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The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
Development
The ABC seeks to present excellent entertainment programming. However, the corporation also
places a high priority on producing content that informs the community and that provokes
interest and discussion. From the outset, Bluebird AR aimed to address the emerging issue of
geoengineering: the deliberate and grand scale manipulation of the earths natural balance to
counteract the effects of global warming. As a sub theme, philanthrocapitalism was introduced
as it had begun to receive increasing attention due to the interest of Bill Gates, Larry Page,
Sergey Brin, Richard Branson and others. Philanthrocapitalism describes the activity growing in
popularity amoung the mega rich in which business and management concepts borrowed from
venture finance are applied to philanthropic goals.
So for Bluebird AR, even at this early stage, two challenges loomed large: How to create an
entertaining, engaging and informative experience that involved the unwieldy concepts of
philonthrocapitalism and geoengineering. It was anticipated that by framing these issues within
an the research intense mystery solving context of an Alternate Reality Game, audiences would
come to understand these terms. This in turn put the focus on exploring and understanding the
mechanics of Alternate Reality Games, a game genre that is difficult to define at best, and one
with tropes that were not wholey understood by many working at the ABC itself, let alone by the
audience it hoped to engage. So over several weeks, the ABC's Innovation producers embraced
and experimented with conventions of ARGs, combining them with more traditional online
formats, finally drafting a project proposal for an interactive drama mystery, set in an Alternate
Reality. The main story of the now titled “Bluebird AR” concerned a young whistle blower
scientist; Kyle Vandercamp, who attempts to garner support against his former employers, a pair
of wealthy business men endeavouring to unilaterally save the planet from climate change,
through a dangerously unproved geoengineering solution. With this story idea in place and the
basic levels of interaction sketched out, the production team now considered how the narrative
might best be distributed across the internet in a manner in which players could uncover it.
Players, it was hoped, would follow the trail of clues to uncover the fictional narrative, research
the concepts and observe the real world parallels, submitting their own thoughts, ideas and
conclusions to a variety of sites along the way. At this crucial point in the process, numerous
issues surfaced, under the three main headings of immersion, interaction, moderation, which will
be explored below in detail.
Immersion – How to manage audience perception of Bluebird AR's "reality" and how to
transmit instructions for interaction within that world?
The most risky aspect of ARG's is, not surprisingly, also their greatest appeal: they actively deny
their status as fiction. This rhetoric of disavowal is labelled within the ARG community as
‘TINAG’ - Acronym for: This Is Not A Game. The codified implication is that while the game is
presented as reality, people encountering it will, after a certain degree of investigation, uncover
its fictionality for themselves, but that regardless, that they should interact with the game: “As
though it were Real”. This particular order of participation in a fictive world is well documented
within the genre of Alternate Reality Games and is referred to as “Performance of Belief”.
However, it could not be assumed that ABC audience members would be aware of the unique
nature of Performance of Belief. Similar reckless assumptions by broadcasters had led to the
famous invasion panic that broke out following the presentation of Orson Welles War of the
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