Words&Dirt

“‘It has been my view for some years that a new System of the World is being created around us.  I used to suppose that it would drive out and annihilate any older Systems.  But things I have seen recently, in the subterranean places beneath the Bank, have convinced me that new Systems never replace old ones, but only surround and encapsulate them, even as, under a microscope, we may see that living within our bodies are animalcules, smaller and simpler than us, and yet thriving even as we thrive.'”

––The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 638

“If you talk to Puppetmasters who have created or participated in creating an ARG, many of them cannot verbalize why they did it and what made the endless hours of volunteer work worthwhile.  I place myself in that same category.  I have tried for years to explain to people unfamiliar with alternate reality games why I literally spend every making moment, for months at a time, thinking about and working on a game for which I am not being compensated in any way.

It is almost as if, once you experience the incredible power of a truly immersive and interactive narrative experience, you are compelled to recreate it in some manner.  And not just in the form of other games––witness the amazingly long and detailed guides that players take it upon themselves to create for these games, the poems, stories, and other pieces of art that they create in appreciation of what they have experienced, and the endless hours they personally devote immersing themselves in the world of the game.  Looking at this behavior analytically, it appears strikingly similar to the actions of the prehistoric cavemen, who crawled into the darkest and most inaccessible areas of the caves below France to scratch miles and miles of sacred symbols and artwork on the stone walls.  Many sociologists and anthropologists explain this behavior as primitive man’s almost primal urge to recreate some mystical or exceptionally meaningful experience he had.  Would they say the same thing about the actions of the ARG community?”

––This is Not a Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming, by Dave Szulborski, loc. 1086-93