This is the second part in a short series that offers a behind-the-scenes look at how I ran an ARG for 100 people, every day for 1 month.

Did you read part 1 yet?

Part 2 of 3

Where Is This Coming From?

After months of nearly no activity, on December 28th (a day after my birthday, of all days), emails started coming in. In fact, 13 applications were submitted that day compared to 5 total during the 4 months prior. These weren’t just simply “I want in” emails either, these were full blown applications.

While it was obvious that these were in-game applications detailing various degrees of experience with the supernatural and more (this was a game of course), what surprised me was the amount of detail and energy put into some of them.

I immediately began doing some research. Where are they coming from, and why? How did they hear about SAVER and what were they expecting to happen next?

It was during this research at the end of December and beginning of January that I first read about Alternate Reality Games (ARG’s).

Alternate Reality Games

I had heard of table top games like D&D (obviously) and of course there were live action (LARP) games, but ARG’s? I had no idea.

Much of the traffic that was coming to the site seemed to be coming from unfiction.com. I was quickly able to find a forum topic about SAVER Corporation. The title “SAVER Corporation” was followed by a tag “[Trailhead]”. As it turned out, my site had been discovered by someone there, and was posted as a potential new ARG. The SAVER website was apparently the trailhead, or the beginning of a new game.

With more research, I discovered there were actually many ARG’s out there. In this genre there were even guidelines, or elements to these games that people expected to see. There were rules about what a PM (a Puppetmaster as they are called, which was apparently me in this case) should and should not do.

I had a lot more to learn, and it needed to happen quickly. I was barely starting to grasp the common expectations of ARG’s by the time I had received 40 applications.

Up to this time,I was responding to each person letting them know they had been accepted. I was manually putting their names and twitter accounts up on the website. I answered their questions in character as “Human Resources, SAVER Corporation” from the staff@saver.co account, but I was quickly becoming overwhelmed. I was not ready for this and I decided I needed to make that known before anyone else invested time into an application.

I would simply apologize and shut SAVER down.

Just Run With It

I told Forrest about my dilemma. There were simply too many applications for me to keep up with. As a programmer, he suggested a more automated process. For me, I needed a solution like this or I could not run the game. If this were in place though, I decided that I would indeed go ahead with it. After all, the system would put their info in a database. I would simply approve each one after looking it over, and their information would display automatically on the website.

When I initially setup the site, I had only asked that people apply for one or more positions – those being Research, Development and Media. Depending on which you joined, your tasks may vary (you can see these on the website). I also had ranks for the employees. Initially, you started at 1 just for applying, you gained another point for including your twitter account, and finally another point was possible for a detailed/interested/in-character application.

Within a day he had it set up, including a drop-menu asking people which department they would like to join. This would come in handy after an email situation came up, and Forrest ended up building me a system by which I could select a department, type out a message, and it would be sent individually to each person in said department.

Forrest also mentioned using a “Terminal” system he had setup for his own website for fun. This tool would be the driving force pushing me forward to the end-game, but I will go into that later.

The applications were really starting to come in now, and I needed to figure out what the players would do.

That’s when thousands of birds fell onto a town called Beebe in Arkansas.

Continue to Part 3 >>

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