by Ana Vasile, published on 7.04.2011

Global adventure allows participants to join or oppose a super villains’ army. The battle takes place through an Alternate Reality Game that started on 12 March 2011. Dominic de Haas, an independent developer/producer and this ARG’s creator explained the game’s mechanism for Transmedia Lab’s readers.

Participants are required to locate the virtual Villain Training Program and complete missions at different locations around the world. This training will guide them on their path to become masked villains and aiding the mysterious T.S., the evil mastermind in need of allies. The participants to the ARG can also oppose the villain. A top secret movement is somewhere out there to support them in this war.

The game concerns a global alternate reality experience that will play out in the real world as well as over the internet through social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. The story includes online and offline elements and will deliver some of its content to the participants’ “doorsteps” by means of phone calls or e-mails. There are also mysterious phone numbers to be found and called.

The back-story will be told through a digital graphic novel whose pages can be unlocked by the participants during the experience. Optionally players will receive SMS text messages at later stages of the game. Also, players will directly affect parts of the story line, in the game as well as in the graphic novel. For example, by completing the second mission, the players allowed the villain to gain entry to a database where he finds a lethal virus. Would the players have failed this mission, there would not have been a lethal virus and the villain would have to find other alternatives (through other missions).

Dominic explains that “The game also requests the players to become actively involved in the game, virtually and in real life. For example, one of the missions has had the players add super villain masks to their photos. Another mission requested players to launch blogs on which they describe their journey into villainy.”

A game of ‘chess’ is proposed  in which players will have to claim locations on earth by going there and taking photos in which they hold up a piece of paper with a drawn logo and therefore ‘claiming’ that location for one of the game’s ‘camps/sides.’ If the Super Villain selects a city that no player can claim, players will then have to use their networks to find people willing to go there.

At a later stage in the game, players will have to use their networks to collect game artifacts and fulfill missions in different locations in the real world. For the moment, the cities targeted by the Super Villain are kept as a great secret, but the game master whispered us : think New York, London, Berlin and even Paris… for once, France was not forgotten!

“This experience will introduce participants to a villain they will actually be able to interact with. The premise is for the players to find out whether they would rather join or oppose the villain and do they have what it takes to do so?” Dominic concludes.

Some known cybernauts, like Jane Doh from argn.com, received a personalized invitation from the Super Villain himself to join his troupes. The recruits already started gathering on the Unfiction forum, but Dominic, the game master, says anyone can join the adventure on the game’s launching site: http://www.sotanaht.com.

What about you, dear readers, would you rather join or fight the Masked Super Villain?