Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how Stuff Workstop coming, Hello everybody, and
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette and
Speaker 1: I'm the tech editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, Crispy, you know the baron wants to talk
Speaker 1: to you. Baron, Yes, he said it was urgent, but
Speaker 1: that sounds even worse. Yes, apparently you have to get
Speaker 1: to Cairo by midnight. That doesn't but I have improv
Speaker 1: workshop tonight. That's it's too late. That's all improvise. UM.
Speaker 1: So you might be wondering what we were just doing.
Speaker 1: I was because we didn't talk about that before I
Speaker 1: started recording. I just sort of thought about it based
Speaker 1: on the topic that we picked for to right, the
Speaker 1: topic that was suggested by a listener. So let me
Speaker 1: read this and introduce is a brand new segment. Yes, ready,
Speaker 1: it's listener tweets. Yes, this listener tweet comes from Emily,
Speaker 1: and Emily, aside from being totally awesome, said I think
Speaker 1: we need a podcast on alternate reality games, and I agree, Emily.
Speaker 1: So this is it. We're gonna talk about alternate reality games,
Speaker 1: which are a very interesting, sometimes peculiar, incredibly addictive form
Speaker 1: of gaming. It's also considered a form of marketing in
Speaker 1: a lot of instances. Well, yeah, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of the alternate reality games that are
Speaker 1: out there are actually part of some sort of marketing
Speaker 1: uh strategy. As a matter of fact, the very first
Speaker 1: one I read about, the very first one. There was
Speaker 1: one that went before the major one, but there's one
Speaker 1: that's credited as starting off the entire uh fad. So
Speaker 1: but we'll we'll get into that first. Let's kind of
Speaker 1: try and explain what reality game is. This a little complicated,
Speaker 1: all right. So you've got role playing games, and in
Speaker 1: role playing games, you take on the role of a
Speaker 1: character living in some other world and you try to
Speaker 1: have that character achieve certain goals and achieve certain tasks, um,
Speaker 1: in very in some format. Yeah, and um, the point
Speaker 1: of a role playing game is to imagine what it's
Speaker 1: like to be that person. So, I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: playing somebody who may not be able to smell very well,
Speaker 1: and you get in a situation where everyone else might
Speaker 1: smell something deadly like you, yeah, but you totally don't
Speaker 1: notice because you can't smell well exactly, thanks, but I'm saying,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to imagine what it's like to
Speaker 1: be in that person's shoes, and so you might know.
Speaker 1: They might say the person who's running a game might say,
Speaker 1: you know, this deadly thing is waiting around the corner
Speaker 1: for you know, what are you gonna do? And you
Speaker 1: have to go, well, you know, my character has no
Speaker 1: idea that that's there. What am I know? My character
Speaker 1: would walk through the door because he doesn't know what's
Speaker 1: going on, right, and everyone else is saying, no, leroy, no,
Speaker 1: he's back Lee Rod Jenkins. Um. Yeah. The so the
Speaker 1: idea behind a role playing game again is that you're
Speaker 1: playing a role and there are all yes, exactly, there
Speaker 1: are all sorts of role playing games there. You know.
Speaker 1: Of course, Dungeons and Dragons is the one that that
Speaker 1: people bust out all the time because it was sort
Speaker 1: of the role playing game. Um, it was certainly played
Speaker 1: a very important part in my childhood. And then there's
Speaker 1: those you know, role playing games that they get you
Speaker 1: to do for a team building and you're, you know,
Speaker 1: company when the stairs and go. Okay, so you're trying
Speaker 1: to sell your car, right? Those are far more fun
Speaker 1: than No, okay, no they're not. No, they're not fun
Speaker 1: at all. Please stop doing that. I used to work
Speaker 1: for a company that used to do those. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not proud of that. So alternate reality games, it's different.
Speaker 1: That's slightly different. Now. Alternate reality games what they do
Speaker 1: is they span two worlds. There's a fantasy world in
Speaker 1: which the game is actually kind of a real a
Speaker 1: real thing, all right, and then there's the real world
Speaker 1: where it's a game. It's yeah, that's the whole point
Speaker 1: of the alternate reality game. So let's say, let me
Speaker 1: give you an example. I'll give you the example. The
Speaker 1: first game that really launched alternate reality games, which was
Speaker 1: commonly known as The Beast. Now. The Beast was part
Speaker 1: of a viral marketing campaign for the movie AI, the
Speaker 1: Kubrick Spielberg film with um, what's his face in it?
Speaker 1: Haley Joe Osmond? M Um, well, where's he been anyway?
Speaker 1: So Haley Joe Osmond playing this little robot character blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. Really interesting. Kubrick's last film, uh, What got
Speaker 1: a lot of people interested in this movie, wasn't the preview,
Speaker 1: wasn't the poster? Well kind of wise, but for the
Speaker 1: reason Head gears, it's because there were little clues left
Speaker 1: behind that something weird was connected to this movie, and
Speaker 1: the the marketers kind of took a big gamble, uh
Speaker 1: and hoped that people would notice the weird stuff and
Speaker 1: that that would precipitate this alternate reality game. And it did.
Speaker 1: If you looked at the poster, if you looked at
Speaker 1: the credits that were listed on the previews, you started
Speaker 1: to see odd little messages, and by putting it together,
Speaker 1: you began to find out that there was a murder
Speaker 1: mystery connected to this world that the movie is about.
Speaker 1: If you played a little bit longer, you would discover
Speaker 1: that the mystery exists in a world that's forty years
Speaker 1: after the main events of the film. AI all right, so, uh,
Speaker 1: you know that's the mystery inhabits this this fictional world old.
Speaker 1: But as you start to play, you begin to have
Speaker 1: an impact on this fictional world, and ultimately you begin
Speaker 1: to be able to contact people within this fictional world
Speaker 1: and they can contact you, and you become an active
Speaker 1: participant in a game that again exists in a in
Speaker 1: a world of fantasy, but it's bled over into the
Speaker 1: world of reality to the point where some people playing
Speaker 1: the game might get a phone call or a text
Speaker 1: message or facts three in the morning and it would
Speaker 1: have something to do with this game, and then by
Speaker 1: following the instructions or solving a puzzle, they would get
Speaker 1: further along and get one step closer to solving the mystery.
Speaker 1: So it's completely immersive. It is incredibly immersive in a way.
Speaker 1: It kind of changes your life into an action movie
Speaker 1: because you become a character who, through your actions, you
Speaker 1: can make a big impact on this this story, and
Speaker 1: it feels like you're suddenly in the Bourne identity or something.
Speaker 1: It's amazing because you know, you get the feeling like
Speaker 1: you're really important. Yeah, you're no longer some person who's
Speaker 1: just saying they're looking at a computer. You're helping solve
Speaker 1: a murder. Yeah. Yeah, and I imagine it. It's no
Speaker 1: good for productivity either, probably not, And it was really
Speaker 1: not good from my product. Let's say that, all right,
Speaker 1: So let me let me give a few more um
Speaker 1: definitions before we get too far. So within the game,
Speaker 1: you have the people who are running the game, and
Speaker 1: they're commonly known as puppet masters. Now, these are the
Speaker 1: people who know the storyline. They know the the route
Speaker 1: that the story is supposed to take that's important to
Speaker 1: note supposed to take, and they know the solutions to
Speaker 1: the puzzles that they are giving out, and they know
Speaker 1: what the next logical steps should be once you figure
Speaker 1: out the puzzle. So they're the ones running the game.
Speaker 1: They're kind of the game master or dungeon master that
Speaker 1: we would think of in a in a role playing game,
Speaker 1: you have the curtain. The curtain is the the veil
Speaker 1: that covers the puppet masters, right, so it's essentially the
Speaker 1: the level of of obscurity the puppet masters put up
Speaker 1: so that players don't see behind the curtains see how
Speaker 1: the game works, and therefore solve the game unfairly. Actually,
Speaker 1: I heard UM. I heard I read as I was
Speaker 1: doing my research for this podcast that UM that curtain
Speaker 1: is is basically critical to the game and because otherwise,
Speaker 1: without UM, it basically has to take itself very seriously,
Speaker 1: because otherwise the illusion is ruined. Even if even if
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily promotional vehicle as not tied, if it's
Speaker 1: just a game. If it if it stops taking itself
Speaker 1: seriously and you can actually see what's going on, it's
Speaker 1: it's a lot more fun if you take it, if
Speaker 1: you pretend that you're part of this work exactly, it's
Speaker 1: I would I would say that it's almost exactly the
Speaker 1: same thing as being able to enjoy a magic trick. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're watching a magic trick and you're enjoying it,
Speaker 1: you know that there's a trick there. You know there's
Speaker 1: an lusion, there's some sort of misdirection, there's something going
Speaker 1: on that is tricking you so that the effect that's
Speaker 1: being achieved appears to be magical, but deep down you
Speaker 1: know that it's not really magic. And you could find
Speaker 1: out how it works, and then you might be able
Speaker 1: to appreciate the skill with which the magician executes the trick,
Speaker 1: but it's not magical anymore because now you know how
Speaker 1: it works. And the same thing with these games, once
Speaker 1: you know how they work. Um, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: putting in a cheat code for a computer game. You you
Speaker 1: you know there's no challenge there, there's no art to
Speaker 1: it anymore. For you. It's just mechanics at that point. Um,
Speaker 1: not the most interesting thing to see, although I will
Speaker 1: say running one of these games has to be one
Speaker 1: of the most stressful, time consuming things I can imagine. Um.
Speaker 1: I was reading a Sean Stewart's website. He was instrumental
Speaker 1: in creating The Beast, and he said it was extremely
Speaker 1: stressful because they were trying to come up with things
Speaker 1: on the fly and he was having to write all
Speaker 1: kinds of parts for all kinds of people, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and they would they would give him a call and say, well,
Speaker 1: we need you know, uh, you know, this particular thing,
Speaker 1: and he's going, all right, well, I'll get on there.
Speaker 1: He said it was very stressful, but it was kind
Speaker 1: of fun at the same time, because you know, it
Speaker 1: was all part of this big puzzle and they were
Speaker 1: sort of making it up as they went along because
Speaker 1: the needs of the game kind of well it turns out.
Speaker 1: It turns out just like role playing games. If any
Speaker 1: of you out there have ever run a role playing game,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about playing, and I'm talking about being
Speaker 1: the game master. You know that players have this nasty
Speaker 1: habit of coming up with plans that you never considered
Speaker 1: while you were designing the game. And what's worse is
Speaker 1: when you come up with a group of players who
Speaker 1: come up with a plan that should work, but you
Speaker 1: didn't think about it, and then you're thinking, okay, well,
Speaker 1: i've got two choices here. I throw out my planned
Speaker 1: stuff because it no longer applies, and I run with
Speaker 1: what they've got and I just make up the rest
Speaker 1: on the fly, or I didn't eye them their plan,
Speaker 1: which in all fairness should work. Now, if you do
Speaker 1: the second choice, that really tends to upset players because
Speaker 1: they're they're thinking, well, now the stuff I do doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It's not that what I do affects the game. It's
Speaker 1: that I have to be led to a very specific
Speaker 1: linear path and if I stray from that, then the
Speaker 1: game does not progress. That's not much fun because really
Speaker 1: that's just you know, that's just trying to find your
Speaker 1: your path in a dark room. That's not a whole
Speaker 1: lot of challenge to that. It's just irritating. But if
Speaker 1: you do the second the first way, rather where you
Speaker 1: adapt to what the players say, that's a lot more
Speaker 1: fun for the players. It results in going gray very early,
Speaker 1: or if you're me, losing your hair because I would
Speaker 1: say that was a contributing factor among several but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Sean Stewart said that the players were often very quick
Speaker 1: and very clever with their responses, so they had to
Speaker 1: hard to stay ahead. Well that, yeah, that's the worst
Speaker 1: part is you come up with a puzzle where you're
Speaker 1: you're sure that's gonna take the players days to figure
Speaker 1: it out, and then they figure it out in a
Speaker 1: matter of hours. But we'll get into that as well.
Speaker 1: I'll explain why that happens in a second. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: other interesting little um terms and I'm getting these, by
Speaker 1: the way, from Cloudmaker's dot org, which is where you
Speaker 1: can find the entire Beast. Yes, cloud www dot Cloudmaker's
Speaker 1: dot org. Slash trail will give you a full outline
Speaker 1: and description of the entire Beast storyline. And it is epic.
Speaker 1: And I played in this game. This was and I
Speaker 1: was part of the cloudmakers um and the way some
Speaker 1: of the other terms they use, lurkers, that's that's the
Speaker 1: term for someone who is watching the game but not participating,
Speaker 1: but they're they're interested, they just don't either feel like
Speaker 1: they can contribute, or for some other reason they don't
Speaker 1: they don't want to contribute, so they just watch they're
Speaker 1: just watching the developments and they're fat snay. But and
Speaker 1: there were times where I was more of a lurker
Speaker 1: than a participant, mostly because my skills just were not
Speaker 1: up to par with the puzzles. Um well, lurky here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then there are rubber neckers. Rubber Neckers will participate in
Speaker 1: puzzles and they will try and solve things, but they
Speaker 1: don't want to take that extra step to become part
Speaker 1: of the game world. So they don't want to necessarily
Speaker 1: register their phone number or their email address. Uh, they
Speaker 1: don't want to make a phone call or stand outside
Speaker 1: of a strip mall next to a pay phone and
Speaker 1: wait for that phone to ring so that they can
Speaker 1: get the next clue. Wh wouldn't you want to do that? What?
Speaker 1: I would say that, it's just, you know, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a step that some people just aren't willing to take.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you can't even identify with that. Collette. Well,
Speaker 1: there are no pay phones anymore, no, but back when
Speaker 1: they were, um so yeah, that like in The Beast
Speaker 1: or or I Love Bees is another one there were
Speaker 1: I Love Bees was the Halo two? Uh a r
Speaker 1: G fantastic a RG by the Way loved. I love
Speaker 1: Bees love the Beast too, I love I think both
Speaker 1: of those were amazing, amazing games. Um And like I said,
Speaker 1: it must have driven people crazy trying to keep those
Speaker 1: up to speed. But they use things like payphones where
Speaker 1: at a specific time, if you were next to that payphone,
Speaker 1: it would ring and you would get the next piece
Speaker 1: of the puzzle. Um okay. Another term that cloudmakers use meltdown.
Speaker 1: Meltdowns are bad. A meltdown is when a game totally
Speaker 1: implodes because of some sort of problem, usually because one
Speaker 1: of the puppet masters has decided to reveal the curtain
Speaker 1: and show how the game works. Or it maybe that
Speaker 1: perhaps the company that's behind the a r G has collapsed. Um,
Speaker 1: it may be that the person who is running the
Speaker 1: game has had a mental breakdown and no longer wants
Speaker 1: to do that. But at any rate, it's it's when
Speaker 1: a game goes away before its conclusion. And that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty traumatic for players because players get sucked up in
Speaker 1: these worlds. They really want to, um to get to
Speaker 1: the conclusion, because I mean, you know, you're personally involved
Speaker 1: at this point, you feel like you're part of this
Speaker 1: bigger thing and therefore you want to see it to
Speaker 1: its conclusion and when it when it ends up collapsing,
Speaker 1: it's not satisfying at all. So that's a big issue. Hopefully,
Speaker 1: if you do play an a ARG it doesn't suffer
Speaker 1: meltdown because people get really you know, they're they're pouring
Speaker 1: hours of their lives into these games. Uh. There's another
Speaker 1: term they use is rabbit hole, which is the initial
Speaker 1: thing that gets you into the game. Reference to yes,
Speaker 1: and it could be everything from a movie poster with
Speaker 1: an odd you know, there's like a phrase that's circled
Speaker 1: on it and you're thinking, why is that circled? Or
Speaker 1: it maybe that you're watching a preview and you see
Speaker 1: something flash on the screen really quickly and when you
Speaker 1: slow it down you see that it's a website. Or
Speaker 1: it could be that you go to a website that
Speaker 1: someone has sent you a link to and it behaves oddly.
Speaker 1: It could be anything like that and uh, but it's
Speaker 1: it's the the hook that gets you into the game. Um.
Speaker 1: And then another great term, which this is not unique
Speaker 1: to cloudmakers, is steganography. That's the art of hiding a
Speaker 1: message in something else, and it could be anything. It
Speaker 1: could be hiding a message by using a specific color
Speaker 1: pellette in a picture. It could be that you've hidden
Speaker 1: it in the HTML code for a web page. So uh,
Speaker 1: it's something that codebreakers have to pay attention to. I mean,
Speaker 1: people who who break codes for a living. Steganography, that's
Speaker 1: a that's actually a way of passing secret messages. It's
Speaker 1: spy stuff, which is also why this is cool. Yep,
Speaker 1: um yeah, I was just lost my train of thought.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I mean that's one of the cool things about, uh,
Speaker 1: these games is that these the game is broken down
Speaker 1: and there's so many different pieces and I think probably
Speaker 1: the Internet this is not the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: could have happened my before the Internet age, because there
Speaker 1: are so many other venues, uh, you know, websites and
Speaker 1: message boards and all kinds of online venues inside which
Speaker 1: you can you can really get involved where I mean
Speaker 1: the phone. You might before you might have the phone.
Speaker 1: You know, you'd have print, um, but there just weren't
Speaker 1: as many opportunities for people to you know, uh, stick
Speaker 1: different messages out there. And that's one of those things.
Speaker 1: I mean, their videos and all kinds of things where
Speaker 1: they break down parts of the game, which just makes
Speaker 1: it that much more complex. Yeah, I mean there there
Speaker 1: are definitely precursors to a r g S, like scavenger
Speaker 1: hunts would be fun or geo cash ing or um,
Speaker 1: there are lots of you know, just various letter boxing.
Speaker 1: That's another good one. Actually, letter boxing is probably one
Speaker 1: of the closer ones to a r g S. But
Speaker 1: the you know, the the a r G gets so
Speaker 1: complex and so involved that I think it goes beyond
Speaker 1: all of those. And like you said, the Internet is
Speaker 1: really instrumental, and that's also instrumental for the players being
Speaker 1: able to solve the puzzles, as these puzzles often are
Speaker 1: really complex, and then they're not just complex, but they're
Speaker 1: very specific as to the set of skills you need
Speaker 1: to solve it. So, for instance, and I love bees,
Speaker 1: there were some puzzles that required you to have a
Speaker 1: pretty extensive knowledge of literature, which was awesome for me.
Speaker 1: I was like whoo, because I was a literal literature
Speaker 1: major in college, so um, I felt like I could
Speaker 1: really contribute to that one. But then there would be
Speaker 1: other puzzles where it would be a bunch of blocks
Speaker 1: and different colors, and I had no idea what it meant.
Speaker 1: And later on we figured out that the different colors
Speaker 1: corresponded to different heights and that the boxes were actually
Speaker 1: a top down view of a city escape and if
Speaker 1: you decoded it and then plotted it in three D
Speaker 1: and rotated at ninety degrees so you're looking at the city,
Speaker 1: you would see a skyline. But I never would have
Speaker 1: figured that out, and I was just like colored blocks.
Speaker 1: Why okay, wait, no, two yellows are touching? Does that
Speaker 1: mean something? No, it didn't mean anything at all. Um.
Speaker 1: But the reason why the Internet is important is that
Speaker 1: it allowed communities to spring up around these games, like Cloudmakers. Now,
Speaker 1: the cloudmakers were able to that almost sound like clown makers.
Speaker 1: Cloud makers. Clown Makers are totally different. Yeah, they all
Speaker 1: drive in the same car. They're annoying. Yes, so cloud Makers.
Speaker 1: This was a community community that sprung up around the beast.
Speaker 1: And the nice thing about the online community was that
Speaker 1: you didn't have to worry if your skill set wasn't
Speaker 1: strong enough to tackle a specific puzzle, because you could
Speaker 1: be sure someone in that group had the skills. And
Speaker 1: as the group grew, it just meant that the the
Speaker 1: skills of the group increased. It's kind of like we
Speaker 1: suddenly became the most intelligent human being on the face
Speaker 1: of the planet. You know, no individual person in that
Speaker 1: group was the most intelligent person on the planet, but
Speaker 1: collectively we made an incredibly difficult opponent for the puzzlemakers.
Speaker 1: The term that Cloudmakers used for it was the collective detective,
Speaker 1: because as a group we could solve any puzzle in
Speaker 1: a matter of hours, sometimes a matter of minutes after
Speaker 1: it went live. There are people who had developed scripts
Speaker 1: to crawl the web and search for new material as
Speaker 1: soon as it went up, and so as soon as
Speaker 1: it went up, people are like, new puzzle, and then
Speaker 1: thirty minutes later it solved it, and then it was like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe the next part of the puzzle is
Speaker 1: not up, whereas the puppet masters are like, holy crap.
Speaker 1: We worked for two weeks on that, we have to
Speaker 1: get a new piece up now. So um yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that it was an ongoing battle between the community
Speaker 1: and the puppet masters. And the puppet masters, I have
Speaker 1: to say for both the Beast and I love Bees
Speaker 1: in particular, we're really good most of the time, and
Speaker 1: any opportunity for the people to participate and make contact
Speaker 1: with characters in the a r G made it even
Speaker 1: more special because it's suddenly felt like you really like,
Speaker 1: now you really have had an impact because you've talked
Speaker 1: to a real, live human being. And granted that real
Speaker 1: live human being is playing a character, but you feel
Speaker 1: like you've just done something. There was a point in
Speaker 1: UH I think it was the Beast where there was
Speaker 1: a security guard in the Statue of Liberty and if
Speaker 1: you solved a puzzle, it would give you a phone number,
Speaker 1: and it was supposed to be it was the security
Speaker 1: guard's phone number. So the first time someone called the number,
Speaker 1: because we weren't sure it was a phone number at first.
Speaker 1: First time, I was watching while this was happening. First
Speaker 1: time someone called it, they said the person picked up
Speaker 1: on the other end said it was the Statue of Liberty.
Speaker 1: I hung up because they freaked out. But then the
Speaker 1: next person called it and say they said it was
Speaker 1: the Statue of Liberty, and that the Statue of Liberty
Speaker 1: is closed on Tuesdays, but it's not really closed on Tuesdays.
Speaker 1: And it was through that that we began to figure out, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: this is the Statue of Liberty that exists in the
Speaker 1: world of AI. So then we figured out, Oh, the
Speaker 1: security guard actually is a character, and we had to
Speaker 1: give him a pep talk and convince them to rush
Speaker 1: into another room and rescue another fictional character who was
Speaker 1: being tortured at the time. And because we did that,
Speaker 1: the one fictional characters saved the life of another fictional character,
Speaker 1: and we all felt good about ourselves. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: we didn't actually affect any real change in the real world,
Speaker 1: but because we felt like we had done something cool,
Speaker 1: we were like, hey, I saved someone's life. Not really,
Speaker 1: it was all in that game, but it felt like that.
Speaker 1: For the reason why I think these games are so addictive,
Speaker 1: you know, it gives you the feeling that you're really
Speaker 1: living out this adventure. Well, yeah, I mean, there have
Speaker 1: to be a payoff other than you find out something
Speaker 1: about the movie. Right. Actually, you know, here's the other
Speaker 1: game is that the game continued after the movie came out,
Speaker 1: and in fact, there were a lot of people who felt, um,
Speaker 1: myself included. Now this is just an opinion, of course,
Speaker 1: that the game was superior to the movie, and um,
Speaker 1: the game actually got to the point where it started
Speaker 1: bringing up some really interesting concepts, like if robots had
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. Uh, should we give them the right to vote?
Speaker 1: And I you know me, I'm a you know I'm no,
Speaker 1: clearly not a robot. I was saying. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm you know that that human rights you know,
Speaker 1: Pinko COMI liberals sort of type person. Uh, can you
Speaker 1: guess how I voted? Um? Uh no on the subject.
Speaker 1: Did I vote for robot rights or did I vote
Speaker 1: against it? Um? I'd have vote for robot You are wrong, sir.
Speaker 1: I argued strenuously that robots should not be given the
Speaker 1: right to vote. In fact, I argued that giving them
Speaker 1: AI in the first place was the wrong way to go.
Speaker 1: You don't give a toaster the right to vote. That
Speaker 1: was my point. Yeah, and p I was not popular
Speaker 1: in that group. There were other people who agreed with me,
Speaker 1: and and I had a really long drawn out answer
Speaker 1: to that. That's the sort of thing these games inspire
Speaker 1: you to do is think about things that uh you
Speaker 1: normally wouldn't think about and then develop really long arguments
Speaker 1: about them. So uh so, yeah, it's definitely a time suck. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I checked into Uh, I checked into it a little
Speaker 1: bit more, and uh, it's turning into something that people
Speaker 1: are studying in college. Um, there are books on Amazon
Speaker 1: and other places. Um, that's where I initially ran across
Speaker 1: them about creating arcs and you know all kinds of
Speaker 1: Um just it's it's apparently spawned this whole movement of
Speaker 1: people who are interested in, you know, creating new games
Speaker 1: and trying to to do this. So I had the
Speaker 1: feeling that there's just going to be more of these
Speaker 1: in the future, whether they're you know, used as guerilla
Speaker 1: marketing techniques or just for the heck of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we've seen several other guerilla marketing techniques
Speaker 1: take place, like the wy So Serious game that was
Speaker 1: part of the Dark Night, or say Frenzied Waters which
Speaker 1: was part of Shark Week for Discovery that was kind
Speaker 1: of an a r G. It was it was a
Speaker 1: r G light, but it was it was still in
Speaker 1: the a r G arena because it blurred the lines
Speaker 1: between fantasy and reality. UM so yeah, I agree, we're
Speaker 1: gonna see them both us as viral marketing and we're
Speaker 1: going to see them as a standalone gaming industry. I
Speaker 1: think now the question is whether or not you can
Speaker 1: find a way to create an a RG that people
Speaker 1: are willing to pay for, or you can monetize in
Speaker 1: some other way to make it worth your while, because
Speaker 1: otherwise you just have hobbyists who are, you know, enthusiastic
Speaker 1: and great people, but they are essentially giving their free
Speaker 1: time to create these things because without the money behind it,
Speaker 1: you really can't support it for very long. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it would be a big resource suck.
Speaker 1: Yet and I cannot imagine. I can't imagine running I could.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I could ever have it more
Speaker 1: than a puzzle or two ahead of where the players were,
Speaker 1: because I'd always be worried the players would come up
Speaker 1: with somethinging that again should work, but wasn't planned for,
Speaker 1: and you know, you need you would need help. I
Speaker 1: don't think this is the kind of thing that you
Speaker 1: do by yourself. Run. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's really
Speaker 1: a cool idea if you are into role playing games
Speaker 1: at all, or scavenger hunts or that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And sometimes they have other benefits like the why so serious?
Speaker 1: I was so upset when they put up the coordinates
Speaker 1: for Atlanta because it was in the middle of the day,
Speaker 1: it was at a bowling alley, and I actually knew
Speaker 1: where this place was, and I wanted to go there
Speaker 1: because if you went to the place and put in
Speaker 1: a specific combination on a specific locker, you would get
Speaker 1: a custom Joker bowling ball and bullet ball bag. And
Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking, now that's something I want.
Speaker 1: And the problem was the coordinates went up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the day and went sort of how am
Speaker 1: I going to get the hell out of here? And
Speaker 1: then within thirty minutes someone had taken pictures and said
Speaker 1: I found it, Like, Uh, you stupid students, students who
Speaker 1: have no job, U get off my lawn. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you know we have a lot of students listening. You
Speaker 1: guys are awesome. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the other ones. I'm talking about the ones who
Speaker 1: specifically go out and ruin my a RG. And if
Speaker 1: it was you, shame on you. Can I go bowling
Speaker 1: with you? Because I totally want to see that bowling ball.
Speaker 1: It sounded so cool. Um, well that's that's a good
Speaker 1: primmer on a r G S. I think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um. Like I said, I think we're just sort
Speaker 1: of scratching the surface. I think it's gonna become much
Speaker 1: more popular in the years to go. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of places you can go to find out more
Speaker 1: about a r g S if you want to find
Speaker 1: any that are currently running. There's www dot a r
Speaker 1: g N dot com that's the a r g net argon,
Speaker 1: and there's also unfiction. Unfiction is a that was Unfiction
Speaker 1: was where I first started through the Beast and I
Speaker 1: love bees, and then I also worked with the cloud cloudmakers.
Speaker 1: So uh, those would be the resources I suggest if
Speaker 1: you want to find out more, well, then that just
Speaker 1: brings us around too. A listener mail and this listener
Speaker 1: mail comes from Shane from Texas, and Shane says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm a longtime listener of the show. I just have
Speaker 1: one small edition about the d d o S distributed
Speaker 1: denial of service podcast. You guys forgot to mention that
Speaker 1: these type of attacks are highly illegal in the United
Speaker 1: States and can result in a big fine or even
Speaker 1: jail time. I think this is very important information and
Speaker 1: may even protect you guys from being sued for someone
Speaker 1: who quote unquote tries this at home. Keep doing your thing, Shane.
Speaker 1: That's a good point, Shane. We should have said don't
Speaker 1: try this at home. I thought it was you know,
Speaker 1: kind of obvious since we were talking about d d
Speaker 1: o S A is being a bad thing. But then
Speaker 1: this is hot. Yes, this is true, so maybe we
Speaker 1: should say that, so Shane, we appreciate it. Yes, do
Speaker 1: not commit a denial of service attack on anyone or anything.
Speaker 1: It is not cool. Nope. And and the government may
Speaker 1: have something to say to you about it. And even
Speaker 1: for our foreign listeners, your government help may have something
Speaker 1: to say about it. Yeah. And depending on who you
Speaker 1: do the d o S attack on, some very large
Speaker 1: men and very expensive suits may have something to say
Speaker 1: to you. In the back of a van and the helicopter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the next thing you know, you're helicopter rides are cool,
Speaker 1: but not like that trying on some concrete shoes and alright,
Speaker 1: then I'm just saying I know some people in waste
Speaker 1: management disposal. That's all I'm saying. Frankie big House, if
Speaker 1: you're out there, give me a cool right now, he
Speaker 1: is You're gonna go Yeah, you know, I really know,
Speaker 1: Frankie big House. No, I'm serious, I really Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you more about that. That's okay. So the guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any questions, like how I know, Frankie
Speaker 1: big House, you can write really sorry about all that
Speaker 1: nasty stuff I said about you earlier. Yeah, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you are. You can email us at tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, and you can
Speaker 1: read all about various games and wastes to waste your
Speaker 1: time at how stuff works dot com and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For moralness and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog
Speaker 1: now on the how stuff Works homepage, brought to you
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Speaker 1: you