An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform and uses transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered 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. Subsequently, it is shaped by 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 collaborate as 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 Find 815 promoted the television show Lost). However, pay-to-play models are not unheard of.
Read more about Alternate Reality Game: Defining Alternate Reality Gaming, Basic Design Principles of ARGs, Scholarly Views On ARGs, Awards Won By ARGs
Famous quotes containing the words alternate, reality and/or game:
“It might become a wheel spoked red and white
In alternate stripes converging at a point
Of flame on the line, with a second wheel below,
Just rising, accompanying, arranged to cross,
Through weltering illuminations, humps
Of billows, downward, toward the drift-fire shore.”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)
“Growing up means letting go of the dearest megalomaniacal dreams of our childhood. Growing up means knowing they cant be fulfilled. Growing up means gaining the wisdom and skills to get what we want within the limitations imposed by realitya reality which consists of diminished powers, restricted freedoms and, with the people we love, imperfect connections.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“Life is a game in which the rules are constantly changing; nothing spoils a game more than those who take it seriously. Adultery? Phooey! You should never subjugate yourself to another nor seek the subjugation of someone else to yourself. If you follow that Crispian principle you will be able to say Phooey, too, instead of reaching for your gun when you fancy yourself betrayed.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)