Network Stories
To Do This Week
Finish Hypermedia Narratives — Due April 16th
Video/Audio Stories
Final Project: 30% - DUE April 30th
The final project is to be a digital story that incorporates at least two of the modules covered in this class: diagrammatic, visual, cinematic, hyperlinked/interactive, game-like storytelling. The work may be a significant reworking of a previous project or a new idea and direction.
The final project will be monitored in class by me during workshops in the last two weeks. There should be progress each week until it is due. Our class time will be focused on building these stories so that you can get help from me and your classmates. Do not leave everything to the last minute, or this will be reflected in your project and participation grade.
What Is a Network Story?
- a story that unfolds across connected media, platforms, people, places, and moments in time.
- the network shapes how the story is discovered, followed, pieced together, and shared.
- meaning often emerges from fragments: posts, videos, websites, comments, clues, maps, messages, screenshots, or archives. Readers or players often have to search, connect, compare, and interpret.
Common Types of Network Stories
- Hypertext (Twine) stories: linked pages or fragments with no single path
- Social media stories: narratives told through posts, feeds, comments, or character accounts (lonelygirl, SKAM)
- Collaborative worlds: shared universes built by many contributors (Second Life, MineCraft)
- Database / archive stories: stories assembled through searching records, files, and entries (Her Story)
- Locative stories: stories shaped by physical location, movement, or mapped space (usually with smartphone audio or video augmentation)
- ARGs (Alternate Reality Games): stories told through clues, puzzles, media fragments, and real-world participation
ARGs
Alternate Reality Games bring together many of the most important affordances of network storytelling:
- multimedia
- distributed clues
- collective problem-solving
- gameplay
- search
- real-world locations
- the feeling that the story is really happening in the world
Five ARG Case Studies
These examples show different ways network stories can operate as space for fiction, performance, gameplay, evidence, and collective discovery.
The Beast — 2001
Created to promote Steven Spielberg’s A.I., The Beast is often described as the first large-scale ARG. Players uncovered a huge trail of websites, phone numbers, emails, and hidden clues. No single person could solve it alone. The story depended on collective intelligence.
- Spread across many websites and media forms
- Required research, puzzle-solving, and collaboration
- Blurred fiction and reality through real communication channels
- Established core ARG logic: discovery, secrecy, and participation
I Love Bees — 2004
Made as a promotional ARG for Halo 2, I Love Bees began with a seemingly hacked website and expanded into audio drama, GPS coordinates, online collaboration, and real-world payphone events. It is one of the clearest examples of how a story can move between internet search and physical space.
- Combined websites, audio, maps, and real locations
- Players had to coordinate across cities and time zones
- Brought online narrative into the physical world
- Shows how location can become part of storytelling
Year Zero — 2007
Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails built an ARG around the album Year Zero. Hidden messages, websites, phone recordings, and physical artifacts gradually revealed a dystopian future. The project is especially useful because the story world, the music, and the ARG structure all reinforced each other.
- Connected music culture to network storytelling
- Used hidden clues in objects, websites, and recordings
- Audience assembled the world through research and discussion
- Form mirrored content: surveillance story told through distributed traces
Marble Hornets — 2009–2014
Marble Hornets is not a classic ARG in the same way as The Beast or I Love Bees, but it is a powerful example of networked horror (Blair Witch style). The story unfolded through YouTube videos, a companion Twitter account, and fan interpretation. Viewers followed uploads like pieces of evidence.
- Used multiple platforms to build suspense
- Treated uploads as fragments of evidence
- Relied on viewers to connect clues and timelines
- Shows how network storytelling can grow out of online video culture
What These Examples Share
- Multimedia: stories can move across text, video, sound, websites, and objects
- Participation/Game Play: audiences often help uncover or assemble the story and solve puzzles
- Search: discovery is part of the experience
- Collaboration: many network stories depend on collective intelligence
- Location: some stories extend into physical space
- Reality effects: network stories often feel real because they use real platforms and familiar media forms
Network Stories in an AI Culture
Network stories play with uncertainty, evidence, realism, and participation. AI intensifies all of this:
- distributed intelligence
- blurred authorship
- reality-fiction entanglement
- responsive systems
- deep personalization
- more embodied play
Questions:
- What happens to network stories when fake evidence is easy to generate?
- Does AI make ARGs more powerful, or harder to believe in?
- How do stories change when artificial characters can act like agents across platforms? Or engage with personalized content. Is this dangerous?
- What kinds of network stories are possible now that were not possible before?
Group Exercise: Pitch a Network Story (with or without AI)
Time: 20–25 minutes total
In groups of 3–4, come up with a short pitch for a network story. Your idea does not need to be a full ARG, but it should use at least some of the affordances discussed: multiple media, participation, search, clues, archives, maps, real-world locations, or platform realism.
Answer These Questions
- What is the premise? What situation or mystery holds the story together?
- Where does it live? What platforms, media, or spaces does it use?
- How does the audience engage? Do they watch, search, solve, follow, or participate?
- What kinds of fragments appear? Posts, videos, screenshots, maps, chat logs, clues, audio?
- What makes it feel like a network story rather than a regular linear story?
Be ready to share your pitch in 2–3 minutes.