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Alternate Reality Gaming V2.0

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hopefully-no-one-will-sue-over-arg-2.0 dept.

ItsIllak writes "Alternate Reality Games [ARGs] have been bubbling under for the past 10 years now. Usually completely homebrew or attached to big budget productions, they have been used to create buzz around a game, product or movie. Perplex City have bucked that trend. Their ARG is completely independent of anything else, its entirely self contained. With fresh ideas on income generation and a $200,000 top prize to whomever finds the real life buried treasure - is this the future of an entirely new form of entertainment?"

16 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Treasure hunt by Aussie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not really new, they were called treasure hunts before.

    1. Re:Treasure hunt by RedMagus77 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Still, with the ability to communicate in real time, as well as the ability of the contestants to search the net and contact other people across the globe for details, even if they were in the middle of no where (depending celluar reception), the parameters of the gaming enviroment can be expanded. You can have more obscure clues, drop hints at a moments notice, give false leads, or have other contestants band together for help, or have a lone wolf who gives out mis-information. Should be interesting, at least in my opinion.

    2. Re:Treasure hunt by SirBruce · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was called Majestic. "The game that played you." Problem was, nobody really wanted to be called in the middle of the day to play a game when they were busy doing something else. Few people signed up to play it after the first free episode, and EA cancelled it not long thereafter.

      The PerplexCity guys are really cool; met them at GDC this year and got some of their cards. But some of these puzzles and codes on them are really hard, and there are far better codebreakers and teams of puzzle solvers that will get to the cash long before I would, so I'm not really into the game. I guess that's their biggest barrier to acceptance -- puzzle freaks will probably love it, but the rest of us won't really feel rewarded for collecting a small number of points.

      Bruce

    3. Re:Treasure hunt by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yup, I was expecting something along the lines of "The Game"...

      Aww, crap. I just lost. :-(

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
    4. Re:Treasure hunt by Ricdude · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Reminds me of an updated version of Masquerade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_(book)

      --
      How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
  2. David Blaine by SushiFugu · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sounds similar to David Blaine's $100,000 Challenge armchair treasure hunt that was placed in his book. I don't really care until they start hiding ebony armor and Nirnroot though...

    1. Re:David Blaine by Dr.+GeneMachine · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ebony? Nirnroot? Call me when they start giving out Skooma.

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      This comment does not exist.
  3. Grassroots ARG by Enderandrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My qualm with most ARGs is that they exist solely as a password hunt. You find the door, and you get a cookie. Games like Beast and Majestic truly scared their players, because the line between game and reality was eerily thin.

    I like games with immersion. I enjoy games where the player feels they have a role in the game.

    I'm working on a grassroots/indie ARG at the moment that I don't want to talk about too much publicly. If anyone is interested, drop me an email at enderandrew AT gmail DOT com

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
    1. Re:Grassroots ARG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is not a password hunt. PxC differs from other ARG's because of all the different angles. The original article does not really highlight how good of an ARG this is. There has been live events in London and New York. We have had live chats with in game characters. In these chats, our words and actions determined where the story would go net. We've received mysterious leaked emails and recnetly started getting updates by text. Players have written a book to help an in game character gain access to an ancient book in a library. It's not your typical ARG, it's a whole other world. We even have out own wiki. There are multiple fans sites. I could go on forever. You cannot critcise or make comparisons until you have experienced Perplex City for yourself. www.perplexcity.com

  4. What makes this an 'alternate' reality game? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    and not just a regular game? Hell, it isn't much more than Geocaching with a prize.

    1. Re:What makes this an 'alternate' reality game? by SixSided · · Score: 2, Informative

      Try this list of ingame sites for starters: http://perplexcitywiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=We bsites One of those is the newspaper site ( http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/ ) that has been updating for over a year now. Perplex City really does quite a job is creating it's own reality.

    2. Re:What makes this an 'alternate' reality game? by donaldGuy · · Score: 2, Informative

      An ARG has to transcende multiple forms of media and blur the line between in-game and none in-game often to the point where it is hard to tell.

      I think someone already posted it but a good definition can be found here

      I have personaly been involved with ILoveBees/Haunted Apiary and Ourcolony (which is arguably not really an ARG) and I would like to say they are alot of fun, especially well created ones like those done by 4orty 2wo productions.

      If you are really interested the place to get started is probably http://unfiction.com/ . It is a great resource and the forums are indespensible within the ARG community. There is also lot of information about what an ARG is and a good archive of history about previous ARGs (much of it is interesting, other parts of it is just ammusing, such as the tail of wheregif/whoregif

    3. Re:What makes this an 'alternate' reality game? by adrian_hon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What makes Perplex City more than geocaching with a prize? How about the story that's being told over dozens of websites, in real time, to tens of thousands of people? How about the live events that have featured hundreds of players across the world, where they've chased spies in black helicopters and watched messages being flashed across the Thames from the London Eye? How about the distributed computing initiative that's seen over a thousand people trying to crack an encrypted puzzle?

      [Disclaimer: I am the lead designer of Perplex City]

  5. They say it so it must be true by kronocide · · Score: 4, Informative

    Another ad finds its way into /. article space. Even the link in the author's name is to a Perplex City movie.

  6. The cycle repeats. by Peganthyrus · · Score: 2, Informative

    Perplex City has a treasure and prize at the end?

    Why, it's Masquerade, the collectible card game! There were about a dozen of these treasure-hunt puzzle books back in the eighties. Now they're just coming in different media.

    Also, I call slashvertisement on this post.

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    egypt urnash minimal art.
  7. Version 2.0? by Khuffie · · Score: 2, Funny

    What happened to version 1.5? And does it run on Linux?