Alternate Reality Games and the Simulation of the Real World

At 13 years old, I had a social media account on the website Tumblr, which I believed held my "true self." It was the only social media my parents did not know of and provided much-needed outlets I did not have in real life. Spaces that discussed queer issues and mental health awareness, as well as a perceived escape from my middle school misery, appealed to a kid like me who was struggling to come to terms with these aspects of their life.

I made friends and talked to strangers. But at sixteen, I would harshly realize I had been conditioned to believe this website held more value than the experiences I was having within reality and day-to-day life. As a kid growing up in a freshly digital age, the line between reality and the digital world was challenging to identify.

Thankfully, at worst it would lead me to invest too much of my early teenage years into a blogging website. Now, as the divide becomes more and more blurred, the question of how we interact with a new digital space becomes more and more dire to examine.

Alternate reality games, colloquially known as ARGs, pose the perfect example of this simulated reality. I loosely define ARGs to encompass a multitude of possibilities, with the best definition being that they are interactive narratives that employ cross-platform and real-world engagement to relay multimedia narratives to an active audience. In practice, this means a story is broken into pieces and scattered, usually around the vastness of the internet, and left for players to find and solve in an online puzzle-solving manner. This type of gaming, based either in or revolving around our reality as a starting point, brings to light a startling examination of the fabricated nature of facts altogether.

I seek to examine how alternate reality games highlight the increasing ambiguity between actuality and simulation within the highly digital and fragmented landscape of our culture through the focus of an ARG I am familiar with, the Editor Wilbur ARG. To examine the Editor Wilbur ARG, I will ground this paper in the theoretical background before delving into their application upon the Editor Wilbur ARG. 

The hypothesizing of alternate realities has occurred for as long as humanity has possessed the ability to imagine possibilities. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, we see the beginnings of how the human mind holds the power to create a simulated reality, albeit more theoretical than we can examine within our modern, digital society.

Through the story of projected shadows on a cave wall, he proposes that the idealized forms take on a more real essence than the physical objects they represent. For those who live in the cave, the physical becomes defined by this relationship to the shadows' appearance. For this paper's purposes, I transplant the allegory from Plato's context into that of the information age, in which various symbols, logos, and references take the place of the projected shadows and pretend to communicate reality to us.

While Plato likely could not have foreseen this connection to the technological, not to mention at such a large scale, this metaphor becomes helpful in examining modern examples of Plato's cave. The line between shadows and physical reality becomes more and more complex as we analyze ARGs.

Following Plato's Allegory of the Cave, Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation asserted a shared perception of reality brought about by the supremacy of symbols and signifiers of the present culture. Baudrillard argued that representations of existence become inherently less tied to the real as they progress within consumerist society. "...The system of signs, a material more malleable than meaning… It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real".

He states that copies of copies, or endless recreations of life's appearance, infuse meaning within the culturally relevant symbol rather than the tangible outputs. In connecting this concept to alternate reality games, we see ARGs create and thrive under this assumption, with coded pieces of media and signs intentionally communicating more than given at face value.

We see this mindset welcomed and encouraged through popularized terms within reality gaming communities with terms such as TINAG or 'this is not a game' used to convey the desire to play within the simulated space without recognition of its fiction. Interacting with and analyzing alternate reality gaming under such assumptions provides a starting point upon which many ARGs build upon and deconstruct the idea of reality overall, a feat that the Editor Wilbur ARG will meet head on.

I will begin this section on the Editor Wilbur ARG with an open admission that complete coverage of any ARG is entirely impossible in the constraints that I face within this paper; therefore, I will highlight what is necessary to connect and engage with my argument.

However, I will assert that the impossible nature of ARG information that I pose to the reader mirrors the spirit of participating within an ARG, connecting clues and meaning that seem irrelevant to one another entirely. Still, it is possible to view an ARG without knowing the entirety of its scope, and this is what I will use to my advantage in this paper.

I will also distinguish between the primary character and the creator of this ARG, both of which are named Wilbur Soot, and adopt the creator Soot's life characteristics. For the sake of this paper, I will refer to the character as E!Wilbur, short for Editor Wilbur, and will refer to the creator as Wilbur Soot to discuss the differences and overlap of the two as they become essential. 

The Editor Wilbur ARG began in 2018 on the online platform Youtube in which Jack Massey Welsh's YouTube channel, or Jacksucksatlife, uploaded a video titled "I let a random guy edit this video" which would begin this year-long series spanning several social media platforms and mediums. The ARG follows the fragmented story of E!Wilbur vying for the editor position of Massey Welsh's YouTube channel and attempting to rid of his current editor, Kai.

Through pieces of media found throughout the ARG's run, the players discovered a secret hidden by E!Wilbur, causing the series of events in the present. The ARG concludes in a Youtube video titled "The Final Editor Wilbur Video" in which a montage of important events throughout the ARG plays before E!Wilbur monologues his reasons for leaving this attempt to be editor behind, saying he will tell the audience the story he had been hiding before he disappears entirely. This ARG holds many realms of interpretation, and for the sake of this paper, I will focus on three aspects: the content, the creation, and the reception that had followed it.

In terms of the content given to the participants by Wilbur Soot, the sheer amount of media created and influenced by this ARG will make any examination seem tangential and mystical, as if wrapped in a month's worth of context and complex narrative that one could not possibly unravel in one paper. However, I will raise relevant material anyway to examine the interaction and overlap between the real and the simulated that is created in the realm of ARGs.

The role of music, lyricism, and poetry becomes relevant within E! Wilbur's narrative and outside analysis as pieces such as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and the musician Crywank's "Privately Owned Spiral Galaxy" will come to hold a significant bearing on our story.

These works, which operate and exist both within our natural world and the simulated nature of E! Wilbur's narrative, overlap to invoke a feeling of real exigency and call upon their meaning within our reality. In a sense, this ARG operates in constant communication with our reality, speaking in symbols and signs so that players may conclude the fabricated nature of Editor Wilbur. 

In congruence with Plato's cave and the realization of reality through observance of shadows, the relationship between these symbols and the players holds a quality that is not entirely unlike our existence, constantly searching and finding more value in coded ideas than in the physical world around us.

The ARG content at face value seems to notify the players of this by referencing media that reflects or calls into question the story's existence entirely. The Cask of Amontillado reflects the ARG narrative in that Poe details a mystery with no detective throughout the narrative, instead leading the reader to be the driving force in solving why Montresor seeks revenge on his enemy.

E!Wilbur drawing attention to this piece imbues importance in connecting his narrative and the meaning of Poe's writing. Similarly, Crywank's song Privately Owned Spiral Galaxy calls upon the desire to escape reality through the controlled nature of dreaming, imagining another reality entirely. He sings, "When inside my mind I find a way to replicate reality. Through lucid dreaming, I decimate the limitations of actuality".

In this lyric, E!Wilbur confronts the audience with a running theme throughout this ARG, which seeks to communicate the falsity of E! Wilbur's narrative with the player directly. Wilbur Soot uses media created and consumed under pretenses of our reality to allow E!Wilbur to communicate the fabricated nature of reality through the tools of our understanding, assuming these realities are separate at all. 

To further the question on the separation of these realities, the Editor Wilbur ARG's creation and the separation between Wilbur Soot and E!Wilbur is shrouded in mystery and illusion. As its primary entrance point is Jack Massey Welsh's Youtube channel, it is easy to dismiss or believe that E!Wilbur is possibly a version of Wilbur Soot unless one actively plays along with and dedicates time to the solving of the ARG.

Throughout the duration of the ARG and after the completion, Massey Welsh expressed his amazement and slight confusion over the scale of it. This confusion indicated his lack of knowledge surrounding the ARG creation and grouped him in with the active participants following the narrative, despite being a vital character and the central platform for relaying information. 

Additionally, Kai Ross-Best has spoken on his uninformed nature throughout the ARG while still playing a prominent role in the narrative and creation of the media output. Soot's ARG functioned within real-world confines, affected and interacted with those who in turn shaped the design of the ARG. Ross-Best, the perceived antagonist of E!Wilbur, spoke out on the nature of involvement, stating his lack of awareness and first assumptions.

“My favorite part of being a part of it was probably the unknown… Especially when it started, everyone was making me out to be the bad guy. Maybe I am the bad guy… My favorite part of the whole thing was just not knowing what was going to happen next… From the beginning, Wilbur just seemed like this random, creepy guy…”

With the content and relationship between players and material demonstrating the blur between fiction and actuality, the nature of Wilbur Soot's relationship with the characters begs the question of where the line of separation lies at all. With the ARG operating under Massey Welsh and Ross-Best's perception of complete authenticity for the beginning and continued removal from the creation process, understanding this game being simulated fiction is nearly entirely lost to those not directly playing and operating within it. 

The legacy and unfinished nature of Editor Wilbur ARG continues to frustrate and motivate the players within the ARG community to this day. Because of the highly complex and emotionally charged nature of this ARG, many players who immersed themselves within the Editor Wilbur ARG still engage in speculation to this day with active communities and theorization. While the story this community was created upon is entirely fictional, the impact of its interaction with our world has built genuine relationships and has facilitated changes in behaviors to engage with and solve the ARG.

It is also important to note the real-world difference that came about throughout the creation of this ARG, including the increase in monetary gain for Jack as well as an opportunity to branch out content-wise within his channel. E!Wilbur explicitly discussed both facets while the game was active, proving the character's awareness of our reality and the simulated nature of his own, furthering the concept of interaction between realities. 

Finally, the Editor Wilbur ARG's ongoing reception and these continued communities create conversations within fandom spaces that often mirror discussions surrounding people who exist in our physical world. In many instances, I have observed fond remarks on 'missing Editor Wilbur,' which feel unique in this example of fiction as they are not deliberately referencing the narrative itself nor the period in which they interacted with the piece.

Instead, they address the character themselves as if the character is now somehow 'gone' or ever existed in the first place. These spaces that facilitate high engagement with ARGs work under a pretense, best exemplified by the explicitly stated mindset, 'this is not a game,' that merges our reality with that of fiction for the duration of active participation.  

Through these facets, we see what I seek to emphasize within this paper: our reality and the simulated fiction of these games are deeply intertwined and are in constant communication with each other. As Baudrillard argues that our existence has become pure simulacra, with the prioritization of symbols and codes, this is reflected in the practice of reality gaming.

These simulations and puzzle-solving can feel familiar, almost entirely in line with our perception of actuality because, in a sense, it is. Alternate reality gaming's most alluring component is that it calls into question the reality of the world around us, highlighting the lack of difference between explicit fiction and the simulation created by our fragmented world. I believe this is best shown by the internet being the leading platform for ARGs, with players using it as a bridge of connection between our lives and the simulated.

Similar to the practice of alternate reality gaming, the process of social media and online presence allows "players" or users to interact with and create narratives surrounding their lives that are pieced together by scattered information. Naive 13-year-olds on social media during developmental stages understand the simulated nature of social media and the familiarity in its reality better than anyone. This same feeling makes ARGs so fascinating to those disillusioned by our perceived reality. 

What becomes both the downfall and the intrigue of ARGs is the possibility that one could go their entire life without knowing they ever existed. Alternate reality games operate within plain sight, hidden to those who are not actively searching for another reality embedded within the fabric of ours. Often, this leads to the inevitable question of if ARGs generate enough attention to be examined at all and if the qualification of this medium as a game completely disproves any questioning of ARGs' reality.

I compel the reader to consider the example of video game envelopment of players and the overall effectiveness of ARGs as a captivating storytelling method. It once again is impossible to address anywhere near the broad scope of these games' effectiveness; however, I offer to skeptical readers instances of intense commitment to the I Love Bees ARG that a 2004 Wired article detailed. "Some people have driven hours to take part, and one player even braved Florida's Hurricane Ivan to answer a call at a payphone that was destroyed shortly afterward".

Reality gaming holds a powerful grasp on its players, one of which can surpass physical danger and threats to dedicated players' livelihood. I argue that anything that maintains this power over an audience and creates such shared experience should be examined critically as it can lead to larger, important questions on the possible ethical concerns while constructing such a game. 

Still, while there is an ethical question to be asked on the dynamic of control that creators have over players, it is also within this power that alternate reality gaming thrives. The principle of the game lies in the alluring feeling of clues hidden in plain sight and the need for teamwork to solve complex problems.

In light-hearted ARGs and occasional examples of educational games, this element can help build communities and explore storytelling. However, I will also not deny the very valid concern over the type of players this medium draws and the obsession or possible danger that lies underneath many past games' surface.

Still, I believe these two truths can coexist for the time being, with this genre still being infantile compared to other media formats and prone to scrutiny that will bring these ethical concerns into the forefront of game designing. I hope that a reader with similar apprehensions would understand the balance that is possible to achieve without completely disregarding the practice as a whole.

On occasion, I think about whether or not I would take an opportunity to tell my 13 year old self what I know now and delete their Tumblr account to prove once and for all that the entirety of the website is meaningless in the long run. If given the chance, I don’t think I would as I believe there was and still is a benefit to some of these forms of explicit and implicit simulations within our lives.

Both at 13 and throughout observing the Editor Wilbur ARG, the role of community interaction and support that social media and reality gaming create has been particularly striking. I find it unfair to group the potential negative connotations of a simulated reality with the large amount of good that can come from these practices. As alternate reality games grow in size and popularity, the question at large no longer asks if the line between the real and the simulated is to exist in a tangible form, now conversations surrounding work within the digital sphere should ask instead if we care about that line enough to look for it.

I am inclined to lean into a duality here, both that artificial realities are connected to and reflect the superficial, simulated nature of our reality and that we should critically engage in media we consume to differentiate between the two more clearly. At 13, this scrutiny alongside engagement was difficult and at some points, nearly impossible to do. The genre of alternate reality gaming is still young, growing, likely to make mistakes and cross boundaries; however, I hope this genre will come to an understanding of what all is possible through this method of storytelling and become in itself, a form of reality.