Creating Communities Around Content

A teaser campaign for a game, The Secret World, recently caught my eye. It's a game that has been in development for over three years now, with no launch date in sight, yet it has managed to grow an active community around it. What is their secret?



Before anyone knew anything about The Secret World (TSW) the developer Funcom began releasing teaser content in the form of a series of Alternative Reality Games (ARG). 

A small but dedicated  community formed in May 2007 to unravel the first ARG after receiving a mysterious email via gaming sites. There were numerous puzzles to unravel the first story, with one of the rewards unlocking TSW's official forum. This initial ARG ran for less than one month, but left off with the promise that more was to come.

It wasn't till two years later that the next ARG installment began with a clue posted to the TSW forum - a forum that people still frequented! At first it wasn't clear that these two different ARGs were connected - in the two year silence there had been many false leads as pretenders tried leading the community astray. However, once the community realised it was a real ARG they got behind it for the next two months that it took to play. On finding the last solution they were given a hint that more was to come, this time "soon."

Two months later clues were found in the Twitter stream of Ragner Tornquist, a creator of TSW. This lead to two weeks of speculation and buzz on the forum as they deciphered clues, till they realised it was a teaser for the game itself rather than information pertaining to the ARG.

The game's website was updated, with more information about it being drip fed to increase continual buzz.

I love how the teaser website engages its audience and seamlessly captures email addresses without the normal psychological barriers we put up. While it has the normal 'keep me informed' option, it also invites people to do an Initiation Test for the chance to win beta access to TSW game.

By answering a few questions you are drawn into the mythology of the TSW world, told about the three ancient secret societies, and which you are most suited to join. To become an initiate - for free - you put in your email address, with benefits of membership communicated in a way that sounds much more exciting and lowers your resistance to the thought of going on their mailing list.

Conversation on the forum now came to buzz with further discussion on what they knew about the upcoming game, their secret societies, with people claiming their alliances and starting to form Cabals (guilds). More people were drawn into the swirl through the "reveal" of information in the press and the teaser website.

Four months later (January 2010) the next ARG installment began, and still continues. There is a detailed community created wiki that explains all the clues and story to date if you want to get up to speed and join in. 

The ARG is being played out over twitter, blogs, Flickr, Youtube, the community forum, and simply designed websites - no expensive production values here other than the teaser (which seems to use screenshots from the gameplay). It's the story and puzzle content that makes it sticky and draws in more and more players. 

At the time of writing this there have been almost 300,000 posts on the official TSW forum, not counting the wiki, fan pages, fan forums, fan fiction (role playing), Facebook fanpage, tweets, blogs, etc.

And this is all before they've even announced when the game will be out! Or how much it will cost. Or anything in any real detail.

What a tease :)

I think there's a lot that indie filmmakers can learn from this. So often we wait till right before release, and then strip naked rather than strip tease. 

Give the audience some mystery, give them something to talk about, and let them become active participants in the 'reveal' - the ARG has their creative, collaborative, and problem solving juices flowing, and they're loving the anticipation, despite the long wait.

The only thing I do wonder, is whether those attracted to the ARG components are the same audience who will play The Secret World game once it is released? Your thoughts?