The Coachella Disaster: How the Puppet Masters of Art of the H3ist Pulled a Victory from the Jaws of Defeat
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks · 2017
In this chapter, I frame ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) as conducive to trangressive play because these games themselves are trangressive in nature in a number of ways. ARGs' seemingly open-ended nature characterized by an absence of a predefined rule set and a distinct game space, encourages rule-breaking mindset in players leading to all manner of emergent gameplay enriching the experience. In what follows, however, I examine a case in which this almost backfired. I focus on a live event that occurred in Art of the H3ist at the Coachella Music Festival whereby transgressive play, in conjunction with the failure of technologies implemented in the gameplay, threatened to end the game prematurely. To integrate the emergent gameplay and make amends with the community at large, the game architects invited one of the players who took part in the Coachella incident to become a fictional character in the story, thereby violating one of the sacrosanct rules of ARGs: the curtain that ensures that no out-of-game interactions occur between players and designers. This principle also ensures that players do not cross into the designer's realm. This bold move (in some respects itself transgressive) accounted for player creativity in an unanticipated way and intensified the game for players by giving the story a more dangerous and immediate feel. Ultimately, the Coachella event demonstrates how transgressive play can be innovatively integrated into design, opening doors to new avenues in participation that produce more effective storytelling as well as more compelling gaming.