The late ‘00s were the heyday ofalternate reality games, many of which were part of marketing campaigns to hype up a different, bigger announcement. These games are largely based around solving puzzles, digging up lore, and piecing clues together. Even though it’s been a while since we’ve seen a major ARG with as much of a cultural impact as, say, Halo 2’s I Love Bees (which had an astounding 600,000+ players), the medium still gets used from time to time.
A website calledBaby Eagle Is Missingappeared overnight a few days ago, unannounced. A link to the website was posted to the Capcom, Resident Evil, andResident Evil 4subreddits – Baby Eagle is a clear allusion to this iconic game, as it’s the codename that the Secret Service uses for the president’s daughter.
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Open the website, and you’re greeted by an interface with green text on a black background where you’re able to communicate with the game’s agents, who give you instructions. They all address you as Handler, and ask you to solve a series of puzzles to ‘analyse and decode’ data that agents on the ground are transmitting, typing the answer in the ‘comment’ box. So far, they’ve been releasing a new puzzle daily, which is a fun way of keeping fans excited during the wait for the Resident Evil 4 Remake launching on March 24. The ARG builds backstory for Resident Evil 4 as the kidnapping of the president’s daughter leads directly into the game, where Special Agent Leon S. Kennedy sets out to rescue her from a cult in Europe.
Unfortunately, the game is neither as well-made nor as challenging as its many predecessors. What makes ARGs so ripe for viral marketing is that, if done well, they bring communities together to solve puzzles, with different people contributing clues and angles that get them closer to an answer. That’s what makes it feel real and immersive, that you’re able to solve it in real-time with other people. Baby Eagle Is Missing, on the other hand, has puzzles that are easy but frustrating, because your answer might be correct but get rejected for the wrong capitalisation, or for including an apostrophe. People are sharing answers on Reddit, but there isn’t a huge response to the game as of yet.
When you compare Baby Eagle Is Missing to games like 42 Entertainment’s ARGs for the promotion of Halo 2 and the Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero, or even to the McDonalds campaign for the 2008 Olympic games, it falls short in scope and quality. Perhaps there’ll be something special at the end of the game that rewards players for following through, but with the remake’s launch already so near, it’s hard to say what that will be.
If anything, fans are more likely to entertain themselves trying to match the lore in this ARG to the lore in the remake. From what we’ve seen so far, that’s probably what the game is intended to do, and not necessarily for it to be fun or immersive. It seems a waste of the strength of the medium to create a game just for this, but I doubt it’ll put a damper on the excitement fans already have for this anticipated remake. Still, it’s disappointing.
