Analysis: Anatomy of an alternate-reality game

Interesting article on the evolution of ARGs.

* by Alex Wawro
* April 26, 2010 13:02 PM PST

We hacked the Portal 2 BBS and tracked Meltzer’s kidnapped daughter to Rapture without touching a video game console. Alternate-reality games (ARG) have become more sophisticated in the last few years, and now it seems every major release comes with an extra mystery to solve. What makes these games so popular? Who plays them, and why do developers sink so much time and effort into a free product?

Alternate-reality games have come a long way since the ill-fated 2001 launch of EA’s Majestic, an interactive game that contacted subscribers via phone, email, and instant message to make a fictional conspiracy come alive. Majestic was the first commercial ARG, a game played in real-time across multiple forms of media. That ARG was a commercial failure – EA shut the game down after recouping less than a tenth of the $10 million development cost – but today the format flourishes as a marketing tool. To find out why, GamePro talked to a few game designers about what makes ARG marketing campaigns so effective and whether their popularity suggests a growing trend or just a passing fad.

Anatony of an ARG

Analysis: Anatomy of an alternate-reality game

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New-Media Narrative Forms

Research in this theme includes any variety of interactive and emergent narratives and games, including interactive drama, documentary and film; non linear texts, computer games, physical games, trans-reality games, location-based games, pervasive games, mobile games
and technologically enhanced live-action role-playing.

What are Alternate Reality Games?

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 [1], produced in the fall of 2007 by Xenophile Media Inc.[2] was awarded a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Achievement for an Interactive Television Program. Xenophile Media Inc.’s ReGenesis Extended Reality Game [3]won an International Interactive Emmy Award in 2007 and in April 2008 The Truth About Marika won the iEmmy for Best interactive TV service.^[1] The British Academy of Film and Television Arts recognises Interactivity as a category in the British Academy Television Awards.

To read the Alternate Reality Gaming Blog click here.