The "Alternate Reality" in Alternate Reality Games
Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) has achieved increasing popularity in the last few years. Similar in some ways to augmented reality games, alternate reality games are elaborate forms of informal learning experiences that usually recruit large numbers of people in separate physical locations for the game to function.
One of the most famous alternate reality games is I Love Bees. In the game, players who had previously participated in ARGs suddenly receive honey bears in the mail that contained mysterious vinyl letters. Separately, a website dedicated to beekeeping is hacked and the website owner pleads for help on her blog. Both instances are related but players only connect them together later on.
Alternate reality games present information to the players strictly on a need to know basis and use evidence with the sole purpose of stimulating player speculation and hypothesizing about an issue. In the case of I Love Bees, players in different areas of the country try to come up with explanations as to what the numbers are that appeared on the beekeeping site.
Some of these conjectures can be used by the designer to modify the plot of the game on the fly, thus enhancing the sense of an "alternate reality" being at play, e.g., using one player’s idea, contributed in a discussion forum, that the numbers were in fact GPS coordinates to create a scenario where this were actually true.
Technology in Playing Alternate Reality Games
Web and communication technologies play a crucial role in the success of alternate reality games. The absence of a known interlocutor in the dialog between designer and players serves as a way to create the mysterious sense of "augmented reality." At the same time, designers of augmented reality games must learn to use these technologies efficiently to:
- generate and disseminate new pieces of evidence in a timely and effective manner in order to maintain player engagement
- coordinate groups that could potentially be physically located thousands of miles apart to keep the information flowing among each other