Master Thesis
This is Not a Game: Alternate Reality Games, Media
Promotion and Convergence Culture
Student: Anastasia Khusid Student Number:10619542 Programme: MA Media Studies
Specialisation: Television and Cross-Media Culture Year: 2013-2014
Supervisor: Anne Kustritz Second Reader: Sabrina Sauer
ABSTRACT: This paper argues that media promo campaigns have to be incorporated into the academic corpus of media studies, and have to be studied in terms of convergence culture, transmedia storytelling and affective economics. The main material for the research is presented by the emerging form of commercial world-building – alternate reality games, or “ARGs.” The goal is to show how ARGs reflect on the interconnections between business and culture within the contemporary convergence media. Thus economic impact is concerned while analyzing such academic media phenomena as transmedia storytelling, interactivity, affective economics and the audience’s experience. The research discusses what kind of narrative is constructed in TV and film promotional ARGs, how the role of audience and fan communities have changed, and the level of the audiences’ agency within such transmedia promo campaigns. ARGs are investigated as a genre of participatory culture, but that is not a modification of a primary producer’s content. Instead, this paper details how the transmedia story created to structure a primary producer’s promotional content has become the primary work for massive global audiences. The research methodology is based on theoretical analyses and qualitative content analyses in several case studies, including the promo campaigns for two TV series True Blood and Heroes, for the film The Dark Knight, and for the TV network HBO. As a result, it is claimed that while in the age of convergence media audiences perform more activity and participation, producers invent new mechanisms in order to transform this activity into economical revenue. It is shown that ARGs become a mechanism through which audience participation is transformed into marketing tool. Thus cases’ analyses demonstrate that ARG campaigns, that are thought as signs of new audience’s empowerment in the convergence media landscape, reshape the producers’ power in another way. However, the quite urgent need to reestablish the audience-producer relationships exists in reality, forcing producers to invent new ways of fans’ participation and to share power with viewers.
KEY WORDS: alternate reality game (ARG), affective economics, audience-producer relationships, convergence culture, interactivity, narrative, promotion, transmedia storytelling.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT………. 2
KEY WORDS……….. 2
INTRODUCTION……… 4
PART 1. THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS……. 9
1.1. Coming Soon: Film and Television Promotion as Transmedia Storytelling………… 9
1.1.1. Why to Study Media Promos Separately?... 11
1.1.2. How Commercial Transmedia Storytelling Becomes Affective……….. 12
1.1.3. Promos Go Viral……… 14
1.2. This is Not a Game, This is Business……… 16
1.2.1. What is ARG?... 18
1.2.2 ARG and Interactivity………. 20
1.2.3. ARG and Narrative……… 21
1.2.4. Role of the Player……….. 23
Conclusion: ARG and Media Studies………... 25
PART 2. CASE STUDIES………. 26
2.1. On Some Methodological Issues of Studying ARG………. 26
2.2. HBO The Voyeur: This is Not a Promo ……….. 29
2.3. Heroes Evolution……….. 33
2.4. True Blood Revelation……….. 37
2.5. The Dark Knight: Why So Serious?... 40
Conclusion: ARG and Convergence Culture……….. 44
CONCLUSION……… 46
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays it is almost impossible to watch a film or TV program without preconceived notions because of the hype that often precedes them. Being surrounded by a massive flow of information from online media, magazines, trailers, merchandising, podcasts, and viral marketing, an audience generally know something about upcoming films and TV shows well before they are even released or aired. This marketing content that surrounds audience experiences is far from peripheral as it shapes understanding, initial expectations, and decision making about what to watch and even how to watch. Having this in mind, one can ask a question whether this information is merely part of marketing practice or should it also be considered as an object of media culture and thus be included into the media studies agenda. In the end, this related information is part of a broader system where films and TV programs as such obviously represent objects of visual culture. However, media products are also objects of business, meaning that they are by nature and internal logic created not only in terms of pure art and culture, but also in accordance with economic profit and value. Many of the contemporary media phenomena, quite legitimate in the academic sphere, can provide evidence of close economic-cultural interconnections. Thus Henry Jenkins describes transmedia storytelling’s vivid economic logic:
Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption. Redundancy bums up fan interest and causes franchises to fail, offering new levels of insight and experience refreshes the franchise and sustains consumer loyalty… A good transmedia franchise works to attract multiple constituencies by pitching the content somewhat differently in the different media. (Convergence Culture 95-96)
In this quotation transmedia storytelling performs as an illustration of the economic logic of media processes and practices. Being a widely discussed academic phenomenon, it actually roots in media search for new consumers, thus mixing multiple areas such as culture, technology, business.
The whole idea of economics’ influence on culture is far from being new and just reflects the broader logic of popular culture. There is massive number of works, discussing main features of popular culture; yet most of authors agree that popular culture, as Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause write, “is commercial and produced with the goal of making money” (10). What has to be stated here is that it is extremely important for media scholars to consider these close interconnections between media culture and business and not to underestimate them in academic research of contemporary convergence media, because as Henrik Örnebring writes, “…
convergence culture does not work to dissolve the boundaries between texts and create trans-media narratives as much as it creates new opportunities to market a specific text or set of texts (such as a feature film, a computer game or a TV series) through other texts” (448). In other words, business logic of media culture, as well as related commercial texts and media products, should receive legitimate status in media studies. In the end, lots of sophisticated, transmedia, viral promotional campaigns for films and TV shows constitute a long-standing hybrid of advertising and creative media product as such, thus becoming precursors to today’s heavily commercialized cultural forms in which art and marketing become increasingly indistinguishable.
Within the media studies the analysis of media industries and economics traditionally perform as central strands of the development of media criticism. However some authors, like Henry Jenkins, take quite positive position in the discussions of relations between culture and economics. This paper shares the standpoint that economic effects have to be considered as an essential part of media culture. In other words, economics can be both good and bad for media culture; yet it is integral constituent of the media. It is argued within this paper that capitalism’s systems of cultural industries necessitate a rethinking and re-visioning of the role of marketing in contemporary media culture. Thus, in terms of this thesis, it is important to have a multidisciplinary perspective in order to adequately address what consequences the current ubiquity of the promotional message might hold for contemporary definitions and understanding of media culture. In other words, the analysis of promotional rhetoric can offer an important perspective on the various academic issues in the field of media studies, such as audience-producer relations, affective and experience-based economics, interactivity, and narrativity. In this particular paper these issues will be analyzed through various commercial cases of film and TV promotional campaigns.
There is a history of studying promos within the humanities framework. Thus promos in media studies perform as opening gates to the show or film, so that even before the release of the main text audience already have some expectations about its content. In accordance with Jonathan Gray’s idea about promos as paratexts, TV and film commercials are analyzed as entries to the main text, often becoming texts on their own. Besides simple knowledge about the show or film, promos aim to attract audience, and to form emotional response, thus being a part of affective economics practices as described by Jenkins, so that today producers dedicate large amount of money, time and labor not only to hype their shows and films but also to form and engage the fan community. In media studies it is also said that media promos have to be spread via various media to embrace the wider audience. These claims are discussed within the Jonathan
Hardy’s concept of cross-media promotion and commercial intertextuality. It is also argued in the theoretical part of this research that in the end what such promos do can be called “world-building,” as they have to create the distinct story around the show or film and engage the certain audience. In relation to this Edward Castronova states, “Marketing must go where the people are, and so virtual worlds are the logical next frontier. At least as attractive as their numbers is the intensity of participants’ engagement with these environments” (22). Thus, promotional campaigns reflect not only on relations between business and culture, but also on the new relations with audience.
This paper discusses in detail an emerging form of commercial world-building, specifically alternate reality games, or “ARGs.” Within the case studies TV and film marketing campaigns, created in the form of promotional games and ARGs, are discussed as interactive networked narratives that use the real world as a platform and construct transmedia stories with commercial purposes. ARGs are investigated as a genre of participatory culture, but the one that is not a modification of a primary producer’s content. Instead, this paper details how the transmedia story created to structure a primary producer’s promotional content has become the primary work for massive global audiences. Game-like promotional campaigns have been chosen for analysis not only as a relatively pioneering form of media communication that gains new features in the age of digital media, but also as a rich material reflecting on various communication phenomena. As Taylor and Beth Kolko write, “Games are not just a big money enterprise; they are increasingly a dominant media form that, like other media artefacts such as film and television, provide insight into how cultural norms are recapitulated and reified within the realm of entertainment” (499). Further they continue about ARG:
The multi-modal format of these games begins to highlight how they are always explicitly working at the boundaries of gaming conventions; in addition, the format is inextricably bound to a pushing of genre boundaries both in terms of the nature of play and the cultural context within which a game is positioned. (503)
Therefore, by highlighting the multimodal character of the ARG, the scholars indicate the close interconnections between games and culture, which in the end demonstrate that the study of ARG potentially can go far beyond marketing or entertaining logic into the field of media culture.
The main research question of this paper is the following: How do ARGs reflect on the interconnections between business and culture within the contemporary media? Thus economic impact is concerned while analyzing such academic media phenomena as transmedia storytelling, interactivity, and the audience’s experience. This research discusses what kind of narrative is constructed in TV and film promotional ARGs, how the role of audience and fan
communities have changed, and the level of the audiences’ agency within such transmedia promo campaigns. Besides that, a possible matrix for promo typology is built on the intersection of promotional narrative types and the audience’s role in the processes of commercial storytelling.
The importance of studying ARGs for media culture, that is completely shared in this research, has been stated by Örnebring as the following:
I do argue that researchers need to pay more attention to how ARGs fit into the economy of popular culture. Playing and participating in an ARG is evidently a pleasurable activity, and might well have the effect of encouraging participatory culture – but simultaneously ARGs also fit well with cultural industry goals and strategies of brand building and creating a loyal consumer base. (450)
In other words, the study of ARGs reflects in general context on convergence media logic, collective intelligence and world building. As Jenkins states, following Pierre Levy ideas about knowledge cultures:
First, he suggests that the distinction between authors and readers, producers and spectators, creators and interpreters will ‘blend’ to form a ‘circuit’ of expression, with each participant working to ‘sustain the activity’ of the others. The artwork will be what Levy calls a ‘cultural attractor,’ drawing together and creating common ground between diverse communities; we might also describe it as a cultural activator, setting into motion their decipherment, speculation, and elaboration. The challenge, he says, is to create works with enough depth that they can justify such large-scale efforts… (Convergence Culture 95)
In this sense, ARG research gives an opportunity to see whether these boundaries between audience and producers ‘blend’ or still present, and what kind of efforts is being taken to sustain audience interest and engagement. The last point is closely connected with world building practices, regarding which Jenkins writes:
More and more, storytelling has become the art of world building, as artists create compelling environments that cannot be fully explored or exhausted within a single work or even a single medium. The world is bigger than the film, bigger even than the franchise – since fan speculations and elaborations also expand the world in a variety of directions. (ibid 114)
The quotation gains a special meaning in terms of commercial storytelling, represented in this paper by ARG; in this perspective the world of promo from now on is built not only by producers, but as well by fans’ participation. Thus ARG research allows to discuss the nature of contemporary media culture, role of audience in participatory culture development, meaning of economy of popular culture and society in general.
The research methodology is based on theoretical analyses and qualitative content analyses in several case studies, including the promo campaigns for two TV series True Blood and Heroes, for the film The Dark Knight, and for the TV network HBO. These four case studies
received awards during prestigious advertising festivals. Such professional acknowledgment reflects on the special input of the selected cases onto the general development of the genre of ARG. It can be said that these campaigns form the trend and shape the future projects in various ways. They also have special cultural status becoming the modeling examples for the transmedia storytelling, audience engagement, and narrative construction. These case studies must be understood within the context of media studies debates over the importance of film and TV promos’ status within the field. Therefore, the kindred relation between promos and affective economics as well as particular marketing viral strategies are described in the theoretical framework, by theorists including S.T. Eastman, M. Andrejevic, R.F. Wilson, J. Kirby, P. Mardsen, et.al. These help to argue that the defining characteristics of the genre of ARG are the following: interactivity, narrative and active audience. It is stated that the development of ARG as a marketing tool and its wide use to promote media content not only shows the commercial effectiveness of the genre but also correlates with a wide range of changes in media culture. First of all, as it is shown within the cases, ARGs reflect on the shifts in audience-producer relationships. While in the age of new media audiences perform more activity and participation, producers invent new mechanisms in order to transform this activity into economical revenue. Finally, it is shown, that ARGs become a mechanism through which audience participation is transformed into marketing tool.
PART 1. THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS
This part is aimed to establish theoretical and methodological frameworks of the paper. It discuses the meaning of such a relatively new phenomenon as promotional ARGs for media studies, starting with general claims that media promo campaigns have to be incorporated into the academic corpus, and have to be studied in terms of transmedia storytelling and affective economics. It is further stated that ARGs reflect various changes in the cultural industry in the age of new media, among which, first and foremost, are the shifts in audience-producer relationships. Three crucial features of the genre are described here as the following: interactivity, narrative, and active audience. Through the lens of these phenomena further the analyses of case studies will be constructed.
1.1. Coming Soon: Film and Television Promotion as Transmedia Storytelling
In the history of film promotion, when looking on it through the lens of media development as such, ARG promos comes up as a very logical invention. For instance, Alfred Hitchcock had been always known as a master of publicity. The iconic promotion campaign of his cult horror movie Psycho just proved his mastery in audience’s engagement. His main task was to create an aura of suspense around the film’s plot. In order to do so he first of all purchased the entire print run of the Robert Bloch’s novel that served as the main storyline for the movie. Psycho’s cast and production crew were strictly forbidden to partake in any usual television, radio, and print interviews for fear of their revealing the plot. Even critics were not given private screenings but rather had to see the film with the general public, which, despite possibly affecting their reviews, preserved the top secret plot. The film's original trailer that nowadays is considered to be one of the best trailers ever, was featured by Hitchcock himself. The director took the viewer on a tour of the set, giving scrappy details of the plot and almost revealing the main intrigue before stopping himself. Finally Hitchcock exerted control over the viewing experience of the audience. Showings of the film began on a tightly-controlled schedule in cinemas in New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia and there was a strict ‘no late admission’ policy put in place. You either saw the film from the very beginning, or you did not see it at all. From the stands in the cinemas the director also called to his viewers to keep the film’s plot in secret and not to share it with others who had not seen it yet (Monahan 14). Psycho premiered in 1960. The promotion campaign was a great success partly because it was a highly innovative strategy for those days.
Almost forty years later in 1999 another horror movie The Blair Witch Project hit the world with a comparatively loud promotional campaign. Just like Hitchcock, the Blair Witch producers were looking to create the sense of suspense, but quite on the contrary to Hitchcock’s strategy they widely shared the plot with the audience before the release of the film. The trick was in the way the film’s story was told in promo materials. The whole promotion campaign was aimed to support the legend that The Blair Witch Project was a real documentary, featuring the story of three student filmmakers, who were investigating the supernatural myth of Blair Witch and disappeared in the Black Hills with their recording equipment. They were never seen again when a year later their footage was found and pieced together to make the movie. Besides the new way of promotional storytelling producers suggested active roles for their viewers as insiders, detectives, and evangelists. It is true that The Blair Witch Project promotion was staged during early developments of the internet, before the widespread popularity of social networks. The first thing that producers had done was to launch a website documenting the history of the Blair Witch, a detailed section on the missing filmmakers, and snippets of film from the recovered tapes that increased the belief that the film was based on true events. The trailers were mainly shown in college campuses, with a special feature on the Sci-Fi Channel. By avoiding mainstream cinema ads, producers made audiences believe that they had stumbled upon something special. There were even missing persons leaflets handed out in some places, stating under the actors’ photos “Missing. Presumed dead.” Finally, on the opening weekend in July 1999, a full-page ad in Variety Magazine appeared, simply noting the website and the number of hits to date: 21,222,589. It was a simple call to action – you could not afford to miss out (Carvell).
The publicity campaign for The Blair Witch Project today stands in one row with the Hitchcock’s promo for Psycho. The reason to celebrate both campaigns through the years is in their innovative approach to film promotion. Thus The Blair Witch Project is known as the first film promo to be widely distributed online. The website provided a point of reference for target audience, and it was something that could be shared easily, with the potential to spread virally. Still the question is, in what ways do these two campaigns differ? What has happened in film promotion for the forty years that separate one campaign from another? However irrelevant this might sound at first sight, the answer to this question might be formulated in a very broad sense: “the digital age has happened.” Some things remain unchanged today – producers are still the leading information manipulators. Whether it is the silent strategy of Hitchcock or the mokumentary trick of The Blair Witch Project, there are always people who decide what piece of cake to offer the viewers for tasting. However, the role of the audience has been changed and
revised significantly as the distance between the viewer and the content creator reduced with the Web 2.0 technologies. Audience today calls for more agency, even within promo campaigns, so that producers have to invent new ways to engage, entertain and amuse their consumers. The aura of suspense is no longer created just by keeping a secret, but on the contrary by complex distribution of information that strategically spreads on the highest speed through multiple channels. The picture described above is not a unique one for the film promotion only; the very same things can be observed today on TV as well, where the real war for audience is going on. Along with changes in the new audience’s role, the manner of commercial storytelling has also been necessarily renewed. Promos, stories, and advertising tools nowadays become as, if not more, entertaining as the content that is being advertised.
1.1.1. Why to Study Media Promos Separately?
To start this section, the question about the specificity of media promotion has to be answered: why single out TV and film promo campaigns from other marketing practices? From the standpoint of marketing science and practice, as Susan T. Eastman et.al. argue, the main difference could be found in the promoted product. While consumer goods, such as, for example, toothpaste or beer, are quite identical one to one another, every film or TV program is unique. Thus Eastman argues, “Consequently, the promotion of programs differs in a crucial way from the marketing of other products. To be effective, promotion must be specific to that program and even to a series’ individual episodes” (1). That notion of promoted media products’ uniqueness can also be found in discussions of media scholars about the nature of the cultural industry within which films and TV shows are produced. In relation to this Justin O’Connor states, “Cultural industries are distinct in that they produce mainly symbolic goods, whose value arises from their ability to bring forth an emotional response from consumers” (15). Thus, the logic of cultural industry or market, within which film and TV products exist, calls for the particular marketing strategies and tactics.
Besides the distinctive nature of the promoted product, the very role of promotion for media content is quite special. In media studies, films and TV programs are observed as legitimated texts, while promos for them have a quite marginalized status. While Jonathan Gray argues that promos can be observed within a humanities tradition as the starting point of the films’ and TV programs’ meanings (Show Sold Separately 47). Promos on their own have all the textual qualities, being as Gray argues “…true beginnings of texts as coherent clusters of meaning expectation and engagement” (ibid). So, the specific role of promotional campaigns for films and TV is to serve as frames that establish the text and create initial expectations about the
show. Thus TV programs and films actually begin long before the first contact with the main text. As Gray further writes, “This process begins with advance promos and buzz campaign that hail a specific audience and that promise that audience a very particular set of pleasures, dictating what a text is while also creating a tone, mood, and sensibility for it” (Coming Up Next 56). Therefore, promos are the true beginners of the media texts, and every bit of their story is, in Gray’s words, “as complex and requiring a study as are their audience, creative or economic histories” (Show Sold Separately 47). Precisely because promos introduce audiences to the text and its many proposed and supposed meanings, Gray continues, “the promotional material that we consume sets up, begins, and frames many of the interactions that we have with texts. More than merely point us to the text at hand these promos will have already begun the processes of creating textual meaning, serving as the first outpost of interpretation” (ibid 48). Thus the role of media promos as textual meaning’s beginnings single it out from other types of promotion; at the same, time this role connects pure marketing goals and cultural form.
In the age when companies have to fight for the audience, spending a comparable amount of money and efforts to promote media content as in its production, it is important for media studies to finally de-marginalize the status of commercial practices. It has to be admitted by scholars that such practices, being an integral part of communication, shape the producer-audience relationship, start the meaning of a media text, and create emotional expectations. Thus media promos can be described in terms of media studies, and help teach vital things about the future of media in convergence and participatory culture.
1.1.2. How Commercial Transmedia Storytelling Becomes Affective
In the age of convergence media affect gains new significant status for contemporary promotion, and ARG as a vivid example of the last one. To be heard and seen by target audience media promotion today goes beyond simple informing and includes diverse and complex storytelling. Campfire, the communication agency established by the creators of The Blair Witch Project promo campaign, describes itself as the following:
Campfire was born from our passion for storytelling. Yes, our founders made The Blair Witch Project. But if you think it was just a movie, you’d be mistaken. It was a tale that evolved in the press and online and through genre fans and dozens of other little experiences to create an experience much larger than any single film could contain. The movie was just the centerpiece in a complex series of encounters. Legends were seeded. Stories evolved. Advocacy grew. And the film became a sensation before it ever reached a single theater. (Campfire)
The very distinct feature of contemporary media promotion campaigns is that those stories are distributed via multiple channels. Indeed promotion campaigns look like an excellent illustration for transmedia storytelling that in its turn, as Jenkins claims, has strong economic motives behind it. Thus he writes, “The economic logic of a horizontally integrated entertainment industry – that is, one where a single company may have roots across all of the different media sectors – dictates the flow of content across media. Different media attract different market niches” (Convergence Culture 96). In other words, by distributing media content via multiple media producers not only attract new target audiences, but they also suggest new points of engagement. Such stories, as frames for films and TV shows, have to engage audiences both intellectually and emotionally. In the age of media convergence promos have to entertain the audience, being at the same time an advertisement and entertainment in their own right. With its vivid commercial nature media promotion becomes part of what Jenkins calls “affective economics.” He explains, “By affective economics, I mean a new configuration of marketing theory, still somewhat on the fringes but gaining ground within the media industry, which seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions” (Convergence Culture 66-67). Thus, the contemporary marketing strategy seeks the ways through which to transform the consumers’ desires into purchasing decisions. In case of media promotion – to engage the potential audience before the show has been even released, and at its best – to create a fan-base already at the promotional stage. The value of highly engaged audience is quite obvious – such viewers not only tend to become active consumers of the media content, but they also can take part of promotion on them by discussing coming show online.
Mark Andreijevic develops Jenkins’ idea of affective economics, stating that Jenkins seems to have in mind “not the newness of advertisers’ attempts to mobilize emotional engagement (again, a topic that long predates the advent of so-called convergence culture), but the enhanced ability of consumers to participate in the process” (607). Andreijevic further writes that this logic has to be revised today through the lens of digital age, where “a shifting logic of media engagement is accompanied by revamped strategies for managing and manipulating audiences. Although Jenkins’s account starts to address these shifts, it does not get at the asymmetries that characterize interactive marketing in the database era” (606). Looking at the affective economics and promotion in particular from this perspective, it can be said that producers’ control over emotional engagement is far from complete. Andrejevic also argues that audiences can now use their emotional capital to build brand communities to influence media producers. Viewed from this perspective, it is not the producers who control this capital, but the
viewers (607). On the other hand in media promotion it is very important for producers to convert audience’s emotions in purchasing, in other words to predict the return of investments (ROI), so that producers are constantly looking for the new ways either to control audience’s emotions or to benefit from it in forms of engagement.
Thus, both examples which opened this section, Psycho and The Blair Witch Project campaigns, include the notions of transmedia storytelling and emotional engagement. Both (but to different extents) also suggest a new role to the audience, considering it as a part of promoting word-of-mouth processes. In the end both campaigns seek to build brand loyalty, “the holy grail of affective economics” as Jenkins would say. He explains it further with the so-called 80/20 rule according to which for most consumer products, 80 percent of purchases are made by 20 percent of their consumer base. Discussing further the role of this 20 percent, Jenkins writes, “Corporations are turning toward active consumers because they must do so if they are going to survive; some have learned that such consumers can be allied” (Convergence Culture 72). Active consumers in marketing are often called “brand advocates”: the ones who promote and advocate for the brand, suggest improvements and refinements, initiate viewers’ discussions and spread the word. They are also the people who act as moral guardians for the brands they love. They make sure the wrongs are righted and hold the brand fast to its stated principles. Jenkins underscores that these consumers, individually and collectively, place demands on corporations (ibid 73). In relation to media content the role of brand advocates is played by fans, defined by Costello and Moore as “viewers who act outside the common expectations for a member of the audience” (126). As a result, promotion campaigns are not only aimed on creation of fan-base, but also have to supply active audience with the platforms to deliver their “advocate” voice.
TV and film promos today thus take on the form of complex stories that, with commercial purposes, are distributed via different media channels. However, it is not enough just to let the audience know about the show. What producers are trying to do is to hook the viewers emotionally. Those emotions hopefully will be further transformed into purchasing, and even more – into complex promotional tools.
1.1.3. Promos Go Viral
In addition to affect, another significant transformation that characterize contemporary promos and ARGs among them is the extremely high potential to become “viral.” The success of the cases of Psycho and The Blair Witch Project with which this chapter started, to a large extent were based on the audience’s participation in spreading the word. Speaking in terms of
marketing, both promotional campaigns are best practices of viral marketing. As Ralph F. Wilson defines it, “Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence” (The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing). Thus, marketing specialist claims the importance of active consumer in promotion practices. Professionals today stress the growth of viral campaigns, tying it up with the raise of digital technologies. In relation to this Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden write, “One of the most significant contributing factors to the current vogue for word of mouth marketing is the rapid uptake of digital media… which enable messages spread faster and more exponentially than ever before” (110). They further describe the role of consumer or audience in viral marketing:
Unlike traditional ‘top-down’, marketer-to-consumer techniques, viral marketing focuses on personal experience of the brand and taps into the new power of the consumer. One of the reasons consumers find viral marketing campaigns appealing is because the campaigns tend to be non-interruptive, so they enable consumers to choose to interact proactively with a communication (and the brand behind it), or not, rather than be passively dictated to. This ‘bottom-up’ approach respects that consumer is in control; viral marketing campaigns are ultimately driven (or derailed) by consumers themselves. (ibid 116)
This revised active position of consumers is a common practice in today’s marketing campaigns. Similarly contemporary media promo campaigns often suggest new role for their audience. However, one should not be over-optimistic, supposing that now at least within promos, viewer’s logic is the one that producers follow. There are various reasons for sharing power with audience; one of them is suggested by Kirby and Mardsen in a following example related to TV: Now it’s time to show you the money. In 1965, you could reach 80 percent of a mainstream target audience with three TV ad spots. By 2002, 117 spots were reassured to achieve the same reach. No business, no matter how rich, can afford to maintain constant mainstream media brand awareness. So less expensive online media routes, and the possibility of peer-to-peer-driven spread whereby the audience effectively becomes another (free!) media channel, are obviously very attractive to brands. (ibid 117)
In other words, shared power and higher level of audience’s agency performed as a kind of compromise in producer-audience relationships. However, even the situation where audience has more control in marketing processes, media companies can turn into its own benefit, transforming viewers’ activity into the marketing tool. Today viral marketing campaigns are quite widespread in media promotion which can be explained both by the advantages of this promo strategy and the nature of the promoted media products. To be successful viral campaign has to be built on a complex story and involve various media channels. In practice viral strategy perform through different marketing tactics.
Therefore, examining the historical background of media promos, meaning of affect, and foundations of viral marketing demonstrate that media promotion campaigns have to be studied in academic media research, as they provide important information about the logic of producer-audience relationships, the agency of the viewer, the sources of meaning, and the practice of transmedia storytelling. In a broader context, media promo research allows scholars to take a closer look at affective economics and the logic of popular culture as such. In this paper promotion will be understood following Jonathan Hardy as commercial transmedia practice, aimed not only on profit, but also on constructing the space for audience to shape meaning, although the control over interaction and content mostly remains concentrated in the hands of the producers (Commercial Intertextuality 65). Thus, contemporary promotion within convergence media becomes emotionally meaningful and suggests an audience the new role.
1.2. This is Not a Game, This is Business
Three main features define the ARG as a genre: interactivity, narrative, and active audiences. The meaning of each of these features is discussed in the intersection of economics and media studies fields. In the end it is argued that ARGs show not only the changes happening within marketing practices in the digital age, but they also demonstrate the practical realization of the principles of such academic concepts as affective economics, world-building and transmedia storytelling. Therefore, both theoretical and practical analyses of ARG reflect on the real transformations within convergence media. Following in this section the characteristics and constituents of the genre are discussed, as well as its relation to the reality, specific way of storytelling and participants’ role.
On the website of one of the most successful companies in its sphere one can read: “We bring people together to solve mysteries collaboratively around the globe, creating memorable moments that reinforce insider status. Whether it’s finding real phones hidden in birthday cakes, or discovering exclusive artifacts, we get people out into the real world, connect their experience to the online community amplifying the message”. Such self-presentation provokes the whole range of guesses about company’s possible expertise, from event management to trainings. The real name of the company is 42Entertainment and it is a creative advertising agency, specializing in media promotional campaigns of a particular kind – the so-called alternate reality games (ARG). It has to be said that in the field of marketing, ARGs are traditionally considered as part of online viral communications. In the beginning of the 2000-s the development of the genre of ARG was broadly welcomed by the marketing professionals. David Szulborski, who was one of the first to celebrate the genre, stated, “After years of disappointment and confusion in the field
of online advertising, alternate reality games promise to bring new life and potential to internet marketing. Compared to other forms of currently available web-base advertising, nothing has the power to create and sustain consumer interest in a product like ARGs” (183). Meaning, marketing professionals evaluate in a very positive way, claiming its high efficient in audience engagement.
The genre of the ARG is very recent. Interestingly, in its pure form it was traditionally considered to start with a promotional campaign called The Beast, produced in 2001 by Microsoft as part of the marketing campaign of the Steven Spielberg’s movie A.I (Kim et.al.; McGonigal; Szulborski). The campaign was very successful, creating a fan base of more than 3 million participants all over the world (Dena 42). This project was soon followed by more media promotional ARGs, including campaigns for Alias (ABC, 2001), ReGenesis (The Movie Network, 2004), The LOST Experience (ABC, 2006), Heroes (NBC, 2007), Spooks Interactive (BBC, 2007), Why So Serious? (The Dark Knight, 2008), True Blood (HBO, 2008), etc. Certainly ARGs exist beyond film and TV promotion (e.g. in computer games marketing) and even beyond media promotion, and outside the marketing logic as such (there are many ARGs that are ‘grassroots-produced’ by fans and thus do not directly market a particular product). Still this genre is quite specific for media campaigns, what is discussed in details in the following pages. Talking about the general goals of media promotional ARGs Örnebring claims:
Generating buzz and attention for the ‘original’ media text is still very much the goal of industry-produced ARGs. Their primary purpose is not to create new opportunities for interaction, networking and audience participation in mediated narratives, but simply to create an enjoyable experience that will build the franchise brand in the minds of media audiences. (450)
In other words, promotional ARGs should be considered in a wider business-driven logic of the marketing campaigns. Thus they are created not to merely interact or entertain the audience, but to engage it in promotion process and establish further consumption.
ARGs present a relatively new way to communicate with an audience and to tell the commercial story. While the genre is currently quite actively exploited by the cultural industry, Ornebring remarks that “there is relatively little academic concern with how ARGs function as marketing tools, and critical acknowledgement of the fact that most high-profile ARGs are produced for marketing purposes is limited at best” (449). He further argues that researchers need to pay more attention to how ARGs fit into the economy of popular culture. The author states, “Playing and participating in an ARG is evidently a pleasurable activity, and might as well have the effect of encouraging participatory culture – but simultaneously ARGs also fit well with cultural industry goals and strategies of brand building and creating a loyal consumer base”
(ibid 450). Within this perspective, the meaning and importance of researching ARGs in the context of media studies can only be found by discussing both positions – producer’s and audience’s.
1.2.1. What is ARG?
Because, the ARG is a newly developed genre, it is indeed relatively innovative for both promotional practice and academic studies. As a consequence of this, there is no consensus on how to define an ARG or where to draw its precise boundaries. Quite interestingly, scholarly concepts of ARGs used to be developed partly in parallel with the first practical realizations of such campaigns. The same people used to create ARGs, and at the same time state the academic point of view on the genre. Thus one of the most developed academic concepts of ARG was suggested by Jane McGonigal, who besides being a media scholar also used to work for 42Entertainment on the production side. McGonagl’s definition of ARG is the following:
ARG is an interactive drama played out online and in real world spaces, taking place over several weeks or months, in which dozens, hundreds, thousands of players come together online, form collaborative social networks, and work together to solve a mystery or problem that would be absolutely impossible to solve alone. (Alternate Reality Gaming 9) Kent Aardse in his turn suggests a quite similar definition: “An ARG is a game which oftentimes covertly encourages player participation, takes particular advantage of the networked, digital environment, distributes game content via multiple media channels, and transforms real-world locations by grafting fictional layers onto these spaces” (107). In other words both scholars emphasize the digital environment, active and collaborative players’ participation, and a close relation to the real world as crucial features of the genre. Quite interestingly, this academic logic has overlaps with a marketing point of view which, in its ultimate form, as stated by Sean Stewart, the founder of 42Entaertainment, entails the following: “Our aim is to carve the client's world into today’s cultural landscape… We create communities passionately committed to spending not just their money but their imaginations in the worlds we represent” (qtd. in Jenkins, Game Design as Narrative Architecture 126). Thus Stewart defines other important features of ARG – collaborative communal participation and world-building. As a result, this paper takes into account academic as well as industry-based meaning of the genre, discussing further all the features suggested in the scholars’ and practitioner’s definitions above.
ARG is just one specific example in the range of online games, but what critically distinguishes it from other types of digital interactive gaming practices is its close connection to reality. The real world becomes a stage for the fictional gaming events and characters. Even the main tagline of the ARG genre states, “This Is Not A Game” (TINAG). In case of ARGs used
for marketing purposes, they are never presented as marketing at all. In this context the question about boundaries between reality and fiction becomes crucial. As Marie-Laure Ryan states the problem, “according to a rhetoric, popular in contemporary theoretical discourse, ARGs deconstruct the boundaries between games and reality, life and fiction, or the virtual and the real” (From Playfields to Fictional Worlds 174). However, it is important to say that although ARGs go into the real world, they do not call for obsolete and uncritical belief in the story as real. The story, the clues, the interactions are indeed disseminated throughout the real world, but as Ryan argues “the lack of formal boundaries between the real world and the playfield means that as they perform the tasks of everyday life, players must be constantly on the alert for the possibility of an intrusion of the game into their life” (ibid). ARG’s players are not naive, and they do not dive into the game unconsciously by accident. As McGonigal claims, ARGs “maximize their play experience by performing belief, rather than actually believing, in the permeability of the game-reality boundary” (A Real Little Game). Ryan sums up the discussions on experiencing the disappearance of spatial and temporal boundaries between the game and the world of everyday life, by claiming that exactly this fact requires an increased players’ attention to the ontological difference between game and reality:
In order to play ARGs successfully, players must be able to isolate the information that has been planted in the real world from the mass of data that exists independently of the game. To say that in ARGs life itself becomes a game really means that the process of picking the signs of the game from the data of everyday life is an integral part of the game. (From Playfields to Fictional Worlds 174)
Therefore, while taking the interconnections between fictional and real worlds as the crucial features of the genre, ARGs also suggest the way in which participants can exist and act in these synthetic reality. In the end, performing belief in the fictional story and distinguishing game artefacts from real life, constitute the gaming experience.
To further analyze ARGs it is important to define its unique terminology. The game usually starts with a Rabbit hole (or Tailhead) – an opening into another world and the first media artifact engaging players into the game. The rabbit hole, as well as the whole scenario, are developed by Puppetmasters, who not only design the game, but also simultaneously create obstacles and provide resources for overcoming them in the course of telling the game’s story. Puppetmasters usually remain behind the so-called Curtain, so that their identities are unknown. They do not communicate directly with players through the game, interacting instead through the characters and the game’s design. Main characteristics of ARGs make the genre a very suitable marketing tool for TV and film promotion. ARGs are built on developed stories, and thus imply transmedia storytelling and high level of audience’s engagement. In the end ARGs serve as a
complex frame to the film or TV show, suggesting meanings and emotions through interactions and relations to the real world.
1.2.2 ARG and Interactivity
This paper requires understanding that in the McGonigal’s definition of ARG as “interactive drama” two principal constituents of the genre can be seen: narrativity and interactivity. Tying both phenomena Ryan says that it is important to decide which types of stories are suitable for digital media, “The answer to this question is crucially dependent on what constitutes the truly distinctive resource of digital media, namely, the ability to respond to changing conditions in the global state of the computer. When the change in conditions is determined by the user’s input, we call this resource interactivity” (Beyond Myth and Metaphor 594). Therefore, the notion of interactivity includes both - the preconceived possibilities for participants to act as well as the actions by themselves. Ryan further suggests four strategic forms of interactivity in ARGs that appear on the basis of two binary pairs: internal/external and exploratory/ontological. In the internal mode, players identify themselves as members of the fictional world, either by taking the role of avatar or by capturing the virtual world from a first-person perspective. While in the external mode, users are situated outside the fictional world and either play “the role of a god who controls the fictional world from above or they conceptualize their own activity as navigating a database” (Beyond Myth and Metaphor 595). Another opposition is presented from one pole by exploratory mode, where users navigate and examine the virtual world, but, as Ryan explains, “their activity does not make fictional history, nor does it alter the plot; users have no impact on the destiny of the virtual world” (ibid). Quite on the opposite is the ontological mode, wherein Ryan continues, “the decisions of the users send the history of the virtual world on different forking paths. These decisions are ‘ontological’ in the sense that they determine which possible world, and consequently which story, will develop from the situation in which the choice presents itself” (ibid 596). Thus, while constructing the promo ARG and points of interactions, producers also suggest to participants to follow one of the strategies of interactivity. However, it is up to the participants to decide to what extent they will conform the preconceived interactivity strategy.
In practice, ARGs interactivity is closely connected with emotions. Thus 42Entertainment sees this correlation as a benefit of the promo tool and claims: “Instead of simply reacting to what people say about you, or forcing your product message onto the public, we help you craft interactions that inspire passionate communities and meaningful conversations that reflect your brand values” (42Entertainment). So that interactivity is the resource for emotional capital within
the ARG genre. Similarly, Ryan explains that with interactivity come curiosity, surprise, and suspense: “When participation takes the form of spatial exploration and leads to unexpected discoveries, its motivation is curiosity and its reward is surprise. Suspense is much more resistant to interactivity because it requires a long-range planning by the system and a top-down management of the player’s expectations” (From Playfields to Fictional Worlds 171). In other words, the logic of ARG and the way it is distributed to the participants, imply affective patterns. What is also quite distinctive for the ARG genre is that players’ emotional response comes here not only from the interactions with strategically created digital artifacts. As an ARG is a collaborative practice, players have to actively interact with each other. Personal interactions are a very rich source of additional investments into emotional capital in the case of an ARG.
This connection of interactivity and emotions, strengthened by the logic of the ARG genre, proves ARGs position within affective economics and reinforces their efficiency as of promotional tool. Compared to other marketing tactics, as Ryan considers, “multiplayer online worlds take advantage of both the space-building resources of digital systems and the natural intelligence of players by offering a wide variety of activities” (From Playfields to Fictional Worlds 172). These hybrid enterprising activities, from the one hand, reflect the way marketing is operating in a highly competitive field, and on the other hand, describes the changes in media culture in the digital age.
1.2.3. ARG and Narrative
Every ARG starts with a story. Game creators have to develop the complex and very vivid synthetic world. Comparing ARG and other digital gaming practices, Ryan writes, “Computer games may turn playfields into fictional worlds, but a newly fashionable (rather than really new) type of game goes one step further, by turning reality itself into a playfield and by associating this playfield with narrative content” (From Playfields to Fictional Worlds 172). In doing so ARGs distribute the story via an unprecedented number of channels, performing as a complex storytelling practice, while as Jenkins states, “more and more, storytelling has become the art of world building, as artists create compelling environments that cannot be fully explored or exhausted within a single work or even a single medium” (Convergence Culture 114). Thus the story in ARG performs not in a form of pure fantasy, but as a complex world-building practice, that as a result includes real world, and is distributed via multiple channels.
Building fictional worlds and distributing stories in the ARG genre imply also the establishment of meaningful space. In the logic of an ARG, the gaming space combines fantasy
and the real world. In the real world, the physical space for the game is found, while the meaning of this space, the story or narrative, comes from an imaginary world. The cultural organization of space is not created merely by objective factors such as walls, laws, institutions, fences, etc. In Ryan’s opinion, “It can also be the product of storytelling activity. By commemorating dramatic events that took place in a certain location, stories place this location on the mental map of a community and may turn it into a site of pilgrimage” (From Playfields to Fictional Worlds 160). Thus in an ARG ordinary things and places gain new synthetic histories and statuses. Therefore, space creation becomes a very fundamental function of narrative in an ARG. Ryan further says:
The space-constructing function is equally shared by referential narratives that make truth claims about the actual world and by fictional narratives that openly create imaginary worlds. Fictional worlds may not be images of actual space, but like actual space, they are situated in time, they are populated by individuated objects, and they are explicitly or implicitly differentiated by boundaries and laws that apply within these boundaries. (ibid 161)
Thus Ryan claims that meaningful space is created on the intersection of real and fictional world. In terms of ARG this means that the game takes place in a real world, the meaning of which is reconstructed by fictional narrative and accepted by players.
Films’ and TV shows’ promotional ARGs often create a very sophisticated world and meaningful space. Although they are the frames for the main promoted texts, ARGs’ narratives do not necessarily have to be unambiguously connected with the promoted story, using the same characters and plots. For instance The Beast, the promotional ARG campaign for Steven Spielberg’s film was performed in the fictional universe of A.I. but did not make use of any characters or narrative events from the promoted film (Örnebring 446). Quite on the contrary the promotional ARG for The Dark Knight heavily exploited both the characters and the narrative of the film. Therefore promotional ARGs can relate to the main narrative in a variety of ways, but in every case creating its own story. Both campaigns in the end were more than successful and just in the logic of genre included multiple media to communicate with the audience. In the case of ARGs, the commercial logic of transmedia storytelling achieves at least one more point of benefit. ARGs tell their stories using various channels not only to get accesses to a wider audience but also to support curiosity and suspense by hiding various pieces of a puzzle in different places. In the end what makes a really good story? Ryan suggests the following answer, “Good stories make space legible and meaningful by dividing their world into emotionally and symbolically charged subspaces where different experiences are possible and different kinds of events happen” (From Playfields to Fictional Worlds 161). Hence narrative as well as interactivity aimed on creating particular emotions within the audience. Affective response also performs as another tying point between the promotional ARG and promoted text.
Highly successful promotional ARG effect can be thus described with the words of Ben Walters as:
Unprecedented in its breadth and sophistication, the campaign provides a new model for cultivating narrative and emotional engagement in an unreleased feature while leaving its actual contents under wraps. Such a head-start of imaginative investment is normally available only to spin-off projects; in this sense, the movie becomes a spin-off of its own publicity. (67)
Waters thus draws attention to the self-contained and relevant status of promos. In the issue, complex narrative-building makes ARG a very specific promotional genre that reflect on multiple academic issues, such as relations between spin-off and main texts, narrative distribution, time and spatial story patterns.
1.2.4. Role of the Player
The genre of ARG implies active audience role. Within this part it is argued that audience participation is one of the inner constituents of ARGs. However, promotional goals of studied in this paper ARGs reshape audiences activity in a particular way that conforms the business logic.
There are various positions within studies of ARGs on audiences’ activity and agency, suggested by the genre. In relation to this, Örnebring writes “many researchers implicitly or explicitly view ARGs as an exciting new medium, a genre that blurs the boundaries between producer and consumer and that fosters a more participatory popular culture” (449). In accordance with this point, Jenkins considers that “ARGs teach participants how to navigate complex information environments and how to pool their knowledge and work together in teams to solve problems… A well-designed ARG reshapes the way participants think about their real and virtual environment” (Game Design as Narrative Architecture 126-127). McGonigal is also quite optimistic, saying that exactly “because ARGs are played in real-world contexts, instead of in virtual spaces, they almost always have at least the side effect of improving our lives” (Reality is Broken 115). In other words ARGs perform as the real life simulators, thus preparing and training for the real-world events and improving the quality of life. These optimistic positions are fully endorsed by business, dealing in the digital age with a very sophisticated audience that is constantly calling for more agency. Thus, 42Entertainment states:
As audiences become increasingly adept at filtering out traditional ads, they’ve also grown more tolerant of ad messages embedded within the story. We’re facing the most media-savvy generation ever. Treat them with respect. Remain authentic and they’ll respond in kind. Fail to do so, and you risk losing them entirely. (42Entertainment)
The way to ‘treat’ this audience, suggested and developed by 42Entertainmet, is obviously ARG. However, in the citation above it can be read rather the practitioners’ call for the new way to treat the audience than indeed the acceptance of the new consumers’ active role in shaping producer-audience communications. Thus the agency suggests choosing alternate ways to engage smart consumers, “If people are no longer content to passively consume entertainment, they’re certainly not going to passively consume marketing messages. Instead of pushing messages out to consumers, brands need to think about how to get audiences to engage with the message and spread it themselves” (42Entertainment). In this sense, business adjusts that consumers today call for the revised relationships and more agency. At the same time, this quote also establishes the price for this agency – engagement and word-of-mouth. In a broader context of media studies, ARG becomes an illustration to the criticism of “free labor/playbour,” presented, among all, in the works of Jose van Dijk. Thus, van Dijck states that today’s “agency is defined more than ever by the capital-intensive and technology-driven economies of global, vertically integrated markets” (54). Through the claim that rroducers and audiences share of agency performs in a form of constant tension and desire for gaining more agency, some scholars take skeptical positions regarding the emancipatory potential of online media participation models.
In spite of all optimistic concerns about consumers’ role and high level of agency in ARG, academic tradition also suggests the critical point of view. First of all, it has to remembered that the main goal of ARGs, discussed in this work, is not to entertain the consumer, but to promote, in other words to sell, the creative product. Following this logic, players will always be limited in their level of agency and directed in their participation, interactions, communications and even emotions. To dive into the game players have to take a role and to agree with the conditions, developed by ARG creators. Concerning this, Ryan’s question about player’s benefits becomes relevant:
But even if all these problems could be resolved, even if the right balance could be struck between user freedom and system control, even if the system managed to coax, rather than coerce, the interactor to take dramatically optimal paths, an important question remains. What kind of gratification will the experiencer receive from becoming a character in a story? It is important to remember at this point that, even though interactors are agents and in this sense coproducers of the plot, they are above all the beneficiaries of the performance. The entertainment value of the experience depends on how the interactors relate to their avatars. Will interactors be like actors playing a role, innerly distanced from their characters and simulating emotions they do not really have, or will interactors experience their character as their own self, actually feeling the love, hate, fears, and hopes that motivate the character’s behavior or the exhilaration, triumph, pride, melancholy, guilt, or despair that may result from the character’s actions? (Beyond the Myth and Metaphor 592)
These questions deserve a separate research and will be only partly discussed in the following case-studies. However, in this paragraph it has to be said that the constructive way to solve agency problem of players and producers still can be found. Aardse describes it as the following: “In a productive direction for ARGs, game designers should start to view their creations less as a self-contained units, and more as vehicles for fans to engage and interact with story content in a meaningful way” (115). Thus it is important even within the promotional ARGs to see beyond the market logic but in a wider context of cultural value.
In the conclusion another distinguishing feature of ARGs’ audiences has to be mentioned, because, they are presented not by the individual consumer, but by an active group. Participating in the game collaboratively, putting joint efforts in solving puzzles and finding clues, they form the so-called “collective intelligence.” The challenge for ARG designers, as Jenkins writes, is “to create works with enough depth that they can justify such large-scale group efforts” (Convergence Culture 95). Just like in any group, players in ARGs show different levels of participation. As an example, 42Entertainment has divided the audience of their promotional ARG for the computer game I Love Bees (2004) into two groups: active participants and casual participants (Dena 42). It is quite obvious that within the marketing logic game creators are much more interested in active participants, who tend further to become “brand advocates” or fans.
Conclusion: ARG and Media Studies
Development of ARG as a marketing tool and its wide use to promote media content obviously reveals the commercial effectiveness of the genre. Besides the business logic, ARGs also reflect on a wide range of changes in media culture. First and foremost the genre indicates various shifts that had happened with the promotional practices in the digital age. It suggests to the media scholar a new perspective on the way the industry is now building its relationships with sophisticated audiences, trying to entertain and engage them. The genre of promotional ARGs also reflect on the practical realization of the academic concepts of fictional world-building and transmedia storytelling. Finally, ARGs show the very roots of affective economics and the processes through which audience’s emotions are stimulated, tying interactivity and narrativity. In the following part a closer look will be taken at several cases of film and TV promotional ARGs. The methodology of the case studies will be based on the theoretical frameworks described here and will follow the same logic with special attention to interactivity, narrativity and player’s role in particular examples.
PART 2. CASE STUDIES
This part consists of four case studies, HBO The Voyeur, Heroes, True Blood, and The Dark Knight, presented the promotional campaigns that include gaming experience and to different extent represent three defining components of ARGs. It is argued that both narrative and interactivity are interconnected in ARGs and serve as the source of emotions. It is also claimed that promo ARGs rather tend to limit audience activity in attempts to keep it in consonance with the marketing goals. However, some campaigns suggest more agency to the audience; yet in the end they transform their activity into a marketing tool.
2.1. On Some Methodological Issues of Studying ARG
In this section four film and TV promotional campaigns will be analyzed: HBO The Voyeur (2007), Heroes Evolution (2007), True Blood Revelation (2008) and The Dark Knight Project (2007). As it has been shown in the previous part, transmedia storytelling practice has strong commercial roots and goals. Nowadays it has become more than just the way of delivering media content, but the real marketing strategy, that is actively exploited by professionals in various promo campaigns. Thus Andrea Learned, marketing consultant and blogger, states:
In this more full-service, conceptual age, storytelling – in its many forms – is one of the most powerful tools for presenting the truths of your product, service, or brand… These much richer narratives, in turn, help brands more empathically interconnect with the buying minds of their customers. There is simply more for them to hold onto. (Marketing via Stories)
Hence the strategy of commercial storytelling supports advantageous relationships with customers (or in the case of this research – with audience), giving them new points to ‘hold on’ and bringing back in case of success such benefits as stronger engagement and higher brand loyalty. Interestingly, quite close opinion about the impact of a storytelling practice on audience can be found within the arguments around ARG, stated by some media scholars. Thus Kim et.al. describe the participatory mechanism of the genre and audience’s engagement in a following way:
ARGs can and have stimulated the formation of voluntary networks collaborating for collective problem–solving. The story at the heart of an ARG provides a powerful motivation to players, where they wish to make sense out of a set of disparate facts and need a community to do so. As a result, the story engages a large, voluntary community in collective problem–solving. (Storytelling in New Media)
In other words, a story in an ARG, using the terms suggested by Jenkins, has both the power of stickiness as well as spreadability (Spreadable Media). The transmedia character of the
