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UN-Reality

Make alternate reality game.

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7 things you should know about...

Alternate Reality Games

What is it?

Alternate reality games (ARGs) weave together real-world artifacts

with clues and puzzles hidden online to create an engaging,

collective experience for players. In an ARG, players follow a

narrative through clues, puzzles, and events orchestrated by the

“puppetmaster” or game designer(s). ARGs are not computer or

video games, though electronic devices—including computers,

cell phones, and GPS-enabled handhelds—are frequently used

to access clues. ARGs are not role-playing games, in that players

generally function as themselves in a real-world environment.

Clues and pieces of the puzzle can be anywhere—websites,

libraries, museums, stores, signs, recorded telephone messages,

movies, television programs, or printed materials (textbooks, reference

books, novels, and so forth). Players can meet and talk

with characters in the narrative and use resources like postal mail,

e-mail, the web, or the public library to find hints, clues, and various

pieces of the puzzle. Since no one is expected to find all the

clues, the game’s solution depends on collaborative effort. Several

characteristics are common to most ARGs, including a narrative

that must be inferred, rules that are not specified at the outset but

must be uncovered in the process of the game, and a suspension

of disbelief—in this case, the sense that “this is not a game.”

Who’s doing it?

ARGs, most of which are free to play, have been embraced by

marketers, nonprofits, training groups, and higher education—

venues that can absorb the cost of development. Many ARGs

have been successful as viral marketing tools, with notable examples

including “I love Bees,” promoting the 2004 release of the

video game Halo 2, and “Year Zero,” promoting a new album by

Nine Inch Nails. Because ARGs facilitate social discovery, these

games offer students a means to engage with subject content

in nontraditional ways. For example, in “World Without Oil,” participants

were encouraged to imagine a near-future world in the

grip of a global oil shortage. Players were encouraged to blog

about their experiences, submitting their stories by e-mail, telephone,

and video; stories were then collected and presented as

part of the game. The European Union is funding an ARG called

“ARGuing for Multilingual Motivation in Web 2.0” that brings together

technologists, ARG experts, pedagogy specialists, and

language instructors to take advantage of Internet technologies

to actively engage students in learning languages.

Alternate Reality Games

How does it work?

Players put together story scraps and clues that lead them through

a narrative. They enter the game through “rabbit holes”—sites or

events that point the way into the game by suggesting that at a

certain website or a certain physical location there is a curious

matter to be investigated. ARGs often have multiple entry points,

and participants researching an initial strange occurrence or peculiar

posting may find an e-mail address or telephone number

that draws players into interaction with the fictional world of the

game and the characters within it. Frequently the games, puzzles,

and mysteries encountered in an ARG are challenging enough to

require input from multiple players working in cooperation. In general,

ARGs offer easy entry points for beginners and rely on collaborative

play throughout the activity. Most, but not all, ARGs offer

a definite conclusion that closes the game.

Why is it significant?

Some suggest that ARGs constitute a new form of literary expression

in their presentation of participatory fiction. For educators,

ARGs invite students into the world of subject matter, urging them

to search for and share information in the effort to solve a mystery.

Such activity familiarizes students with the tools of scholarly research

as it promotes collaborative learning, problem solving, and

experiential learning. It may offer new ways to address different

learning styles—including kinetic, auditory, or visual—in that each

student in a team-learning situation can offer clues that might have

been missed by others. Perhaps more to the point, ARGs open

doors into the future of students’ professional lives, where they will

be expected to solve complex problems by taking necessary raw

materials from multiple resources, thinking critically and analytically,

and putting their individual skills, interests, and abilities at the

disposal of a group dedicated to a common goal.

What are the downsides?

ARGs can be complex to design and execute. Effective games for

learning require a compelling narrative, a strong sense of what is

to be accomplished, a series of puzzles and clues that lead to a

pre-arranged conclusion, and instructional design expertise. As a

result, constructing them might be best undertaken in a team environment.

While they encourage players to interact with the game

content in absorbing ways, if clues are too difficult to decipher or

too easy to understand, players will become frustrated or bored

and might simply choose not to participate. ARGs are not common

in education, and notable examples of the genre continue

to be linked with marketing. Even where resources for excellent

design and execution exist, the medium may not appeal to all students

or instructors. Finally, to the extent than an ARG employs a

disturbing scenario (perhaps including crimes and violence) and

successfully creates the suspension of disbelief—the sense that

“this is not a game”—players unfamiliar with the ARG model can

become alarmed and upset.

Where is it going?

The genre is emerging and evolving as it distinguishes itself from

antecedents that include role-playing games, solve-the-murder

parties, and scavenger hunts. Awareness of ARGs is growing,

with much of it coming in the wake of public awareness of virtual

worlds and the educational possibilities that they offer. The overlap

with virtual worlds and augmented reality might be extended

or deepened in the future—a peek through a cell phone camera

viewer, for example, could reveal the building on the corner not as

the familiar warehouse it is but as a castle or ancient oracle with a

clue written above the archway. Some have suggested that ARGs

may constitute a new curriculum of problem-based or experiential

learning in which students can learn to work with others to solve

real-world problems.

What are the implications for

teaching and learning?

Because no one participant finds all the clues and because it’s

improbable that anyone could unravel all of an ARG’s puzzles without

help, these games offer new opportunities for collaborative

learning, either in competition with one another or in opposition

to a puppetmaster. By offering engaging content that embraces

multimedia, these games present learning challenges that can be

solved in many different ways, allowing students to leverage answers

obtained from online searches, library resources, texts, and

experts in the field. Because design of these games can draw on

the skills and knowledge of many contributors, ARGs might be

well suited to production at the departmental or institutional level,

where whole courses might consist of the game alone.

ARGs will force many educators to think in new ways about their

students—as participants in a collaborative learning environment

and characters in the narrative—and ask new questions. Will students

profit from increasingly difficult challenges? Are students

learning useful information as they search for answers? How

have new technologies changed the ways that students search

for information? When such matters are taken into consideration,

ARGs might become a common component of a wide range of

educational programs, offering students new opportunities to

hone their critical-thinking, problem-solving, and collaborativelearning

skills.

EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. (2009). &things you should know about AR game. Retrieved from  http://www.educause.edu/eli

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.

Alternate reality game.(n.d). In wikipedia. retrieve from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality