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Alternate Reality Games Grow In Popularity
A Joystiq post has some commentary on the popularity of Alternate Reality Games. Specifically, they reference some statistics gathered to give quantifiable metrics to game popularity. From the post: "Based on official numbers, the volume of forum posting and the number of hits on Google, these figures are pretty impressive. Two of the better-known ARGs -- The Beast and I Love Bees -- attracted upwards of two million players, according to their designers." For folks who play: What is your sense of their popularity? How many people do you know who play?
Okay... it is alternate reality gaming. I followed both links, but found no reference to what this actually means. A link in one of the articles pointed me to wikipedia, which seems to have that page slashdotted.
Can someone fill me in on what "Alternate Reality Gaming" means? If I missed it in the linked articles, I apologize, but wish we'd get more of a background on something that we are not familiar with.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
... are the originals.
'An alternate reality game is a cross media game that deliberately blurs the line between the in-game and out-of-game experiences, often being used as a marketing tool for a product or service. While games may primarily be centered around online resources, often events that happen inside the game reality will "reach out" into the players' lives in order to bring them together. Elements of the plotline may be provided to the players in almost any form, some of those used have been'
From wikipedia for anyone else who was wondering what the hell this is all about.
All video games are "alternate realities"; there's no point otherwise.
It's a shame that there's only one company in this industry that can put on a decent show: 42 Entertainment. It's also a shame that they have to change their name for every big project they do (they were Myriad Entertainment when they made The Beast).
I know some ARGs have real world events (such as calling payphones). Are there any new ARGs that are currently running and are fairly interesting? None of the links seemed to say how one can get started (in true ARG fashion).
These stories never end up being about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality
You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.
This reminds me alot of the movie, eXistenZ.
These games, MMORPGS and their ilk, have always scared me. I dont like the idea of being totally absorbed into an artificial world at the expense of the real one. Everyone I know that plays WoW describes their playing experiences as "I spent 70% of my weekend playing WoW."
Eesh. Videogames, for me, are brief distractions. Something to take up a rainy weekend day or maybe an evening twice a week. I prefer to spend my time working on small projects and creating things. Usually crappy things, but my friends get wierd bookends, shelves, and random art and I get the satisfaction of building cool shit.
Its a pity, really. I am fascinated by WoW, it looks beautiful and Ive leaned over shoulders and watched them play. Gameplay seemed to have a lot to be desired. clickaclicka.
I get my geek from our bi-weekly D&D sessions, instead of this encompassing, life-sucking fantasy game.
Games are okay, but you need to diversify your life.
I'm not part of any of the active ARGs right now, but I heavily got into ILB during its campaign, to the point that it could have been classified as an addiction. Unfortunatly, school and work got in the way of leading the forefront, but I still made sure to keep up on discoveries and hypothesises (hypothesii?).
One of the big reasons ARGs create such fervor is that it's more like virtual reality than playing a game console. Instead of manipulating a character in the game, you are in the game. Your personal reactions can change or advance the story, but so can the actions of millions of other people around the world.
However, I think ARGs more easily attract non-gamers than gamers. Because of the non-physical and low-visial environment that ARGs take, there's no fighting, adventuring, sword-swinging, racing, or gun shootng- in short, 70% of the gaming world wouldn't quite understand.
"Regular" people would get into it more because it's closer to an interactive novel than a video game. You still read along and try to think ahead, but now you actually do things instead of placidly sitting to the side, which would excite home-making housewives everywhere. You don't need anything more than a keyboard and mouse (and maybe a cellphone), things that most people are comfortable, if not really adept, with.
The gamers that would hop into it naturally are those who are into RTS or Myst. No longer is hack, slash, and headshot part of the formula, but strategy and puzzles rule the day. Critical thinking is necessary if you don't want to get left in the dust, and odd specialities can actually come in handy (we had one guy in ARG who was good with changing voice pitches and the like who was modifying voice recordings to see if there was a hidden message.)
Another big thing is that, unlike msot other games, this all happens in real time. You can't just save and come back later, or restart if something goes wrong. You have to stick with it and check it often, or you might just miss out.
ILB limited itself to one or two sites, e-mail, and a couple dozen public phones. The Beast, IIRC, covered a wild variety of sites, and used many other means of communication to advance the story.
As for people I know personally, not that many. Most of the people involved in ARGs that I know I met through the ARG.
I think that, as people get tired of Sequal of the Year awards, they'll turn towards things like ARG, which can have a much smaller budget, but a lot more user interaction.
As someone firmly addicted to PerplexCity (perplexcity.com), which is a cruelly addicting crossover between ARG and CCG, I'd have to say that there's something to this ARG thing.
Darnit.
-kian
P.S. Help on #251 would be very welcome.
~
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." -Emerson
I think that the biggest reason I enjoy playing ARGs is for the social problem solving.
I played both "The Beast" and the "I Love Bees" ARGs and have played some of the grassroot games(the smaller "indie" games). I find that the better the story and puzzles that have to be solved the better the game. This is probably blatantly obvious but I think these things are much more important than the voice acting, script writing and what not. While having a bigger budget definitely helps, having good ideas and decent puzzles can make or break a game.
Unfortunately, as has been mentioned before, bigger budgets usually define how successful a game is. Not all ARGs are used as advertising as most grassroots are just games with no corporate backing. What really draws me to the genre are the storys that unfold and the people involved with the project. Good ARGs should unfold based on how the players play the game. Having a rigid story line may work but allowing players to alter the course of the story definitely increases the enjoyability of the game.
Not all people may find ARGs enjoyable. ARGs usually play slower than some people like and take a while to truly enjoy. The more involved the players becomes with the story the more enjoyable the game becomes. Taking this into consideration, if you are willing to give it a chance and dedicate some time and effort into the game, ARGs can be a very rewarding and enjoyable experience.
In the past? I can't remeber the name, they closed it down after 9/11 I think because it was inapropreate or something...
e =off&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aunof ficial&q=ea+majestic&btnG=Search
search and you will find...
http://www.google.com/search?hs=DR4&hl=en&lr=&saf
Man, this was twelve years ago which really makes me feel old...
Reading about alternative reality games immediately brought this to mind: the Publius Enigma.
Eleven years later it was finally admitted that it was a record label marketing gimmick, but a LOT of people spent years chasing down clues online and offline about it.
LARPing and RPGing explain in a short documentary
The Game. I really liked that movie and thought it would be really cool (if not crazy and scary at times) to be involved in something like that. Might have to give some of these links a try...
I love the idea of ARGs. I played in Majestic when it came out and I loved the interaction. E-mails from characters, telephone calls at 2am with threatening messages, video diaries of kidnappings. It was awesome. Then I started interacting with the other players. Nobody was interested in the feel of the game. They just wanted to answers fast so they could try to get ahead of everyone else. It wasn't about solving the mystery through clues on your own for them. It was about winning. Other players would contact me and I'd offer them cryptic clues, but they would get angry at me for not just giving them the answer.
I tried a couple since then, but could never get on board. Because so damn many people are hitting the mysteries so hard and so fast, the games have to keep pumping out stuff all the time. So while I'm still trying to figure out the first part of the game I'm getting clues to later parts that spoil or reference the stuff I'm still trying to work out.
I think the future of this genre is going to be friends running small ARGs for each other in their spare time as a hobby.
I played the Beast as it rolled out. It was a very strange sort of online thing. The problem was the game was a lot more fun then the movie turned out to be. I remember waiting around hours for things like trailers and the like to hit. I was part of the Cloudmaker's Yahoo! Group. Those were fun days, especially because I was bored out of my mind at work.
The problem is that their nature makes it very hard to be commercially viable on itself and their "ad-hoc" nature makes it hard to predict what the real market for something like this is. I say it will always be doomed for the "tie-in" realm and not really be a viable stand alone game experience.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
As a writer for the prime ARG news-source, www.argn.com, I can say that I've personally seen how amazingly quickly this genre has grown. Since "The Beast" and Majestic (technically not ARG, but the first verrrrry close "packaged game") the numbers playing have skyrocketed.
It's really a great way to meet some new people, to have a unique gaming experience, and more often than not (by far) it's 100% free to play. People are coming out with new games (quality-varying, of course) all the time, and it's still in its infancy. I'd reccomend it to anyone (really, ANYONE can play).
For info, check out www.argn.com, www.unfiction.com, www.4orty2wo.com (if you're interested in using ARG to promote your company/product/whatever), or www.immersionunlimited.com.
And a hearty "HI" to everyone who's nicknames I see every day!
A couple of pieces of evidence to the contrary
:)
www.perplexcity.com - Commercially viable ARG
www.4orty2wo.com - Company that makes ARG for a living (behind I Love Bees, The Beast, and Last Call Poker)
(they're doing just fine thank you.)
www.gmdstudios.com (another company that makes ARG for a living)
I once sent a copy of TID to a friend who had been reading Spinrad and has a childish fascination with all things Nazi. The cover of that particular edition did nothing to indicate that it wasn't for real, and she anxiously IMed me, afraid that her entire understanding of 20th-century history was bogus! Though now she will not admit under any circumstances, that she was taken in.
I suspect that part of the appeal of ARG is playing that kind of game with outsiders.