Alternate reality game
Encyclopedia
An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative
that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.
The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real-time and evolves according to participants' responses, and characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence
as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and often work together with a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimedia
, such as telephones, email and mail but rely on the Internet
as the central binding medium.
ARGs are growing in popularity, with new games appearing regularly and an increasing amount of experimentation with new models and subgenres. They tend to be free to play, with costs absorbed either through supporting products (e.g. collectible puzzle cards fund Perplex City
) or through promotional relationships with existing products (for example, I Love Bees was a promotion for Halo 2
, and the Lost Experience
and FIND815 promoted the television show Lost
). However, pay-to-play models are not unheard of.
ARGs are now being recognized by the mainstream entertainment world: The Fallen Alternate Reality game http://web.archive.org/web/20070317204354/http://www.occulareffect.com/, produced in the fall of 2007 by Xenophile Media Inc.http://www.xenophile.ca/ was awarded a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Achievement for an Interactive Television Program. Xenophile Media Inc.'s ReGenesis Extended Reality Game http://web.archive.org/web/20060219055154/http://www.regenesistv.com/ won an International Interactive Emmy Award in 2007 and in April 2008 The Truth About Marika
won the iEmmy for Best interactive TV service. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts recognises Interactivity as a category in the British Academy Television Awards.
and street games like SF0
as well.
While addressing all of the various attempts at definitions and arguments for and against them is beyond the scope of this article, defining a few terms unique to ARG parlance, identifying precursors and influences on the development of the genre, and comparing and contrasting ARGs to other similar forms of entertainment may be helpful in aiding understanding of the form.
's 1905 short story
"The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown" (part of a collection entitled The Club of Queer Trades) seems to predict the ARG concept, as does John Fowles
' 1965 novel The Magus
. The performance artists in Delany
's science fiction novel Triton
(published in 1976) appear to be playing a type of ARG. Ludic texts such as the popular Choose Your Own Adventure children's novels may also have provided some inspiration. Reader-influenced online fiction such as AOL
's QuantumLink Serial
provides a model that incorporates audience influence into the storytelling in a manner similar to that of ARGs, as do promotional online games like Wizards of the Coast's Webrunner games. Other possible antecedents include performance art and other theatrical forms that attempt to directly engage the audience.
The One Game
, a British television drama serial screened in 1988, was entirely based on the premise of the protagonist being forced to play an ARG (referred to as a "reality game" in the script).
Due to the influence the Beast exerted over the form of later ARGs and the willingness of its creators to talk about its development, its sources of inspiration are both particularly relevant to the evolution of the modern ARG and somewhat more verifiable than other possible antecedents. Elan Lee
, one of its creative principals, cites the 1997 movie The Game
as an inspiration, as well as the Beatles
' "Paul is dead
" phenomenon. Sean Stewart, another of the three principal designers, notes that designing and running an ARG bears some similarities to running an RPG
, and the influence of that particular game form is further suggested by the fact that Jordan Weisman, the game's third main designer, was also the founder of leading RPG company FASA. Stewart also noted that the sort of "creative, collaborative, enthusiastic scavengering behavior" upon which the Beast depended has its antecedents outside the arts: the Beast just "accidentally re-invented Science as pop culture entertainment."
The conspiracy in Thomas Pynchon
's The Crying of Lot 49
may be an ARG set up by Pierce Inverarity to bedevil Oedipa Maas, as may be the hallucinatory Turkish frontier across which A.W. Hill
's Stephan Raszer tracks his quarry in the current literary thriller Nowhere-Land.
and published on sfgate.com in 1996. It included most of the techniques above that would, in upcoming years, become the standard for most ARG games. The game included working voice mail phone numbers for characters, clues in the source code, character email addresses, off-site websites, real locations in San Francisco, real people (including then-Mayor
Willie Brown
), and of course a fictional mystery.
In 1997, a year prior to the release of the Douglas Adams
computer game Starship Titanic
, The Digital Village
launched a web site purporting to be that of an intergalactic travel agency called Starlight Travel, which in the game is the Starship Titanic's parent company. The site combined copious amounts of Monty Python
-esque writing (by Michael Bywater
) with ARG-type interactivity.
The marketing for the 1999 movie The Blair Witch Project
resembled ARGs in many ways (and some of its makers went on to create the 2005 Audi promotional ARG The Art of the Heist
), expanding the world of the movie online, adding backstory, and treating the fiction as reality through real-world media such as fliers and a fake documentary on the Sci-Fi Channel. However, perhaps in part due to the subject material and the absence of overt metacommunications that this was fiction, it also resembles an internet hoax or attempt to create an urban legend.
Pervasive play games like the Go Game
and the Nokia Game
also incorporated many elements similar to ARGs (although they tended to lack the narrative element central to ARGs) and prefigured the public play components of large-scale corporate ARGs like I Love Bees, The Art of the Heist and Last Call Poker.
Electronic Arts' Majestic began development in 1999, although it didn't launch until after the Beast had concluded, in 2001. Featuring phone calls, emails and other media that involved players in a multiplatform narrative, the game was eventually cancelled due to lack of players. This was due to many factors, ranging from the monthly subscription fee (as part of Electronic Arts' EA Online venture) to Majestic's unfortunate timing and subject matter in relation to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Many players also criticized the absence of the TINAG principle (e.g. in-game phone calls were preceded by an announcement that they were part of the game, although these announcements were optional based on user preference).
and based on Stanley Kubrick
's unfinished project but also a planned series of Microsoft
computer games based on the film, Microsoft's Creative Director Jordan Weisman
and another Microsoft game designer, Elan Lee
, conceived of an elaborate murder mystery played out across hundreds of websites, email messages, faxes, fake ads, and voicemail messages. They hired Sean Stewart
, an award-winning science fiction
/fantasy
author, to write the story and Pete Fenlon
, an experienced adventure game "world builder," to serve as developer and content lead. The game, dubbed "the Citizen Kane of online entertainment" by Internet Life
, was a runaway success that involved over three million active participants from all over the world during its run and would become the seminal example of the nascent ARG genre. An early asset list for the project contained 666 files, prompting the game's puppetmasters to dub it "the Beast
", a name which was later adopted by players. A large and extremely active fan community called the Cloudmakers formed to analyze and participate in solving the game, and the combined intellect, tenacity and engagement of the group soon forced the puppetmasters to create new subplots, devise new puzzles, and alter elements of the design to keep ahead of the player base. Somewhat unusual for a computer-based game, the production engaged equal numbers of male and female participants, and drew players from a wide spectrum of age groups and backgrounds.
Although the Beast ran for only three months, it prompted the formation of a highly organized and intensely engaged community that remains active years after the game concluded. Perhaps more significantly, it inspired a number of its participants to create games adapting and expanding the model, extending it from an anomalous one-time occurrence to a new genre of entertainment and allowing the community to grow even after the Beast itself concluded. Members of the Cloudmakers group went on to form ARGN, the primary news source for the genre, and Unfiction, its central community hub, as well as designing the first successful and widely played indie ARGs, such as LockJaw and Metacortechs, and corporate efforts such as Perplex City.
games, and the inclusion of player personas in the game. While the numbers never rivaled those of The Beast, the game proved both that it was possible for developers to create these games without corporate funding or promotion, and that there was interest in the ARG form beyond a one-time audience for a production on the Beast's scale. Lockjaw marked the start of the ARG as a genre of gaming, rather than simply a one-time occurrence.
Shortly before Lockjaw's conclusion, players discovered a game that seemed to revolve around the movie Minority Report. Despite speculation to the contrary, the game (known as Exocog) was not an official promotion for the film, but an experiment in interactive storytelling by Jim Miller. Inspired by the independent Lockjaw effort, Dave Szulborski
introduced ChangeAgents, a spinoff of EA's failed Majestic ARG, to the ARGN audience, then followed it with two additional installments. During this time, Szulborski also created a successful grassroots game not based on the Majestic universe, called Chasing the Wish. Just before the release of the third and the final Matrix
movie, the team that developed Lockjaw launched Metacortechs, an ARG based on that universe. The fan fiction effort was very successful, reached a larger and more active player base than many professionally produced games, and was at first assumed by many to be an officially sanctioned promotion for the movie. Metacortechs was followed by an ever-increasing number of grassroots ARGs.
In the wake of these successful, low-budget independent ARGs, an active "grassroots" development community began to evolve within the genre. While the quality of the grassroots games varies wildly, amateur storytellers, web designers, and puzzle creators continue to provide independently developed ARGs for the active player community.
, another of the moderators, created the two websites that have become the central hub of the ARG community: ARGN and UnFiction. Due to their efforts, when Lockjaw ended, the players had a new community resource allowing them to assemble to play the games that were soon to follow. Unfiction now boasts over 26,000 members, and ARGN employs a staff of 15 volunteer writers to report on new games and other topics of interest to the community, as well as producing a weekly netcast.
("In Memoriam" in Europe) is a video game based on the same principles that appear in an ARG: an online enquiry, the game entering into the players real life environment, willingly confusing reality and fiction (real fact-based sites, emails…). Developed from 1999 onwards by the French studio Lexis Numérique, Missing Since January was launched by Ubisoft in Europe in October 2003 and by Dreamcatcher in the US in January 2004. In Missing Since January, using the internet, the player must attempt to decode a mysterious CD ROM broadcast by the police in order to find two missing people abducted by a serial killer. More than a hundred sites were created for this purpose. By and large, as the player advances in the enquiry, they are contacted by different characters that send emails. The follow-up, which appeared in 2006 under the title Evidence: The Last Ritual
("In Memoriam 2, The Last Ritual" in Europe) also allowed players to receive text messages and to speak on the phone with certain characters in the game.
. The result, I Love Bees, departed radically from the website-hunting and puzzle-solving that had been the focus of the Beast. I Love Bees wove together an interactive narrative set in 2004, and a War Of The Worlds-style radio drama set in the future, the latter of which was broken into 30-60 second segments and broadcast over ringing payphones worldwide. The game pushed players outdoors to answer phones, create and submit content, and recruit others, and received as much or more mainstream notice than its predecessor, finding its way onto television during a presidential debate, and becoming one of the New York Times' catchphrases of 2004. A slew of imitators, fan tributes and parodies followed. In 2005, a pair of articles profiling 42 Entertainment
appeared in Game Developer magazine and the East Bay Express
, both of which tied into an ARG created by the journalist and his editors.
The following spring, Audi launched The Art of the Heist
, developed by Audi ad agency McKinney+Silver, Haxan Films (creators of The Blair Witch Project
), to promote its new A3.
Roughly a year after I Love Bees, 42 Entertainment
produced Last Call Poker, a promotion for Activision's video game Gun. Designed to help modern audiences connect with the Western genre, Last Call Poker centered on a working poker site, held games of "Tombstone Hold 'Em" in cemeteries around the United States—as well as in at least one digital venue, World of Warcraft
's own virtual reality cemetery -- and sent players to their own local cemeteries to clean up neglected grave sites and perform other tasks.
At the end of 2005, the International Game Developers Association ARG Special Interest Group was formed "to bring together those already designing, building, and running ARGs, in order to share knowledge, experience, and ideas for the future." More recently, an ARG was created by THQ
for the game Frontlines: Fuel of War
around peak oil theories where the world is in a crisis over diminishing oil resources.
for other products, as in The LOST Experience, but at this time no large-scale game has attempted to fund itself solely through in-game advertising.
The first major attempt (other than EA's failed Majestic) to create a self-supporting ARG was Perplex City
, which launched in 2005 after a year's worth of teasers. The ARG offered a $200,000 prize to the first player to locate the buried Receda Cube and was funded by the sale of puzzle cards. The first season of the game ended in January 2007, when Andy Darley found the Receda Cube at Wakerly Great Wood in Northamptonshire, UK. Mind Candy
, the production company, has also produced a board game related to the ARG and plans to continue it with a second season beginning March 1, 2007. This model was delayed till June 1, and has again, been delayed to an unspecified date. Mind Candy's acceptance of corporate sponsorship and venture capital suggests that the puzzle cards alone are not enough to fully fund the ARG at this time.
In March 2006, Elan Lee
and Dawne Weisman founded edoc laundry, a company designed to produce ARGs using clothes as the primary platform. Consumers decipher the codes hidden within the garments and input the results into the game's main website to reveal pieces of a story about the murder of a band manager.
Reviving the pay-to-play model, Studio Cypher launched the first chapter of its "multiplayer novel" in May 2006. Each "chapter" is a mini-ARG for which participants who pay the $10 registration fee receive earlier access to information and greater opportunities to interact with characters than non-paying participants. VirtuQuest, a well-known corporate team, also attempted a pay-to-play model with Township Heights later in the year, but despite initial enthusiasm on the part of the ARG community, the game was not well-received due to the design team's use of player Hybrid-Names based on their real life names. Also the short run time frame was not appreciated by some seasoned players.
In June 2006, Catching the Wish launched from an in-game website about comic books based on its predecessor, 2003's Chasing the Wish. 42 Entertainment
released Cathy's Book
, by Sean Stewart
and Jordan Weisman
, in October 2006, shifting the central medium of this ARG from the internet to the printed page. The young-adult novel contains an "evidence packet" and expands its universe through websites and working phone numbers, but is also a stand-alone novel that essentially functions as an individually playable ARG. Neither the cost of creating the book nor sales figures are available (although it made both American and British bestseller lists) to determine whether the project was successfully self-funded.
It is difficult to judge the efficacy of self-funded ARG models at this time, but it seems likely that exploration of ways to fund large-scale ARGs without using them as marketing for other products will continue as the genre grows.
, the first ARG centered on a serious near-future scenario: a global oil shortage. Another ARG, Tomorrow Calling, appears to be a testbed for a future project focused on environmental themes and activism.
Serious ARGs introduce plausibility as a narrative feature to pull players into the game. People participate to experience, prepare for or shape an alternative life or future. The games thus have the potential to attract casual or non-players, because ’what if’ is a game anyone can play. Serious ARGs may therefore be sponsored by organizations with activist or educational goals; World Without Oil was a joint project of the Public Broadcasting Service's Independent Lens and its Electric Shadows Web-original programming.
Their serious subject matter may lead Serious ARGs to diverge from mainstream ARGs in design. Instead of challenging collective intelligence
to solve a gamemastered puzzle, World Without Oil’s puppetmasters acted as players to guide the “collective imagination” to create a multi-authored chronicle of the alternative future, purportedly as it was happening. By asking players to chronicle their lives in the oil-shocked alternative reality, the WWO game relinquished narrative control to players to a degree not seen before in an ARG.
In October 2008 The British Red Cross
created a serious ARG called Traces of Hope to promote their campaign about civilians caught up in conflict.
There are possible future Serious ARGs described in fiction. In his novel Halting State
, Charles Stross
foresightedly describes a number of possible ARGs, where players engage in seemingly fictional covert spy operations.
In 2008 the European Union funded an ARG to support motivation for multilingualism within European secondary school students called ARGuing for Multilingual Motivation in Web 2.0 http://arg.paisley.ac.uk/. As noted above in World Without Oil, to complete this ARG it was necessary to move away from the strict definitions of an ARG as listed. The ARG was by invitation only and players (students) knew they were going to play a game. This project is now completed and papers on the project and the resources produced for education (a Methodology and Teacher Training guides)are available and have been presented at the 3rd European Conference on Games Based Learning.
In 2008-2009 the MacArthur Foundation supported an ARG The Black Cloud to teach US high-school students about indoor air quality
. The project is active and allows teachers to rent sophisticated air quality sensors to run the game locally.
UCLA Film Department had its first Alternate Reality Game class, taught by Game Designer/Writer Flint Dille
in 2011 Winter Semester. The Class Built an ARG in one semester, culminating in a real world event which resolved the story. http://www.slideshare.net/dorianrichard/asek-core-arg
, a popular series of videos on YouTube
, relinquished an unprecedented amount of control to its audience by recognizing a fan-created game as the "official" ARG.
In August 2006, Hoodlum produced 'PSTRIXI' for Yahoo!7 Australia. PSTRIXI was designed around a young DJ Trixi and her boyfriend Hamish. Players were engaged across all of Yahoo!7's platforms and asked to help solve the mystery of Trixi's missing sister Max. The multiplatform ARG ran for 12 weeks and used websites, email, Yahoo!360 forums, Yahoo Radio and viral television to engage the audience in the game. PSTRIXI was a major success with the Yahoo!7 community; players spent an average of 16 minutes per session on the websites and returned more than once a week.
2007 got off to a strong start immediately, with Microsoft's Vanishing Point to promote the launch of Windows Vista
. The game was designed by 42 Entertainment
and, due in part to many large-scale real world events, such as a lavish show at the Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas as well as a prizes of a trip into space and having a winner's name engraved on all AMD Athlon 64 FX chips for a certain period of time, received large media attention. It was followed almost immediately by another 42 Entertainment
production for the release of the Nine Inch Nails
album Year Zero
, in which fans discovered leaked songs on thumb drives in washrooms at concerts, as well as clues to websites that describe a dystopian future. Monster Hunter Club, a promotion for the U.S. release of the movie The Host, launched by sending action figures and other items to prominent members of the ARG community. Perplex City
concluded its first season by awarding a $200,000 prize to a player who found the game's missing cube. They plan to continue the ARG into a second "season" under the name Perplex City Stories
, although they have said that there will not be a large grand prize this time around. Meigeist, produced by a new professional puppetmaster team, garnered a great deal of community attention and affection with a light, humorous storyline and numerous references to past ARGs. The teaser site for World Without Oil
, the first major "Serious ARG," was unveiled in March 2007; the game itself launched on April 30 and ran through June 1, gathering over 1500 videos, images, blog entries and voice mails to document the "Oil Crisis of 2007."
In May 2007, 42 Entertainment
launched Why So Serious, an ARG to promote the feature film The Dark Knight
. Hailed as being the single most impressive viral marketing campaign of all-time, it played out over 15 months, concluding in July 2008. Millions of players in 177 countries participated both online and taking part in live events, and it reached hundreds of millions through internet buzz and exposure.
In March 2008 McDonalds and the IOC launched Find The Lost Ring
, a global ARG promoting the 2008 Summer Olympics
in Beijing, China. The game was run simultaneously in six languages with new story lines developing in each, encouraging players to communicate with residents of other countries to facilitate sharing of clues and details of the game as a whole. American track and field athlete Edwin Moses
acted as a celebrity Game Master, and McDonalds Corporation promised to donate $100,000 (USD) to Ronald McDonald House Charities China
on behalf of the players.
February 2009 saw the launch of the ARG Something In The Sea, designed to promote the videogame Bioshock 2
by immersing players in character Mark Meltzer's quest to find his missing daughter. In addition to the messages, documents, photos and puzzles on the website, those lucky enough to be following along on August 8, 2009, were given the coordinates of 10 beaches worldwide and told to go there at dawn. Those who did found objects planted by the game runners designed to look like they had washed ashore from Bioshock
s fictional underwater city of Rapture. Players who wrote letters to Mark, whose address was advertised on the website, also sometimes received items such as wine bottles, records, or masks.
March 1, 2010, Valve Corporation
released an update via Steam
to their game Portal, adding a nondescript new achievement and some .wav files hidden within the game GCFs. The .wav files actually contained morse code
and SSTV
encoded images, some including certain numbers and letters. When pieced together in the correct order, these numbers and letters formed a 32-bit MD5
hash of a BBS
phone number. When traced, it was found to originate from Kirkland, Washington
, where Valve was based before moving to Bellevue, Washington
in 2003. Accessing the number as a bulletin board system yielded large ASCII art
images.
Also launched in March 2010, an ARG produced by David Varela at nDreams
featured the 2008 Formula 1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton
; entitled Lewis Hamilton: Secret Life, the game ran throughout the 2010 Formula 1 season, in nine languages, with live events in a dozen cities around the world.
, creators of The Blair Witch Project
, who would later go on to develop the well-known ARGs The Art of the Heist
and Who Is Benjamin Stove. Freakylinks employed a website designed to look like it had been created by amateur paranormal enthusiasts to generate internet interest in the show, which gathered a cult following but was canceled after 13 episodes. In September 2002, following a successful initial foray into ARG-like territory with 2001's Alias
web game, ABC
brought alternate reality gaming more definitively to the television screen with the show Push, Nevada
. Produced and co-written by Ben Affleck
, the show created a fictional city in Nevada, named Push. When advertising the show, LivePlanet
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. In October 2004, the ReGenesis
Extended Reality game launched in tandem with the Canadian television series ReGenesis. Produced by Xenophile Media
in association with Shaftesbury Films, clues and stories from the series sent players online to stop a bioterrorist attack.
In 2006, the TV tie-in ARG began to come into its own when there was a surge of ARGs that extended the worlds of related television shows onto the internet and into the real world. As with Push, Nevada
, ABC led the way, launching three TV tie-in ARGs in 2006: Kyle XY
, Ocular Effect (for the show Fallen) and The LOST Experience (for the show LOST
). 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 was focused on a fictitious company prevalent in the storyline of the TV series, and the game was promoted through television advertisement
s run during LOST episodes. The Fallen Alternate Reality Game was launched in tandem with the Fallen TV movie for ABC Family and was originally conceived by Matt Wolf
and created by Matt Wolf
(Double Twenty Productions) in association with Xenophile Media
. "I am humbled by this honor..." said Wolf when accepting the Emmy for The Fallen Alternate Reality Game at the 59th Annual Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, live at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on September 8, 2007.
NBC
followed suit in January 2007, beginning an ARG for its hit TV series Heroes
launched through an in-show reference to the website for Primatech Paper, a company from the show, which turned out to be real. Text messages and emails led players who applied for "employment" at the site to secret files on the show's characters.
In May 2007, the BBC
commissioned Kudos and Hoodlum to produce an interactive ARG for their flagship drama series Spooks
, "Spooks Interactive." The game enlists players to become MI5 agents who join the Section D team on missions crucial to the security of the UK, and launched on September 26. In 2008 it won the Interactivity Award at the British Academy Television Awards and the Interactive Innovation -Content Award at the British Academy Craft Awards.
The November 9, 2007 episode of Numb3rs
entitled "Primacy" featured alternate reality gaming, and launched the ARG Chain Factor, which centered on players using a flash-based puzzle game to unknowingly destroy the world's economy on the whim of one of the characters from the "Primacy" episode.
In January 2008, BBC
launched "Whack the Mole" for the CBBC show M.I. High in which viewers are asked to become M.I. High field agents and complete tasks to capture a mole that has infiltrated the organization.
CBS
made an ARG for Jericho
to promote the series in 2007.
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.
The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real-time and evolves according to participants' responses, and characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and often work together with a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
, such as telephones, email and mail but rely on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
as the central binding medium.
ARGs are growing in popularity, with new games appearing regularly and an increasing amount of experimentation with new models and subgenres. They tend to be free to play, with costs absorbed either through supporting products (e.g. collectible puzzle cards fund Perplex City
Perplex City
Perplex City was a long-term alternate reality game presented by Mind Candy, a London-based development team. The first "season" of the game had players looking for "The Receda Cube" , a priceless scientific and spiritual artifact to the people of a fictional metropolis known as "Perplex City",...
) or through promotional relationships with existing products (for example, I Love Bees was a promotion for Halo 2
Halo 2
Halo 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved...
, and the Lost Experience
Lost Experience
The Lost Experience was an alternate reality game that was part of the American television drama Lost. The game was developed by ABC in the United States, Channel 4 in the UK, and Channel 7 in Australia. It was written by Jordan Rosenberg and created by the agency Hi-ReS!...
and FIND815 promoted the television show Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
). However, pay-to-play models are not unheard of.
ARGs are now being recognized by the mainstream entertainment world: The Fallen Alternate Reality game http://web.archive.org/web/20070317204354/http://www.occulareffect.com/, produced in the fall of 2007 by Xenophile Media Inc.http://www.xenophile.ca/ was awarded a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Achievement for an Interactive Television Program. Xenophile Media Inc.'s ReGenesis Extended Reality Game http://web.archive.org/web/20060219055154/http://www.regenesistv.com/ won an International Interactive Emmy Award in 2007 and in April 2008 The Truth About Marika
The Truth About Marika
The Truth About Marika , is a cross-media production by Sveriges Television and The company P. It is an alternate reality game and a TV-series first aired in Sweden during the autumn of 2007...
won the iEmmy for Best interactive TV service. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts recognises Interactivity as a category in the British Academy Television Awards.
Defining alternate reality gaming
There is a great deal of debate about how to define the term "alternate reality game" and what should be included or excluded by the definition. Sean Stacey, founder of the website Unfiction, has suggested that the best way to define the genre was not to define it, and instead locate each game on three axes (ruleset, authorship and coherence) in a sphere of "chaotic fiction" that would include works such as the UncyclopediaUncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia is a satirical website that parodies Wikipedia. Founded in 2005 as an originally English-language wiki, the project currently spans over 75 languages...
and street games like SF0
SFZero
SFZero or SF0 is a web-based community game invented in San Francisco. It is a type of alternate reality game. SFZero players earn points by completing a wide variety of different tasks, often with a focus on creativity, exploration, community, or performance...
as well.
While addressing all of the various attempts at definitions and arguments for and against them is beyond the scope of this article, defining a few terms unique to ARG parlance, identifying precursors and influences on the development of the genre, and comparing and contrasting ARGs to other similar forms of entertainment may be helpful in aiding understanding of the form.
Unique terminology
Among the terms essential to understand discussions about ARGs are:- Puppetmaster - A puppetmaster or "PM" is an individual involved in designing and/or running an ARG. Puppetmasters are simultaneously allies and adversaries to the player base, creating obstacles and providing resources for overcoming them in the course of telling the game's story. Puppetmasters generally remain behind the curtain while a game is running. The real identity of puppet masters may or may not be known ahead of time.
- The Curtain - The curtain is generally a metaphor for the separation between the puppetmasters and the players. This can take the traditional form of absolute secrecy regarding the puppetmasters' identities and involvement with the production, or refer merely to the convention that puppetmasters do not communicate directly with players through the game, interacting instead through the characters and the game's design.
- Rabbithole - Also known as a Trailhead. A Rabbithole marks the first website, contact, or puzzle that starts off the ARG.
- Trailhead - A deliberate clue which enables a player to discover a way into the game. Most ARGs employ a number of trailheads in several media, to maximise the probability of people discovering the game. Some trailheads may be covert, others may be thinly disguised adverts.
- This Is Not A Game (TINAG) - Setting the ARG form apart from other games is the This Is Not A Game aesthetic, which dictates that the game doesn't behave like a game: phone numbers mentioned in the ARG, for example, should actually work, and the game should not provide an overtly designated playspace or ruleset to the players.
Similarities to and differences from other forms of entertainment
- Computer/console/video games. While ARGs generally use the internet as a central binding medium, they are not played exclusively on a computer and usually do not require the use of special software or interfaces. Non-player characters in ARGs are controlled in real-time by the puppetmasters, not computer AIArtificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
. - Role-playing games (RPGs) and Live action role-playing gameLive action role-playing gameA live action role-playing game is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically act out their characters' actions. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by the real world, while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions may...
s (LARPs). The role of the puppetmaster in creating ARG narratives and the puppetmaster's relationship with an ARG's players bears a great deal of similarity to the role of a game master, gamemaster or referee in a role-playing game. However, the role of the players is quite different. Most ARGs do not have any fixed rules—players discover the rules and the boundaries of the game through trial and error—and do not require players to assume fictional identities or roleplay beyond feigning belief in the reality of the characters they interact with (even if games where players play 'themselves' are a long standing variant on the genre). Also, the This Is Not A Game aesthetic is distinctive to ARGs, not being present in the PRGs or LARPs. - Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). As outlined above with computer games and traditional role-playing games, non-player characters in ARGs are controlled by real people in real time, not by computer AI; ARGs do not generally require special software or interfaces to play; the games do not require players to roleplay or create characters or avatars; and ARGs generally use multiple media and real life in addition to the internet to distribute their narratives.
- Viral marketing/internet hoaxes. While ARGs are often used as a type of viral marketingViral marketingViral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...
, they diverge sharply from the philosophy behind "sponsored consumers" or other viral marketing practices that attempt to trick consumers into believing that planted shills for a product are other independent consumers. Similarly, they also diverge from sites or narratives that genuinely try to convince visitors that they are what they claim to be. Puppetmasters generally leave both subtle and overt clues to the game's fictional nature and boundaries where players can find them (e.g. through clearly fictional names on site registrations) and many ARGs openly flaunt obviously fictional plots. The puppetmasters of the genre's seminal example, the Beast,(see below) made it a point of pride never to pretend to be players in order to solicit publicity or nudge players along, and the Terms of Service of Unfiction, the central community site for the ARG genre, strictly prohibit individuals involved in creating games from posting about them without disclosing their involvement.
Influences and precursors
Due to factors like the curtain, attempts to begin games with "stealth launches" to fulfill the TINAG aesthetic, and the restrictive non-disclosure agreements governing how much information may be revealed by the puppetmasters of promotional games, the design process for many ARGs is often shrouded in secrecy, making it difficult to discern the extent to which they have been influenced by other works. In addition, the cross-media nature of the form allows ARGs to incorporate elements of so many other art forms and works that attempting to identify them all would be a nearly impossible task.Possible inspirations from fiction and other art forms
G. K. ChestertonG. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
's 1905 short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
"The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown" (part of a collection entitled The Club of Queer Trades) seems to predict the ARG concept, as does John Fowles
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
' 1965 novel The Magus
The Magus (novel)
The Magus is the first novel written by British author John Fowles. It tells the story of Nicholas Urfe, a teacher on a small Greek island...
. The performance artists in Delany
Samuel R. Delany
Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as "Chip" is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society.His science fiction novels include Babel-17, The Einstein...
's science fiction novel Triton
Triton (novel)
Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia is a science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. It was nominated for the 1976 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and was shortlisted for a retrospective James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 1995...
(published in 1976) appear to be playing a type of ARG. Ludic texts such as the popular Choose Your Own Adventure children's novels may also have provided some inspiration. Reader-influenced online fiction such as AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
's QuantumLink Serial
QuantumLink Serial
The QuantumLink Serial by Tracy Reed on AOL was the first episodic online story. The series was also known as the PC-Link Serial and the AppleLink Serial before all three services were unified when Quantum changed its name to AOL....
provides a model that incorporates audience influence into the storytelling in a manner similar to that of ARGs, as do promotional online games like Wizards of the Coast's Webrunner games. Other possible antecedents include performance art and other theatrical forms that attempt to directly engage the audience.
The One Game
The One Game
The One Game is a four part 1988 British television drama serial, produced by Central Independent Television and broadcast on ITV from 4 June to 25 June 1988...
, a British television drama serial screened in 1988, was entirely based on the premise of the protagonist being forced to play an ARG (referred to as a "reality game" in the script).
Due to the influence the Beast exerted over the form of later ARGs and the willingness of its creators to talk about its development, its sources of inspiration are both particularly relevant to the evolution of the modern ARG and somewhat more verifiable than other possible antecedents. Elan Lee
Elan Lee
Elan Lee is a game designer who is widely regarded as one of the creators of the genre of Alternate Reality Games.-Biography:...
, one of its creative principals, cites the 1997 movie The Game
The Game (film)
The Game is a 1997 neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by David Fincher, starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn, and produced by Polygram. It tells the story of an investment banker who is given a mysterious gift: participation in a game that integrates in strange ways with his life...
as an inspiration, as well as the Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' "Paul is dead
Paul Is Dead
"Paul is dead" is an urban legend suggesting that Paul McCartney of the English rock band The Beatles died in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a look-alike....
" phenomenon. Sean Stewart, another of the three principal designers, notes that designing and running an ARG bears some similarities to running an RPG
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
, and the influence of that particular game form is further suggested by the fact that Jordan Weisman, the game's third main designer, was also the founder of leading RPG company FASA. Stewart also noted that the sort of "creative, collaborative, enthusiastic scavengering behavior" upon which the Beast depended has its antecedents outside the arts: the Beast just "accidentally re-invented Science as pop culture entertainment."
The conspiracy in Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
's The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, first published in 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, it is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero...
may be an ARG set up by Pierce Inverarity to bedevil Oedipa Maas, as may be the hallucinatory Turkish frontier across which A.W. Hill
A.W. Hill
A.W. Hill is an American writer of speculative fiction and mystery. He grew up in the Midwest but began writing under the influence of Southern California and has been linked by novelist/essayist Alan Rifkin to the tradition of "California fabulist literature." Hill has published three literary...
's Stephan Raszer tracks his quarry in the current literary thriller Nowhere-Land.
Basic design principles of ARGs
ARGs are sometimes described as the first narrative art form native to the internet, because their storytelling relies on the two main activities conducted there: searching for information, and sharing information.- Storytelling as archaeology. Instead of presenting a chronologically unified, coherent narrative, designers scatter pieces of the story across the Internet and other media, allowing players to reassemble it, supply connective tissue and determine what it means.
- Platformless narrative. Stories are not bound to a single medium, but exist independently and use whatever media is available to make itself heard.
- Designing for a hive mind. While it might be possible to follow games individually, designs are directed at a collective of players that share information and solutions almost instantly, and incorporate individuals possessing almost every conceivable area of expertise. While games might initially attract a small group of participants, as the participants come across new challenges they try to find others with the knowledge needed to overcome an obstacle.
- A whisper is sometimes louder than a shout. Rather than openly promoting games and trying to attract participation by "pushing" it toward potential players, designers attempt to "pull" players to the story by engaging in over-the-top secrecy, have elements of the game "warn" players away from them, and eschew traditional marketing channels. Designers do not communicate about the game with players or press while it is in play.
- The "this is not a game" (TINAG) aesthetic. ARGs themselves do not acknowledge that they are games. They do not have an acknowledged ruleset for players; as in real-life, they determine the "rules" either through trial and error or by setting their own boundaries. Narratives present a fully realized world: any phone number or email address mentioned works, and any website acknowledged exists. Games take place in real-time and are not replayable. Characters function like real people, not game pieces, respond authentically, and are controlled by real people, not by computer AI. Some events involve meetings or live phone calls between players and actors.
- Real life as a medium. Games use players' lives as a platform. Players are not required to build a character or role-play being someone other than themselves. They might unexpectedly overcome a challenge for the community simply because of the real-life knowledge and background they possessed. Participants are constantly on the lookout for clues embedded in everyday life.
- Collaborative storytelling. While the puppetmasters control most of the story, they incorporate player content and respond to players' actions, analysis and speculation by adapting the narrative and intentionally leave "white space" for the players to fill in.
- Not a hoax. While the TINAG aesthetic might seem on the surface to be an attempt to make something indistinguishable from real life, there are both subtle and overt metacommunications in place to reveal a game's framework and most of its boundaries.
Early examples
The first example of an ARG style game was Dreadnot, a (non-commercial) web game produced with a grant from the San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
and published on sfgate.com in 1996. It included most of the techniques above that would, in upcoming years, become the standard for most ARG games. The game included working voice mail phone numbers for characters, clues in the source code, character email addresses, off-site websites, real locations in San Francisco, real people (including then-Mayor
Mayor
In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
Willie Brown
Willie Brown (politician)
Willie Lewis Brown, Jr. is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served over 30 years in the California State Assembly, spending 15 years as its Speaker, and afterward served as the 41st mayor of San Francisco, the first African American to do so...
), and of course a fictional mystery.
In 1997, a year prior to the release of the Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
computer game Starship Titanic
Starship Titanic
Starship Titanic is a computer adventure game designed by Douglas Adams and made by The Digital Village. It was released in 1998. It takes place on a starship of the same name which has undergone "Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure" and crash landed on Earth on its maiden voyage .The player...
, The Digital Village
The Digital Village
The Digital Village was a digital media company based inCovent Garden, London WC2 in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1994. The science fiction/comedy writer Douglas Adams was one of the founding members, along with Robbie Stamp, who is the Executive Producer of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the...
launched a web site purporting to be that of an intergalactic travel agency called Starlight Travel, which in the game is the Starship Titanic's parent company. The site combined copious amounts of Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...
-esque writing (by Michael Bywater
Michael Bywater
Michael Bywater is a British writer and broadcaster.-Biography:He was educated at Nottingham High School, an independent school...
) with ARG-type interactivity.
The marketing for the 1999 movie The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur footage. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. The film relates the story of three student filmmakers The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur...
resembled ARGs in many ways (and some of its makers went on to create the 2005 Audi promotional ARG The Art of the Heist
The Art of the Heist
The Art of the Heist was an advertising campaign and an alternate reality game created to promote the Audi A3.-The promotion:Audi developed a new car and wanted to promote it...
), expanding the world of the movie online, adding backstory, and treating the fiction as reality through real-world media such as fliers and a fake documentary on the Sci-Fi Channel. However, perhaps in part due to the subject material and the absence of overt metacommunications that this was fiction, it also resembles an internet hoax or attempt to create an urban legend.
Pervasive play games like the Go Game
The Go Game
The Go Game is a competitive game put on by a San Francisco company of the same name. Players race through the game zone solving clues and performing tasks with the aid of a cell phone and digital camera in an effort to earn the most points. Though the Go Game comprises elements of a scavenger hunt...
and the Nokia Game
Nokia Game
The Nokia Game was a series of Alternate Reality Games produced by for Nokia. The concept was developed by Joost van Liemt and Sicco Beerda...
also incorporated many elements similar to ARGs (although they tended to lack the narrative element central to ARGs) and prefigured the public play components of large-scale corporate ARGs like I Love Bees, The Art of the Heist and Last Call Poker.
Electronic Arts' Majestic began development in 1999, although it didn't launch until after the Beast had concluded, in 2001. Featuring phone calls, emails and other media that involved players in a multiplatform narrative, the game was eventually cancelled due to lack of players. This was due to many factors, ranging from the monthly subscription fee (as part of Electronic Arts' EA Online venture) to Majestic's unfortunate timing and subject matter in relation to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Many players also criticized the absence of the TINAG principle (e.g. in-game phone calls were preceded by an announcement that they were part of the game, although these announcements were optional based on user preference).
The Beast
In 2001, in order to market the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence directed by Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
and based on Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's unfinished project but also a planned series of Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
computer games based on the film, Microsoft's Creative Director Jordan Weisman
Jordan Weisman
Jordan Weisman is an American game designer, author, and serial entrepreneur who has founded four major game design companies, each in a different game genre and segment of the industry.-Biography:...
and another Microsoft game designer, Elan Lee
Elan Lee
Elan Lee is a game designer who is widely regarded as one of the creators of the genre of Alternate Reality Games.-Biography:...
, conceived of an elaborate murder mystery played out across hundreds of websites, email messages, faxes, fake ads, and voicemail messages. They hired Sean Stewart
Sean Stewart
Sean Stewart is a U.S.-Canadian science fiction and fantasy author.Born in Lubbock, Texas, Sean Stewart moved to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1968...
, an award-winning science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
/fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
author, to write the story and Pete Fenlon
Pete Fenlon
Pete Fenlon is an American Role-playing game designer, game developer, graphics designer, and publisher. He began creating fantasy role playing rules and drawing large and very detailed full-color Middle-earth maps in MERP modules. He later published science fiction, mystery, and historical games...
, an experienced adventure game "world builder," to serve as developer and content lead. The game, dubbed "the Citizen Kane of online entertainment" by Internet Life
Yahoo! Internet Life
Yahoo! Internet Life was a monthly magazine published by Ziff-Davis, which licensed the name from Yahoo!, the well-known web portal and search engine website. It was created and launched by G. Barry Golson, the former executive editor of Playboy and TV Guide.It dealt with the emerging Internet and...
, was a runaway success that involved over three million active participants from all over the world during its run and would become the seminal example of the nascent ARG genre. An early asset list for the project contained 666 files, prompting the game's puppetmasters to dub it "the Beast
The Beast (game)
The Beast was an alternate reality game created by a team at Microsoft to promote the Steven Spielberg film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. The Beast, which ran for twelve weeks in the spring and early summer of 2001, is one of the most influential early ARG games.-Defining ARG:An ARG is a game...
", a name which was later adopted by players. A large and extremely active fan community called the Cloudmakers formed to analyze and participate in solving the game, and the combined intellect, tenacity and engagement of the group soon forced the puppetmasters to create new subplots, devise new puzzles, and alter elements of the design to keep ahead of the player base. Somewhat unusual for a computer-based game, the production engaged equal numbers of male and female participants, and drew players from a wide spectrum of age groups and backgrounds.
Although the Beast ran for only three months, it prompted the formation of a highly organized and intensely engaged community that remains active years after the game concluded. Perhaps more significantly, it inspired a number of its participants to create games adapting and expanding the model, extending it from an anomalous one-time occurrence to a new genre of entertainment and allowing the community to grow even after the Beast itself concluded. Members of the Cloudmakers group went on to form ARGN, the primary news source for the genre, and Unfiction, its central community hub, as well as designing the first successful and widely played indie ARGs, such as LockJaw and Metacortechs, and corporate efforts such as Perplex City.
Community and genre growth
The years immediately after the Beast saw independent developers who had played it extend the form from a one-time occurrence to a new genre of gaming, and the formation of an ever-growing community devoted to playing, designing and discussing ARGs.Grassroots development
Influenced heavily by the Beast and enthusiastic about the power of collaboration, several Cloudmakers came together with the idea that they could create a similar game. The first effort to make an independent Beast-like game, Ravenwatchers, failed, but another team soon assembled and met with greater success. With very little experience behind them, the group managed, after nine months of development, to create a viable game that was soon seized upon eagerly by the Cloudmakers group and featured in WIRED Magazine. As players of the Beast, members of the Lockjaw development team were extremely aware of the community playing the game and took steps to encourage the tight bonding of the player base through highly collaborative puzzles, weekly EuchreEuchre
Euchre or eucre, is a trick-taking card game most commonly played with four people in two partnerships with a deck of 24 standard playing cards. It is the game responsible for introducing the joker into modern packs; this was invented around 1860 to act as a top trump or best bower...
games, and the inclusion of player personas in the game. While the numbers never rivaled those of The Beast, the game proved both that it was possible for developers to create these games without corporate funding or promotion, and that there was interest in the ARG form beyond a one-time audience for a production on the Beast's scale. Lockjaw marked the start of the ARG as a genre of gaming, rather than simply a one-time occurrence.
Shortly before Lockjaw's conclusion, players discovered a game that seemed to revolve around the movie Minority Report. Despite speculation to the contrary, the game (known as Exocog) was not an official promotion for the film, but an experiment in interactive storytelling by Jim Miller. Inspired by the independent Lockjaw effort, Dave Szulborski
Dave Szulborski
Dave Szulborski was the first professional independent alternate reality game developer, and an authority on ARGs. His books on the subject are used today in curricula on alternate reality games and transmedia storytelling...
introduced ChangeAgents, a spinoff of EA's failed Majestic ARG, to the ARGN audience, then followed it with two additional installments. During this time, Szulborski also created a successful grassroots game not based on the Majestic universe, called Chasing the Wish. Just before the release of the third and the final Matrix
The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
movie, the team that developed Lockjaw launched Metacortechs, an ARG based on that universe. The fan fiction effort was very successful, reached a larger and more active player base than many professionally produced games, and was at first assumed by many to be an officially sanctioned promotion for the movie. Metacortechs was followed by an ever-increasing number of grassroots ARGs.
In the wake of these successful, low-budget independent ARGs, an active "grassroots" development community began to evolve within the genre. While the quality of the grassroots games varies wildly, amateur storytellers, web designers, and puzzle creators continue to provide independently developed ARGs for the active player community.
Community development
The term Alternate Reality Gaming was first used by Sean Stacey, one of the moderators of the Lockjaw player community, in the Trail for that game. Stacey and Steve PetersSteve Peters (game designer)
Steve Peters is a game designer specializing in alternate reality games. He worked with alternate reality game design company 42 Entertainment as Experience Design Director...
, another of the moderators, created the two websites that have become the central hub of the ARG community: ARGN and UnFiction. Due to their efforts, when Lockjaw ended, the players had a new community resource allowing them to assemble to play the games that were soon to follow. Unfiction now boasts over 26,000 members, and ARGN employs a staff of 15 volunteer writers to report on new games and other topics of interest to the community, as well as producing a weekly netcast.
A first experience in video games
Although not considered as a pure Alternate Reality Game, Missing Since JanuaryIn Memoriam (video game)
In Memoriam is an adventure video game for Windows and Macintosh. It uses alternate reality-style gameplay, in which the player receives e-mails from other in-game characters, including the game's main antagonist...
("In Memoriam" in Europe) is a video game based on the same principles that appear in an ARG: an online enquiry, the game entering into the players real life environment, willingly confusing reality and fiction (real fact-based sites, emails…). Developed from 1999 onwards by the French studio Lexis Numérique, Missing Since January was launched by Ubisoft in Europe in October 2003 and by Dreamcatcher in the US in January 2004. In Missing Since January, using the internet, the player must attempt to decode a mysterious CD ROM broadcast by the police in order to find two missing people abducted by a serial killer. More than a hundred sites were created for this purpose. By and large, as the player advances in the enquiry, they are contacted by different characters that send emails. The follow-up, which appeared in 2006 under the title Evidence: The Last Ritual
Evidence: The Last Ritual
In Memoriam 2 is an adventure game for Windows platform, and is notable for its Alternate Reality-style gameplay, in which the player receives e-mails from other in-game characters, including the game's main antagonist, as well as being asked to find a lot of information and...
("In Memoriam 2, The Last Ritual" in Europe) also allowed players to receive text messages and to speak on the phone with certain characters in the game.
Massive-scale commercial games and mainstream attention
After the success of the first major entries in the nascent ARG genre, a number of large corporations looked to ARGs to both promote their products, and to enhance their companies' images by demonstrating their interest in innovative and fan-friendly marketing methods. To create buzz for the launch of the Xbox game Halo 2, Microsoft hired the team that had created the Beast, now operating independently as 42 Entertainment42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment is an American company based in Pasadena which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games . The company was founded in 2003 as an independently-owned, creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo Entertainment. The company started with a...
. The result, I Love Bees, departed radically from the website-hunting and puzzle-solving that had been the focus of the Beast. I Love Bees wove together an interactive narrative set in 2004, and a War Of The Worlds-style radio drama set in the future, the latter of which was broken into 30-60 second segments and broadcast over ringing payphones worldwide. The game pushed players outdoors to answer phones, create and submit content, and recruit others, and received as much or more mainstream notice than its predecessor, finding its way onto television during a presidential debate, and becoming one of the New York Times' catchphrases of 2004. A slew of imitators, fan tributes and parodies followed. In 2005, a pair of articles profiling 42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment is an American company based in Pasadena which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games . The company was founded in 2003 as an independently-owned, creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo Entertainment. The company started with a...
appeared in Game Developer magazine and the East Bay Express
East Bay Express
The East Bay Express is an Oakland-based weekly newspaper serving the Berkeley, Oakland, and East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area...
, both of which tied into an ARG created by the journalist and his editors.
The following spring, Audi launched The Art of the Heist
The Art of the Heist
The Art of the Heist was an advertising campaign and an alternate reality game created to promote the Audi A3.-The promotion:Audi developed a new car and wanted to promote it...
, developed by Audi ad agency McKinney+Silver, Haxan Films (creators of The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur footage. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. The film relates the story of three student filmmakers The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur...
), to promote its new A3.
Roughly a year after I Love Bees, 42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment is an American company based in Pasadena which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games . The company was founded in 2003 as an independently-owned, creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo Entertainment. The company started with a...
produced Last Call Poker, a promotion for Activision's video game Gun. Designed to help modern audiences connect with the Western genre, Last Call Poker centered on a working poker site, held games of "Tombstone Hold 'Em" in cemeteries around the United States—as well as in at least one digital venue, World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
's own virtual reality cemetery -- and sent players to their own local cemeteries to clean up neglected grave sites and perform other tasks.
At the end of 2005, the International Game Developers Association ARG Special Interest Group was formed "to bring together those already designing, building, and running ARGs, in order to share knowledge, experience, and ideas for the future." More recently, an ARG was created by THQ
THQ
THQ Inc. is an American developer and publisher of video games. Founded in 1989 in the United States, the company develops products for video game consoles, handheld game systems, as well as for personal computers and wireless devices...
for the game Frontlines: Fuel of War
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Frontlines: Fuel of War is a first-person shooter game for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360. It was released February 25, 2008 in North America. It was produced by Kaos Studios...
around peak oil theories where the world is in a crisis over diminishing oil resources.
The rise of the self-supporting ARG
As the genre has grown, there has been increasing interest in exploring models that provide funding for large-scale ARGs that are neither promotions for other products nor limited by the generally small budget of grassroots/indie games. The two major trends that have emerged in this area are support through the sale of products related to the game, and fees for participation in the game. A third possible model is one using in-game advertisingIn-game advertising
In-game advertising refers to advertising in computer and video games. IGA differs from advergaming, which refers to a game specifically made to advertise a product.The IGA industry is large and growing...
for other products, as in The LOST Experience, but at this time no large-scale game has attempted to fund itself solely through in-game advertising.
The first major attempt (other than EA's failed Majestic) to create a self-supporting ARG was Perplex City
Perplex City
Perplex City was a long-term alternate reality game presented by Mind Candy, a London-based development team. The first "season" of the game had players looking for "The Receda Cube" , a priceless scientific and spiritual artifact to the people of a fictional metropolis known as "Perplex City",...
, which launched in 2005 after a year's worth of teasers. The ARG offered a $200,000 prize to the first player to locate the buried Receda Cube and was funded by the sale of puzzle cards. The first season of the game ended in January 2007, when Andy Darley found the Receda Cube at Wakerly Great Wood in Northamptonshire, UK. Mind Candy
Mind Candy
Mind Candy is a British entertainment company, formed in 2003 by UK internet entrepreneur Michael Acton Smith, and based in Shoreditch, London, England...
, the production company, has also produced a board game related to the ARG and plans to continue it with a second season beginning March 1, 2007. This model was delayed till June 1, and has again, been delayed to an unspecified date. Mind Candy's acceptance of corporate sponsorship and venture capital suggests that the puzzle cards alone are not enough to fully fund the ARG at this time.
In March 2006, Elan Lee
Elan Lee
Elan Lee is a game designer who is widely regarded as one of the creators of the genre of Alternate Reality Games.-Biography:...
and Dawne Weisman founded edoc laundry, a company designed to produce ARGs using clothes as the primary platform. Consumers decipher the codes hidden within the garments and input the results into the game's main website to reveal pieces of a story about the murder of a band manager.
Reviving the pay-to-play model, Studio Cypher launched the first chapter of its "multiplayer novel" in May 2006. Each "chapter" is a mini-ARG for which participants who pay the $10 registration fee receive earlier access to information and greater opportunities to interact with characters than non-paying participants. VirtuQuest, a well-known corporate team, also attempted a pay-to-play model with Township Heights later in the year, but despite initial enthusiasm on the part of the ARG community, the game was not well-received due to the design team's use of player Hybrid-Names based on their real life names. Also the short run time frame was not appreciated by some seasoned players.
In June 2006, Catching the Wish launched from an in-game website about comic books based on its predecessor, 2003's Chasing the Wish. 42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment is an American company based in Pasadena which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games . The company was founded in 2003 as an independently-owned, creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo Entertainment. The company started with a...
released Cathy's Book
Cathy's Book
Cathy's Book is a young adult novel with alternative reality game elements by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman, illustrated by Cathy Brigg. It was first published September 12, 2006...
, by Sean Stewart
Sean Stewart
Sean Stewart is a U.S.-Canadian science fiction and fantasy author.Born in Lubbock, Texas, Sean Stewart moved to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1968...
and Jordan Weisman
Jordan Weisman
Jordan Weisman is an American game designer, author, and serial entrepreneur who has founded four major game design companies, each in a different game genre and segment of the industry.-Biography:...
, in October 2006, shifting the central medium of this ARG from the internet to the printed page. The young-adult novel contains an "evidence packet" and expands its universe through websites and working phone numbers, but is also a stand-alone novel that essentially functions as an individually playable ARG. Neither the cost of creating the book nor sales figures are available (although it made both American and British bestseller lists) to determine whether the project was successfully self-funded.
It is difficult to judge the efficacy of self-funded ARG models at this time, but it seems likely that exploration of ways to fund large-scale ARGs without using them as marketing for other products will continue as the genre grows.
The Serious ARG
In a 2007 article, columnist Chris Dahlen (of Pitchfork Media) voiced a much-discussed ARG concept: if ARGs can spark players to solve very hard fictional problems, could the games be used to solve real-world problems? Dahlen was writing about World Without OilWorld Without Oil
World Without Oil is an alternate reality game created to call attention to, spark dialogue about, plan for and engineer solutions to a possible near-future global oil shortage, post peak oil...
, the first ARG centered on a serious near-future scenario: a global oil shortage. Another ARG, Tomorrow Calling, appears to be a testbed for a future project focused on environmental themes and activism.
Serious ARGs introduce plausibility as a narrative feature to pull players into the game. People participate to experience, prepare for or shape an alternative life or future. The games thus have the potential to attract casual or non-players, because ’what if’ is a game anyone can play. Serious ARGs may therefore be sponsored by organizations with activist or educational goals; World Without Oil was a joint project of the Public Broadcasting Service's Independent Lens and its Electric Shadows Web-original programming.
Their serious subject matter may lead Serious ARGs to diverge from mainstream ARGs in design. Instead of challenging collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
to solve a gamemastered puzzle, World Without Oil’s puppetmasters acted as players to guide the “collective imagination” to create a multi-authored chronicle of the alternative future, purportedly as it was happening. By asking players to chronicle their lives in the oil-shocked alternative reality, the WWO game relinquished narrative control to players to a degree not seen before in an ARG.
In October 2008 The British Red Cross
British Red Cross
The British Red Cross Society is the United Kingdom branch of the worldwide impartial humanitarian organisation the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The society was formed in 1870, and is a registered charity with over 31,000 volunteers and 2,600 staff. At the heart of their work...
created a serious ARG called Traces of Hope to promote their campaign about civilians caught up in conflict.
There are possible future Serious ARGs described in fiction. In his novel Halting State
Halting State
Halting State is a novel by Charles Stross, published in the United States on October 2, 2007 and in the UK in January, 2008. Stross has said that it is "a thriller set in the software houses that write multiplayer games". The plot centres around a bank robbery in a virtual world. It features...
, Charles Stross
Charles Stross
Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a British writer of science fiction, Lovecraftian horror and fantasy. He was born in Leeds.Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera...
foresightedly describes a number of possible ARGs, where players engage in seemingly fictional covert spy operations.
In 2008 the European Union funded an ARG to support motivation for multilingualism within European secondary school students called ARGuing for Multilingual Motivation in Web 2.0 http://arg.paisley.ac.uk/. As noted above in World Without Oil, to complete this ARG it was necessary to move away from the strict definitions of an ARG as listed. The ARG was by invitation only and players (students) knew they were going to play a game. This project is now completed and papers on the project and the resources produced for education (a Methodology and Teacher Training guides)are available and have been presented at the 3rd European Conference on Games Based Learning.
In 2008-2009 the MacArthur Foundation supported an ARG The Black Cloud to teach US high-school students about indoor air quality
Indoor air quality
Indoor air quality is a term referring to the air quality within and around buildings and structures, especially as it relates to the health and comfort of building occupants....
. The project is active and allows teachers to rent sophisticated air quality sensors to run the game locally.
UCLA Film Department had its first Alternate Reality Game class, taught by Game Designer/Writer Flint Dille
Flint Dille
Flint Dille is a screenwriter, game designer, and novelist. He is best known for his animated work on Transformers, G.I...
in 2011 Winter Semester. The Class Built an ARG in one semester, culminating in a real world event which resolved the story. http://www.slideshare.net/dorianrichard/asek-core-arg
New developments
2006 produced fewer large-scale corporate ARGs than past years, but the ARG form continued to spread and be adapted for promotional uses, as an increasing number of TV shows and movies extended their universes onto the internet through such means as character blogs and ARG-like puzzle trails, and as an increasing number of independent/grassroots games launched, with varying levels of success. One of the more popular indie ARGs to launch in the fall of 2006 was Jan Libby's dark yet whimsical "Sammeeeees". Lonelygirl15Lonelygirl15
lonelygirl15 was an interactive web-based video series which began in June 2006 and ran through to August 1, 2008. Developed under the working title The Children of Anchor Cove, the show gained worldwide media attention when it was outed as fictional in September 2006.-Overview:lonelygirl15...
, a popular series of videos on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, relinquished an unprecedented amount of control to its audience by recognizing a fan-created game as the "official" ARG.
In August 2006, Hoodlum produced 'PSTRIXI' for Yahoo!7 Australia. PSTRIXI was designed around a young DJ Trixi and her boyfriend Hamish. Players were engaged across all of Yahoo!7's platforms and asked to help solve the mystery of Trixi's missing sister Max. The multiplatform ARG ran for 12 weeks and used websites, email, Yahoo!360 forums, Yahoo Radio and viral television to engage the audience in the game. PSTRIXI was a major success with the Yahoo!7 community; players spent an average of 16 minutes per session on the websites and returned more than once a week.
2007 got off to a strong start immediately, with Microsoft's Vanishing Point to promote the launch of Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
. The game was designed by 42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment is an American company based in Pasadena which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games . The company was founded in 2003 as an independently-owned, creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo Entertainment. The company started with a...
and, due in part to many large-scale real world events, such as a lavish show at the Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas as well as a prizes of a trip into space and having a winner's name engraved on all AMD Athlon 64 FX chips for a certain period of time, received large media attention. It was followed almost immediately by another 42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment is an American company based in Pasadena which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games . The company was founded in 2003 as an independently-owned, creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo Entertainment. The company started with a...
production for the release of the Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
album Year Zero
Year Zero (album)
Year Zero is the fifth studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released on April 17, 2007, by Interscope Records. Frontman Trent Reznor wrote the album's music and lyrics while touring in support of the group's previous release, With Teeth...
, in which fans discovered leaked songs on thumb drives in washrooms at concerts, as well as clues to websites that describe a dystopian future. Monster Hunter Club, a promotion for the U.S. release of the movie The Host, launched by sending action figures and other items to prominent members of the ARG community. Perplex City
Perplex City
Perplex City was a long-term alternate reality game presented by Mind Candy, a London-based development team. The first "season" of the game had players looking for "The Receda Cube" , a priceless scientific and spiritual artifact to the people of a fictional metropolis known as "Perplex City",...
concluded its first season by awarding a $200,000 prize to a player who found the game's missing cube. They plan to continue the ARG into a second "season" under the name Perplex City Stories
Perplex City Stories
Perplex City Stories is the planned second season of the popular alternate reality game Perplex City, run by Mind Candy. Although no plot has been revealed yet, the first wave of puzzle cards was released on March 1, 2007....
, although they have said that there will not be a large grand prize this time around. Meigeist, produced by a new professional puppetmaster team, garnered a great deal of community attention and affection with a light, humorous storyline and numerous references to past ARGs. The teaser site for World Without Oil
World Without Oil
World Without Oil is an alternate reality game created to call attention to, spark dialogue about, plan for and engineer solutions to a possible near-future global oil shortage, post peak oil...
, the first major "Serious ARG," was unveiled in March 2007; the game itself launched on April 30 and ran through June 1, gathering over 1500 videos, images, blog entries and voice mails to document the "Oil Crisis of 2007."
In May 2007, 42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment
42 Entertainment is an American company based in Pasadena which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games . The company was founded in 2003 as an independently-owned, creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo Entertainment. The company started with a...
launched Why So Serious, an ARG to promote the feature film The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight (film)
The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins...
. Hailed as being the single most impressive viral marketing campaign of all-time, it played out over 15 months, concluding in July 2008. Millions of players in 177 countries participated both online and taking part in live events, and it reached hundreds of millions through internet buzz and exposure.
In March 2008 McDonalds and the IOC launched Find The Lost Ring
The Lost Ring
The Lost Ring was an alternate reality game initiated by McDonald's, as part of their marketing for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. A co-production between McDonald's, AKQA, and Jane McGonigal, the game was notable for its global scope: taking place across six continents, in seven...
, a global ARG promoting the 2008 Summer Olympics
2008 Summer Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, was a major international multi-sport event that took place in Beijing, China, from August 8 to August 24, 2008. A total of 11,028 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees competed in 28 sports and 302 events...
in Beijing, China. The game was run simultaneously in six languages with new story lines developing in each, encouraging players to communicate with residents of other countries to facilitate sharing of clues and details of the game as a whole. American track and field athlete Edwin Moses
Edwin Moses
Edwin Corley Moses is an American track and field athlete who won gold medals in the 400 metre hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics. Between 1977 and 1987, Moses won 107 consecutive finals and set the world record in his event four times...
acted as a celebrity Game Master, and McDonalds Corporation promised to donate $100,000 (USD) to Ronald McDonald House Charities China
Ronald McDonald House Charities
Ronald McDonald House Charities is an independent 501c3 organization whose mission is to create, find and support programs that directly improve the health and well being of children across the world...
on behalf of the players.
February 2009 saw the launch of the ARG Something In The Sea, designed to promote the videogame Bioshock 2
BioShock 2
BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The sequel to the 2007 video game BioShock, it was released worldwide on February 9, 2010....
by immersing players in character Mark Meltzer's quest to find his missing daughter. In addition to the messages, documents, photos and puzzles on the website, those lucky enough to be following along on August 8, 2009, were given the coordinates of 10 beaches worldwide and told to go there at dawn. Those who did found objects planted by the game runners designed to look like they had washed ashore from Bioshock
Bioshock
BioShock is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston and designed by Ken Levine. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on August 21, 2007 in North America, and three days later in Europe and Australia. It became available on Steam on August 21, 2007...
s fictional underwater city of Rapture. Players who wrote letters to Mark, whose address was advertised on the website, also sometimes received items such as wine bottles, records, or masks.
March 1, 2010, Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
released an update via Steam
Steam
Steam is the technical term for water vapor, the gaseous phase of water, which is formed when water boils. In common language it is often used to refer to the visible mist of water droplets formed as this water vapor condenses in the presence of cooler air...
to their game Portal, adding a nondescript new achievement and some .wav files hidden within the game GCFs. The .wav files actually contained morse code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
and SSTV
Slow-scan television
Slow-scan television is a picture transmission method used mainly by amateur radio operators, to transmit and receive static pictures via radio in monochrome or color.A technical term for SSTV is narrowband television...
encoded images, some including certain numbers and letters. When pieced together in the correct order, these numbers and letters formed a 32-bit MD5
MD5
The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm is a widely used cryptographic hash function that produces a 128-bit hash value. Specified in RFC 1321, MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications, and is also commonly used to check data integrity...
hash of a BBS
Bulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
phone number. When traced, it was found to originate from Kirkland, Washington
Kirkland, Washington
Kirkland is a city in King County, Washington, United States. It is a suburb of Seattle on the Eastside . The population was 48,787 at the 2010 census makes it the 9th largest city in King County and the 20th largest city in the state...
, where Valve was based before moving to Bellevue, Washington
Bellevue, Washington
Bellevue is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, across Lake Washington from Seattle. Long known as a suburb or satellite city of Seattle, it is now categorized as an edge city or a boomburb. The population was 122,363 at the 2010 census.Downtown Bellevue is...
in 2003. Accessing the number as a bulletin board system yielded large ASCII art
ASCII art
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters...
images.
Also launched in March 2010, an ARG produced by David Varela at nDreams
NDreams
nDreams, Ltd. is a video game developing company located in Farnborough, Hampshire in the United Kingdom. The company was formed in August 2006 thanks to former SCi/Eidos creative director, Patrick O'Luanaigh. nDreams was listed in Develop magazine as one of the hot companies to look for in 2008...
featured the 2008 Formula 1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton, MBE is a British Formula One racing driver from England, currently racing for the McLaren team. He was the Formula One World Champion.Hamilton was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire...
; entitled Lewis Hamilton: Secret Life, the game ran throughout the 2010 Formula 1 season, in nine languages, with live events in a dozen cities around the world.
Television tie-ins and "Extended Experiences"
Even before the development of the ARG genre, television sought to extend the reality of its shows onto the web with websites that treated their world as real, rather than discussing it as fiction. An early example was Fox's Freakylinks, developed by HaxanHäxan
Häxan is a 1922 Swedish/Danish silent horror film written and directed by Benjamin Christensen...
, creators of The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur footage. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. The film relates the story of three student filmmakers The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur...
, who would later go on to develop the well-known ARGs The Art of the Heist
The Art of the Heist
The Art of the Heist was an advertising campaign and an alternate reality game created to promote the Audi A3.-The promotion:Audi developed a new car and wanted to promote it...
and Who Is Benjamin Stove. Freakylinks employed a website designed to look like it had been created by amateur paranormal enthusiasts to generate internet interest in the show, which gathered a cult following but was canceled after 13 episodes. In September 2002, following a successful initial foray into ARG-like territory with 2001's Alias
Alias (TV series)
Alias is an American action television series created by J. J. Abrams which was broadcast on ABC for five seasons, from September 30, 2001 to May 22, 2006...
web game, ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
brought alternate reality gaming more definitively to the television screen with the show Push, Nevada
Push, Nevada
Push, Nevada is an American mystery television series set in the fictional town of Push, Nevada. It premiered on September 17, 2002 on the ABC network, and ran for 7 episodes before it became one of the first shows to be cancelled during the Fall 2002 season.Created by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey ,...
. Produced and co-written by Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck
Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt , better known as Ben Affleck, is an American actor, film director, writer, and producer. He became known with his performances in Kevin Smith's films such as Mallrats and Chasing Amy...
, the show created a fictional city in Nevada, named Push. When advertising the show, LivePlanet
LivePlanet
LivePlanet is a production company that invests in content for television and new media platforms. It was founded in 2000.-History:The company was started by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Moore and Sean Bailey...
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
Monday Night Football
Monday Night Football is a live broadcast of the National Football League on ESPN. From to it aired on ABC. Monday Night Football was, along with Hallmark Hall of Fame, and the Walt Disney anthology television series, one of the longest running prime time commercial network television series...
. The last clue was revealed during half-time
Half-time
In some team sports such as association football and rugby, matches are played in two halves. Half-time is the name given to the interval between the two halves of the match...
, prompting those fortunate enough to have solved the puzzle to call a telephone number. The first person to call received $1 million. In October 2004, the ReGenesis
ReGenesis
ReGenesis is a Canadian television program produced by The Movie Network and Movie Central in conjunction with Shaftesbury Films. The series, which ran for four seasons, revolves around the scientists of NorBAC , a fictional organization with a lab based in Toronto...
Extended Reality game launched in tandem with the Canadian television series ReGenesis. Produced by Xenophile Media
Xenophile Media
Xenophile Media is a Toronto-based cross-platform production company founded in 2002 by Patrick Crowe and Thomas Wallner. They are best known for creating alternate reality games linked to television series such as the ReGenesis Extended Reality game produced in association with Shaftesbury Films...
in association with Shaftesbury Films, clues and stories from the series sent players online to stop a bioterrorist attack.
In 2006, the TV tie-in ARG began to come into its own when there was a surge of ARGs that extended the worlds of related television shows onto the internet and into the real world. As with Push, Nevada
Push, Nevada
Push, Nevada is an American mystery television series set in the fictional town of Push, Nevada. It premiered on September 17, 2002 on the ABC network, and ran for 7 episodes before it became one of the first shows to be cancelled during the Fall 2002 season.Created by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey ,...
, ABC led the way, launching three TV tie-in ARGs in 2006: Kyle XY
Kyle XY
Kyle XY is an American television series with a science fiction premise and mystery-drama style. The central character is a teenage boy who awakens naked in a forest outside Seattle, Washington, with no more knowledge or abilities than a newborn. He is taken in by a family and given the name Kyle...
, Ocular Effect (for the show Fallen) and The LOST Experience (for the show LOST
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
). ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
joined with Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
in the UK and Australia's Channel 7
Seven Network
The Seven Network is an Australian television network owned by Seven West Media Limited. It dates back to 4 November 1956, when the first stations on the VHF7 frequency were established in Melbourne and Sydney.It is currently the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach...
in promoting a revamped web site for The Hanso Foundation. The site was focused on a fictitious company prevalent in the storyline of the TV series, and the game was promoted through television advertisement
Television advertisement
A television advertisement or television commercial, often just commercial, advert, ad, or ad-film – is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization that conveys a message, typically one intended to market a product...
s run during LOST episodes. The Fallen Alternate Reality Game was launched in tandem with the Fallen TV movie for ABC Family and was originally conceived by Matt Wolf
Matt Wolf
Matt Wolf is an American video game and new media designer, director, producer, creator and board game inventor. Wolf also conceived the first Alternate Reality Game to ever win a Primetime Emmy Award.-Biography:...
and created by Matt Wolf
Matt Wolf
Matt Wolf is an American video game and new media designer, director, producer, creator and board game inventor. Wolf also conceived the first Alternate Reality Game to ever win a Primetime Emmy Award.-Biography:...
(Double Twenty Productions) in association with Xenophile Media
Xenophile Media
Xenophile Media is a Toronto-based cross-platform production company founded in 2002 by Patrick Crowe and Thomas Wallner. They are best known for creating alternate reality games linked to television series such as the ReGenesis Extended Reality game produced in association with Shaftesbury Films...
. "I am humbled by this honor..." said Wolf when accepting the Emmy for The Fallen Alternate Reality Game at the 59th Annual Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, live at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on September 8, 2007.
NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
followed suit in January 2007, beginning an ARG for its hit TV series Heroes
Heroes (TV series)
Heroes is an American science fiction television drama series created by Tim Kring that appeared on NBC for four seasons from September 25, 2006 through February 8, 2010. The series tells the stories of ordinary people who discover superhuman abilities, and how these abilities take effect in the...
launched through an in-show reference to the website for Primatech Paper, a company from the show, which turned out to be real. Text messages and emails led players who applied for "employment" at the site to secret files on the show's characters.
In May 2007, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
commissioned Kudos and Hoodlum to produce an interactive ARG for their flagship drama series Spooks
Spooks
Spooks is a British television drama series that originally aired on BBC One from 13 May 2002 – 23 October 2011, consisting of 10 series. The title is a popular colloquialism for spies, as the series follows the work of a group of MI5 officers based at the service's Thames House headquarters, in a...
, "Spooks Interactive." The game enlists players to become MI5 agents who join the Section D team on missions crucial to the security of the UK, and launched on September 26. In 2008 it won the Interactivity Award at the British Academy Television Awards and the Interactive Innovation -Content Award at the British Academy Craft Awards.
The November 9, 2007 episode of Numb3rs
NUMB3RS
Numb3rs is an American television drama which premiered on CBS on January 23, 2005, and concluded on March 12, 2010. The series was created by Nicolas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton, and follows FBI Special Agent Don Eppes and his mathematical genius brother, Charlie Eppes , who helps Don solve crimes...
entitled "Primacy" featured alternate reality gaming, and launched the ARG Chain Factor, which centered on players using a flash-based puzzle game to unknowingly destroy the world's economy on the whim of one of the characters from the "Primacy" episode.
In January 2008, BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
launched "Whack the Mole" for the CBBC show M.I. High in which viewers are asked to become M.I. High field agents and complete tasks to capture a mole that has infiltrated the organization.
CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
made an ARG for Jericho
Jericho (TV series)
Jericho is an American action/drama series that centers on the residents of the fictional town of Jericho, Kansas, in the aftermath of nuclear attacks on 23 major cities in the contiguous United States...
to promote the series in 2007.
External links
- Alternate Reality Gaming - A Quickstart Guide - A simple explanation on how to get started playing an ARG
- Design-in-play: improving the variability of indoor pervasive games - A design strategy which allows end users to redesign indoor pervasive games
- Serious fun, The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, Technology Quarterly, Mar 5th 2009 - ARGology - Key information about ARGs by the International Game Developers Association Alternate Reality Game Special Interest Group (IGDA ARG SIG).
- Alternate Reality Gaming Network - the hub of a network of sites dedicated to Alternate Reality Gaming.
- ARG Stats A comprehensive list of ARG's by Christy Dena.
- Storytelling in new media: The case of alternate reality games, 2001-2009 First Monday (Volume 14, Number 6–1 June 2009) by Jeffrey Kim, Elan Lee, Thimoty Thomas and Caroline Dombrowski
- Authorized free excerpt from THIS IS NOT A GAME by Dave Szulborski Authorized free excerpt from THIS IS NOT A GAME by Dave Szulborski as a PDF