Heroes ARG

Heroes, the NBC TV show, has a Alternate Reality Game (ARG) associated with it. Well, sort of. Whilst following the premise of an ARG there’s no actual game play.

It started off well, with an in-show business card showing the URL for the fictional paper company Primatech. Applying for a job here got you into the game and you started to receive clues via text or email. Unfortunately they are nto really clues, but straightforward instructions for what to do next – and then they are all repeated over on this character blog for Hana. Hana is a character who has only appeared in a trailer for the show but is due to make a main show appearance soon.

The ARG community are all over this, lookign at images, Whois data, URLS, code etc, but the sad thing is there is nothing yet under the surface, it’s all exactly as it says in the blog. There are a few nice touches, such as the URL for Hana, samantha48616e61.com where the numbers are actually hex for Hana, but nothing deeper to discover and find. There’s almost a full write up on this wiki. There is some interaction; the latest message asks you to phone Mr Bennet’s voicemail and leave him a message, which may appear somewhere. The hope seems to be on the show but it may be more likely to be on the blog.

But in general it appears that an good idea has been watered down for the lowest common denominator, those that will not do any clue breaking or investigation. They give the appearance of it being a game, but have failed to follow through. A little bit more work could have had this playing on 2 levels, with the background info being easily accessed but there being more of a challenge in the content for fans to work through. It may happen this way, but I’m not holding my breath.

On a related note, CBS’s show Jericho has a small game associated with it – the titles each week have a morse code message. Over the winter break there was a contest to guess the ending of the message which will be broadcast in the next new show this week.