Riddle me this...riddle me that...

Yeah yeah, I know the upcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight, is about the Joker, but a current advertising campaign for the new movie is more like something done in the familiar idiom of the Riddler. The Dark Knight ARG (alternate reality game) puts players in the shoes of a resident of Gotham City, guiding them through story events set in the fictional corrupt and crime-ridden city and letting them take part. While this sounds like one of those live action role-playing game events (LARPs), whose gameplay requires players to take on the roles of different personas similar to a game of Dungeons and Dragons, the Dark Knight ARG gives information to players during their day-to-day lives and allows them to take part in the game through even mundane means. If the concept of an ARG is foreign to you, unfiction.com, a website devoted to the game-style, defines it as this:

An alternate reality game is an interactive fusion of creative writing, puzzle-solving, and team-building, with a dose of role playing thrown in. It utilizes several forms of media in order to pass clues to the players, who solve puzzles in order to win pieces of the story being played out.

Clues can be passed through web pages, email, voicemail, snail mail, television advertisements, movie posters, campus billboards, newspaper classifieds… really, in any way that information can be passed.

(source: http://www.unfiction.com/history/)

The game, set in the Batman universe, allows players to interact with any number of characters from the famous comic book and movie universe. In order to be introduced to the game, all the player has to do is access one of the game's more current websites and give an e-mail address or phone number. Or go to this website, it is a Wiki that tracks the progress of the game.

"Tell me kid: you ever dance with the devil by the pale moonlight?"

Whoops...wrong Joker...

Yes, it's safe...

The game began in May of 2007 when a website advertising The Dark Knight went up called Ibelieveinharveydent.com. The website was a poster for Gotham District Attorney candidate Harvey Dent, played in the movie by Aaron Eckhart. Soon defaced joker cards were appearing in comic book stores with the a web address written on them: www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com. This led to a Jokerized version of the Harvey Dent campaign sign. The site later changed to an apparently blank site that revealed pages of Joker laughter and the message "see you in December" if the visitor highlighted the text on the page. The game remained stagnant until July of '07 when "Jokerized" $1 bills were handed out at the San Diego Comic-Con. These led to whysoserious.com, which was a recruiting site for the Joker's gang. It told participants to be at a certain place on a certain day. When the players arrived a phone number was written in the sky. This sent them on a scavenger hunt through whatever city they were in. When all the clues were solved, a website with the first trailer for the movie was revealed.

A "Gotham City Police" document detailing the original Joker event

Most of the game's scenarios play out similarly, some involving other characters. They usually end with a new trailer or poster being revealed. I became involved in the game in two different ways. While looking on IGN.com, I read an article following the game. I was led to two sites, one was the reactivated Ibelieveinharveydent.com, which became his campaign site. I signed up for it and occasionally receive e-mails from them about the campaign and messages to go vote in the Gotham City Elections (Dent won, the bill to have the police put "masked vigilantes" at the bottom of their priority list lost by a 1% margin.) My other introduction, however, was a little more of what an ARG is about. I found a link to a website called acmesecuritysystems.com that had a security camera feed on it. IGN reported that Joker's henchmen got a password and ID to enter in the site through other parts of the game, so I went to the site and entered that info along with my e-mail and phone number. Imagine my shock when my phone rang a second later and I was greeted with the following message:

This is Jim Gordon, major crimes, Gotham Police Department. Not the voice you were expecting...huh? We have your name. We have your number. We have your computer's IP address. So what I'm saying is, we have you. Consider yourself the Gotham Police Department's newest recruit. You see, this works one of two ways, either you're going to jail for conspiracy in a criminal enterprise, or, you'll work for me. We'll be in touch. Oh, have a great day!

Not again...I mean...what?

I then began receiving e-mails from Gordon (Batman's ally in the movies and books) with tasks. Unfortunately I missed the first one he sent out, which is a bummer because it had the players "intercepting" actual care packages sent to crooked cops. Oh if I had only gotten one of those cell phones that receive texts from the Joker...

So why am I writing about this? It's fun to see how games like this can "break the fourth wall" and seep into our world this way. Sure, people have been playing role-playing games for years, and there are the LARPs out there where people go have a role-playing game in a real urban setting, acting out different characters and even involving non-players at times, but a game like this puts the real you into the game world. You write e-mails, take phone calls, and walk around your city like you normally would, but at the end of the day you get a new part of a story revealed to you or a new promotional material, if you are playing an advertising ARG.

This is certainly not the first ARG. That distinction belongs to The Beast, played in 2001. It chronicled a murder mystery that players had to solve by visiting over 30 websites. The next was Majestic, created by Electronic Arts. These games eventually grew to be used as advertising campaigns and were involved in the campaigns for Halo 2, the movie A.I: Artificial Intelligence, and for Audi motors. With games moving away from the boards and out from behind the TV screen, this presents interesting new possibilities for game design.

There is also still one going on for the movie Cloverfield that even involved part of the DVD packaging. It gives a lot of the backstory to the monster and is even alluded to in the movie: Rob's new job is working for a Japanese company with ties to the monster (he doesn't know about it) and one of the main characters in the game is a friend of the characters in the movie and is passed out on Rob's couch during the party scene of the film. Current game events have you trying to find the whereabouts for the passed out girl's missing boyfriend, who may have been involved with an environmental group fighting Rob's new employer. The site following the Cloverfield ARG can be found at this site. Obviously, the events in these kinds of games are very pervasive and can take forms that you may not even foresee. Who knows? You may be playing a game now and not even know it.