A Journal in Jade: The ‘ARCANA’ Diaries — Week Four
The alternate reality game comes to a stunning conclusion
ARCANA, the latest alternate reality game (ARG) from the team that created All of Them Witches, kicked off on May 6. Each week, NoPro’s Laura Hess, Blake Weil, and Kevin Gossett will be offering their thoughts on Jade’s story, the brain-bending puzzles, and any other creepy goings-on.
Below is their report on the final week of the game.
Kevin
We’ve reached the conclusion of Jade’s story and AOTW’s ARCANA! There was a lot happening this week, including the final week of gameplay, the finale event, and a denouement. I’m going to let Laura start because she kicked this off way back in Week 1, but right now, we’re going to talk through the last week and the finale. And then, we’ll have one more piece coming up to cover ARCANA as a whole. With that: Laura, take it away!
Laura
Throughout the past four weeks I’ve been wondering if the video assets were all pre-recorded. It was delightful to have Gareth Fitzpatrick, my favorite demonologist, make it evident that at least some of the videos were recorded in time with the game’s pace. With Gareth’s video call-outs to specific player comments and questions (which were directly emailed to him), the show’s immediacy was heightened; the game felt even more alive, permeable, and undetermined. It amplified participant agency, even if that agency was predominantly an illusion.
Blake
That sense of immediacy seemed to be the driving force this week. Despite ARCANA always having good response times, this week was all about conversation for me. Some of the most fun I’ve had has been spooky messages showing up in my DMs unprompted, taunting demon Jade with links to the The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” and pictures of inarizushi (a fave for a Nogitsune, as we discovered one of the demons to be), and writing some of the most outrageous emails I’ve ever composed to Gareth. It was overwhelming at times, but it gave a rich texture to the universe.
The one struggle this week seemed to be Robin. After weeks of build up, introducing her as a deuteragonist was a bit of a struggle for me. I really grew to love Jade, and Gareth, Hadley, and even the off screen presences of Marge and Tiff grew to inhabit a place of love in my heart. For Robin, though, it was just a bit too late. Having already found it in my heart to forgive Jade, I couldn’t get a grasp on Robin, especially with the reveals of the abuse that drove Jade to instability and Robin’s own indiscretions. Still, her exposition managed to further flesh out Jade’s character and the circumstances, and I found her presence a net positive.
Kevin
I’m with you on the “Robin” part of it all. I think her presence helped round out the final week to some degree (more so the finale, which we can talk about in a bit), but it also pulled some of the focus away from Jade. Obviously, their stories are intertwined, and the same could be said of everyone who inhabited the world of ARCANA, including Gareth and Hadley. Still though, the character who had been our anchor, who we’d been chatting with for weeks, was no longer connected to us in the same way. I felt unfocused in this last week, and I kind of think that was partially why. Don’t get me wrong! I enjoyed Gareth and Hadley’s presences throughout and I love that they were integrated so well at the end. As Blake proved, there was plenty of room to interact with them and bounce off of Gareth and demon Jade, I just kind of didn’t.
I think the other thing that led to a disconnect for me was the sheer scope of the puzzles. I’ve really loved working on them the whole game, but I think I solved part of one this week. They were inventive and wide-ranging and pulled in all of the characters. They seemed so cool and I wanted to play them! But they also seemed so involved because of all of that and even figuring out how to start solving them was a process, though one I would have enjoyed if the pace hadn’t been so intense this week. Feeling adrift from my two main connections to ARCANA as it approached the end didn’t feel so great, though, even if all of the story elements were still mostly firing.
Laura
I’m in agreement with Kevin on several fronts. Although I appreciated that ARCANA applied full force to its final week, I was unable to receive the game’s momentum in real time; distracted by current events, I felt disconnected from the puzzles. When the game cracked open with multiple new characters (God bless Gareth and the illustrious, if invisible, presence of Marge and Tiff), it also introduced a wave of new riddles, assignments, and historical events. This ultimately proved problematic for me.
During Week Three, I hoped that the historical tales of killers Amos Ratliff, Scott Jackson, and Alonzo Walling would be actively integrated for the finale; I’m thrilled that they were. I’m equally fulfilled by the game’s character development. For example, the nuanced, humorous — and fictional — professional threads between Hadley Meares (an actual historian!) and our beloved Gareth (apparently, Hadley was present for a past “fiasco” involving Gareth’s demonology services). From the beginning, I’ve admired how real-word events were compellingly interwoven into the ARCANA fabric. However, as the game’s breadth expanded, I felt myself spread thin.
In prior weeks, I loved the deeper immersion into a narrow vein for more sustained periods of time. In Week Four, as I bounced between Hadley, Gareth, Robin, Jade, and Providence (Jade’s demon), I lost steam, which was compounded by new historical storylines and additional puzzles. The issue didn’t seem limited to me and Kevin; on Slack, I noticed a significant drop in activity, with several participants commenting that they had taken a step back from the game for various reasons.
This shines a spotlight on fostering complimentary engagement in tandem with advancing the game. I failed to interact much with Hadley, Gareth, Robin, or Jade/ Providence because I hadn’t solved the riddles. And yet, other participants, such as Blake, were corresponding with characters outside of offering solutions. In hindsight, I wish I had chatted more with these well-developed, charming characters as an experience unto itself. If anything, I was more invested in ARCANA’s characters than the game’s plot. Character exchanges, especially one-on-ones, can be electric encounters and yet, I didn’t take full advantage of those opportunities.
Blake
Bouncing off of what Laura said, I really loved the way the scope expanded over time. I mentioned that my favorite part of the early game was tracing through historical accounts of Hickman and trying to find evidence of him in game. That feeling extended with Gareth’s visions. Attempting to tie together both using game clues and out of game articles to identify mythological monsters was a delight. Particularly clever was using variations on Hickman’s aliases (“The Fox,” “Fate,” and “Death”) for the three demons selected.
I’ll confess: I cheated a bit. Even when I didn’t solve a puzzle, I’d send in the solution mined from Discord to try to get a few minutes of backchat. It’s that repartee that honestly made the finale work so well for me. I did actually banter with the scary demon, who was one of the best conversational partners. Seeing all these voices that I had become familiar with interacting with me, then interacting with each other, while perfectly maintaining established characters, made the stakes fantastic. The blurred lines of reality and high focus on interaction kept the suspension of disbelief — and tension — high.
Speaking of tension in the finale, what a relief that those of us pushing to free Jade won the final vote! It’s a common complaint that ARGs often dissolve into factions, competing for different goals, but launching the challenge to record a video to bind Providence to Jade, or to banish Providence, was a great final act. By introducing dissent among the player base as to our course of action at the very end, ARCANA managed to avoid some of the toxicity and tribalism that have marked other ARG player bases. Watching everyone’s video submissions on Instagram Live felt like a combination of the tensest drumroll and a credits reel for all the dedicated players (watch for me, desperately in need of a haircut, in front of Spirited Away, loudly declaiming the chants). It was an opportunity for each player to inject a little of their personality into the finished game. Jade’s Instagram sits as a really cool monument to the accomplishments of ARCANA as an experience.
I also want to throw in kudos to the team for clearly taking safety so seriously. COVID-19 social distancing protocols were clearly in effect, but by making a pre-edited shot/reverse shot conclusion video, they were able to create a suitably epic ending, incorporating all the characters while still keeping cast and crew safe.
Kevin
Even if the final week didn’t quite work for me, the finale was basically the opposite! The build up during that last week was strong and it kept the focus on the characters that we’d come to care about over the last month. While Gareth had been key to providing comedy throughout, he got to be downright heroic as he prepared to venture into the house and attic to save Jade. The character beat felt earned and hopefully Gareth earned himself a first place demonologist award (but maybe from a different publication and not Vichy LA Weekly).
Jade spent most of the finale possessed and still managed to provide the emotional anchor for all of ARCANA. Even if she lied to the audience and had a terrible relationship with her sister, she didn’t deserve to spend the rest of her days with a demon trapped in her. After hearing Robin’s admissions that she may have been a teensy bit responsible for Jade’s possession, it felt like the game had to end on a note of reconciliation between the two sisters.
And as Blake mentioned, that’s where the audience came in! To complete the ritual, Gareth asked for audience participation, and participate they did. Even though it was just a series of quick home recordings, the whole section was fraught with tension. Did enough people vote to save Jade or condemn her?! I obviously had a preferred outcome (though, I’ll admit, I wasn’t able to actually record a video) and wasn’t sure that side would win out while watching. This part of the finale also worked on a couple of other levels: it emphasized the community nature of the game and it demonstrated just how committed people were to the story. It could have played cheesy, but watching people get so into it no matter their vote was just genuinely fun.
Laura
Since Kevin and Blake addressed the finale from a real-time player point of view, I’ll highlight a reveal about the finale from AOTW’s post-show talkback with ARCANA’s participants. During the discussion, ARCANA’s creative team verified Jade’s fate truly was decided by the players. The team shot footage of both versions: banishing the evil demon from Jade and binding the demon to Jade forever. In NoPro’s recent Writers Roundtable dialogue, I cited the need for meaningful touchpoints with remote experiences; what we potentially lose through physical distance or technological barriers can be gained via other methods in order to maximize impact and complete the circle of a show. AOTW did exactly that by gifting the audience with the “bind” finale video after the talkback.
It was an unexpected ARG epilogue which offered two vital elements: confirmation that player agency did indeed affect the game and the satisfaction of scratching a story itch. We peered through the window of an alternate universe to witness what might have been, knowing that our collective actions and choices sent Jade down a different path. By offering both endings, one canonical and one unrealized, we were simultaneously inside and outside the fantasy, participant and voyeur, accountable and also without any responsibility. All of which afforded the opportunity to be immersed within the story while being detached enough from its outcome to view it with a different perspective, one that transcended the story’s tracks and allowed us to look inward to our individual motivations, beliefs, and desires; that duality not only completed the show’s circle, but amplified it.
Read Blake, Kevin, and Laura’s final thoughts on ARCANA.
ARCANA has concluded. Arcana is a creation of AOTW: Eva Anderson; Mali Elfman; Eric Hoff; Tommy Honton; and E3W Productions (Aaron Keeling, Austin Keeling and Natalie Jones).
