The Development of the Maddison Atkins Alternate Reality Game

Jeromy, designer of the Maddison Atkins Alternate Reality Game, talks about the new version of the game

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/arg-madison-interview.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]LDDjhaoZcHQ[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the ARG Fest and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Jeromy: Hi, Jeromy Barber. I’m the producer of Maddison Atkins.

Interviewer: OK and what’s that?

Jeromy: Maddison Atkins is an interactive fiction. Some people call it an alternate reality game, but it’s basically a mystery surrounding a college girl named Maddison and her friend, Adam.

Interviewer: How does the story or narrative play out then?

Jeromy: It plays out through videos on YouTube and interaction through Facebook and emails and Twitter accounts and that kind of thing.

Interviewer: Exactly how does it work through Facebook and Twitter?

Jeromy: Well, what happens is that Maddison and her cohort, Adam; they are in communication classes. They are communication majors, and in their summer school sessions they have all these video projects they have to do, one of the classes being new media. They have to make some sort of Web 2.0 new media social network. They have to have a presence on that, even if they don’t already. So, they do that and that’s how this all works in the plot.

Interviewer: How did you come up with this idea, and why did you choose to use interactive fiction versus a normal novel or something else like that?

Jeromy: I don’t know. That’s a great question. I actually am totally intrigued with the idea in experimenting with the form of interactive fiction. I like the idea that the audience plays a part. I like the idea of it takes a village to figure shit out, which is a direct Hillary Clinton quote [laughs].

You know, I was attracted to those ideas about three years ago, and so I was watching other things that do that or attempting to do that, and I built the thing in 2007 and had a following. What I did is that story as it went and then I rebooted it. I just started over from the beginning as though nothing had ever happened.

Interviewer: How did you build up that following?

Jeromy: Well, I was playing to an audience that was already in place for Lonely Girl 15 as I built something for the community of that series.

Interviewer: How did you keep in contact with your players, and was there anything else that you did?

Jeromy: Well, the players of the game… OK, so the traditional producer or what they call in the ARG world the puppet master, fan relationship is usually one of the secrecies, like people are playing games. They don’t know who is involved and stuff.

In my alternate reality game, people know who I am, and so you can go to maddisonatkins.com, and it’s two d’s with a t, m-a-d-d-i-s-o-n-a-t-k-i-n-s.com. Anyway, my deal, you can-that was a plug-in my deal I’m on there. That’s Jeromy and they can find me. So, there’s a lot of free banter going back and forth between me and the people that follow the game.

Interviewer: Where do you see the game going in the future?

Jeromy: I don’t know. I’m going to finish this run of things, and there’s a lot of really cool things that I’ve got to do where I’ve got full time actors working for me. I have a terrific, essentially, a production manager named Randall with the spoons, total genius and two actors, Fay Austin and Jason Zednick. They’re great. They’re with me full time. They’ve ventured on to this journey and being part of the writing process, the revising process, the rehearsal process and the shooting process. And even the editing process I’ve actually outsourced to them a little bit. I come in and help as much as I can, but they’ve come along and have really taken up the mantle and done it with me.

Interviewer: Out of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, what has been the most engaging thing for players?

Jeromy: The game is primarily at YouTube.com/maddisonatkins. That’s where the game was initially, and that’s where the game basically is now. There’s a benefit of having the videos and then all of the comment and interaction right there for anybody who wants to catch up.

You really should go to maddisonatkins.com if you want to follow the game. It’s not a big game. It’s not a big game. We have about 150 people on the site, a little bit more than that, but about 150 people that follow the game and play the game which is big but also not gigantic.

Interviewer: Have you seen that YouTube Street Fighter game? Are you going to do any kind of interactive YouTube just like they did?

Jeromy: I’m not familiar with the YouTube Street Fighter game, but we try to do interactive stuff. So, I’m kind of talking out of my ass because I’ve not seen the Street Fighter thing you’re talking about, but I will soon, I’m sure.

The whole game is interactive. The main characters of the game are totally oblivious and really in many, many ways helpless as in many alternate reality games, I guess. You’ve got a pretty girl. She’s helpless. You’ve got to help her. And in this situation, it works.

Interviewer: Where do you see interactive fiction going and alternate reality games going? What do you think needs to change to make them more mainstream?

Jeromy: I don’t know. If I knew that I would be doing it.

Interviewer: Are there any other things that you’ve learned as you’ve developed this game?

Jeromy: Yeah, you know, I think it’s really, really important to whatever audience you’re performing for, you listen to them and you figure out ways to hear what they think. I also think it’s really important that if you have a hunch or an idea that you follow through with it. I also think it’s super important that if you’re banking something like this that you live within the boundaries of what your resources are and you be realistic about it.

A lot of people get romantic about it, the same way as you think about your ex-girlfriend or your ex-boyfriend and you’re like, “Oh, those were great times”. They were great times, but then there were a bunch of bad times you’re forgetting. You’re not being realistic with yourself. Sorry for that advice if that hurt you.

Essentially, in game making it’s the same thing. You cannot be romantic about the things that you can sincerely accomplish. You only have so many hours in the day, and when you’re making something that is interactive, something that is built one day at a time, if something happens on Monday you should write, shoot, edit on Monday. In that kind of scenario you don’t have time to deliberate over some shit.

Interviewer: Are you doing any other things to promote the game some more to get the word out there?

Jeromy: I’m not, I’m not doing anything else to promote the book. It’s word of mouth, and the people that play it like it, and I’m busy enough making sure that they are entertained.

Interviewer: Cool. Any last words then for someone else who wants to get into interactive fiction or make those types of games?

Jeromy: I don’t know. I think everybody should do it. If you can do it and the more people the better always. I’m a film maker and so I think that about film making. I think that if you want to make TV or if you want to make comedy, whatever you want to do, I say do it.

I’m in a band called The Mustn’ts, and we write all the music for the game as well. Whatever it is, whatever your endeavor, whatever your passion, just do it. Stop judging yourself and do it.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.