Can a geeked out, niche Alternate Reality Game (ARG) be used to launch an otherwise unheard of entertainment franchise?

An ARG is an interactive story that uses many channels, both real world and online, to create a game experience directly influenced by players. It's easily interchangeable with the increasingly popular 'transmedia' label (minus the 'game' specific designation), but while transmedia has been embraced as of late to increase the reach of big budget sci-fi, grassroot ARGs have typically existed outside the mainstream–customarily driven by a loyal, niche game community that finds and solves clues littered throughout the Web.

Smoking Gun Interactive aims to change that by bringing ARGs into the mainstream with their debut transmedia franchise, codenamed "X" or "Exoriare." It's a real-world mystery with ancient locations and deep conspiracy that "explores the secret history of mankind in a way that has never been done before." Pretty lofty material, but not uncommon for a sci-fi/adventure franchise.

The gameplay itself has been covered thoroughly at argn.com, jayisgames.com, guardian.co.uk, and boingboing.net, so we won't go into that in great detail here other than to say you better bring your thinking cap and your appetite for conspiracy theories and problem solving. (Start with a graphical preview at exoriare.com or jump right in at arg.exoriare.com.)

What's perhaps more interesting from a story development standpoint is that the ARG vehicle is being used to pull audiences towards more traditional offerings, including a graphic novel and platform videogame.

“One of our main goals as a studio is to constantly innovate in how we tell our stories”, says Smoking Gun CEO and Creative Director John Johnson. “Our perspective is, if you can interact with it, then it can be part of the experience we deliver. And if you cannot interact with it, then we will evolve it to the point where it can be part of our universe. There are no boundaries to where we can go or what we can accomplish.”

Smoking Gun Interactive was founded in 2007 by the creative forces behind Company of Heroes, arguably the highest rated strategy game of all time. In their past lives, they have collectively shipped a tidy handful of multi-million unit selling games. To translate: these guys have no intention of stopping on the fringes with an ARG.

While X is a sincere ‘bottom-up’ transmedia undertaking, with original story and gameplay driving its development, it’s worth noting that the company is well funded and accordingly focused on platform games, with the universe almost certainly living or dying on the profitable release of the end game (even the graphic novel can’t hold a candle to the cash cow of platforms or box office).

The graphic novel–the first in a series of stories set to continually expand the X universe–is the launch point for at least one ARG and is the back-story for the pending videogame series.

It was written by controversial, award-winning author and social critic Douglas Rushkoff, and will be delivered over the course of four weeks (the first ¼ is available as of this writing) at exoriare.com to provide a first glimpse into the universe.

"It has been insanely challenging and insanely fun to dive head-first into Smoking Gun's universe," explains Rushkoff. "And while I work on threading one narrative through this material, other artists are building it out on many other levels, all at once, for different people to engage with in so many different ways. So for the audience this multi-faceted, multi-media approach brings new dimension to the epic struggle that we're talking about here: nothing short of how humanity defines itself."

For more info on X visit www.smokingguninc.com.