It's not often that Smirkbox gets first dibs on anything, but we must have lucked out today. We are extremely happy to be the first ARG site to publish an interview with members of the very talented team behind The Art Of The Heist. Mike Monello of Haxan Flms and Brian Clark of GMD Studios were two members of the collaborative force that put together the Alternate Reality Game that impressed many longtime ARG fans. Here are their responses to an email interview sent out this week.

SB: We were very impressed by The Art of the Heist from the get go. What was the most important goal you you wanted the game to achieve when you launched it?

MM: There are two goals that were most important to me -- I wanted to push the level of interactivity as much as possible, and I wanted the game to sell more Audi A3's than they were expecting.

BC: Head exploding. Definitely head exploding was the most important goal. Amazing success in the head exploding on launch department. We really wanted you to feel like you had dropped into something with a rich history.

SB: This game journeyed pretty far into uncharted waters, as far as in-game/out-of-game aspects went. Were there any places in the game where you wish you could have done more 'blurring of the lines'?

BC: You wanted MORE blurring of the lines? If I had to pick some at random, I'd have added in a television show, a double-disk CD release, Virgil solving Perplex City and the recruiting of retrievers from an Ian look-alike contest at a mall. I think that was half the fun, really, popping up in surprising places and guises. There are always more surprises to be dreamed up. With a crime motif, there were some aspects that just shouldn't be blurred, but hopefully the in-game/out-of-game dichotomy is stretched in some interesting new ways.

MM: Well, the lawyers always seem to spoil the fun in this area! I wish we could have done more live webcasting from live environments like E3 and NY. Often the problem with webcasting was needing to get signed releases from everyone who walks into view, so we could only webcast where we had a great deal of control over the environment, or where everyone in the space was required to sign a release to enter. I wish we could have mentioned product names, bands, celebrities in the dialog to give it a better sense of reality. I especially wish we could have referred to real organizations like Interpol, the FBI, MI6, etc., rather than the legally safe generic "authorities." I would have liked to get a real magazine or newspaper to interview Nisha the character, the way VH1 interviewed Virgil.

SB: Your game played like a spy novel. Were there any 'sticky situations' with security that you had to find a quick solution for?

MM: We managed to do pretty good with security. Every live event had real security nearby -- sometimes we incorporated their presence into the scenario, like Virgil's bodyguard at E3, or the "suspicious looking guy" trailing Nisha and the NY retrievers at that event. Other times, they were incognito -- we had multiple security guards in various locations for the Chicago event, including two on the boat, below deck.

BC: I am so not going to touch that "sticky situation" softball. No, sir, not going to touch it. Virgil has rubbed off on you guys too much. But, to seriously answer your question, since the U.S. Government was one of the 120 co-sponsors of the project, we didn't have to ... worry ... about any security problems that couldn't be handled quickly, efficiently, and silently.

SB: Some of the swag in AOTH was pretty sweet. Will the public be able to purchase Last Resort Retrieval pins or other merchandise related to the game?

MM: There are no plans to sell pins or other swag. I think we will be giving away pins at ARGFest, though, so come to NY for that!

BC: Yes. Watch our eBay accounts carefully, they will likely go fast.

SB: Your game had many real world interactions. How did you end up picking the locations and events that were used in the game?

BC: We used a complex system involving lab monkeys, darts, various random automotive maps and a fortune cookie cipher (take the first letter of each word in your fortune and plug the string into Mapquest.) Or we'd just look at Mike and go, "Anywhere else you want to spend some quality relaxing time at, Mike?"

MM; The locations were determined by either the event being piggybacked (i.e. Coachella, E3, The AFI party in NY), or by desire to spread the locations beyond simple East Coast/West Coast geography (Atlanta, Chicago). There were some great locations that we had to pass on due to logistics or budget or both.

SB: Okay, now that the 'serious' questions are over, we can get to the fun stuff. How much fun was it working with the ARG community members, like HitsHerMark and j5?

MM: HitsHerMark was the best -- she was so cool to have taken that step with us and cross over to the "other side," and I thought she was a great perfomer -- she played her kidnapping perfectly! j5 and the rest of the Atlanta crew were amazing -- they were the pioneers, really. They had no previous event to pattern their mission on, and it was our first real heavy interaction so it was a volatile situation and they worked it like pros. All the gamers who interacted with the characters were awesome, really. Everyone played it just perfectly and seemed to have fun with it. Working with players is scary and exhilarating because you just can't anticipate what they are going to do -- it's something completely unique to ARGs.

BC: I was constantly disturbed by the ARG community's amazing skill at lying, deception, tattling and secret keeping. They all seemed destined for successful lives in politics! J5 for Senate! Ehsan for School Board! Rose for the Supreme Court! HitsHerMark for President!

SB: We've noticed that many of the most successful ARGs have characters that are, um, easy on the eyes. Will there be a sequel for The Art of the Heist, and if so, will there be another jaw-droppingly beautiful heroine involved?

BC: Who knows what the future might bring, but I'll add "jaw-dropping" to "brain exploding" on the list of goals for AOTH 2+ *smile*

MM: Swell idea! Maybe a voluptuous villainess for Nisha and Ian to go up against. Of course we'd probably need to have a live webcast/event at some sort of mud wrestling competition... oh this is definitely going places!

SB: Speaking of eye candy, the women really enjoyed seeing Ian dance shirtless in the second easter egg video. Was it ever considered that Virgil/Gunter/Emile might also give us a shirtless dance?

MM: It was like pulling teeth getting those guys to put their shirts on for the events! Every time we were ready to roll, there they were, shirtless, oiled up, and striking all kinds of poses. It was a constant struggle:

"why can't we dance shirtless and oiled up?"
"Because it's E3, and no one does that at E3!"
"Well there's a first time for everything, you know"
"How about we put the shirts on for this event and see about doing that at the next one?"
"That's what you said at Coachella!"

BC: You didn't notice that we included that all in Virgil's dark place? Jeeze, that means there are still parts of the Evil Cube you haven't completely solved. No wonder there wasn't much spec about why Virgil had so many shirtless dancing photos of Gunter and Emile. Gunter's coughing shirtless dance was the key to the whole ending!

SB: Did Audi come to you, or did you approach Audi? And, in the future, would you consider working with Lada, a Russian automaker with some sweet rides?

BC: Like Nisha, we have no opposition to working with Russians, in Russia or (if you give us a few days) in Russian if the need might require.

MM: McKinney-Silver, Audi's ad agency approached us to develop the campaign for the A3. We have had some success doing things online, from Blair Witch and Freakylinks to the Beta-7 campaign for Sega and the Legend of the Sacred Urns campaign for Sharp, so they came to us to do something that pushed the edge. We were fortunate that they are such great collaborators, and they had the vision to push this thing to reality.

SB: You have to let inquiring minds know -- will there be an Art of the Heist wedding spectacular between Ian and Nisha?

MM: I don't think Nisha is the marrying type, but perhaps a "home video" might surface, or maybe someone will "hack" Nisha's cell phone and find some interesting videos and post them online. Better keep checking their intranet for that! *wink*

BC: Not if Virgil has anything to say about it!

SB: What's the running price on goons now a days? Smirkbox has been getting some threats and we need to take care of the compet..err, protect ourselves.

MM: Good help is hard to fine and that goes double for goons. Be prepared to spend a good chunk of change if you want the job done right.

BC: Depends on whether you are hiring locally or expect them to travel. GoonstoGo.com has a great collection of the traveling type, but they cost quite a bit more. So basically your Trent and Rogers get paid a lot more than your Emiles and Scapegoats.

SB: Finally, which character was creepier -- the Blair Witch, or Virgil Tatum?

BC: Poor Virgil is just misunderstood! And well, kinda vain. And with a dangerous obsession streak. From his really deep-rooted and unresolved psychological issues. And with a dark background hiding potential violence. Okay, probably Virgil, but we'd really have to see how he is "beyond the grave" before we'd know for sure.

MM; Actually, nothing is creepier than Emile when he takes his shirt off and dances. That's enough to make anyone run screaming in fear!

Special thanks to Rowan for contributing some of the questions.