The February issue of Communications of the ACM has our Alternate Reality Gaming article as the cover story.
ARGs are games that mix online and real-world play, where players (sometimes thousands of them) work together to solve challenges. The game’s story changes in response to what the players do. ARGs began as a kind of intense promotional tool for movies and videogames, but have diversified into ‘collective experiences’ for business, entertainment, and politics.
ARGs are hot (see the Wired article), but it’s difficult to explain exactly what they are, much less why they’re attractive or how to run one. The article (written with my main man Jeff Kim at U. of Washington, and Elan Lee of Fourth Wall Studios) describes the first two successful ARGs that defined this new type of gaming: the Beast ARG tied to the Spielberg movie AI, and the ilovebees ARG tied to the Halo 2 game release. Wikipedia and the ARG network are other good resources if you’d like to learn more about the games that don’t admit they’re games…
awesome JP.
in class last week, my students and i were discussing a white paper by media professor henry jenkins. in the paper, he mentioned ilovebees. a few of us remarked how we’d like to learn more about this ARG. now we have some readings – thanks.
It is very interesting but I am wondering what kind of challenges the players have to solve because video games sometimes affect players negatively and positively. I am not a game freak but what I hope is this game can teach the players some problem solving skills and convey a good message so the players can keep it as a experience for themselves. I also want to learn more about this game and might try to experience it.