Alternate Reality Gaming V2.0

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?"

Comments

David Blaine

[SushiFugu]

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...

Re:Treasure hunt

[RedMagus77]

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.

Re:Treasure hunt

[SirBruce]

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

Grassroots ARG

[Enderandrew]

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

They say it so it must be true

[kronocide]

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