Alternate reality game

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An alternate reality game (ARG) is a type of game that overlaps the game world with reality, by utilizing real world media, in order to deliver an interactive narrative experience to the players -- a kind of surrealism.

ARGs are typified by involving the players with the story and its characters, by encouraging them to explore the story, solve plot based challenges, and interact with game characters. ARGs can be delivered via websites, email, telephones, or any other means of communication which is readily available to the players.

ARGs are growing in popularity, with new games appearing regularly. They tend to be free to play, with costs absorbed either through supporting products (collectable puzzle cards in the case of Perplex City) or because they support or promote an existing product such as Halo 2 (in the case of I Love Bees) and Nokia products.

Contents 1 Concepts 1.1 Real World Media 1.2 Alternate Reality & This Is Not A Game 1.3 The Narrative Experience 1.4 Player Collaboration 1.5 Interaction 2 History and examples of ARGs 3 Current trends in ARGs 3.1 Self-funded 3.2 Playing with different forms of media 3.3 Large live events & street games 4 External links 4.1 Introductory ARG resources 4.2 Main resources 4.3 Other relevant sites

[edit] Concepts

[edit] Real World Media

Alternate Reality Games make heavy use of real world media such as Internet websites, e-mail, telephones, newspapers, television, or even real world interaction. There is no restriction on the medium used to deliver an ARG, as long as the targeted player base eventually has access to that medium.

The most common medium used to date in ARGs is the Internet. ARGs generally feature a large game-reality consisting of multiple websites, all of which are presented as being real (non-fiction). The games are so ubiquitous that sometimes it is difficult for the players to tell if a website is real or part of the game.

The use of pervasive media outlets that extend into the players' everyday creates a situation where the game's alternate reality and the real world collide. As the in-game elements and real world overlap, the lines are blurred between the game world and reality. Some games have extended into players' everyday lives by pushing information towards players at certain times (e.g. SMS messages), whereas others have required players to initiate all communication to advance the plot.

By crossing over the game world into the real world, ARGs create a self-sustaining alternate reality that never admits to being a game, but a universe coexisting with and crossing into the real world.

[edit] Alternate Reality & This Is Not A Game

The phrase "This Is Not A Game" (TINAG) is central to the ARG genre and has been used both as a design philosophy and a player mantra.

As part of the design philosophy behind the Beast, it was first presented publicly by the lead designer of the game, Elan Lee, at the 2001 Game Developers Conference. The idea is that in order to present a believable story world or alternate reality, everything within the game reality must react appropriately. If there is a phone number given, it should work or have a good reason not to (no fake numbers such as 555-1234). If an email address is available, it should accept and, perhaps, respond to emails. If a website is mentioned, it should exist. The same is true of the characters who must act and react as if they truly exist. The result is a design philosophy that leads to a game that feels much more real. Everything within the game world believes itself to be true and reacts accordingly - it is not a game.

TINAG also frequently appears in player discussions as a mantra. This is especially true when players are confronted with a boundary between the real and fictional worlds. It has also appeared in several games and was the title of one of the first books devoted to the genre, This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming.

By maintaining that the game is real, the creators do not reveal themselves while the game is running. The creators of the game have thus been given the title of "Puppet Masters", running the game from behind the "Curtain", and creating a universe which is entirely self-contained and filled with a vast array of assets which are used to tell a story.

[edit] The Narrative Experience

ARGs deliver a story by breaking it into several pieces that are delivered over different media, and allowing the players to combine those pieces in order to reassemble the story and advance the plot. For example, an ARG might convey the relationship between two characters by employing a personal blog for each character, and creating entries that detail the actions and emotions of each character. The players would then proceed to piece together the story by cross-referencing different entries and creating a timeline of the correspondences between the two characters.

This fragmented approach in delivering the story translates into an enjoyable challenge for the players, who in turn form groups to discuss the different elements of the game, and attempt to speculate on what the current story elements mean and how the plot might advance.

[edit] Player Collaboration

ARGs inherently lead to and encourage player collaboration. The Internet is a highly pervasive medium used for delivering ARGs, and thus creates a perfect environment for the rapid delivery and dissemination of information.

If an ARG used an advertisement in a magazine to deliver a message, then only one player needs to acquire that magazine and scan the advertisement in order to publish it online for all players to access. The players can then use online resources such as forums or chatrooms to discuss the message and how it relates to the story.

Thus the player base for an ARG becomes a unified collective, with the majority of player base composed of lurkers following the discussion amongst the more vocal player base, but jumping in at various stages in order to make a contribution which the active players might have missed or did not have access to. This blend of passive and active players sharing experiences and knowledge is unique to ARGs, and is an integral part of playing the game.

[edit] Interaction

ARGs encourage the collective player base to interact with the game world by allowing players to respond via the same media used to deliver the story. For example, a player might receive an e-mail from one of the characters containing an encrypted message. The player would then solve the encryption to reveal a website address which contains another message from the character, and requires further interaction on the site itself.

Interaction constitutes a major foundation of ARGs. By interacting with the game world, players can actively advance and influence the plot of the game. The players' actions (or lack thereof) has a direct effect on the game and its progress.

The interactive nature of ARGs, combined with the element of player collaboration, has led to the creation of communities which flourish around individual games and the ARG genre as a whole.

[edit] History and examples of ARGs

• The concept of the ARG was predicted in the 1905 G. K. Chesterton short story "The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown", presented in the collection 'The Club of Queer Trades'.

• ARGs grew from traditional role-playing games (RPGs), which first came to prominence with the introduction of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. Jordan Weisman, co-founder of leading ARG design company 4orty 2wo Entertainment previously founded leading RPG company FASA in 1980.

• Other roots include reader-influenced online fiction sites. The first of these was the all-text QuantumLink Serial by Tracy Reed on AOL (then called Quantum Computer Services), which debuted in 1988, and was played out in online chat rooms, emails and traditional narrative. The series also went by the name The AppleLink Serial and The PC-Link Serial on those services before they were all unified under the AOL brand when Quantum changed its name. After each week's chapter was published, users wrote to author Reed suggesting how they could be part of the story. Each week Reed chose one to a handful of users on each of the three services and wrote them into the story, depicting how they interacted with the fictional characters. The project was personally greenlighted by AOL founder Steve Case and produced by Kathi McHugh. Later titles, the most famous of which was The Spot by Scott Zakarin, added photos and video to the stories, but typically featured less user interaction.

• Wizards of the Coast developed some of the first ARGs (before the term was coined) to promote the collectable card game Netrunner in 1996. The first "Webrunner" game, Webrunner: The Hidden Agenda, cast players as futuristic hackers breaking into the Futokora Corporation's computers. The sequel Webrunner II: The Forbidden Code turned the tables, casting players as security agents defending against hackers. Wizards did several more such games in the late 1990s for its games BattleTech and Magic: The Gathering, and one more ("Horsemen") for Hecatomb.

• The Game, a 1997 film starring Michael Douglas, featured a fictional company that developed and implemented large-scale ARG/LARP games for the amusement of wealthy people. Michael Douglas' character is caught up in a conspiracy when his brother buys him a "game" for his birthday. However, there are no known real-world ARGs tied into the one in the movie.

• One of the most commercial ARGs to date remains the Nokia Game, which ran between 1999 and 2005, with a different story each year. The game used phone calls, SMS, TV adverts, newspaper articles and emails to give clues to the player. As each game lasted only a maximum of 3 weeks, deadlines for mini-games were strict, with many sections of the game only giving players one chance to solve it.

• The first wildly successful ARG was a game developed to promote the movie A.I. by a small team at Microsoft. At its peak, this game was being played simultaneously by many thousands of users, and created something of a cultural phenomenon when it was released; it was referred to by its developers (and now by players, as well) as "The Beast", and is considered the granddaddy of the genre it created. The players were known as Cloudmakers, and still self-identify themselves as such in ARG communities.

• One of the earliest large-scale examples of this was the EA game known as Majestic. Though the game itself suffered commercial failure and had significant problems, it remains a useful initial case study for the genre. While development on Majestic began before "The Beast" was launched, Majestic was made available to the public at the tail end of this A.I.-related campaign. Change Agents Out of Control was an early ARG that actually grew from the demise of Majestic.

• Lockjaw, written by former cloudmakers, was one of the first successful independent ARGs. It kept the momentum started by "The Beast" alive and solidified the current ARG community as popular genre websites ARGN and UnFiction were developed by active Lockjaw players during the game's early 2002 run.

• In July 2001, Dark Carnival Games published Morton's List: The End to Boredom, an offline game in book format that uses dice to give players randomly determined activities to do in real life.

• In September 2002, ABC brought alternate reality gaming to the television screen with the show Push, Nevada. Produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, the show created a fictional city in Nevada, named Push. When advertising the show, they advertised the city instead, with billboards, news reports, company sponsors, and other realistic life-intruding forms. During each episode of the show, highly cryptic clues would be revealed on screen, while other hidden clues could be found on the city's website. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled mid-season, and all of the remaining clues were released to the public. Clever watchers eventually figured out that the show would still be paying out its $1 million prize during Monday Night Football. The last clue was revealed during half-time, prompting those fortunate enough to have solved the puzzle to call a telephone number. The first person to call received $1 million.

• Uru Live, a now-defunct (Update: Uru Live is to be restarted by Turner Broadcasting System/GameTap) "immersive" MMORPG created by Cyan Worlds, was the culmination of nearly a decade of subtle (and, in the later years, not-so-subtle) overtones in dialogue between the software company and the fan community, in which the former "passively maintained" the existence of the fictional D'ni race. The hired actors who formed the D'ni Restoration Council served as the central feature of the ARG experience.

• In October 2003, the team that developed Lockjaw launched Metacortechs, a game based on the Matrix universe. Notable not only as a Fan fiction effort, the game was a successful independent ARG, with a larger and more active player base than many professionally produced games.

• In October 2003, the video game In Memoriam was released - the game CD was supposedly created by a serial killer whose mystery needs solving by the player, and the game involves receiving e-mails and accessing websites along with the information on the CD.

• In 2003, Halloween's Pursuit began in New Mexico. Based on the premise that $77,000 had been hidden somewhere in the United States, the game's puzzles involved real-world locations and intricate book-based challenges. The game fizzled out in 2005, and it has never been proven to be connected to a specific marketing or branding effort, even though many fans have suspicions.

• Acheron - Could you decide? Players were led on a rough and tumble adventure to locate Jake, a graduate assistant at New River University. Along the way, they discover a story of intrigue, time travel, and betrayal that caught everyone by surprise.

• In 2004, an independent Alternate Reality Game advertised the re-release DVD edition of the George Lucas movie THX1138. Created and moderated by VirtuQuest, the SEN5241 game took players through the post THX era in the underground world through the thoughts and actions of SEN5241. The main goal was to defeat OMM, the ruling entity of the THX world.

• In 2004, the I Love Bees ARG (also known as Haunted Apiary) was developed in relation to the Xbox game Halo 2 and set in the vast fictional universe that has grown around the Halo franchise. This ARG departed from the traditional puzzle-led form to be more story-led. Its authors, who also created The Beast, had in the interim founded an ARG design and development company, 4orty 2wo Entertainment.

• Likely in response to 'I Love Bees', 2Advanced Studios developed another ARG, Channel 51, which was centered on a fictional company called Orbis Labs. This ARG was used as a promotional vehicle for Nintendo's GameCube game Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Also, as a parody of 'I Love Bees,' Nintendo created many similar-sounding websites).

• July 2004, the Shadow Government launched StreetWars, a traveling, city wide, month-long water gun assassination competition. The game incorporates real-life actors, web puzzles and real-life missions in the players' quest to "assassinate" another player.

• October 2004, the ReGenesis Extended Reality game launched in tandem with the Canadian television series ReGenesis. Clues and stories from the series sent players online to stop a bioterrorist attack.

• In 2005, Palladium Books launched lazlosociety to coincide with the second edition of their roleplaying game Beyond the Supernatural. The website exists both in the game and in real life. In the game, it is the website in which characters (both player characters and non-player characters) discuss supernatural events and sightings around the world. In real life, the website is a message board in which players post "in character" threads about events in the game.

• In January 2005, This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming was released, the first book to cover the phenomenon of Alternate Reality Gaming in detail, providing an overview and history of the genre, and tips for players and would-be puppetmasters.

• March 29, 2005, The Art of the Heist launched. Developed as a promotional ARG for Audi, The Art of the Heist took things to a new level with multiple realworld events/missions and extensive media placement.

• April 2005, Perplex City began in earnest, after a years' worth of teaser/previews. Perplex City is currently still playing, and is a commercial ARG involving the purchase of puzzle cards as well as an online trail and live events.

• September 24, 2005, a poker-themed ARG called Last Call Poker launched. It is considered to be 4orty 2wo Entertainment's first major ARG since I Love Bees, and featured both online poker play and cemetery-based live events and poker tournaments across the country.

• December 10, 2005, the IGDA's ARG SIG was founded "to bring together those already designing, building, and running ARGs, in order to share knowledge, experience, and ideas for the future."

• January 2006, the first trailhead for Who is Benjamin Stove? is found.

• January 2006, Brazilian magazine Superinteressante illustrates an article about ARGs with an ARG, that ended when the Orkut's profile of the "organizer" was found. In February, they made one again, but harder to discover (the website of the ARG was written in the magazine, but in Wingdings).

• January 2006, SFZero was launched in San Francisco. It is significant as one of the first non-commercial ARGs and introduced a non-narrative task-based structure to the genre.

• March, 2006, edoc laundry [note: "edoc" is simply "code" backwards] was launched. This ARG venture uses clothes as its primary communication medium, with consumers deciphering the codes hidden within the garment. The codes are then input into the website to reveal pieces of a story about the murder of a band manager.

• In May 2006, the makers of the TV series Lost started their own ARG called the Lost Experience. American television network ABC joined with Channel 4 in the UK and Australia's Channel 7 in promoting a revamped web site for The Hanso Foundation. The site is focused on the fictitious company that is prevalent in the storyline of Lost, the TV series. The game has been promoted through television advertisements (run during Lost episodes) featuring the company's name, web site URL and one of three telephone numbers (depending on which part of the world the ad is being run) that connects to the Hanso Foundation company directory. Players can find out more about the Lost universe by accessing the web site. Several additional websites have been created to further the game and offer clues.

• Also in May 2006, two websites were launched in anticipation of Robison Wells' novel, The Counterfeit. The first, Trial of the Century, was a fictional collaborative blog, "written" by the main characters of the novel. The second, The Unknown Patriot, was a seemingly unrelated site, dealing with the search for a fleeing member of the Illuminati--effectively a treasure hunt.

• In June 2006, Catching The Wish, the sequel to the successful 2003 ARG Chasing The Wish and the first game to incorporate a printed work as the center piece of the game, launches from an in-game website about the comic.

• In July 2006, Centrodemagia.com released The Hunting To The Horcrux, a game based on the Harry Potter book series. In the game, the British Ministry of Magic discovers that one of the seven horcruxes had come to stop in Brazil.

• ABC Family also launched an ARG inspired by Fallen. This game follows a young girl named Faith Arella as she travels around the world in search of her parents. A mysterious device called The Oculus is tracked by the investigative team (and guide) at The Ocular Effect. This game is still underway.

• In mid September, 2006, TorGame launched Waking City - a 13 day ARG in Toronto, Canada that blends elements of narrative, puzzle hunting, and urban exploration together with the mixed media and reality bending nature of ARGs, focusing primarily on real, rather than online, spaces.

• In late September 2006, Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman's book/ARG "Cathy's Book: If Found Call 650-266-8233" is due to be released. The novel is essentially an ARG wrapped up in book form with an "evidence packet" attached. 17-year-old Cathy has just had her dad die and her boyfriend dump her, but when she tries to find out why Victor left her, things get very strange and she follows a trail that leads her through biotech and ancient Chinese secrets.

• Another late September 2006 launch, Ny Takma ran for 2 months through October and November. This game followed various activities of two men searching for answers about the Bermuda Triangle, leading the players to find out that the daughter of one of the men was a child from Atlantis. The players were introduced to an interesting word cipher masked in a so-called Atlantean language termed: Lanti. The player controlled events led to a conclusion video. This was the second ARG designed by Naked Rabbit Studios.

[edit] Current trends in ARGs

[edit] Self-funded

As highlighted above, a number of teams are experimenting with different revenue models. Despite a few failed attempts at a pay-to-play model (most notably, Majestic), games had either been funded from the pockets of the teams that created them, with minimal attempts at recovering their costs let alone covering wages or turning a profit, or created as a part of a promotional or extended reality campaign until Perplex City launched with its collectable puzzle cards in 2005. Since then, we've seen a number of other teams attempting to use a similar model. Currently, there are games working on a pay-to-play basis (Waking City), using additional products and merchandise (Catching The Wish), and taking advantage of in-game advertising.

[edit] Playing with different forms of media

From comic books, to collectable puzzle cards, to a very non-traditional traditional book, game designers have recently been experimenting with forms of media that had not yet been utilized within the genre. Additionally, games make more use of a wider variety of media types within a single game.

Much of the experimenting with different forms of media actually relates to the funding of the game. For example, the collectable puzzle cards in Mind Candy's Perplex City not only helps to draw players into the alternate reality game, but they also provide the main source of revenue. Catching the Wish, the sequel to Chasing the Wish (2003), does something similar with comic books. And, while also utilizing in-game advertising, Cathy's Book by award winning author and experienced ARG writer Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman uses a book to lead readers and participants into a rather deep on and offline mystery.

[edit] Large live events & street games

Alternate Reality Games have been taking to the streets more and more since I Love Bees sent its players on a quest to find (and answer!) payphones throughout America (and select few outside of the US). While going to and answering payphones had an element of play to them (with singing and occasionally dressing for the occasion) a recent trend has combined elements of Big Games into the ARG which can stand apart from the ARG and only tangentially apply to the online story. A great example of this would be 42 Entertainment's Last Call Poker that offered games of Tombstone Hold'em (a variation of Texas Hold'em that had players completing their poker hand with tombstones) in a different city every weekend throughout the run of the game.

Recently, there has been a greater focus on use of real-life spaces and on large-scale public events. The Art of the Heist featured more extensive and diverse live events than previous ARGs (some of which were almost cinematically choreographed), Perplex City has held live events with attendance in the hundreds, and some games, such as TorGame's Waking City, are moving the main focus from the Internet to public spaces.

[edit] External links

[edit] Introductory ARG resources

• Sean Stewart's introduction and definition of A.I. Web Game (The Beast)
• Blurring the Line Between Games and Life (CNET)
• Alternate Reality Gaming Quickstart Guide by Brooke Thompson
• History of Alternate Reality Games by Greg Carnegie

[edit] Main resources

• Alternate Reality Gaming Network - the hub of a network of sites dedicated to Alternate Reality Gaming. News, reviews, commentary and resources, plus an opt-in mailing list to be notified of new games as they are discovered.
• unforums - the genre's largest message boards dedicated to ARGs (since September 2002). Parent site: unfiction.com.
• Immersion Unlimited - community of players who build and play games, similar, albeit much smaller in volume than unforums.
• patmo.de - ARGReporter - a German news site dedicated to ARGs
• IGDA ARG SIG - Special Interest Group on Alternate Reality Games development. A free group run by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) for all professional and hobbyist game developers to discuss, analyze, share, and learn about ARG development.

[edit] Other relevant sites

• Abuse of ARGs A fictional account of messing with a Majestic fan.
• Cross-media entertainment A comprehensive list of top ARG's as of March 2006 by Christy Dena.
• ARG's in Virtual Spaces A beginners guide on using Second Life to create and plan self-contained ARGs from Gary Hayes, PersonalizeMedia.
• [1] The Club of Queer Trades, an early prediction of the ARG concept.