APPENDIX C

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE “DEUS CITY” ARG

INTERACTIVE STORYLINE

The main storyline of the “Deus City” ARG was written long before I ever knew what an
ARG was. In 2003 I began my coursework at UT-Dallas, at which time I took a class
entitled “Screenwriting” that would change the direction of my whole program. The class
had one assignment: Write a fully submissible screenplay. At the end of the semester I
had written the first version of a movie screenplay entitled “Deus Ex Machina,” set in an
indeterminate futuristic Orwellian cyber noir “corporate bordello” in which the “Corporate
Senate” has direct control over the government, and tracks everyone with a
subcutaneous tracking chip. The main character was a 1930’s film noir “Sam Spade”
style detective who hated the technological world he lived in, and was thereby able to
solve crimes by using the older forgotten methods of yesteryear.

Three years later I hit upon the idea of using this story’s setting, characters, and general
plot outline as the backbone for an online interactive story, and “Deus City” was born.
The storyline below is told without regard to the specific player created elements of the
game versus the puppetmaster created content, if for no other reason than in attempting
to define that blurry line the story itself would become ridiculously complex if not entirely
unfollowable.

The fictional “Deus City” ARG’s story officially began in 2006 when an insignificant blog
(the first trailhead) appeared in the seemingly infinite sea of blogs that some call the
blogosphere. The writer, not so surreptitiously named “Brackin” was an in-game version
of myself who was working as the project leader of a team from the University of Texas
at Dallas to make contact with themselves exactly one week into the future using what
they called a “Space Laser.” The team’s progress and pitfalls were chronicled by my
fictional counterpart “Brackin” on his blog, including the test fire of the laser as a
countdown appeared on the team’s website at www.deuscity.com for the project’s
attempt at making contact with the future, an address chosen seemingly at random by
the team’s entirely fictional technical supervisor nicknamed “Foo.”

At the appointed time a “live” video was broadcast on the project’s site via alleged
YouTube placeholder files, thus showing the experiment. Foo was mysteriously absent,
claiming later that he was locked in the server room, but it was hardly noticed, for at the
appropriate firing time, the experiment went horribly “right” and the team received their
first message from “Mustafa Tang Fujimoto,” CEO of “Defensecorp,” and the president,
and majority leader of the Deus City Corporate Senate in the year 2036, who gives a
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rather enigmatic plea for help, finishing with the game’s catchphrase: “The future is
coming. Can you change it?”

The plug was then mysteriously pulled on the project entirely and the team was
disbanded. It was at this point that the players were first required to choose sides and
lend support – a recurring theme of the game - through emails and blog posts players
were able to discover the status of the team. Brackin is bitter over his removal from “his
project”, while Foo has re-emerged and is citing foul play for his prior absence, claiming
he was locked in the server room by someone. He reveals that he still has a backdoor
into the system and allows players to help him “hack the feed” in order to restore
communications with the future.

Not long after, Foo’s own Blog entitled “Foo-Defiant” emerged, as did more ambiguous
messages from the future which implicated both men as perhaps having ulterior
motives, such as those from a new character: The enigmatic “Brother Theophilus”
whose pirated video messages predicted doom and apocalypse in stark contrast to the
seemingly idyllic Utopia of Deus City being portrayed in the official corporate messages.
It was revealed through player inquests that Fujimoto was none other than the future
incarnation of Foo himself, and that there was significant evidence to suppose that
Brother Theophilus was none other than the future Incarnation of Brackin who preached
of a prophecy, a mysterious secret society which he called the “Sodality of
Nostradamus,” and a folio written by Nostradamus’s apprentice “James Chavingy”
which outlined the nuclear disaster and subsequent apocalyptic fall of civilization in
2012 and the beginning of World War III, which was ironically caused by the
communication from the future of 2042 being cut off inexplicably and a worldwide panic
which followed it.

Believing that the future could not be changed, and guided by the messages from his
future self, Brackin changed his name to “Brother Theo” and set off on a quest,
doggedly pursued by the authorities and those who would seek to stop him from
reclaiming his technology, while through the help of players, Foo was able to wrest
control of the technology back for himself and start his own company, which he
somewhat fatalistically named “Defense-Corp” with the misguided intent of changing the
future for the better of all. Meanwhile Brother Theo was tracked by players through a
series of clues left by him on his new blog as he found the first of a series of hidden
real-world folio pages from the “Folio of Nostradamus,” until he was finally forced into
hiding, where he did not emerge again except in vague passing for those enthusiastic
players most loyal to him over the course of the game.

Through his newfound corporate structure, and with help from the future, Foo is able to
gain a firm hold upon the Deus City interface and open the site to players for registration
as “temporal agents.” This marked the conclusion of the pre-game and the start of the
main game on the deuscity.com homepage.

From this point the narrative became less linear. Players were assigned a district in
which to perform investigations and were able to go to virtual locations on the site based
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on their karma and prestige levels, and then spend virtual credits to attempt puzzle
solves and find small pieces to the larger puzzle hidden within the districts of the
futuristic Deus City. Players were also able to make contact with other players and in-
game characters, including their “handler” which was also determined based on their
personal Karma. Characters reacted differently based on this statistic until getting to
know the player personally. Daily news articles from the future were also posted, giving
clues to the important issues coming through from the Deus City corporation news
filters. By working together and solving the mystery the players were able to discover a
serial killer, solve multiple murders, and assist a revolutionary force in overthrowing the
corporate government, creating a paradox and arguably preventing the city from ever
having existed in the first place.

The story wrapped up using a very traditional format, the novella. This novella was
essentially a novelized format of the original screenplay, with changes made to
accommodate the players’ effects on the world where needed. This novella was
released relatively quickly over the course of the final week, one chapter at a time, in
various virtual locations around the city, as a way of summing up all of the major game
related stories, and as one final puzzle requiring all of the players to work together,
regardless of their in-game statistics. In the end, the story was quite well received by the
players and critics, and the game was said to have “wrapped up nicely” and that “the
players also seemed to appreciate it all” by Unfiction’s Sean Stacey in a private e-mail
following the game to myself.

An untold number of subplots and side stories also existed which are now lost, including
everyone’s own personal experiences within the game. Many were resolved and some
were not, leaving room for a sequel and for speculation, much to the sadness of some
players, but also mimicking the nature of reality in its many unsolved mysteries. In the
end, the Deus City story was a collaborative work of fiction was a great success, gritty,
visceral, and real, the likes of which could never have been told by any one person.