Appendix C

APPENDIX C A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE “DEUS CITY” ARG INTERACTIVE STORYLINE

The main storyline of the “Deus City” ARG was written long before I ever knew what an ARG was. In 2003 I began my coursework at UT-Dallas, at which time I took a class entitled “Screenwriting” that would change the direction of my whole program. The class had one assignment: Write a fully submissible screenplay. At the end of the semester I had written the first version of a movie screenplay entitled “Deus Ex Machina,” set in an indeterminate futuristic Orwellian cyber noir “corporate bordello” in which the “Corporate Senate” has direct control over the government, and tracks everyone with a subcutaneous tracking chip. The main character was a 1930’s film noir “Sam Spade” style detective who hated the technological world he lived in, and was thereby able to solve crimes by using the older forgotten methods of yesteryear. Three years later I hit upon the idea of using this story’s setting, characters, and general plot outline as the backbone for an online interactive story, and “Deus City” was born. The storyline below is told without regard to the specific player created elements of the game versus the puppetmaster created content, if for no other reason than in attempting to define that blurry line the story itself would become ridiculously complex if not entirely unfollowable. The fictional “Deus City” ARG’s story officially began in 2006 when an insignificant blog (the first trailhead) appeared in the seemingly infinite sea of blogs that some call the blogosphere. The writer, not so surreptitiously named “Brackin” was an in-game version of myself who was working as the project leader of a team from the University of Texas at Dallas to make contact with themselves exactly one week into the future using what they called a “Space Laser.” The team’s progress and pitfalls were chronicled by my fictional counterpart “Brackin” on his blog, including the test fire of the laser as a countdown appeared on the team’s website at www.deuscity.com for the project’s attempt at making contact with the future, an address chosen seemingly at random by the team’s entirely fictional technical supervisor nicknamed “Foo.” At the appointed time a “live” video was broadcast on the project’s site via alleged YouTube placeholder files, thus showing the experiment. Foo was mysteriously absent, claiming later that he was locked in the server room, but it was hardly noticed, for at the appropriate firing time, the experiment went horribly “right” and the team received their first message from “Mustafa Tang Fujimoto,” CEO of “Defensecorp,” and the president, and majority leader of the Deus City Corporate Senate in the year 2036, who gives a 143

144 rather enigmatic plea for help, finishing with the game’s catchphrase: “The future is coming. Can you change it?” The plug was then mysteriously pulled on the project entirely and the team was disbanded. It was at this point that the players were first required to choose sides and lend support – a recurring theme of the game - through emails and blog posts players were able to discover the status of the team. Brackin is bitter over his removal from “his project”, while Foo has re-emerged and is citing foul play for his prior absence, claiming he was locked in the server room by someone. He reveals that he still has a backdoor into the system and allows players to help him “hack the feed” in order to restore communications with the future. Not long after, Foo’s own Blog entitled “Foo-Defiant” emerged, as did more ambiguous messages from the future which implicated both men as perhaps having ulterior motives, such as those from a new character: The enigmatic “Brother Theophilus” whose pirated video messages predicted doom and apocalypse in stark contrast to the seemingly idyllic Utopia of Deus City being portrayed in the official corporate messages. It was revealed through player inquests that Fujimoto was none other than the future incarnation of Foo himself, and that there was significant evidence to suppose that Brother Theophilus was none other than the future Incarnation of Brackin who preached of a prophecy, a mysterious secret society which he called the “Sodality of Nostradamus,” and a folio written by Nostradamus’s apprentice “James Chavingy” which outlined the nuclear disaster and subsequent apocalyptic fall of civilization in 2012 and the beginning of World War III, which was ironically caused by the communication from the future of 2042 being cut off inexplicably and a worldwide panic which followed it. Believing that the future could not be changed, and guided by the messages from his future self, Brackin changed his name to “Brother Theo” and set off on a quest, doggedly pursued by the authorities and those who would seek to stop him from reclaiming his technology, while through the help of players, Foo was able to wrest control of the technology back for himself and start his own company, which he somewhat fatalistically named “Defense-Corp” with the misguided intent of changing the future for the better of all. Meanwhile Brother Theo was tracked by players through a series of clues left by him on his new blog as he found the first of a series of hidden real-world folio pages from the “Folio of Nostradamus,” until he was finally forced into hiding, where he did not emerge again except in vague passing for those enthusiastic players most loyal to him over the course of the game. Through his newfound corporate structure, and with help from the future, Foo is able to gain a firm hold upon the Deus City interface and open the site to players for registration as “temporal agents.” This marked the conclusion of the pre-game and the start of the main game on the deuscity.com homepage. From this point the narrative became less linear. Players were assigned a district in which to perform investigations and were able to go to virtual locations on the site based

145 on their karma and prestige levels, and then spend virtual credits to attempt puzzle solves and find small pieces to the larger puzzle hidden within the districts of the futuristic Deus City. Players were also able to make contact with other players and ingame characters, including their “handler” which was also determined based on their personal Karma. Characters reacted differently based on this statistic until getting to know the player personally. Daily news articles from the future were also posted, giving clues to the important issues coming through from the Deus City corporation news filters. By working together and solving the mystery the players were able to discover a serial killer, solve multiple murders, and assist a revolutionary force in overthrowing the corporate government, creating a paradox and arguably preventing the city from ever having existed in the first place. The story wrapped up using a very traditional format, the novella. This novella was essentially a novelized format of the original screenplay, with changes made to accommodate the players’ effects on the world where needed. This novella was released relatively quickly over the course of the final week, one chapter at a time, in various virtual locations around the city, as a way of summing up all of the major game related stories, and as one final puzzle requiring all of the players to work together, regardless of their in-game statistics. In the end, the story was quite well received by the players and critics, and the game was said to have “wrapped up nicely” and that “the players also seemed to appreciate it all” by Unfiction’s Sean Stacey in a private e-mail following the game to myself. An untold number of subplots and side stories also existed which are now lost, including everyone’s own personal experiences within the game. Many were resolved and some were not, leaving room for a sequel and for speculation, much to the sadness of some players, but also mimicking the nature of reality in its many unsolved mysteries. In the end, the Deus City story was a collaborative work of fiction was a great success, gritty, visceral, and real, the likes of which could never have been told by any one person.