Keep the Secrets of a Stranger in ‘iConfidant’ (Review)
The ARG from the creator of ‘The Tension Experience’ is a resounding success
Pizza is one of those foods that everyone has an opinion on.
Whether you’re a die-hard NYC pizza enthusiast, a deep dish fan, or you love that wood-fired kind that comes out of Italy. You could really only care about the toppings or whether you eat it normally, fold it, or eat it with a knife and fork (these people are WRONG, don’t do that). Maybe you had that one perfect pizza that one time in that one specific place and you’ve been chasing it ever since, but nothing ever lives up.
Such was the predicament that Maggie Rogers faced. She really wanted, “this perfectly crunchy bread that is both soft and crunchy with cheese that was just made, fresh roma tomatoes, fresh basil, olive oil which comes from this island off Sicily and some kind of herbs I haven’t figured out yet.”
And then it became my predicament because I was her confidant.
Created by Darren Lynn Bousman working with a small army of writers and actors, iConfidant sought to connect people in these socially distant times. iConfidant, a new Alternate Reality Game (ARG) based around the titular company, was spun off from a story thread in Bousman’s The Lust Experience ARG. This new experience was free of the extensive The Experiences lore in order to make it friendlier to new people. “iConfidant,” the company, wanted to help participants in their beta program find someone they could have a “profound connection” with, as everything became more disconnected; they wanted people to find their confidant.
iConfidant is the most successful ARG I have ever played. It is one of the most effective immersive experiences I’ve ever taken part in. There aren’t even any qualifiers for it as a remote experience. A lot of factors contributed to those feelings, so let’s back up a little bit.
The game kicked off when “iConfidant” (the company, not game, sorry if this gets confusing!) relaunched their web site and let people know what the company was about (finding a confidant); they posted that registration would open shortly, but that slots in the company’s beta test would be limited to 10–15 people. At the time, it still wasn’t clear what the actual experience would be about.
When registration did open, it contained a questionnaire with an array of both normal, personal questions and strange questions that would help pair participants with their confidant. As people began to be “selected,” there were creepy calls, other suspicious things happening on Facebook, and there was also what seemed like a pseudo-competition for the limited slots even as they announced that they would actually be taking more than 15 people.
At this point I was skeptical of iConfidant because it seemed like pretty standard ARG fare that was repeating some of the more frustrating aspects of other games. So despite my hesitations, I kept playing and was eventually selected as one of the 28 beta participants.
Before the game properly started, an email went out to the beta participants with a lengthy set of rules and instructions. It reiterated the terms and conditions on the “iConfidant” site, ways to check whether things were in-game or out-of-game, recognition and sensitivity towards potential triggers, and a way to remove yourself from the experience, along with a number of in-game rules. This was a welcome and reassuring introduction that even if iConfidant got dark, the team behind it wanted to create a space to explore the feelings and emotions that could rise to the surface.
With the safety aspects squared away, iConfidant really kicked off. Each of the 28 participants began receiving emails from their own confidant. Around a week in and after communicating by email the entire time, the confidants began calling and texting their assigned participants. A week after that, they moved to video calls. In a talkback after iConfidant, Bousman explained that the experience had been deliberately structured around three acts: email, calls, and video.
That choice was the foundation that helped make the game so successful. It allowed a legitimate and natural connection to form between the beta participants and their confidants. If participants had been immediately thrown into phone calls or video chats, there would have been awkwardness and weirdness, and perhaps a similar relationship could not have been forged. Instead, beta participants and their confidants went through the getting-to-know-you process by email and built a rapport that was carried into future interactions.
While the mediums for those interactions were the same for all the confidants, the actual shape the stories took varied wildly across all 28 confidants. As I mentioned, my confidant was a woman named Maggie Rogers (written by Lawrence Meyers and played by Shannon Estabrook). She had major stoner vibes in our first few emails; she was kind of an oddball who worried she was saying the wrong things; she was bummed about the quarantine in general, and more so because she had lost her job because of it. Even though I knew it was an actor or writer responding to my emails, the back and forth with Maggie felt … real.
Somewhere along the way, Maggie mentioned that perfect pizza; then her focus on it continued, until she came up with a plan to somehow order that pizza and have it delivered to her in Los Angeles during the quarantine. Everything in our correspondence was now about getting that pizza and it became clear that the story I was taking part in was some kind of comedy, though not one without any emotional depth to it. With some prodding, Maggie revealed why she was fixated on this particular pizza and why she had made it my goal too. The chats were just through email at that point, but it was still affecting stuff. It was also the first moment where I realized just how immersed I was in iConfidant.
The next moment was a comedic beat when Maggie texted me that I might be receiving a call from an Irish export service. And that if I did, I should pretend to be an officer with the US Customs office. It was so out there and so ridiculous, that I burst out laughing, because it was still in line with Maggie’s character. (Then, I actually received a call from a Scottish export service, one played totally straight asking me about the various US Customs codes and policies.)
The moment that really sealed the deal for me came a little bit later. I was on the phone with Maggie when she was not in a good place, something bad happened to her, and I couldn’t get in touch with her. Stacey, the woman in charge of “iConfidant” had sent out an email that a confidant had taken their own life, but offered no more explanation beyond this. I was genuinely worried the person was Maggie. Then I was genuinely angry that the situation had been so mishandled. When Stacey spoke up on the in-game Slack to address the issue without giving more information, I kept pushing and pushing her on the way this had unfolded because of how upset I was.
Good immersive theatre can draw reactions out, but sometimes there’s a sense of reacting that way because you feel it on some level, but also know that it’s how you’re “supposed” to address the situation. At least personally, I can have a hard time getting past that fictional barrier and truly feeling the reaction in my gut. But great immersive theatre can shatter the barrier long enough to let those feelings in and evoke something truly specific. The intensity of my reactions to the situation were surprising, but the time iConfidant had spent allowing our connection to develop organically over several weeks paid dividends right then and there. At some point, I had totally locked into what was happening without even realizing it.
That sentiment appears to have been shared across the 28 stories that played out during iConfidant’s run. I obviously can’t speak for other participants, but in their recollections of what was happening between them and their confidants, they expressed similar feelings. I was able to know how other participants were feeling because basically every interaction was documented on the iConfidant subreddit. You can read through my experiences with Maggie here and the rest of the beta participants’ stories here. Now, there were so many different things happening at once because all of the iConfidant stories were moving at the same time, but the subreddit helped make it slightly more accessible and easier to follow along with the ones that you found particularly intriguing. I found that I became nearly as invested in a number of the other stories as I was in my own with Maggie.
Near the end of iConfidant that feeling became even more true as the confidants’ lives went to dark places, the tension ratcheted up, and the bodies started to pile up (a shockingly high number of confidants ended up dead). Thankfully, Maggie was not among them. Midstream her story shifted from a comedy into a drama. I later learned that it was out of necessity due to some of the other happenings. However, it was just one example of the fluidity of iConfidant, as it reacted to participants in real time and the needs of the overarching stories. Thought not the original intent, the dramatic changes in Maggie’s life made the whole thing more impactful.
The credit for the impact of iConfidant goes to Bousman along with showrunner Joshua Ryan Dietz, and eight other writers, not to mention the 30+ actors (including an adorable corgi). Together they brought the “confidants” to life and made them feel like real people with real connections to the participants. The amount of work behind iConfidant is stunning. Not to mention, the whole thing was free, other than an optional donation at the end which raised over $4,000 for Movement for Black Lives.
A team of dedicated writers behind the confidants is another reason for the success of the whole endeavor. It kept the experience focused instead of wandering as ARGs are wont to do the longer they go on. Offering individual stories also made the whole thing feel more immersive (in some ways, the structure was similar Theatre Macabre).
No one can say that Bousman (and the teams he assembles for these projects) lacks ambition. Who else would have thought to create a piece with nearly 30 plotlines, some of which connected to others, while managing all of the creators and actors working behind the scenes? There are a million reasons iConfidant shouldn’t have worked or hundreds of places where it could have fallen apart completely. But it didn’t. Instead, it offered up something that was emotionally resonant while also being dark, and funny, and shocking, and nerve wracking, and moving — all at the same time.
iConfidant’s initial run has concluded. Keep an eye on iconfidant.net for any updates.
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