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Alternate Reality Games Examined
The Guardian's gamesblog has an interview up with Matt Adams, one of the members of the company Blast Theory. Blast theory was given the "Maverick Award" at GDC 2005 for their Alternate Reality Game Uncle Roy All Around You, which uses mobile technology to insert players into a virtual landscape while traversing real London streets. From the interview: "Games are an expression of the ways in which the virtual interpenetrates our lives in ever more complex ways. Desert Rain took the Gulf War of 1991 as a critical moment in this process: when it became widely understood that the killing itself was 'off screen' and the imagery of war was taking over. Soldiers themselves are taught in increasingly computer generated spaces and have less direct contact with their enemy. And many of them are avid games players. America's Army is a game funded by the US Army to bring in new recruits."
This game was apparently pretty different from what we think of as ARG's, like ilovebees or the beast. Those are played out on websites and chat rooms (and payphones) pretending that a story is developing in the world around you. This "uncle roy" game seems more like a game where an artificial reality is placed "over top" of the streets you're walking on.
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
AR was a damn fine concept and one I'd like to see revisited now that we have so much many resources at our disposal.
sig semper tyrannis!
Militaries around the world are changing. AA is primarily a marketing tool, but the interest in using commercial video games as training tools is increasing.
And, on the other side, the number of recruits coming in who are already 1337 is increasing. An article on a recent miliatry FPS trial reported that a full 2/3 of the soldiers selected were familiar with FPS.
Those making mods for military-style games are finding their work being favorably mentioned in surprising places, and well, if some you receiving instant messages from warzones may have noted that what's going on often gets described in terms of video games.