform they want to discuss a specific topic on, whereas in the case of group liveness they introduce a topic to their already existing social group. This also means there is a difference in the amount of control they have over when and what they want to discuss between the different forms. Online liveness forces the individual to follow the masses and view the content that is trending at that time. Group liveness can be the result of one person encouraging the group to watch a television series through streaming or VOD. Couldry states that online liveness is initiated by the broadcaster, while group liveness starts from a group of people, meaning it could be a group of people that started binge-watching Friends together.
It becomes apparent here how persistent the idea of liveness has been throughout television’s history, as its meaning keeps evolving. While in the early days of television liveness was a given and the audience could witness events as they were unfolding in "real-time," Couldry argues that nowadays liveness can refer to scheduled programming as well, stating, “liveness guarantees a potential connection to shared social realities as they are happening” (Couldry, 2004, p. 56). This is based on his argument that liveness has less to do with the realness of the event than with the immediacy of the transmission. Couldry also states that "liveness now takes new forms which link television to other media" (Couldry, 2004, p. 355). This coincides with Johnson's description of sports broadcasters, in that the "water-cooler talk" has moved online, creating a community through audience interaction. Liveness no longer refers only to witnessing events as they are happening, but to participating in a shared social reality as it is taking place. It is important to experience an episode of a television series "now" so that the viewer can interact with the online community also watching, those who are consuming and producing content through new media instead of other social
mechanisms. It is the aim of online liveness that is the most significant to the transmedia storytelling in television series such as Mr. Robot, Alias, and Westworld which employ Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). These games are set almost entirely on the internet, thereby moving part of their story into the digital realm where the audience can now interact not only with each other, but with the story as
well, on the same platforms as where the story is being told. As the live experience moves online, so do the stories of television.
While liveness used to be a necessity in television, it has now become a tool employed by
broadcasters to attract viewers within a particular time frame as well as being a concept that can be initiated by the audience. It no longer only secures the reality of the event but also evokes
immediacy and a sense of urgency to be able to participate in the shared social reality by joining the conversation on social media. However, McPherson speaks mostly of an “illusion” of liveness, stating that online liveness is influenced by our own personal experience. The differences between online and traditional liveness can be demarcated by three factors: mobility, volatility, and causality (McPherson, 2006). McPherson explains that, as we navigate liveness ourselves, it becomes mobile, since we make choices about which content to consume driven by our own interests. As we choose, we encounter causality, since our previous choice influences our next choice, creating a chain of events resulting in our own personal path that leads through the content provided to us. The volatility presents itself in terms of the immediacy of liveness, since we experience it in the "now", causing the user to be unable to reproduce the experience later as it was unique to that moment in time. McPherson calls this volitional mobility. However, she later admits that this volitional mobility is undermined by the interfaces employed by the websites, which guide the user along a
predetermined path. Dasgupta elaborates on this by stating that McPherson was perhaps too optimistic in her view of audience agency in the online experience, adding that along with public volatility, volitional mobility should be seen as a directed-and-participatory form of temporal experience (Dasgupta, 2014). Dasgupta argues here that even though the user has influence on the path they take to some degree, their path is also directed by the creator of the website. McPherson touches on this herself by speaking of "the illusory nature of the web's modalities," stating they create the illusion that one is actively searching the web. This means that the user does not have the amount of control that McPherson initially assumed over where they go on the web; rather, the websites they visit are set up to lead them to whichever part of the web the owner of the website wants them to go to. While the user remains mostly in control of their browsing behavior, webpages do have mechanisms in place to try and manipulate the user’s online experience. McPherson and Dasgupta argue that ‘liveness’ on the web can be perceived as existing through the volatile nature of our own personal experience, but also consider the notion that the user is lead along a
predetermined path, rather causing an illusion of liveness instead.
A similar temporal experience can be seen in ARGs. Westworld features an ARG that encourages the viewer to experience the narrative within a certain timeframe by using other media outside of television to tell parts of the story. The audience works together to solve a "puzzle", communicating
with each other about their findings and becoming part of a community. While the audience may feel they chose to participate, they were also set on this path by the media to become part of a shared social reality. This enforces the significance of the program’s liveness by suggesting the audience might uncover important information regarding the narrative in the case of a television-series related ARG (Dasgupta, 228). This way ARGs can be used to create a sense of urgency, allowing the viewers to be part of the shared social reality, uncovering the narrative as it unfolds through multiple media and sharing different pieces of the puzzle in different places.
Örnebring brings up the point that, while ARGs do offer experiences through audience participation, it does not shift power away from traditional media towards the audience, since the power to set the limits of narrative still very much lies with the cultural industries (Örnebring, 2007). He emphasizes the function of ARGs as marketing tools, since they conform to corporate goals of brand-building. Creators of television series can deliberately leave gaps or additional areas for narrative exploration outside the “main” texts. These parts of the narrative outside the main texts are termed
hyperdiegesis by Hills (2002). Leaving these gaps might create a desire to find additional content on the part of the consumer, a desire that can be satisfied through an ARG. This way, fans are strongly encouraged to participate in the shared social reality that is created, to consume as much of the story as possible.
The Alternate Reality Games that are attached to television series are generally intended to be solved by the "internet hivemind" or, as McGonigal calls it, citing Pierre Levy, "collective
intelligence". This collective intelligence is employed on an enormous scale in Wikipedia, where people from all over the world come together to create an ever-growing online encyclopedia (McGonigal, 2). In her case study of I love bees, the ARG that prefaced the release of the videogame
Halo 2, she describes a deconstructed narrative. Rather than telling the audience a story, the game
designers left an evidence trail of a story and let the audience tell it to themselves (7). This evidence consisted of website whose URL was shown briefly at the end of the theatrical trailer for Halo 2, which led players to a blog of a beekeeper who claimed the website had been hacked. At this point it was unclear to the participants how this website could be related to the Halo universe. As the blog was updated and players started investigating the website, they found clues to there being a lot more going on, as the website appeared to be hacked by an Artificial Intelligence from the Halo universe. This was never explicitly stated anywhere in the ARG, but rather pieced together by the players through a trail of clues that was left for them. This is what most ARGs that come out of the television business tend to do, such as the tactic followed by Westworld’s ARG; they hand the audience the pieces of a (secondary) narrative and leave it to them to piece it all together.
There are generally speaking three moments at which the pieces of a TV-related ARG can be presented to the audience: before a series premiere, while the season is airing, or in between seasons of a television series. Alias, for example, had an ARG running alongside its first season from October 2001 until March 2002, while Mr. Robot has run ARGs in between seasons. HBO's sci-fi western Westworld released the ARG only shortly before the series' premiere, causing the audience to try to find out as much as they could before the show aired and then coming up with different ways to approach the puzzle as the narrative unfolded on the television series. The goal of releasing an ARG ahead of the release of a series would seem to be generating hype, getting people excited to watch the show, as McGonigal states was also the case for the I love bees ARG (McGonigal, 2008). Running the ARG concurrently with a season, however, would enforce a sense of urgency as ARGs are ephemeral, and thereby construct liveness. Running an ARG in between seasons might serve to keep the audience engaged as they wait for new content.
As the subreddit dedicated to the Westworld ARG has a total of 683 subscribers, it is safe to assume the television series has a much larger audience than the ARG. The ARG does not function to attract new viewers, but rather to ensure more quality engagement from the people who are already fans of the show in order to keep them invested in the story. Jenkins coined the term “affective economics” to describe a configuration of marketing theory which attempts to understand how customer desires translate into their purchasing behavior, or as Jenkins puts it, the approach “ seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and
purchasing decisions” (Jenkins, 2006). He states that advertisers and networks are slowly coming to the conclusion that the quality of viewer engagement might be more important than the quantity of viewers in order to build a long-term relationship with the consumer. Quality engagement here means offering the consumer the ability to engage with the content and interact with it, instead of simply being exposed to it. As they are able to interact with the content, they can build a more meaningful relationship with it and become loyal viewers. In turn, advertisers want to transfer this brand loyalty from the entertainment property onto their brand; however, consumers seem to be much more accepting of product placement in reality television shows than they are in other genres, most notably drama, news and children’s programming. This desire to create brand loyalty, turning viewers and customers into fans of the brand, shows the industry’s shift towards valuing quality over quantity when it comes to viewer engagement and a stronger emphasis on “brand loyalty”. Creating additional opportunities for the viewer to interact with the story through ARGs could make the viewer have a stronger connection to the series and cause them to be more invested in the narrative. As they become more invested in the narrative, they will also be more likely to track down content across multiple media platforms, meaning the ARG itself could envelop an increasingly more complex
story spread across more websites or even other platforms, allowing for an increasingly more intimate relation with the audience, who will work harder to find additional content. This relationship is what networks intend to achieve, as, in the volatile television climate, “such consumers, they believe, represent their best hope for the future.” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 68).
As ARGs are gamified narratives, they allow for a more immersive experience, considering that games allow the audience to not only witness a story but to participate in it. This participation of the audience in the narrative and being able to interact with the content instead of only being exposed to it shift the roles of both the broadcaster and the audience towards each other: “The role of the broadcaster is not just to speak but to listen; the role of the audience is not just to listen but to speak” (Rose, 2012, p. 11). Rose states that ARGs are a hybrid of game and story, as the story is broken up into fragments and the game is to piece them back together. These stories are told non-linearly as they are like hypertexts in the sense that one narrative clue contains links to multiple different texts, causing players to be able to follow different paths. It also enables viewers to dive deep into the part of the story they want to explore. The collective intelligence of the communities who solve these puzzles retells the story in their own way and comes to own the story to an extent that cannot be achieved by any other medium. The ARG can convey details that would not have fit within the runtime of a television episode or a movie, or it can show alternate outcomes of the same story. By telling the story through multiple media, a new narrative emerges, according to Rose. Above all it is immersive. He names this “deep media,” or “stories that are not just entertaining, but immersive, taking you deeper than an hour-long TV drama or a two-hour movie or a 30-second spot will permit” (Rose, 2012, p. 13).
This rise of deep media can be explained through Jenkins’ statement that networks are starting to prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to viewer engagement. This quality engagement is achieved through multimedia or transmedia stories. Kevin Veale uses the term “transmodal engagement” to describe the use of different media forms within the webcomic Homestuck, which uses “the affective, experiential affordances of different media forms to sculpt and shape the experience of the text in completely different way to ‘transmedia’ storytelling” (Veale, 2017, p. 1).
Homestuck uses the audience’s familiarity with certain media to set expectations and consequently
defy or confirm those expectations; however, these media forms are all applied within the context of the webcomic and never leave this medial context. Veale uses the term metamedia storytelling to describe the way in which Homestuck uses the audience’s familiarity with certain modes of mediated storytelling to shape and manipulate their experience of the text. By employing different modes from different media the text utilizes transmodal engagement. Transmedia storytelling chooses to
with the medium, allowing it to contribute to the story in a unique way. ARGs tend to contain characteristics of both transmedia storytelling and transmodal storytelling. They exhibit elements of transmodal storytelling in the sense that they often consist of seemingly mundane texts that are riddled with clues and easter eggs. They shape the experience of the audience by presenting the player with texts that, when seen within the context of the alternate reality, are simply user
agreements, or corporate websites, whereas within the context of the game they can be understood as pieces of a narrative that connects these texts. The term ‘easter eggs’ here refers to parts of the story that are hidden, much like actual Easter eggs. By diving deep into the ARG, the participants can find these obscure bits of content, which usually lead them to new parts of the story. Simultaneously ARGs can also be understood as part of transmedia storytelling, as Örnebring states they can be seen as part of the transmedia world of a media franchise (Örnebring, 2007). This can also be applied to
Westworld as the television show and ARG are parts of the same narrative, but are spread across
multiple media platforms. The texts that are contained within the ARG can be seen as transmedia texts which employ strategies of transmodal storytelling, as the texts are presented within a known format but contain an extra meaning in the form of clues to an overarching interactive narrative. By placing these clues within known formats, the ARG creates a more immersive experience for the audience to engage in. This results in higher quality engagement and thus helps the audience to have a more meaningful relationship with the content. This results in more loyal viewers who will
ultimately want to watch new content ‘live’ as it premiers on TV.
This meaningful relationship with the content encourages the viewer to follow the temporal flow of episode release which is determined by the network. In doing so, viewers are enabled to participate in a multi-platform liveness, to become part of a shared social reality. Binge-watching after the season or the entire series is over prevents the viewer from participating in the shared social reality and experiencing the narrative at its most immersive, as well as being the way it was intended by the series' creator. Networks have moved from focusing on exposing as many people as possible to the content, to creating a loyal fanbase by offering more immersive content which allows the audience various ways to interact with the content and even participate in the narrative. The ideal viewer of fiction television participates in the constructed multi-platform liveness by both joining in discussions through second screen apps as well as seeking out new content, such as ARGs, across multiple different media platforms.
2. Liveness and temporality
The way we watch television has changed through the years as a result of technological
advancements. From DVD to DVR to streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, they all enable modes of viewing that break through television’s formerly irreversible flow (Kelly, 2018). As a result of this, the temporality of television programming has shifted, from its initial form where the
broadcasters were in command of when the audience had access to the content, to a more and more flexible temporality wherein the viewer is in control of when and where they view the content they want to see.
For the broadcasters and television networks, however, it is still important to concentrate most of their viewership around the initial release of the content; amongst other reasons, this is the case because showrunners need to prove to executives, who in turn report to shareholders, that their show is bringing in a commercially viable viewership (Jenkins, 2006). This audience is measured through audience measurement systems such as Nielsen ratings, which often do not take time-shifted viewing into account, as is written on Nielsen’s own website which states that time-time-shifted viewings are only captured in their measurements when they occur within seven days of the original broadcast ("Television Measurement | Television Ratings | Nielsen", 2019). As most fiction television series air on a weekly basis with the exception of certain soap operas, this means that only viewings that occur before the next episode is aired are added towards the ratings. These ratings are very often the cause for a series’ cancellation (Guerrero-Pico, 2017). Additionally, cable networks and streaming services can expect new shows to bring in new subscribers or for them to be popular among their existing subscribers, causing them to be more likely to stay subscribed. To be able to adequately describe a correlation between a series’ release and an increase in subscribers, these subscribers will have to be stimulated to subscribe within the timeframe in which the episode are being aired. Streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime which often release full seasons of a series at once are notoriously secretive about their viewing numbers and practices in regards to renewing and canceling shows. What can be noted however is that cancellation
announcements often occur roughly a month after a season’s release, as was the case for The Path and Santa Clarita Diet recently. Alternatively, someone might subscribe to HBO simply to gain access to HBO’s streaming platform HBO Go so that they can watch The Sopranos or True Blood. Then after they have finished those series they can cancel their subscription. The broadcaster will want to keep this viewer subscribed by offering them new content that they want to watch as it is airing to ensure
the viewer stays subscribed rather than canceling and then returning later when there is enough new content to binge-watch.
While someone is subscribed, the network can use their platforms, television broadcasting,
streaming service, websites, and email for instance, to make the viewer aware of new series that are being released soon. This can be done through teasers and trailers that are broadcasted or shared through any of these platforms, but also through marketing campaigns that are more immersive and allow the audience to engage with the content (Bourdaa, 2014). Such a marketing campaign was employed for the release of HBO’s Westworld. However, it soon after its inception became clear that the marketing campaign was more than just that as throughout the series’ run people have been finding new clues in what was discovered to be an ARG because of these hidden clues and easter eggs.
Westworld does not tell its story through televised episodes alone; it employs multiple websites
which are part of the ARG, and a mobile game through which the storyworld can be experienced. It can be argued that the story is told through transmedia storytelling, which Jenkins defines as a narrative told through multiple media whereby each medium contributes to the story in a unique way and can be consumed independently of the others (Jenkins, 2006). Whether or not Westworld fits this specific definition, it at least borrows some practices from transmedia storytelling as both the websites and the game offer unique experiences and even new information regarding the
story(world). At the time of release, the television series interacted with the other texts in a way that stimulated the viewer to consume all of the related texts as soon as they were released, since
information from one influenced the way in which the other was experienced. In some cases the ARG even contained spoilers for the television series, if the most recent episode had not been viewed yet. Information from the episode was often also necessary to proceed in the ARG or at least to
understand what certain pieces of content meant within the context of the overall story. In the latter case the player could of course choose to seek out other players who shared the needed
information, but would then risk spoiling the as yet unwatched episode.
Part 1 – exploration phase
Westworld’s ARG started almost simultaneously with the series pilot (which aired October 2, 2016),
with the appearance of the website Discoverwestworld.com. The Discover Westworld website allowed viewers to experience what it might be like to explore the Westworld theme park as a guest. They were able to view prices, information about the park, and promotional material aimed at
potential guests to the park. At first glance the website might be experienced as a transmedia text rather than as part of an ARG, as the audience was able to simply explore the world of Westworld in a more engaging way which could be experienced as an extension of the storyworld in a different medium, without looking out for clues and hidden messages. Within days, however, the audience had found a large number of easter eggs, including other websites like the corporate Delos website (Delosincorporated.com) as well as the ‘Terms Of Service’ agreement in regards to the Westworld theme park. These easter eggs, which often needed decoding as they were hidden inside strings of nonsensical programming language, indicated that the websites were not just storyworld extensions, but were in fact parts of a puzzle that the audience could figure out together.
All these extra pieces of narrative expanded the universe that the show was set in, but also encouraged people to actively participate in the ARG in between airings of episodes since there might be clues pointing to future events in the show. An example of this can be found in the ‘Terms Of Service’ contract, which states that, through their coding, it is impossible for the ‘hosts’ to hurt a living organism, not even a fly. However, in the first episode one of the hosts is in fact shown killing a fly, hinting that there might be more to the hosts, or to this particular character, than meets the eye. The ARG and television series strengthen each other as part of the ARG gives new meaning to something that might otherwise seem insignificant in the show, as well as these encoded allusions to the ARG within the show encouraging people to seek out more clues by participating in the ARG. It is in such moments that Westworld shows signs of Veale’s concept of transmodal engagement as well as metamedia storytelling as the audience’s understanding of a ‘terms of service’ document as a mundane piece of text is used to hide a core plot point inside it (Veale, 2017). In this case, it points to the potential of an oncoming robot rebellion and which host might have a part to play in its
instigation.
This early stage of the ARG can be considered as an introduction of the concept to the audience, as they are encouraged to explore in general considering there is no content that ties directly into specific events on the television series, but rather lets them explore the storyworld to better understand the context in which the events of the television series are taking place. They can find how much entrance to the park costs for instance, when the park was built, or what kind of activities visitors of the park can participate in. At this point the ARG does not yet adhere to the television series’ episodic flow. While clues with varying degrees of significance to the plot are hidden, the content on the websites remains the same up until the Season One finale. Because of this, no direct references to major plot points on the television series can be found in this stage of the ARG. McGonigal states that the I love bees ARG applied a similar approach, as the first part of I love bees
game world and a shared language for discussing it” (McGonigal, 2008). This same practice takes place in the case of Westworld’s ARG as viewers are taught how to interact with the content, where to search for clues and what actions to take to access new parts of the ARG. For example, using key phrases from the series, such as the Shakespeare quote often repeated by multiple characters, “These violent delights have violent ends,” reveals that “VIOLENTDELIGHTS” can be used as a
password to the Discoverwestworld website to gain access to Delos’ corporate website. On the latter website the player can read emails sent by Delos employees, one of which references a security breach, but does not specify what kind of security breach. Another interactive aspect they are introduced to is the fact that repeating the same action can yield different results and that repeated actions can even be required to access specific content. This is the case when asking the chatbot AEDEN, “Who are you?” three times. Two possible responses are simply met with the line, “Hello nice to meet you, what questions can I answer about Westworld?” along with some strings of code, but a third outcome reveals the ominous message, “You’re in a prison of your own sins. Hell is empty, and the devils are here. Arnold will come for you.” As the show is packed with Shakespeare quotes that highlight core plot elements, an observant viewer would instantly be alerted to the significance of this response over the other two chat messages and urge them to look into the context of this particular Shakespeare quote (“Hell is empty, and the devils are here.”), which was shouted by King Alonso in Shakespeare’s The Tempest as he jumped overboard during a storm, and how it may relate to Arnold, one of the park’s founders who has passed away, but of whom we find out the host Bernard is a very close replica. Arnold at this point in the series has been mentioned, but not seen as any flashbacks to when he would have been alive did not reveal anything about his appearance. Through this method the audience is encouraged to keep trying new things in order to possibly unlock new portions of the story.
Part 2 – narrative phase
In between the first and second season the teaser trailer for the second season was aired during the Super Bowl, which took place on February 5th 2018, with the first episode of Season Two not airing
until April 22nd. The main content of the Super Bowl ad itself was not directly tied to the ARG, but in
the last seconds of the ad a binary code was shown which would lead players to a new website. This website in turn revealed there were a total of six robot-inhabited theme parks in the diegetic space of Westworld. Three weeks later the show’s official twitter account posted a link to the “Delos Destination Intranet,” which amongst other things contained an employee guidebook which had disturbing messages written on the pages, urging the reader to get help as the park was no longer
safe. Soon thereafter the Delos Destinations website was updated with a careers section, which featured a promotional video aimed at potential Westworld employees for the upcoming Westworld mobile game, which was an actual game that the audience could play themselves. The mobile game, which lets players run a virtual version of Westworld, would supposedly teach employees about how the park is run. At this point the ARG actually promoted yet another transmedia product through which players could expand their experience of the Westworld universe as they could experience what it supposedly would be like to be a newly hired Delos employee. How tempting it might be to start working at Westworld was undermined within the next week, however, as the ‘hosts’ (the robots that inhabit the theme park) took over the Discover Westworld website, making even the service chatbot hostile towards visitors. The hosts taking over the website is a part of the narrative that is not shown in the television series and rather is exclusive to the ARG, but does show how thorough the hosts are in their endeavors, as well as set the tone for a Season Two where the hosts are in control instead of the humans. Furthermore, it also serves as an incentive for people to not only watch the television episodes as soon as possible, but to also participate in the ARG as soon as possible because certain parts of the game might become inaccessible as the story evolves and the websites change. The original Discover Westworld website, for example, can no longer be
experienced as only the version that the hosts put up is currently online. This change in the ARG also only makes sense to viewers who have watched all the released episodes as they would otherwise lack the necessary context to understand why and how the hosts have taken over the website. As a result the audience is stimulated to adhere to the temporal flow that is exercised by the television series as well as the ARG, albeit to a lesser extent in the case of the ARG at this point, before the release of Season Two.
Part 3 – Episodic phase
Örnebring states that many ARGs follow an episodic structure (Örnebring, 2007), in response to Hills’ observation that fan culture is becoming “[…] increasingly enmeshed within the rhythms and
temporalities of broadcasting […]” (Hills, 2002). The introductory part of the ARG was crucial to get as many people acquainted with the game as possible, as during the second season Westworld’s ARG grew into this episodic structure much more. New content was added directly after or in between episodes of the television series, which strengthened the episodic rhythm of the narrative and stimulated viewers to adhere to this structure by engaging in ‘live’ viewing as well as actively
participating in the ARG in between episodes in order to experience the narrative in its entirety. This was due to the fact they might miss out on certain content if they chose to lag behind and
binge-watch multiple episodes of the television series, causing them to be unable to follow along with the ARG as it would contain spoilers or simply not make sense.
By encouraging the audience to stay involved in the ARG, Westworld was able to rely on its audience to quickly find out when new content was added to the ARG by using the websites that the players were now familiar with. This was put to use by rounding out the first season through the ARG and instantly initiating a bridge to the second season, while moving the ARG into a more episodic structure that was better entwined with the television series’ temporality. The ARG shifted from being a tool for players to explore the storyworld to being a legitimate extension of the narrative, evolving and changing along with changes that were happening in the television series. It is here, at the end of the first season, that the series’ creators left out key information from the televised narrative, such as the fate of Elsie, one of the characters whom we last see being left for dead in the final episode of Season One. However, a term used in the series to describe the files that contain information regarding the robots’ past memories and iterations – “reverie” – can be used to log in on the Delos corporate website, revealing Elsie to still be alive. Here Westworld’s ARG is established as not only part of the storyworld, but also part of the story as it catches up to, and even moves
beyond, the television series by revealing new information that has yet to be shown in the series. The ARG also becomes more entwined with the temporality of the television series as content in the ARG is released as a continuation of the first season. This also serves as a motivator for players of the ARG to watch the episodes as soon as they come out from this point forward in the sense that the ARG could now serve as a source of spoilers for those who have not yet seen the final episode of the season. On the other hand, the ARG also operates outside that temporality, as the hosts taking over the website as well as the mobile game were added months before the second season’s first episode even went to air.
From the second episode of season two onward, the ARG was updated at least once after every episode, bringing new content to the players that elaborates on the events of the series. For
instance, after the second episode aired, a restricted part of the Delos Incorporated website dubbed “The Door” by players, a mini-site that features a panoramic view of a room through which players can access videos, was updated with clips that showed a flashback to a few key moments in William’s past, one of the main characters on the show who is a major shareholder in the Delos company. The videos that can be viewed are taken from the television series and therefore emphasize these moments instead of introducing new information to the player. As opposed to when these scenes were shown with the rest of the story on the television screen the content from the television series is recontextualized, being framed as accessing restricted information. By putting the content in a different context it gains additional meaning as something the audience is not supposed to know,
thereby meaning most characters in Westworld also do not know this information as they would lack access to this restricted part of the website that the ARG players have ‘hacked’ into.
One of the clips that is shown on the webpage shows a tense conversation between William and the founder of Delos about William wanting to buy a controlling stake in Westworld, which he ends up doing in a later scene on the show. In a different clip he is then seen using this to his advantage when James Delos falls ill to move into a more powerful position within the company. The means by which he achieves this shows the character as manipulative and morally perverse. Finally in a last clip, William also states he will use the hosts for his own purposes, which the viewer now knows will most likely be diabolical. By having these parts of the story emphasized, the audience can assume that this will be one of the major plotlines that are to come in later episodes, fueling speculation about future events. To be able to participate in the discussion of future events the viewer will have to be caught up with the current state of affairs in regards to Westworld’s story, both in regards to the television series and the ARG.
After the third episode of Season Two an e-mail went out to viewers who had registered an account on the Discoverwestworld website during Season One. The email refers readers to a website for the newly revealed park “The Raj,” which was featured on the third episode. Revealing the website for a certain park only after it has been introduced on the television series would become a common practice, as it was repeated for two other parks as well. The e-mail also explained what “The Cradle” is, a computer server that contains all the consciousnesses of the park’s hosts. More important, however, is the fact that “The Cradle” does not make its first appearance on the show until three episodes later. In other words, the ARG teases out something that exists in Westworld but has not been featured on the show yet. Something that people who engage in live viewings of the episodes would be aware of, as others might think this was still to come in the episodes that had aired but they had not watched yet. Another instance of the ARG showing the player something before it is featured on the show is revealed in the fourth episode as observant viewers and players will
recognize the room from the “The Door” mini-site displayed on-screen. The room is meant to contain a robot clone of the founder of the Delos company, James Delos, as he is being tested to decide whether the cloning process is a success or not. This also hints at the possibility of William being a robot clone as well, as his memories are placed inside this room on the “The Door” mini-site. But this would not be revealed until a later episode. Adding such foreshadowing to the ARG offers further incentive for players to keep up to date, as experiencing these parts of the ARG after the events have happened on the television series would significantly alter their experience of the story. It also creates affective engagement as the players of the ARG become part of the select group of people
that are ‘in the know’ in regards to this foreshadowing. In a more concrete way, the addition of content in the ARG that is yet to be showed on the television series solidifies it as an integral part of the storytelling process rather than a means to tie up loose ends from the television series.
After the fourth episode of Season Two players received another email with a link to the Delos Destinations intranet. Following this link revealed that the website had been taken over by a chatbot, which alerted users to the fact that all traffic from and to Westworld had been suspended as a result of a ‘viral outbreak’ among the guests. Here players of the ARG received insight into how Delos handles crisis situations, as viewers of the show will know that the shutdown is not the result of a viral outbreak but rather of a robot rebellion, as the hosts are taking over the park. The Delos company was already not being portrayed as the most transparent or trustworthy organization, and this part of the ARG further added to that by showing the upper management’s dishonesty in regard to the safety of not only their employees, but also dozens of guests who are still inside the park. Furthermore, the player was given two options to restore the computer system to an earlier state from two different back-ups that were created at different times, causing them to be part of
different timelines that the television series presents its viewers. One backup was created during the timeline which shows the events leading up to the most recent uprising of the hosts, and one backup was created during the timeline which shows the hosts revolting. The first back-up that the system could be reset to in the game was created sometime during the uprising, while the second back-up was created in the timeline leading up to the rebellion, allowing the player ‘behind the scenes’ access to two different timelines. The second back-up (Back-up B) takes the player back to the page
describing ‘The Cradle,’ which was already released after the previous episode. The first back-up (Back-up A), however, first takes the player to a page that shows an exchange between an unidentified user and a chatbot who calls itself ‘second officer’. The visitor can read the chatlog where the chatbot talks to the user and refers to humans as ‘your kind’, making it clear that the ‘second officer’ is not human. The second officer also implies the robot uprising is already underway, stating that the user can see that the subjugation of their species (robots/hosts) is at an end if “you just look around you”. From this exchange it can be concluded that this back-up was created
sometime during the robot uprising. After restoring the back-up, the player gains access to the mesh network that connects all the hosts in Westworld (not to be confused with ‘The Cradle’, which stores the host’s memories and programming as well as other programming involving the park). The mesh is visualized as ‘white pearls’, representing the hosts, and certain ‘red pearls’, which are a reference to a red control unit that is used to power the James Delos clone. Connecting to the red pearl gives an error message that contains information regarding an interrogation of the character Bernard, which was shown on the television series. However, the message suggests that a lot more information was
gained from the interrogation than was shown on television. Connecting to a white pearl takes the player to a page where memories from Bernard can supposedly be accessed, but only one of them can actually be viewed. While the type of content that is added here – webpages with videoclips and cryptic messages – is not exactly new for the ARG, what is new is that the pages refer to different timelines. Taking the player back to content that was already released earlier implies that there is something there that they might have missed. This in turn reminds them that the earlier episodes of the television series might contain missed clues as well, serving as a motivation to go back to these earlier episodes in order to further investigate them.
Watching earlier episodes again is not uncommon for audiences when dealing with complex narratives as it allows them to find details or connections to future episodes that they might have missed on their initial viewing (Jenner, 2014; Mittell, 2015). It does, however, interrupt the flow of the episodic structure that was being set up through both the television series and the ARG. The temporality of the television series and the ARG changes here as players are stimulated to go back and experience parts of the ARG and television series another time. Whether they view specific episodes or every episode in the order they were aired is up to the viewer, however, and thus relatively speaking a part of the control over the story’s temporality is handed back to the player as they themselves can decide if they want to interrupt the episodic flow at all, and if they do, how they do it. On the other hand, they are still ‘forced’ to do this within the constraints of the flow that is enforced by the ongoing narrative with new episodic content in both the television series and the ARG. As it is highly unlikely viewers will be able or willing to binge-watch every single released episode before the next one airs, it is more probable they will watch one or more specific episodes. As a result, Westworld promotes a mode of viewing through content that is presented in the ARG, that differs from both binge-watching and episodic viewing. Viewers are motivated to take a more investigative approach, leading to a mode of viewing that could be described as referential viewing. With this mode of viewing the viewer moves from one episode to the next not based on the order created by the broadcaster, but rather based on which episode has information that is relevant to the part of the narrative they wish to investigate. Which part of the narrative they wish to investigate is largely motivated by the content that appears in both the television series and the ARG.
Up until this point, the direct interaction that the ARG offered with characters from the extended
Westworld universe was exclusively with AI-controlled chatbots who seemed to be affiliated with the
hosts. Most of their responses read as automated messages that were prompted by certain
keywords. This changed after the sixth episode, when the character formerly introduced as ‘second officer’ in the ARG revealed himself to be Dr. Ford, a major character on the show portrayed by
Anthony Hopkins, who created the hosts that inhabit Westworld together with the human version of the aforementioned Bernard, whose real name is Arnold. Certain important plot points and even twists on the television series had been foreshadowed in the ARG, but this instance is unique as it is a plot twist that actually happens in the ARG rather than just being hinted at in it. From the television series the viewer already knew that Dr. Ford’s consciousness existed within Westworld’s computer system, as his human self was killed off in the season one finale and was interacting with other characters through the computer. Knowing this, the ARG players could have expected the character to show up as his digital self in the ARG. Besides being a plot twist that takes place in the ARG, then, it is also a plot twist in the ARG that has been foreshadowed by events in the television series. The television series had already been a means to find ways to advance in the ARG, using key phrases as passwords for example, but this instance is the first where the show set up events that will take place in the ARG, further establishing the ARG and television series as equally important means of
storytelling for Westworld. This in part takes us back to Jenkins’ definition of transmedia storytelling as Westworld has become a narrative that expands over multiple and has each medium contribute to the story in a unique way (Jenkins, 2006). The ARG is no longer just a marketing tool to promote the story, as the medium has become a legitimate part of the story that is being told.
The next few episodes that lead up to the second season finale see the ARG websites changing and being expanded upon to reflect the events on the show, further following the episodic structure that has been established. As hosts take over the park, maps and other information are shifted to be perceived from the hosts’ point of view, for instance, and the page featuring a single memory of Bernard is updated with dozens of videos depicting other memories of the character. These clips can be arranged to form a sequence which shows the events as they unfolded chronologically, helping players make sense of the timelines on the show. An interesting element is a portion of data that is missing which describes a timeframe of memories that the character on the television series, Bernard (the host clone of Arnold, who co-founded the theme park with Robert Ford), also seems to be missing. These memories involve events that are not shown or mentioned yet in any other part of either the ARG or the television series. Leaving this part of the story explicitly unexplained in both the television series and the ARG differs from the other ways the ARG and television series have
interacted up until this point, as gaps in the story in either medium were explained in future episodes of the other medium. In this case, however, there is no resolution, but rather a stronger accentuation of the cliffhanger that was already introduced by the television series. In the next episode, the season finale, this particular cliffhanger is resolved as the missing memory is shown as a scene on the television series, while the episode also sets up new cliffhangers which will not be resolved until later seasons.
