Slashdot Mirror
Alternate Reality Games Grab Mindshare
An nonymous reader points to articles at the New York Times and on the BBC about online games that require a lot more audience participation and curiosity than conventional games do. "Known as ARGs or Alternate Reality Games, these immersive experiences mix real world clues, phone calls, voicemail, email chatter-bots, real people playing roles in real life and a bevy of bogus and legit websites, to create a fully rounded gaming experience that bleeds over into everyday life. With central sites like ARGN, Unfiction, and endless forums and Yahoo groups, the BBC claims that this is not only a quickly emerging gaming trend, but that it may also have real-world applications like group dynamics and problem solving. Chasing the Wish claims to already have a few thousand people worldwide playing since it opened for play on Feb. 28. One sure sign of having people's attention is the fact that it's already spawned a parody site, Chasing the Fish."
When games start bleeding into real life, it's time to see a psychologist.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
i thought 'the game' with michael douglas was decent. then again, i smoked a shitload of grass before i saw it.
Wasn't Majestic, the game released by EA pretty much the same thing? Charged a monthly fee to get calls in the wee hours of the morning, e-mails, movies, what-not. It didn't do so well, I guess customers didn't like waking up at 3 am to hear a poorly delivered line about the imminent danger they were in.
Last I heard EA scrapped the idea since no one bothered to keep paying.
Does anyone else think it was the most unfortunate timing possible for THAT game? You know that one about being a 'terrorist' or 'anarchist' or anti-whatever with these types of communique experiences going on....
;-p
It seemed like the 'killer-app', of the century, for gaming at least.
Anyways, I'm giving up moderation for this post so be nice...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
"Chasing the UnSlashdotted site"? Flash + /. = death.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
He's on a mission so secret, even he doesn't know about it.
One of my favourite movies. Stars Bill Murray, who's supposed to be taking part in a 'reality' spy play, but he accidentally ends up in the real thing. Hilarious!
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
I've played MUDs and I've talked on BBSes and I've collaborated on all sorts of projects with AIM and cellphones (anyone catch the reference to "smart mobs" in the linked BBC article?). But I can't see how this could be fun, since the individual's efforts are always subjugated to solving someone else's computer-aided puzzle. The BBC article compares this online fake problem-solving effort to EverCrack, perhaps unfairly:
But really, this isn't special. It's just people seeking an outlet for their otherwise desperate life-empty frustrations; they'd be far better off contributing talent somewhere worthwhile rather than playing with someone else's hacked-together Flash animation. It's nothing to write home about--just Internet puzzles that take away your individual exploration and innovation and replace it with someone else's idea of a good time.
No offense, of course, intended to anyone who does in fact derive a good time from this kind of thing; but please remember if you're that desperate to express your smartness, there are much more productive and creative things you could be doing. Read... Write. Scram.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Didn't Electronic Arts try this a couple years back, only to have it flop? I can't remember the name of the game...
As far as real world 'immersion', Electronic Art's "Majestic" game from a while back was a pretty damn good first attempt IMHO. Sure, the clues that were left predominantly lacked personalization (obvious pre-recorded messages being left on your voice-mail, generic fill-in-the-customer's-name emails etc), it still seemed good enough to be considered an admirable first attempt.
Sure, we'll probably never see anything to the extent of The Game (at least not until someone builds a Holodek - my favorite fictitious invention EVER), but it was a much braver step in a new direction than most companies are willing to take.
God knows how much money EA lost on Majestic though.
...with a game called Majestic. Ron Dulin at Gamespot gave it a 6.7 and said "Majestic is a very passive experience, and as the novelty fades, so will your interest". The game faded after a couple of months because it just wasn't immersive enough, since you had to wait for phone calls or emails or faxes for the game to progress. It was also pretty linear and didn't take advantage of collaborative gaming. Maybe these new games can improve on that. I can imagine ARGs in which you join a government agency or revolutionary faction and work with other players on your side on different tasks set up by the game server, like collecting counterintelligence information on the internet and saboting the other team's networks and...umm, I think I let my imagination run wild there. Sorry.
Imagine how pissed off the NSA is going to be if this sort of thing takes off. All those intercepts of evil people planning which turn out to be a couple of bored 23-year-old guys somewhere...
...you never need the flash player.
You are already playing the game, you just don't know it.
But I don't know if If I'd like to have all those sleazy chicks calling me at work. (-;
I didn't kill that fish
The Canadians are going to help America with the war on terrorism.
They have pledged 2 of their biggest battle ships, 6000 ground troops and 6 fighter jets.
Unfortunately, after the exchange rate conversion, we ended up with 2 canoes, 1 Mountie, and some flying squirrels.
That was way too funny!
All these reality games are extremely, utterly pointless. Don't get me wrong, I love playing them, but games like The Sims (which I loved playing) is such a waste of time its so crazy that they are a blast to play. When you think about it your spending your time making someone shower, eat, work, and socialize. Games like this and other online games are of course fun, and playing them is fun for a while. I am writing this not to bash these games, but to make people think twice before they commit all their time to silly games like this. Just really think about it, and why it is fun, and what other things you could be accomplishing.
This reminds me of The Game with Michael Douglas.
It would be unnerving to have an experience as completely in the real world as his character did in that movie.
It's called "real life".
Kinda off topic, but I just ordered Uplink published by Strategy First. This has a RL slant since you play a "hacker" manipulating remote systems from your home PC through a gateway. It has fairly addictive gameplay. Played through the demo and wanted more. Cannot wait for the full game to get here.
that IS NOT BLAMING 9/11 for its' poor performance ?? Majestic was static and very boring. It is bad enough having to spend 30 minutes trying to QUIT EQ in a'safe' place. I'd just as soon NOT have the damn game calling me. :)
EQ already does that via my admitedly abnormal phyche
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Americans say the darndest things.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
When I read the title, I was expecting my favorite Atari 8-bit game, the RPG Alternate Reality , to be mentioned.
ARGN has news of TerraQuest failing due to a lack of userbase. In the BMW films game, ~200 players made it to the finale.
Compare that with a sales figure of 400,000 for a modestly selling console title. I have to ask: how much mindshare are these Alternate Reality games managing to attract?
It's pretty clear they're not going to become mainstream anytime soon. As the game is scaled up it becomes far more difficult (expensive & complicated) to provide a personalised touch to the gameplay - a factor that seems to be the key appeal to ARG's.
And then there's the whole other problem of one person being able to "solve" a problem and pass it on to everyone else....
Using web sites, email, voice mail, and mysterious in-person communications to piece together a puzzle in order to figure out what the hell is going on...
This isn't a game, it's my real life!! Why would I want to play a game that made me feel like I was at work?
Funny story related to this:
They held the Timothy McVeigh trial here in Denver in 1996. My friends and I all played Cyberpunk at a Denny's during the wee hours of the night just about every night of the week. One night we started kinda early, during the tail end of the dinner rush. In the game, we were planning this big bank heist complete with neurotoxins, automatic weapons, remote cameras, cars packed with explosives, distracting police attention by blowing up a wing of a hospital, and all sorts of other shenanigans. We were all so into it, even the waitress was tossing ideas back and forth with us.
Well, apparently, some concerned citizen heard us plotting these things and called the police. The next night, a bunch of goons in FBI jackets stormed into the place and started interrogating us about what we were planning.
I was like "Dude, come on...it's a game. Here are the books, here are the dice...wanna see my stats?" No legal trouble ended up coming of it, luckily, but I wouldn't be surprised if I am on some FBI database somewhere as a potential terrorist. Last year, I applied for an intership with the feds and was denied based on the background check. Considering I have no significant criminal history, I can only imagine that is what caused it. (They don't tell you why you fail, just that you fail)
Think about my experiences, and those of Steve Jackson games, and tell me that there won't be many many misunderstandings as these things become more mainstream.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
I dunno, I wonder how this would effect weak-minded people who would be unable to tell where the game ended and their life and responsibilities began. I guess that's true for any game, right? But having to mentally divide your day into reality/fantasy could be difficult for some folks.
.. it would be under the control of a private company! Scary, isn't it? No more constitution, no more human rights. Just whatever the company decides to put in it's EULA.
.. about a society that was actually two societies intertwined, one that was "normal" and one that was under control of a game company... has it been done?? What would the difference between this game company, and a government be?
Would would worry me is just how much leeway these companies will have with your life. And you'll agree to it all in the terms of service! Can they scare you? Send people out to beat you up? Have a woman seduce you for the purposes of the game? The mind boggles.
(putting on my tinfoil hat and thinking into the future) I wonder if someday, people will lead entire lives (earning a living and working, getting married, etc) under the auspices of these games. Imagine having a child according to the rules of the game, raising it for the purposes of improving your "score", etc.
It would be exactly like real life! Except
Man, that would make an awesome movie, wouldn't it
Interesting ideas...........
That people might do it.. just because it's -fun-? I'd be quite happy if I did nothing but play computer games, talk to my friends, golf, race cars, and play around with my other hobbies.
There's nothing wrong with doing things for no other reason than fun. If people like Everquest, and they have fun doing it - more power to them. The point of it is that it isn't productive at all.
..don't panic
is this like everquest? i never did like that game, it wasnt that you had to pay to use it (which was a huge turnoff to begin with), but it just seemed like my life started to end, and my video game persona took over.. people even started calling me by my handle (ciro), and when it gets to the point in which u'de rather stay in and play video games than go out and date girls, well thats just sad.
hey wait a second.... thats the perfect nerds life.. DUDE I CANT BELIEVE I SOLD MY COPY!!!!
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Lot's of people have mentioned EA's failed Majestic game, but no one seems to talking about the one ARG that was a huge success: The game based around the movie A.I. It was run by Microsoft, and had a very loyal and fanatical fanbase. The fans were so in to the game that they actually changed the dynamics of the game as it went along, even going so far as to create a distributed.net-style program to sovle a puzzle that was inadvertainly left unsolvable by the team.
Read more at Cloudmakers.org.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
Some people work hard all day every day to get a nicer car. They claw and climb the corprate ladder. But the group doing this the most...White Males in America are also the group were most social pathic killers come from so what does that say about the game we're playing.
Sex is what happens when people think no one else will ever find out
I'm one of the people totally addicted to this. Here are a few other great sites to check out.
collective detective
unfiction both of which are great message boards and have IRC groups.
Some other games include l3
search4e
Time Hunt
Collective detective there are also resources (irc/message) for game books. Welcome to my addiction:) Check out collective detective for many other games/resources.
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
You go from saying that a player is mearly 'solving someone else's computer-aided puzzle' to saying that 'It's just people seeking an outlet for otherwise desperate life-empty frustrations' and some how that is anti-individualism. What makes a person an individual is the way in which the face a problem or a situation not what problem or situation they face. Saying this is as much saying that a computer Scientest is less of an individual than a farmer because a computer scientest doesn't deal with 'real' world problems. (real is deffined as physical. This also asumes some things about the CS persons field of research). We can not all have fulfilling jobs some one must pump gas. I live in Lawrence Ks a city filled with the highly educated I have a friend who has a masters in Computer Engineering...she is substitute teaching and glad for the games life has to offer.
Sex is what happens when people think no one else will ever find out
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Some of the appeal of this genre is obviously the immersive aspect of gaming this way -- the way it blurs reality and the game work. Ironically, "The Beast" was also the game that had the least bit of "reality" in it -- it was more alternate than "real" I guess. The game's reality was set centuries in the future (even after the events in the movie it was supposed to promote) and so you had to make an effort to participate and put yourself into that world. Every web site in the game gave you warnings about "downgrading" itself to adjust to your primitive 21st century technology -- so there were constant reminders that this wasn't "real." There were some phone calls -- but not many at all.
Now Majestic and the other games try much harder to be "real" -- they are set in the present, and they try to contact you in all sorts of ways. So if this immersion is the thing people are going for, then the Beast should have failed miserably...
I think the reason these later games have not been as much a success with casual players like me has to do with how they misunderstood the reasons the AI game was successful. The AI game succeeded because it had good content. It succeeded because the writer for the Beast, Sean Stewart, was a great sci-fi novelist, and he took care to create the characters and the world they inhabited with words that suspended disbelief. Sure the graphics and everything else helped, but the writing was what really made it all work together. I can't really convey how good the writing for that game was -- but you can get a taste for it from his novels. Some of the writing in that game, such as a dialogue in words-and-pictures between a man and his slave-AI who wanted to be free, was done with more care and more evocative than anything I saw in the AI movie itself. It was really art.
In contrast, Majestic and the new games so far have terrible content. It really looks as if the creators in these games thought flashy graphics could make up for poor writing. These games always play on a conspiracy/occult storyline that lends itself to cliches and trite tabloid-style writing. Of course, by focusing on these themes, the new games can link to a bunch of existing web sites devoted to conspiracy theories and the occult and save themselves a lot of effort (whereas the people for the AI game had to create everything for this future world of theirs).
Therein lies the heart of the problem for me. I think the Beast worked because Sean Stewart and the team at Microsoft treated the players with respect. They did not take the lazy way out, and they backed up the flashy presentation with good, publishable, professional quality sci-fi writing, and they designed puzzles that required the knowledge of a diverse group of people with specific talents to solve (there were puzzles that drew on genetics -- and the sort of genetics that only graduate students would be comfortable with -- and puzzles that drew on the artistic ability of players to mold clay). In a word, they thought their players were interesting people with diverse backgrounds, who were very smart and had an appreciation for literary writing. This kind of respect came across in their work, and this is what it takes to keep most players interested.
In contrast, the writers for Majestic and subsequent games were condescending to the players, and treated them as either socially inept geeks or as conspiracy-obs
No I just cut and peste because it easier:
Plese excuse my poor writign. I am nto good at typsing and hate to yuse backspace when i am thinking fast and engliehs is my other langage. This guy [slashdot.org] make soem good points abotu the flwaed modretation system on the Slashdort. if we don't so somethign about this now, w'ell lose the site we all love and cherich. So go read this guys log journal and make discussing with yourself. I am positng this anonymousyl because I kow it will hurt my kamra to post with my regula accnotu/ Teh modretation sytem is definitley broken here. That's why this commnet will probalyl get moded down. If anyone her' has the balls like this guy do, then you wil l poste this stuff logged in. My kamra is to lo so afford that right now. If anyeon else with mod points is concerned about this problems please mod this up as well as teh other guys potsts. I putp one comment is his log hournal. Its the one wher e I say I am going to postt a linik to his thing. Rmember that this is the Slashdotg that we dont' want to see. Plese brign back the old Sladhost with no modretation so we can be more real. Or at leest fix teh moedretation sothat it works in more fair way6. Peoeple shoudl be abe l to be heared and noticed by everyone. There are too many unfiar thingks happeningn on the Slashdote. The wrong peoolp are geting allteh kamra and the peolep who say cool sutffs is gettnig moded down to fast so they are no never heard.d I am sick and tird of hearing some stupid peolpe talking aabotu thnigs tat dont matter at all. Thins like when peopel say that Ameirica ois a good country. and thar linux is not god for the peolep. Linux is th good opertating sytem that makes peopl work better than their micro$oft windoes pc. a lot of peopel talk bad botu the X windoe sytem. It suprerior to winshit becaus e ti can be newtworked withot no one knowing it. Users use programt htat is far a wawy but it s like on the same machine but its noet. Wincrap not haet his pheeature untli temrinal serve and X have it sinse begining in 1980s! Thta proves its suprerior. They aws thinkin abotu the future. Those peopel new then that the inertnet waws the awy to the future. Micor$oft just peepee inthe pants then. Now they are running scare becuase the penguin is the - epower from them for no moeny. If the Slashodt would realize this is why we come here then they would make the modretation fixed. But they don;t. It makes me sad. dont forget to linik tothis man and make yout voice count!!! POER TO THE PEOEPL!!!
The website is a showstopper. Confused, overwhelmed I certainly was by the overwhelmingly Scientological typeface. in short they are really afraid to tell me what the rules of this game are, and, here I am seriosly considering secretly regestering my mother-in-law - with the option "Full Contact" checked on. -Just kidding.
but then again, /. is kind of a departure from reality in and of itself.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
My question is: What's the point? Why play alternate reality games when you have the reality right around you. Many people know movie characters better than they know other people around them. Everyone is expected to know who some movie character is, and if they don't, then they are labeled as "weird". I think people have enough trouble with reality, and dealing with things that happen in real life. Over 50% of the American populace think Saddam Hussein ordered the 9/11 attack. Shouldn't the people get to know our reality properly, before they start in on alternate reality? -Dae
"Alle reden vom wetter. Wir nicht." - SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
j00 4r3 3n73r1ng l337 w0r1d.
NokiaGame, an annual game run by Nokia has proven wildly successful in entertaining people across europe. They've combined printed media, phonecalls, email and SMS to give out clues and assignments. Hint-sites have popped up all over, and people are in fact doing as their slogan says, connecting. The previous game sported 1 million players in total.
Harald
Doing so will *create* a file for you with the FBI if you don't have one.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
mod this parent up!
One of the first proper ARGs was The Beast, an AI marketing kinda game run out of Microsoft (although we had no idea until the very end, it was all very secretive).
:) near the end of the game, from an insane Teddy Bear. It was supposed to be a prompt to recognise the sound and revisit one of the earlier game sites as new information was posted there, but it just creeped the hell out of me.
I remember getting a really disturbing phonecall at 2am in the morning (the dialling software didn't take timezones into account
But then again, that's one of the biggest lures of this genre - getting faxs, phonecalls, e-mails... without breaking 'the illusion of the reality'. Eg, a game which - like The Beast - is set in the future has a hard time of keeping the players immersed without accidently breaking the 'immersion' by slipping up regarding methods of communication. That's why the Internet is great for this, as it can be considered a medium that will exist for quite some time - thus providing a base for all kinds of fanciful immersion storylines.
Majestic ran into two problems - one was that is failed miserably at keeping the player immersed. Contact from the game was simply too obvious, there -was- no chance to get spooked. Also it was badly paced.
I'm on the team that build and runs Collective Detective, mentioned in the BBC article (I havn't read the nytimes article). We beat TerraQuest for one of the same reasons Majestic sucked - nobody took into account the Collective factor, that people will play together for fun as opposed to playing alone to win a set goal or prize.
This particually threw Majestic off because they were not adapting to the play of the users. The Beast adapted it's pace, and threw in new elements just to keep players busy and distracted. Majestic just kind of idled, and TerraQuest threw in the towel. It's a new Genre so the main problem is, I think, the lack of previous work to help base something on.
Of course, it also shows that commercialised games are going to run into problems in this regard. The Beast was a small "black ops" group kept under tight secrery at Microsoft. People ran into it just on word of mouth, and because the team was small (two to four people most of the time) there was a lot of freedom to quickly adapt. Majestic, and to an extent TerraQuest, did not have the ability to adapt quickly enough to stay alive. Because, I believe, partly of "Developer Bloat" and partly because the strict commercial structures governed by marketing stiffle this kind of behavior in a conventional environment.
- Ender
Developer Dude, Collective Detective
Addicting? Uplink is so boring I almost fell asleep when I played it. Finished the demo in the first try, deleted it, and never missed it.
BORING.
Any of them. They all discuss Majestic.
-1, redundant.
No one else has done it, and as I was thinking about it last night...
The slogan for "Majestic" used to be "the game that plays you". This was before the Soviet Russia craze, but since it's currently ontopic...
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, THE GAME PLAYS YOU!
Thank you very much. I feel like I have achieved something.
I can tell you my biggest problem, and the reason I stopped playing was the linear gameplay.
The game was fun and exciting for the first episode, but then after that it was like paying for a really slow television show. Everything was predetermined to fit a very specific timeline, and there wasn't that much you could do to get out of it.
I just had to stop after playing for a few months because I just got sick and tired of being led by the hand through the episodes, and not really being able to change the direction of the storyline myself.
Now, if someone were to make a game like Majestic, but with a nonlinear storyline. I would pay big bucks for that. I loved majestic (I am a bit of an x-files fan), I just quit because I got tired of being led by the hand through it. I want a game, not a "reality storybook."
~ kjrose
...
.
This message finally got to you. .
Don't turn around, don't do anything suspecious...
They are watching.
Yeah those were awesome.. Alternate Reality the City, Alternate Reality the dungeon. What a badass series of games. Oh.. you didn't mean those?
You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.
hmm, let's see... reading *way* too much in to human behavior that's technology related... coming up with a bizzare theory from out of left field... this seems familiar. Now I've got it!
:-P
Who let Jon Katz back in here!?
First everyone says "It's just a game, don't let it interfere with your real life" then they start saying "It's a great game that interacts with your real life". Psycologists are going to be filthy rich very soon.
Love Media- http://www.rockstargames.com/grandtheftauto3/flash /loveMedia/
for example. I just want to know where I can get a Bitch 'N' Dog Food t-shirt.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Any type of game where you play a role is an "alternate reality," in a way. Some people prefer to play in a game world that is very similar to ours. Others prefer to play in one that is drastically different. The medium the game is presented on alters the level of involvement.
Many people draw the line at the point where they feel that the game will interfere with the real world. For example, I am fine playing D&D... but I'm not too keen on Live Action Roleplaying (LARP) because some of the games I've heard of can meld into the player's life. That, and I think the foam swords and fake elf ears just look stupid. Heh.
And we all know that there are some people who play far too much EverQuest for their own good...
This type of "Alternate Reality" game takes it to the level where the game world can become hard to distinguish from the real world because of the level of involvement, and because the setting of the game tends to be one that is close to our own.
Of course, it seems that there are plenty of people who enjoy it and play it without much problem.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I recall checking out in line at a supermarket, buying red beverages for a Vampire: The Masquerade game I was hosting at my house that night, discussing with my cohorts our plan to "kill Armstrong" that night, in full detail. I don't really think going into detail on what the results are are necessary, but it is safe to say that after our conference with the local police who were waiting outside, the government very likely has a file on me, and that I would have trouble getting a job in law enforcement were I to try as a result.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
its got my mindshare, get it!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on