No, what’s been shown is that a bunch of strangers with both nothing to lose and nothing to gain worked toward a nebulous common goal. I guess its the sheer benevolence on display that amazed me most. — Jon Elek

Jon wrote that after reflecting on the A Million Penguins project. As mentioned in an earlier post (A million Penguins typing), the project fascinated me. The thing that drew me in to ARGs was the idea that a community of strangers from around the world could (and would) come together and collaborate on some strange project with no true understanding of what they were looking at and where they were going with it. They do so in a supportive environment with few arguments. Each giving what they can to the project and the process. In the end, they are rewarded with a story that they have, together, created.

I say story, but it’s really two. There’s the story and the story behind the story - the one of them as they played the game, the reactions they had, the processes that they went through. Both stories are meticulously documented, though only one of them is done so purposefully, and in the end they are so intertwined that it’s often difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

That’s what fascinated me with the Million Penguin project. They were given the directive to create a story. The pieces weren’t created by people lurking in the shadows and hiding them for the community to discover. The pieces (characters, places, plots, chapters) were to be built by the community while they were putting them together. It took out all of the other elements - the things that I found myself getting caught up in. The play. The game. The puzzles. The goals. The rewards. They are all important for an ARG, but they will never be as important as the fact that a bunch of strangers with nothing to lose and nothing to gain will come together to work towards some nebulous common goal. It’s a thing of beauty, really, that story behind the story. I’m glad that John and all of those involved with the A Million Penguin project got to experience it and that they were able to remind me of why I love Chaotic Fiction.