Welcome to Gotham City

Welcome to Gotham City – the Joker awaits you

The Alternate Reality Game “Why so serious” as an example for transmedia storytelling and collective intelligence

By Ilka Marhenke

New technologies and media open the door for a new way of entertainment. People no longer want to consume media, but to experience and participate. All this is provided by a new idea of games: Alternate Reality Games (ARG). ARGs connect the real with the digital world and therefore allow stories to live off the screen. To let this happen, the creators of these games, the so-called puppet masters, use all kinds of different media for their narrative: the internet, mobile phone service, live streaming videos and large scale projections as well as real world events, casual online games and actual print let the game become alive and players become participants.

The most extravagant and expensive ARG so far was “Why so serious”, a part of the marketing strategy to promote the batman movie “The Dark Knight” which was released in 2008. 15 months before the release, the company 42 Entertainment started the game, which later on would assume greater proportions than anyone could possibly imagine. It all began with a website where players could find the first message from the Joker. From there on, the puppet masters spread clues via all kinds of media and made this game an experience of transmedia storytelling how it is described by Henry Jenkins: every used medium contributes to the narrative and makes it a unique entertainment experience.

Every website, phone number or newspaper which was used, formed the story as well as the participants who followed the puppet masters’ lead. From simple websites or posters in the streets to mobile phones hidden in cakes or GPS data which brought the players to places where planes had written a phone number into the sky, the designers used every imaginable way of hiding clues. Those clues helped players to unlock special features of the movie like trailers or short movie scenes. More than 10,000,000 individual players from about 75 countries considered themselves as citizens of Gotham City and slipped into different movie roles during the process of the game. From the Joker’s henchman to a supporter of Gotham City Mayor “Harvey Dent”, the participants experienced the world of Batman in real life. An online message of the Joker made hundreds of people running through the streets as Joker look-a-likes and even a real election campaign for Harvey Dent took place when Dent asked via phone calls for help to save Gotham City. 33 Dentmobiles visited cities all over America to meet the participants and make them register to vote for Dent in the final election held in June 2007.

In Jenkins's words are "transmedia stories [...] based not on individual characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds which can sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories". This description applies exactly to "Why so serious", which is no longer just about Batman or the Joker, but about a whole world created around them.

The makers of the game wanted to promote the new batman movie by showing the story between the movies “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” and by drawing attention to the world of Batman. With this kind of transmedia storytelling, they could reach a large number of people and show them that “The Dark Knight” is more than just a comic book movie.

The Homepage of "Why so serious"

One of the clues: A Gotham City newspaper

The participants of “Why so serious” didn’t play the game on their own. They met online in forums or chats to discuss the latest news and clues about Gotham City. A wiki was used to collect all information about websites, codes and so on, used by the creators. By sharing information about the game online, a collective intelligence was formed and helped every single player to move forward in the narrative of the game.

With “Why so serious”, 42 Entertainment used turn a movie into an event, which lasted for almost one and a half years. This way of promoting a movie is unique and creates a whole new way of fan fiction, which allows the fans to help form the narrative. This marketing strategy made “The Dark Knight” the most successful movie in 2008 and 42 Entertainment the winner of the 2009 Web Award in the category “Games”.