Many years ago (perhaps on an aeroplane journey?) I saw the Michael Douglas movie “The Game”. The idea (if I remember correctly) is that the Douglas character is given as birthday present a ticket in a Game, no other information given. Once he accepts the ticket, the gamemasters slowly but surely infiltrate his life — he gets anonymous phonecalls, objects are deposited in his locked house and car, he’s no longer sure if the people he meets are “real” or actors, and so on to some sort of cathartic and generally personality-improving conclusion. I can’t remember if it was a good film. I sort of doubt it, but the point is: this has happened.

At least, the tiny first stirrings of this sort of experience have already, well, stirred :-/ I just read about the game known as The Beast, which was created to market the Spielberg film A.I., and was an online version of this sort of idea, but used the massive player base that the internet guarantees to distribute the whole experience, making it intentionally cooperative. It turns out there are more of these things (known as “Alternate Reality Games”, or ARGs), in fact there are sites where people post their suspicions that this or that advertising campaign might be the beginnings of an ARG (for instance the ARG Network).

I’m somewhat amazed that I managed to avoid hearing about any of this until now, it’s quite fascinating. There’s a science fiction short story I read some years ago, suggesting that this sort of activity might become the main learning paradigm for school children; as the pace of technological change speeds up, it’s no longer possible for schools to provide up-to-date prepared lessons, and the emphasis moves to giving children the skills to research breaking news and make informed judgements themselves. A typical classroom assignment becomes something like “Be the first to report a story that subsequently attracts international attention,” or “Get involved in a technological breakthrough.” (Unfortunately I can remember neither title nor author, and the collection it’s in is in a different hemisphere. If it rings any bells, let me know.)

I’m not sure what would be more exciting, ARG-wise: playing, or writing. Here’s Sean Stewart, one of the writers of The Beast:

On the game, there was no time for serious or respectable either. The game was freaking pastiche Armageddon: It started from a Spielberg script inflected with Kubrick notions from a Brian Aldiss short story with echoes of Dune and Clockwork Orange, for God’s sake. Political tracts. Corporate boasting. Sex-kitten catalogues. Mysterious Oriental Gentlemen. Wistful midlife crises. Suicide notes. Gibsonian cyberpunk. I stole or hot-wired or tweaked up Shakespeare and John Donne and Tim O’Brien, Ovid and Iain Banks and Puccini and Bladerunner. I wrote every genre character ever invented, I think–bounty hunters and kept women and a bad guy made of nightmares, religious zealots and angry teenagers and streetwise hackers. Hookers with hearts of gold available on request from Belladerma SRL, in sizes petite to extra large, or (in one of the game’s creepiest phrases) cut to fit. [ … ] It was the most incredible, exhilarating experience of my professional career. It was street theater and a con game and a pennant drive rolled into one. Sounds good, don’t it? But here’s the quote that really explains the appeal (Stewart again):

As rewarding [as] novel-writing can be, no job is quite as satisfying, at the end of the day, as Shadowy Mastermind. I recommend it to anyone who gets a chance.