Research

I am making an ARG which will conclude with the player being recruited into a cult. Along the way I want to make cryptic videos which will lead 

For research I will be looking at different sources like YouTube,  Internet articles, Reddit, surveys, Polls, etc... 

I want to find out the codes and conventions of an ARG, examples of good / bad ARGS.

What is an ARG?

An  ARG (Alternate Reality Game) is a mystery piece which takes the viewers along a story which they have to solve puzzles and codes to unlock apart of the story but its never mentioned that the game isn't real. Alternatively you can watch this video by "Inside a mind" who will describe it way better than me :D 

History Of ARG'S

 A TL;DR of the first ARG:

The first known instance of an "ARG" would be the book "Masquerade" which happened in the 70's. The book contains images which kicked off a treasure hunt
by giving clues which took the player to a Golden Hare, which is the prize. It took 6 years for anyone to find the hare but "Ken Thomas" found it. Thomas then went on to gamejack the arg after creating the company "Haresoft" and created an impossible overpriced videogame, he then released another game which was needed to complete the puzzle but it was still impossible. The funny thing is Ken only won the arg because of luck, he saw a group who actually solved the puzzle but had dug just in the wrong spot then found the treasure himself.

The Secret ARG:

The Secret was an ARG treasure hunt in 1982 which started like masquerade, in a novel by Byron Preiss. The book presented itself in more of a modern ARG style

Codes / Conventions

 What I Know Already + More research:

ATBASH

ARG's Commonly use "Ciphers" which is secret code. There are so many examples of ciphers but I'll start with the most basic example I can think of is the Atbash Cipher. Here is the ciphertext alphabet 

As you can see this cipher is just the alphabet backwards. "It is one of the earliest known substitution ciphers to have been used, and is very simple."

Here is an example of the cipher in use: 

SVOOL GSRH RH Z XRKSVI - Hello This Is A Cipher

CAESAR

Then there's the Caesar Cipher, which probably one of the most famous ciphers. Being used
by Julius Caesar to hide messages from his enemies, hence the name.

"If he had anything confidential to say, he wrote it in cipher, that is, by so changing the order of the letters of the alphabet, that not a word could be made out. If anyone wishes to decipher these, and get at their meaning, he must substitute the fourth letter of the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others."
(Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars)

The cipher works with something called a "Key" Caesar liked to use a "shift" key of 3, you can see what it's like below.

Although The Caesar cipher can be shifted to any amount even with the minuses.

Here's an example of me using a Caesar cipher:

NLOO KLP DW VLA 15 WKLV DIWHUQRRQ = Kill him at six 15 this afternoon

The last cipher I'm going to include is the "Pigpen" cipher. 

"The Pigpen Cipher is another example of a substitution cipher, but rather than replacing each letter with another letter, the letters are replaced by symbols. Most notoriously, it was the cipher of choice for use by the Freemasons, a secret society in the 18th Century." (Rodriguez-Clark, n.d.)  

Here's an example of pigpen:

,        = Hello, meet me at the forest in 30

These 3 ciphers are some of the most common and simple ciphers I know and they could possibly be used in my piece, although I was thinking about using the Minecraft enchantment table "Galactic" text cipher or Ranboo's endermen language because they use symbols which makes it looks cooler and more cryptic in my opinion. here are example of Enchantment table / endermen language:

https://trak.in/tags/business/2011/07/11/alternate-reality-gaming-arg-crowdsourcing/

Codes, Conventions, rules, expected:

One of the big rules of ARG's is that the creator doesn't tell anyone that its fake and keeps the façade of it being real.

•  "Storytelling as archaeology." This is the concept of not giving the audience all the
  
  
  information or content in once piece. You should hide bits and pieces for them to discover instead of telling them straight forwardly 
• It's a "Platformless Narrative" meaning that the ARG doesn't / shouldn't stick to one medium like YouTube or forums. It can run all over the internet if you desire.
•  ARG's usually involve "Collaborative storytelling" which is using the players responses / actions and implementing them into the story. Just like the choose your own story books.
  
•  "Rabbit Hole." The term rabit hole is referencing the original post which started the whole story
  
• 
  

   (Alternate reality game, 2021)

Nightmind / Reignbot / Inside A Mind (etc) 

Nightmind: "PBHere: A 3D TikTok ARG"

 PBHere is a TikTok 3D ARG that uses the tiktok format to its advantage and encourages viewer interaction. The first video we get from PB is him replying to a comment which is quite a good use of the app especially for a 3d animation. 

PB will happily respond to user suggestions which shows that its collaborative. In an update video we see a door with a keypad, some users noticed that some of the buttons were worn, obviously through being pressed. The creator of PBHere likes to

leave obvious clues for the viewers to help PB progress as he investigates the letter box we see some scratches along with him playing a song on the keypad. with the combination of the scratches and the numpad people worked out that the code was "80824", PB leaves the room but finds a body. 

I'll leave the explanation on a cliff-hanger but here's my thoughts on PBHere: I really like PBHere, its a very simple but interesting ARG which relies on audience participation to carry on. Because of it's simplicity there isn't much code breaking to do as it more relies on choices after a few episodes until they use spectrograms to hide a message which I like a lot. I see PBHere as a great inspiration because it's starter friendly and has a gripping story.

Reignbot: "@TheSunVanished Creepy Twitter Account"

  TheSunVanished is a twitter based ARG that started in 2018 and technically hasn't ended to my knowledge but we've had no story since October of 2020. The idea behind TheSunVanished is just that. One day the sun is gone, the world is black and chaos ensues. But there seems to also be mysterious men?

This is pretty much all we learn from reignbot's video on TheSunVanished although it has been updated since I wanted to focus on 3 different ARG / unfiction youtubers I wont look into someone else's video. Would I consider TheSunVanished an arg? I don't think so, I think it lends itself more towards the unfiction side because there doesn't seem to be the game element, at least from the little I've seen.

Inside A Mind: "The Worldwide Treasure Hunt (Gravity Falls) - Inside A Mind"

 Now onto the video / ARG that probably helped kick off my love for the genre. The gravity falls arg. If you've never seen the show here is a little backstory from IMDb:

"Sent to stay with their great-uncle over summer vacation, twin siblings Dipper and Mabel Pines have close encounters with the strange phenomena that lurks within the small Oregon community of Gravity Falls."(Gravity Falls (TV Series 2012–2016) - IMDb)

 The ARG starts during the series finale where fans noticed some code on the bus seats. Using a combination of Atbash and Caesar ciphers they decrypted the message to this: "Hidden deep within the woods a buried treasure waits, secrets lost and statues found beyond the rusty gates" the episode ends with a video of a bill cipher statue lost in the woods, similar to the one we see in the show. The whole arg is a treasure hunt coming to an end when the players found the IRL statue of bill that was seen in the finale. What's interesting is that the treasure hunt didn't just stay in America but actually was in Russia and japan where a couple clues were hidden. what's nice is, Alex, the creator of the show + ARG was very responsive to the fans when something went wrong like when a whole clue got moved because it was in a museum / when fans spent way too long on the puzzle so he showed what it was meant to look like. 

Gravity falls is what got me into ciphers, codes and mysteries so i owe a lot to the show and ARG. What makes this an ARG and not an international treasure hunt is the fact that the whole time its in character with the show, you speak to grunkle Stan and things are written and presented like the show.

Primary Research:

Reddit: 

r/ARG could be the place I start / ask about my ARG and get opinions from the target audience and from people who know ARG's well

Survey:

I created a google forms survey asking about ARG's, you can read it above but in case the link dies here are screenshots of the finished survey: 

I Posted the Survey On the sub reddit r/ARG to as well as sending it to class mates to get a mix of opinions. Here's a screenshot of what I posted on reddit: 

I'll let it run for a few hours then analyse the data that I've collected from the survey.

It's Been 4 hours since I've posted the survey on reddit / Instagram, Lets see the responses:

*Disclaimer: Not all information is up to date accurate as the survey is still open as I'm writing this, that's why the responses will fluctuate.*

Firstly we've got around 30 responses with ranging ages but it seems that 15 - 30 years is the average age that responded to this Form. About 2 responses seem to be partly jokey but answered some questions seriously, which is a better record than I expected. We'll get more into age range later when I ask them about what they believe the age range is.

The Majority of people who answered this survey were male with female coming second. From this we could probably assume that, currently, ARG's are more appealing to a male audience, although this may just reflect on the group who uses reddit instead of the whole ARG community. From this I could include things in my product that have been proven to appeal more towards the male genre or I could keep in gender neutral, which is more likely.

Later on after we got over 100 responses it turns out nonbinaries are also in the community, which doesn't surprise me at all because the community is diverse and gender doesn't need to be important

There were lots of different answers to this question but the main answer was student, the other bigger ones are student as well but typed differently. so clearly the ARG world attracts students to the genre.

A large majority of the people who answered have some sort of experience with ARG'S which tells me that the answers I've been given can be reliable and relevant rather than having a survey full of clueless people. 

What comes into your mind when you hear "ARG"30 responses

VR Games

Change of reality

Cicada 3301

Interactivity, it's a very important factor of ARGs.

Escape game IRL with internet and many people

Larpg, horror, fun

Story telling

Mostly puzzles

Confusion as I am unfamiliar

Plot, hidden messages

mystery

Local 58

Alternate reality game

A community working to solve puzzles and looking for clues

Fun experience that I can scratch my head to

Alien noises

An experience :V

Alternative reality game

Puzzles

webseries

Thomas is missing

Alternate reality games

Black websites, source codes, image texts, ciphers

the alex maestro one i'm participating in rn lol

A cool intriguing story with twists and turns that I would love to help solve

A spooky game

Alternate reality game. Puzzles. Ciphers

Code-breaking, hexadecimal systems, probably murder scenarios and mysterious evil killers

trials evolution

Omegamart, The Beast, the Cloverfield ARG, The Sun Vanished

This question allows me to know what the public think ARG's are and what they affiliate with the genre. This lets me know what to include / what I could include if I wanted to. It gives me new eyes on the genre, especially because I wouldn't make these links myself when I think "ARG".

What kind of sounds / visuals would you associate with ARG's?34 responses

N/A

Dark, Weird

cryptic, hidden messages

Subliminal messages.

weird sounds, old aesthetic

Variety: there's so many options in this genre.

Sounds from a person

Creepy

Creepy sounds

scary/mysterious images or sounds

Footsteps

Magical

Mostly the creepy stuff but that is really overdone.

Morse code, spectrograms, SSTV, binary, QR codes, etc

Alien

SCI-FI

Any thing Horror

Strange

Codes,

Generally mysterious and cryptic language used with distorted music or sounds along with something fitting to its theme - think local 58 tv

Backwards talking, dark, minimalist visuals

maybe like a message in a spectrogram

Creepy/reverse, distorted, low quality

Codes and shit idk

Cryptic and/or subliminal imagery. SSTV. Morse code

Creepy and dark. But really enthralling too. Like you’re a real life cyber detective.

space/sherlock homes

Websites, static, dark phone camera footage, static.

Static, morse code beeps

beep sounds 😅

Glitch-like, as many clues can be hidden in audio files that, when heard are gibberish but when processed reveal messages. Images resulting of composites of different others that, again, hide clues or similar information.

Glitchy or in reverse

surrealism mixed with horror, often ARG's have a mysterious/spooky 'vibe' to them which I adore. sounds vary per story or puzzle but mostly it comes down to hollow or ambient kind, but again it really depends (like pizza time pizza where it is more up and cheerfull at times)

This gives me an idea for what sort of audio / visuals I can do since I am kind of puzzle as of what to do right now. I've seen lots of new ideas when it comes to this question that I haven't thought of, so I will definitely think about this question a lot while making / planning for my product.

It's positive to know that i have a wide audience, that's what I asked this question for. 

What would you consider ARG Tropes / Rules?27 responses

N/A

don't explain the purpose

Keep answers to yourself.

Make something subtle and hard but try to adapt the game to the players

Yes if I knew some more about it.

A lot of new ARGs think they have to do with horror in order to even be considered an ARG.

Trope: there's always a glitchy sound/image lol

The increasing tension

The answer isn’t what you initially think, and a good ARG tries to innovate the formula

Depends what they are

This Is Not A Game

Codes Puzzles External media

Over complicated Codes

I don't like the idea of brute forcing solutions and spoiling answers to others

Binary, text hidden in images, ciphers

Not sure

Piss

Make sure the puzzles are solvable. Make sure there is a disconnect between reality and unreality so people know it’s fake so they don’t panic.

No cheating. You can use the internet to research tactics and skills but don’t steal from people who have already done it. Hints are ok but you need to figure it out yourself.

hacked websites, audio cues

Secret codes, websites leading to other websites. Cyphers, are all tropes.

Saying "hurr durr I RANDOMLY found this and didn't just make it and I'm not using this for an excuse to promote my arg"

concentrates to paths

Use of encrypted text, binary, base64, etc.

A good story

it had to be adaptable to the community, nothing really has to be set in stone and often more the scenarios should be adapted to what the community contributes.

I asked this because it was difficult to actually research myself for what the conventions / generic tropes of the genre are so I thought it would be good to see what experience players thought. And possibly what to avoid while making my ARG.

what ARG would you consider a good starter?24 responses

ARG apps on phones

Pizza Time Pizza

a clue that seam to be here from a long time but obviously strange and link to a website or a social media or something on internet

Local58

Plot (easy)

Dunno, I really just got into ARGs a year ago so I feel to I inexperienced to answer

N/A

when the start is unexpected/or when you trick the players

The white door

The Game Theory ARG

Ong's Hat

Dad or daisy brown

Idk

Gt arg was my first

Not sure, very new to all of this

Nah

Walker Creek. Inspired me to make my own

Not really sure, I have done several startups and also some that are unsolved.

The Sun Vanished. The Game Theory ARG.

I don't know. I've only ever made an arg

mysterious effect

I don't know if it can be considered a good starter, but at least a good example, in my opinion, is the hidden messages within the game files of the free Visual Novel Doki Doki Literature Club (Warning: Disturbing Content). It has the basic ARG Puzzles: Sound files, processed images and encrypted text.

The Black Watchmen game

Pizza time pizza, DAD, PBHere, The Blair witch project, also the clover field ARG is a fun rabbit hole to dive into for starters

I asked this question so I could cross reference because I want my ARG to be starter friendly so knowing what experienced players thought was easy or a starter was essential. This question did cause some confusion because it got a mix of answers that weren't relevant but this would be a fault on my wording surveys which I'll need to improve on.

none of the people who answered the survey thought ARG's we're a bad tool for story telling which is positive so I know not to worry that the genre isn't a good way to express my art.

This is when I'm going to talk about the age range / demographic. As we can see from what the people said. The age range for an ARG is almost definitely 16 - 40 or just 16+. which is what I estimated for my target audience. I'm assuming it comes with a pinch of salt because if your ARG contains R rated content it wont be targeted towards people who are 15, but in my case i will target more towards the 16+ demographic.

Any Advice on making an ARG?37 responses

N/A

No

Make it clear to everyone. 🤷🏿‍♂️

apply multiple ciphers

Use a ton of interactivity to it, make the player feel like they've accomplished something or find enjoyment from it!

Prepare it before, and think that everyone will potentially deform parts of your story with theories. But that's great ! The storytelling has to evolve with the players i think

Never made one

No as I don’t really know the software that much.

to plot the story very well before creating clever puzzles

If it's your first time, I would suggest to make a relatively simple plot, that increases in complexity the more you feel confident in the project

I don't know

Don't use morse code

Try obscure forms of encoding messages, but give the player a hint as to what you used

Stay in character.

Even though codes and puzzles are a major part of args I would go light on using them since they are getting over used in the arg community.

Set out the story first

be original in your way of portraying the story

Make a structured plan of what steps the person should take, work backwards

Dont do too many of the cliches, like binary and textedits n stuff, be as creative and out there as possible, while still ensuring it is rewarding

good luck! i hope it turns out well lol

Be smart, make it tricky, don’t be afraid to seek help, and have fun,

Nah

Just do it. Honestly, when I started making mine I just.. went and did it instead of pondering on and on about it.

Broadcast it widely. Make it an automatic clue system. Create a discord or network for collaboration. Be attentive and responsive on hints. Make sure it has a story.

na

Make the beginning easily accessible with an interesting story hook, so people want to continue. So many times I see someone just post a code with no context and I have no idea if it’s going to be worth my time or not. Don’t overuse binary or Morse code.

Can't think of any right now.

make it using fb so that everyone can join

I haven't done one myself, but one thing I'll say is don't underestimate the community. the Internet is filled with examples of very hard ARGs being cracked by a very passionate community. As long as their is a solid logic supporting the puzzles and a mysterious yet engaging story, I would expect it to be successful. Good luck!

Have fun

listen to the community is a must, be adaptable and prepared to change your story or puzzle and maybe use something else then a secret organization for once? An ARG doesnt need complex puzzles or codes that take a year to decipher. just make the story intriguing, involve your audience and stay in character

Try to find a way to present a story with a new perspective/point of view, Local 58 use visuals and the news format to tell what it needs to be tell.

There's nothing better than failing

Influences / Inspiration:

Cicada 3301

 What is / was Cicada 3301?

to put it simply, complicated. Cicada is something which has interested me ever since i found it, the puzzles, the mystery, the product. The story that's present to us is that they are looking for intelligent individuals, that's it. cicada uses very complex puzzles, the final one we've gotten from them being the "Liber Primus" a 60 page manuscript which is

comprised completely by Runes that was found in 2014. although some pages have been supposedly "solved" the book itself remains unsolved, no one knows what it means or why, even the winner of the first cicada puzzle in  2012 gave up with the "Liber Primus" So maybe we'll never see the end to cicada.

 

 @gr3gory88

 What is / was gr3gory88?

 Gr3gory88 was a twitter based ARG which ended with a cliff-hanger. The premise was that the "Puppet master" gained ownership of his dead grandfathers old house
and weird things start to happen like sticks on the door handle and the whole town is weird with him. a TL;DR of the ARG is that he stumbles upon these creatures that are the focus of a cult.

11BX1371 

 What is / was 11BX1371?

The original video itself is a cloaked man in a plague doctors mask and a glowy glove accompanying the image is some piercing audio which has a hidden spectrogram. The whole story of 11BX1371 is confusing to me since I've been out the loop for ages but i know the ARG uses many forms of hidden messages / codes.

What I've Learnt and what i want to implement

I've learnt a bit more about ciphers than I did before and will definitely explore them more in-depth so I can use them. Also everything in the codes... section of my blog is new to me and has given me knowledge which I didn't know before. It's also kind of taught me that the ARG genre has very little bounds and its a very open space that has lots of room for expression.

What i want to implement from what I've seen is having my product spread across the internet using twitter, reddit, YouTube etc because it will make it more of an adventure and could allow for interesting story telling.

Cults

(Levitan and Thompson, 2020)

1. Church of the Lamb of God

started by Ervil LeBaron in Chihuahua, Mexico, after he clashed and left his brother Joel’s sect. LeBaron convinced his followers that he received direct instructions from God to kill sinners to "cleanse" them of evil. LeBaron also practiced polygamy.

2. Manson Family

Manson coined the term “Helter Skelter” and he used the term to describe a race war he believed would bring in the apocalypse. "Some people believe Manson ordered the murders because he thought it would kick-start his “Helter Skelter” concept."

3. Aum Shinrikyo

A Japanese Cult founded in 1984 but they made headlines in after rumours that Asahara, the leader, was forcing members to donate money to the group and holding them against their will. Asahara believed in a doomsday in the form of world war 3 caused by America but only the followers of the Aum Shinrikyo would survive. in 1995 the group orchestrated a gas attack in Tokyo subway.

My interpretation of cults: They start as a normal, potentially religious group, then the leader starts to transition into more extremes and develops the idea of "doomsday." and the now cult is brainwashed to do whatever the leaders seem as right.

Similarities: Many believe in an impending "doomsday", most are religious based in some form, some form of violence / abuse,  

ARG Graphics:

 Here is the graphic a Minecraft content creator "Ranboo" used to link to a website during his ARG:

What he did was included text which was hidden which put together created a link to the website. He hid the text among the black background and it was uncovered by shooting the brightness all the way up, what I like is that it's not just the link but a jumble of letters that they have to put together.

Another thing Ranboo used in the ARG was this old paper style graphic:

I want to create something  similar to this, which will be shown in the video and it will be a clue to apart of the story. The point of these pages are to find out more about Ranboo's character. 

ARG Websites:

 I found these 3 websites on r/ARG 

https://othi.neocities.org/index.html

 

http://ssendetcennocretni.tk/

 

https://thebelow111.wixsite.com/fawn

 

Questions:

1.Explain how you strategically selected the five channels of research to support and develop your idea.

The Channels of research I chose are videos(YouTube), Websites, surveys, focus groups and interviews with a possible look into books / magazines. I selected my research channels by thinking about where information about ARG's would be most abundant / reliable, that's why I mention a possible look into books because I don't know if such material exists

2.Explain what secondary research you undertook and why. Describe how each channel contributes to the other giving you a body of secondary knowledge that develops your idea and develops your target audience profile.

The secondary research I've done is looking on different websites and videos. websites and videos compliment each other a great deal because websites will have a more in-depth view than most videos and will be a great support to the videos that cover the topic and will build towards the target audience profile as I get a feel for who ARG's are usually made for

3.Explain what primary research you undertook and why. Describe how it developed and further shaped your idea based on the information you used from your secondary research investigation(s). Say how this further develops your target audience profile.

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4.Explain how your research strategy overall developed your idea and evolved / developed your target audience 

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5.Write up in detail your final target audience profile using the correct terminology. (Psychographic, Demographic, Behavioural, Geographic, AIO). Explain how your research investigation was important to direct you to this final profile. Give examples of where research channels support this profile.

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Bibliography:

Rodriguez-Clark, D., n.d. Crypto Corner. [online] Crypto Corner. Available at: <https://crypto.interactive-maths.com/> [Accessed 19 April 2021].

Levitan, H. and Thompson, E., 2020. These Are the Scariest Cult Stories of All Time. [online] Cosmopolitan. Available at: <https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/a10309417/scariest-cult-stories/> [Accessed 22 April 2021].

Ultimate Pop Culture Wiki. 2021. Alternate reality game. [online] Available at: <https://ultimatepopculture.fandom.com/wiki/Alternate_reality_game#Basic_design_principles> [Accessed 23 April 2021].

IMDb. 2021. Gravity Falls (TV Series 2012–2016) - IMDb. [online] Available at: <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1865718/plotsummary#synopsis> [Accessed 23 April 2021].