Enter the Mysterious World of the Westbury Faery

December 7, 2016
A new Alternate Reality Game from Melbourne's Plot Media sends players into a hidden world of magic and mystery.

Apparently the World Faery Society need your help. Yes, you. Thus far their attempts to get a bead on a mysterious sprite haunting the town of Westbury, Tasmania have come to naught, and so they’re using the magic of the internet to reach out to the wider world. The trail leads all the way back to 19th century Ireland by way of Canada, and canny investigators will need to be able to parse truth from fiction and fact from folklore in order uncover the real story behind The Westbury Faery.

That’s the conceit behind a new cross-platform, experimental, interactive narrative from Melbourne creatives Plot Media, working in conjunction with Canadian digital outfit, Log Cabin Productions. In terms of tone and play style, if you let your mind circle around the idea of “Sherlock Holmes meets Pokemon Go”, you’re on the right track.

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Made with support from Screen Australia, Film Victoria and the Canadian Media Fund, The Westbury Faery is the result of a co-production initiative set up to foster creative relationships between the two countries. “Canadians are very good at multi-platform and experimental formats,” explains Jamie Houge, producer on The Westbury Faery. “And Australia has some good companies out there doing it, but we’re nothing like the Canadians. It’s a really interesting opportunity that we were given as one of three groups of people across the two countries to experiment with multi-platform work.”

The result is an Alternative Reality Game, where players uncover clues and leads across a variety of online platforms, gradually revealing more of the central story and the fictional world in which it takes place. It’s not the first of its kind – Warners got a lot of mileage out of similar endeavours when marketing Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, and McDonald’s did The Lost Ring a few years back. The Westbury Faery, however, is a wholly new property, and not based on an existing franchise.

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“That’s been a big part of the massive challenge,” Houge says. “Creating a fictional world from scratch. There’s no underlying literature, there’s no underlying brand – it’s just building off fairy folklore and history. It combines Canadian, Australian and Irish history with folk tales. So all of the clues on the website and Instagram and various social platforms, all have a very realistic look to them – they all look and feel like real artifacts from the past. And the story itself that you would uncover if you were to play along is based in true events.”

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The project is keyed towards a young demographic already deeply engaged with the fantasy genre and interactive narrative. “The Westbury Faery is really aimed at YA literature-reading youth, so around 13 to 17.” Houge says. “The reason why we went with fairies and genre is because things that are riding the line between reality and fiction in the online space in terms of narrative are the kind of programs that get the most engagement. Particularly among genre fans who like to get online and talk and write and build fantasy worlds – things like Lost or Star Wars or Tolkien, they always get built on and extended by the fans so we really took that idea and made an interesting game.”

To that end, The Westbury Faery puts the narrative in the hands of its fanbase, inviting them to contribute to and shape the story through their own ideas, submitted via the popular fanstasy/fanfic platform, Wattpad. “For us the main property is loosely defined – it really requires the community to build the main property themselves. They have to write short fiction and there’s a really good incentive – 20 will be selected to be published in a book, so it’s a bit of a story writing competition at the end of the day.” Brisbane-based micro-publisher Tiny Owl Workshop have been contracted for publishing duties.

In addition to the fan-generated literary component, a big part of the project are a number of viral videos, and a film from the World Faery Society, that players can uncover – all in actuality directed by The Woolshed, and Nicholas Verso (Boys in the Trees), respectively:

And as for the final solution to the mystery? Not even Houge knows, but hints that even if one answer is uncovered, more questions will remain. “I think the world will continue to expand.”

To join the investigation, point your browser towards The World Faery Society.

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