ARGs are a unique form of media in their ability to promote player involvement in a narrative as they overlap fiction with reality. Many of the examples we’ve looked at relied on technology and the Internet to initiate the game and unite other forms of media behind it. But, naturally, the question arises: as technology improves, and our collective ability to bring fiction and reality closer together does so as well, what will be the ramifications for the medium as a whole?
The “this is not a game” mentality that drives many contemporary ARGs is typically more or less moot; players usually know that they are participating in a game, likely because the fictional aspects, though sufficient to immerse the player, are still too distinct from reality. But if the mentality—currently more like a mutual agreement between players and developers—were to become an actual attainable goal for the game, perhaps some issues of “over-immersion” would occur. If a hypothetical game was able to portray fiction accurately as reality and blur the line between the two, it would be able to evoke emotional responses from players to a much higher degree. On the other hand, the line between immersion and deception would also be blurred, and whatever world the game intends to depict, the resultant confusion could in fact distract from the message that is actually relevant to the real world. Moreover, there is the moral issue of inducing lasting emotional impact on unsuspecting players, even if it’s through creative or technical expertise in the development of the game. Would it be worth potentially traumatizing a player to have them experience a simulated tragedy firsthand (to take increasing awareness of an issue to an extreme degree)? Would it be worth introducing players to an utterly convincing utopian alternate reality with the intention of giving a playerbase a goal to work toward, even if it meant inducing a dissatisfaction with reality?
To avoid these scenarios, the development of more “realistic” ARGs would have to include a balance of player awareness and simulated realism, though I’m not sure exactly what this means. In terms of emotional impact, I feel like the difference between zero awareness and even the lowest level of awareness would be noticeable; it would be impossible to compromise the decision to actively disguise the ARG’s status as a game to potentially increase immersion and impact, disregarding the legality of such a decision.
That’s a really interesting point you have about ethics and ARGs, and it actually brought a case of this happening to mind – though you mentioned the blurring of reality and game as technology progresses, this was actually something that happened during the late 90s (98-99, I think?).
A website called crimescene . com was making frequent updates to the completely fictitious murder case of a made-up person named Purity Knight. Though this is just a story and not at all real, that was never disclosed to those who discovered the page on the website – instead, readers were told that the officer in charge of Purity’s murder was looking for help to solve the case and catch the killer, uploading documents and interviews and including a comment section for readers to discuss their theories and help solve what was portrayed as a completely real murder of a young woman.
Eventually more and more people realized that this was probably all made up, as it doesn’t seem necessarily like protocol to release a bunch of case-related documents to random users online. But still, the ARG was very convincing to many, and never once tipped the audience off to believe that it was a story, other than the unlikely nature of its story.
Though it was proven false, it still affected many people, who became invested in the tragic story of Purity Knight – including Corey Taylor, the lead singer of the band, Slipknot. He was so impacted by the story of Purity Knight, that he wrote an actual song about it that the band released, called “Purity”. After it was revealed that the story of Purity Knight was fake, Taylor said that to him, the story was real, and it had deeply impacted him, and so the emotional motivation to make the song was still there.
Here’s a short little article about the whole thing: https://slipknot.fandom.com/wiki/Purity