Choose Our Own Adventure

When I played the San Francisco Perplex City game, I quipped that since the story underlying the day relied on us solving a certain number of puzzles, we should all just give up and see what happened. I couldn't build enough momentum for my idea, but I imagine that somehow we would've met the goal anyway. But if the alternate reality game genre relies on real-world activity, shouldn't players be able to influence the story in unpredictable ways?

That thought occurred to me again as I skimmed the surface of the Heroes 360 Experience, an ARG/marketing device for the TV show Heroes. ARGs have been used to market movies and television before, but this one seems pretty extensive. And the producers have said that this is a dry run for an even larger game next season.

So here's what I wonder. Some of the Heroes ARG storyline recruits players to solve some problem faced by a key character, a behind-the-scenes thread that ties into the TV show's storyline. What if we weren't able to help? Or chose not to? Wouldn't it be cool if the producers had to modify the TV show's story to account for the fact that we either had or had not solved some series of puzzles? If the writers had to keep ahead of, but also deal with, the reality of the ARG?