My Favorite ARG

ARGs—or Alternate Reality Games—are interactive “games” or events that cross different types of media for the players to use, investigate, and ultimately “solve.” It’s kind of like a puzzle that you and dozens of other people are trying to solve at the same time. The other players are both your competition and your allies as you try to unravel the ARG. A lot of times, there’s a sort of mystery at the center, and you’re following clues to find whatever it’s leading you towards. It’s kind of like a treasure map, which I think is funny when you remember that ARG is both what the game is called and a famous pirate exclamation.

 

My favorite example of an ARG is one I didn’t participate in but kept loose tabs on. In the summer of 2016, a kid’s cartoon called “Gravity Falls” had its series finale. Gravity Falls was a supernatural mystery show set in the Pacific Northwest absolutely riddled with codes and cyphers, and at the very end, the bad guy (an evil magic triangle named “Bill Cipher”) got turned into a statue and left in a forest. One of the final shots was an actual, very large statue of the bad guy in a real forest. Soon after, the creator of the show announced a “treasure hunt” to find the real-life statue, with the promise of some real “treasure” to those who found it. There were thirteen clues hidden around the world that led to the next clue. It’s worth noting that while Gravity Falls was a kids’ cartoon, the mysterious nature of the show had broad appeal and had a large adult fan-base.

 

The hunt started in late July of 2016. I won’t go into too much detail, but the clues were in cyphers and themed after the show. Most clues had some form of writing or were items with writing on them. Invisible ink was involved. One was even a two thousand puzzle pieces with the phrase “I hope you like puzzles” written in code included on a separate piece of paper. The first clue was in a Russian cathedral, the second in a shrine in Japan, then one in the American state of Georgia, then Rhode Island, and then after that the rest of the clues were up and down the west coast several times over. All the clues were shared online after being discovered and deciphered so that anyone could participate. To my knowledge some people really did travel back and forth to clues once they started popping up on the west coast and were somewhat near each other.

 

The hunt ended when players found the statue and hidden treasure in early August of that year. Some players found the statue and tweeted out pictures of it, half buried in the woods of Oregon where the show took place, while another group dug up the buried treasure, which included Russian and Japanese money, some plastic coins and gems, a blacklight used to find invisible ink, a plastic crown and sash and a lot of memorabilia from the show, including another (though, much smaller) statue of the bad guy. The statue was left where it was found to commemorate the show and the treasure hunt, while the players who found the treasure chest got to keep it’s contents.