Slashdot Mirror
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?
'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.
I dunno about you, but my job has me running around corridors in a cardbox box before popping out to snap the necks of enemy guards.
Whoops, gotta go. Getting another call on the transceiver...
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.
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.