| Arc Symphony | |
|---|---|
 Promotional art for the game, also used as cover art for the fake game boxes | |
| Developers |
|
| Engine | Twine |
| Platforms | Microsoft Windows,MacOS,Linux,web browsers |
| Release | May 15, 2017 |
| Genre | Adventure |
| Mode | Single-player |
Arc Symphony is anadventure video game developed by Matilde Park and Penelope Evans, and released on May 15, 2017, both as abrowser game and in a downloadable version forMicrosoft Windows,MacOS, andLinux. The player takes the role of a formerly active user of aUsenet newsgroup for a fictional Japaneserole-playing game (JRPG), also titledArc Symphony, and reads messages from the game's characters.
As part of the game's release, fake game boxes for the JRPG, in the style of those forPlayStation JRPGs, were created and given to the developers' friends, who shared photos of it onsocial media with comments pretending that the JRPG was a real game; additionally, a fakefan site for the JRPG was created to further the illusion that it was real. Critics liked the game and its marketing, calling them accurate to fan communities in the 1990s.
Arc Symphony is a text-basedadventure game,[1][2] and is presented as an old computer through which the player reads messages in aUsenet newsgroup dedicated to a fictional Japaneserole-playing video game (JRPG)[3] for thePlayStation game console, also titledArc Symphony. The player takes the role of a formerly active user of the group, and begins the game by taking apersonality quiz.[4] Messages include discussions about the fictionalArc Symphony's characters and writing, and about the newsgroup users' usernames.[3] The characters the player interacts with include a couple who chat onIRC at the same time by using two phone lines, a new user who provokes people,[4] and a university professor who wants to be called by his username rather than his real name when in the newsgroup.[4][5]
Arc Symphony was developed by Matilde Park and Penelope Evans using thegame engineTwine.[3][6] Both of them had prior experience with fan communities: Evans mentioned having been a member ofmessage boards for the gameThe Sims 2 as a child and having nostalgic feelings for it, while Park said that although she did not miss old websites,bulletin board systems andmailing lists, they still were a part of her. Evans described the game's interactions as feeling like a real forum experience, saying that while people look at pixels at their screen, a real person is on the other side, and that both parties get to accept or reject the other, with the possibility of hurting them.[4]
After the completion of the development, they thought about how to launch the game, and came up with the idea to put together fake game boxes for the fictionalArc Symphony, consisting of a PlayStation-stylejewel case and JRPG-like cover art with inaccurate Japanese text.[1][4][5] The unnatural Japanese text on the case reads "Fly Shooting Free (of charge), Tactical, Flight Actions"(フライ射撃無料 タクティカル フライトの行動) A few of these were given out to friends as keepsakes, who would play along with the illusion that theArc Symphony JRPG was a real video game by posting about it on social media, sharing photographs of the jewel cases on the internet accompanied with comments about the nostalgic feelings they supposedly had for the game.[4][5] Park said that she liked this idea, since it replicated the game's premise of learning about a game through its fan community in real life.[5] Park and Evans brought the remaining cases to theToronto Comic Arts Festival, where more people joined in; according to Park, some people insisted that they remembered playing theArc Symphony JRPG, something she described as feeling surreal. In addition to the case, a fakefan site for the JRPG was created in the style of fan sites from the 1990s; it was coded by Park, and includes fakefan fiction. As she had never been interested in fan fiction herself, she described what she had written as "accurately bad".[4]
Following a countdown on the fan site, the game was released on May 15, 2017, through Park'sItch.io page,[7][8] and is available both as abrowser game and in a downloadable version playable onMicrosoft Windows,MacOS andLinux.[7] The game is also accessible from within Park and Evans' gameSubserial Network.[9]
Julie Muncy ofWired called the game "engaging [and] incredibly polished" despite its short playtime, and described it and its marketing as similar toperformance art.[3]Polygon's Allegra Frank found the game "amusing and quirky", and also commented positively on the marketing, saying that she was amazed by how it manipulated people's memories.[8] Gita Jackson atKotaku said that the marketing fooled her due to how accurate the fan site was to real performance of fandom in the 1990s, and called it part of what makes the game work, as it sets up nostalgia for the JRPG, making it easier to pretend to be a fan of it within the game. She described the game as feeling "like a snapshot of [a] world long lost", with an accurate cast of characters.[4] Brendan Caldwell atRock, Paper, Shotgun includedArc Symphony on a list of recommended free games, where he called its characters and the interactions between them realistic, and described it as fun to see the "quirks and squabbles" of fandoms as an unseen observer.[10]