ARGs and Me: An Awfully Written Intro

I've realized that, if I were to ever get into the gaming industry, that story would be the thing I would most be interested in crafting rather than the actual mechanics. This is why I've recently been researching ARGs: alternate reality games, where one of the most important factors of the game is to make it seem as realistic as possible... mostly without the aid of a console or a computer. This means MUCH less time spent on mechanics and a whole lot more time spent on creating an interesting narrative.

I'm sure if you're a regular user of the Internet, you've stumbled upon one of these before. I've been somewhat involved in two past games (for Cloverfield and Portal 2) and have come across remnants of others, my favorites so far being the Aperture Science website for Portal (seriously, the employee application is one of the funniest things I've read, and if you want to read it as well, go to the website and type in "login", username: cjohnson, password: tier3, then enter "ls", then "apply") and the seven deadly sins packages/websites for Dante's Inferno (which were less narrative based but definitely raised some general questions about morality). Most recently, I've signed up to finish the end of the Tron Legacy ARG, Flynn Lives, and have started participating in some of the more recent events.

And so far, from what I've seen, ARGs have been closely tied with advertisements for products. Off the top of my head, lonelygirl15 is a sort-of ARG— not a game because this was only comprised of videos —that was able to successfully trick an audience into thinking it was real while at the same time being incredibly engaging. What I really want to do is see how an ARG that isn't based off of some pre-existing product/story could be engaging, fun, and most importantly successful. I don't know if there are already some out there, but I bet that if there aren't, it could be done somehow.

All of that said, here's the first stepping stone in my quest to either search for or make an original ARG from ARGN.com.

Three Movies and Many Caps

I didn't really want to make a huge post about all of these films, so here're a couple of screencaps I've taken from some recent films I've watched with some interesting compositional stuff that's probably not actually super interesting but hey I think they're interesting and look at that I'm making a run-on sentence so without further ado, I'll just get my creepy nerdiness out of the way and start with these:

Pokémon is one of those shows that… well, you either hate it because you feel that it's all a huge marketing ploy or you love it immensely because of the escapist story of being able to go off into the world to capture crazy animals and have amazing adventures. I've fallen into the trap of loving them for the animation and the stories, specifically for the third Pokémon movie, Kesshou Tou no Teiou Entei, which I think translates into something like "The Badass Lion Pokémon Entei and his Magic Adventures". The movies are honestly a lot better than the TV show just for overall quality (except the best thing about the whole series, Team Rocket, hardly ever makes an appearance in the films, but that's something to discuss another day). Anyway, in the movie, this little girl Molly loses her parents, finds a whole bunch of magical Pokémon called the Unown, and uses them to create her own scary dream world and conjures up her "Papa", the legendary Pokémon Entei. Through a series of events that would take a while to explain, Entei kidnaps Ash's mother because Molly wants to pretend that she's her real mother... so Ash and friends must go and infiltrate the girl's dream world to get his mom back.

Every time I watch Pokémon nowadays I always think of the three kids as the band of wandering, adventurous detectives. I think it stems from Harry Potter being enhanced for me by Brad Neely's Wizard People, Dear Reader where he kept calling the trio of friends "junior Sherlock Holmes'." So yeah. Here are the four detectives, Misty, Brock, the rat, and Ash. And this is just a really nice cap of all four of them together in a lovely meadow before Brock has to kick the crap out of Molly in a Pokémon battle.

...I guess I won't explain every scene cap, but this next one makes more sense with at least a sentence of explanation below it...

Here Molly finds out that her dad has just disappeared while on an expedition. Small Molly, spaced far away from everyone else, meaning Molly feels small, and she feels like she's so far away from anyone's help. Very obvious composition, yes, but I don't know. I liked it for some reason.

This one is just so awkward and hilarious, and Ash looks like a big dork as always. "YEAH TOTODILE LET'S DO OUR VICTORY JUMP." I want to know how someone can jump that high. I don't want to try it for myself, though. It looks too dangerous. I'll leave that kind of move to the real Pokémon trainers.

I didn't really take too many good screencaps, because when I was watching this movie the other day I only got through half of it. The second half is a whole lot cooler and has so many better opportunities for caps (note to self: do a scene study of this movie!), but... I took this one because it was just so awkward. I don't know if it's just because things are chopped off in this version of the movie (is this not as wide as the original?) but Molly's just placed strangely in the frame. Maybe it's just me. Either way, sometimes you just gotta look at the frames you hate, too.

PIKACHU. WEARING A HAT. I AM LAUGHING LIKE A LUNATIC. The framing here is obvious and excellent. Also, that cake in the back looks delicious. I really want some.

Anyway, next movie. Wristcutters. It's a good film with Gogol Bordello music about where you go when you commit suicide. Again, not many caps (just this one), but I did watch through the whole movie, and what I really liked about it wasn't the compositions (which were good) but the color. Everything is so washed out and depressing, because... well, Suicide World is a depressing place where you can't smile and bad things happen to you all of the time. But it was gorgeous and never distracting.

Now Kabei: Our Mother. Also a really good film that almost made me cry. And I say almost because I thought the ending was so incredibly corny. Otherwise, yes, it was a really nice film, and interesting to see both WWII from a Japanese perspective and see the universality of family and loss. And to see Tadanobu Asano. Oh yes. That man is amazing.

But I really liked all of the scenes that happened inside of houses, which was more or less half of the movie. On one hand is was voyeuristic, and on the other... it made you feel like you were also a part of the family. Which made each loss and gain within the household a lot more emotional.

This is obviously the truest cap in the entire film. And the last one from this set.