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."

Comments

Re:warning signs

[Xsh-II]

I agree here, if you want to play games, play games but don't let them take over your life, I can't imagine anything worse than having a game invade my life! One thing that should be established, is the clear seperation between "Real Life" and the domains of escapism that is the Internet and online gaming. If this does not happen then events such as killing related to the violence seen in Online games etc will increase because the kids and other players wont make a clear distinction between real life and their game. Not clearly recognising that if someone dies then they aren't going to respawn