Would you travel to a phone box in a hurricane to answer a call from a fictional character in a game? We take a brief look at the rise of Alternate Reality Games.

What is an ARG

The simplest explanation of Alternate Reality Games (ARG) is that a story is fragmented over multiple locations (both real and virtual) and a community of players then work to piece the story back together.

Clues can be found in a variety of media, including: videos, classified ads, phone calls, audio files, websites, email, real-life locations and good old-fashioned snail mail. The storyline of an ARG can also be influenced by the actions of the participants.

ARG’s are not like Second Life, World of Warcraft or Habbo Hotel (although they have been used as a platform to deliver content). You don’t need any special equipment beyond what you would use in everyday life.

For example, you might receive an email or text message from a game character telling you to visit a website or real-world location. You then visit the website or real-word location and find a clue, but you’ve no idea what is means, so you upload what you’ve found to a forum. The community then takes over and solves the puzzle and that leads you to a new piece of media, such as, a video or audio file that the community works on together to solve, and so on, until the story is complete. (For a more detailed explanation click here or here )

The time travelling tales of John Titor and the work of sound artist, Janet Cardiff, had elements of what would later become alternate reality games, although, arguably, one of the first ARG’s was “The Beast” by 42 Entertainment. The Beast was a marketing campaign for Steven Spielberg’s, A.I film. Sean Stewart, writer for several 42 Entertainment games explains the concept:

So there was the project: create an entire self-contained world on the web, say a thousand pages deep, and then tell a story through it, advancing the plot with weekly updates, concealing each new piece of narrative in such a way that it would take clever teamwork to dig it out. Create a vast array of assets–custom photos, movies, audio recordings, scripts, corporate blurbage, logos, graphic treatments, web sites, flash movies–and deploy them through a net of (untraceable) web sites, phone calls, fax systems, leaks, press releases, phony newspaper ads, and so on ad infinitum.

For anybody interested in social media, these games offer an indication of how to create engaging content across a variety of different media. Henry Jenkins explains why he is so interested in alternate reality games

[Alternative reality games]…are informational scavenger hunts which disperse information across a broad range of different media channels. This goes back to the pioneering work which Neil Young did for Majestic, arguably one of the earliest and most influential examples of this practice. Second, they encourage players to create new media tools which they can use to process and communicate information. And third, they can only be solved by people working together as teams and tapping the power of social networks to solve problems. So Alternative reality games are, in a sense, the perfect illustration of all of the principles which I see shaping the media landscape at the present time.

The Business of Having Fun

Photo by: sling@flickr

Ok, so now you know (roughly) what these games are, you might be thinking about how they can benefit you. Previously, most major ARG’s have been as a promotion for a product, although there have been some games that were directly sold a product or created to highlight a particular cause.

Chances are that if you’re interested in social media, you’re already creating content for a variety of media, such as, videos, podcasts, and articles for social news sites. ARG’s offer the opportunity to include all of these types of media into a single campaign.

As the following quote from game designer, Jane McGonigal shows, there are opportunities for any businesses or non-profit organisations that want to enter this space. From Wired.com:

There are all kinds of viable business models. A cool white paper put out this year by the [International Game Developers Association] special interest group [www.igda.org/arg/] outlines a whole range of business models, and anybody interested in trying to pioneer in that space would definitely benefit from looking at this free online paper. I think there’s a big potential to partner with all kinds of technology companies and not-for-profit groups that would benefit from having gamers as part of their culture, whether it’s a new online application or a particular scientific research think tank or a public institution that is interested in learning, education, and quality of life. A number of projects coming out are exclusively funded not as marketing but as a core practice of an organization’s efforts to create online or networked content. That’s a model I’m really interested in. There are a lot of people looking at serious gaming, trying to find out how to throw money at the gaming culture and engage gamers. There’s just a huge opportunity right now to use alternate reality games to address solutions to online community problems, digital learning problems, local community problems - everything from pay-to-play to [creating] objects in games to sell as collectibles. There is no limit to imagining how people can try to support themselves by doing these games. It will be interesting to watch how people invent ways to make money with this. Certainly, it’s well beyond marketing now.

While there are potentially many uses for this type of gaming, it is probably the promotional aspect that most of the readers on this site will be primarily interested in.

These games won’t be for everyone, but they are one of the most interesting uses of social media; combining the idea of collective intelligence with the ability to create new content and most importantly, having fun along the way.

Three major benefits of creating an ARG

Capture audiences attention - Here’s a quote from the Kotaku comments section

“As a big fan of ARGs I have to say that they are a really creative and inventive way of marketing. It’s far more fun to PLAY an ad campaign than simply to stare at one.”

Obviously, there will be some people who would prefer to stick with more traditional forms of advertisement, but an ad on the side of the page won’t engage an audience in same way as an ARG will.

Create an enthusiastic following - much like Seth Godin explains in this TED talk; it’s now more dangerous to aim for the middle ground than the fringes. When was the last time you heard about somebody braving a hurricane to look at a billboard?
Some people have driven hours to take part, and one player even braved Florida’s Hurricane Ivan to answer a call at a pay phone that was destroyed shortly afterward.
“Dude,” said Puppetmaster 2, “it’s a hurricane. Put the phone down.”

And from Christy Dena’s website:
“Within the first few days of the campaign launch, seven fan sites were created”

Reach people via different media - As CopyBlogger, Brian Clark points out in his free report on TeachingSells.com 42% of college graduates never read another book after they graduate. If you are only promoting written content then you are missing out on reaching a large potentially large section of the population.

Alternate Reality Games have been receiving more coverage recently with articles on Wired.com and ReadWriteWeb.com. This article by Muhammed Saleem does a good job of outlining some of the elements required to make a successful ARG.

If you want to become a top user on Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon, you need to know what each community is interested in. Similarly, if you want to create an ARG for a particular reason (to highlight a charitable cause or to promote a product), then you need to spend some time researching previous games.

Before you even start thinking about making a game you should begin by visiting the unfiction forums. Here you’ll find a community willing to offer advice to any newcomer (and it’s probably one of the most welcoming communities on the web). Search the forums and ask questions. There are a number of people who have made independent games who can help you.

Tips to help you get started

Don’t push the hard sell - much like submitting an article to social news site or joining “My-Face” (© my dad), if you’re only going to promote a product then you’re going to have a tough time convincing anybody to stick around and actually take part in your game.

That’s not to say you can’t use an ARG as a vehicle to promote your own product, but you’ll need to create great content if you want people to care about your project. While Perplex City offered a $200,000 reward for the winner of their game, I really don’t think that was the reason why the players stuck around. They created great content for their audience in order to sell playing cards. As a company they really tried to engage their community and provide an interesting experience for everybody involved.

More recently, Brian Clark of GMD Studios wrote this post:

“I’d hinted in the past that one of the differences between our business model and some of the self-sustaining ARG attempts in the past could be described as patience: a willingness to deploy the revenue models later rather make the immersive experience itself bear that burden from the beginning.”

Listen - ARG’s provide you with an opportunity to listen and interact with your audience in a way not many other art forms allow. Use it to your advantage. If the players like a periphery character then you can rewrite parts of your story so that character has a bigger role. Depending on the particular ARG, it can be a bit like hearing John Coltrane play an improvised jazz set and deciding halfway into the performance to join in using something you found in your pocket.

Develop trust - You shouldn’t really start promoting your product or services to any community without putting something back in first. Talk to people who’ve made games before and do your research first. And while you might read about blurring reality and fiction, most people want to know they are playing a game. An ARG is not designed to be a hoax, so don’t abuse the trust of your audience.

Things to consider before you begin

Time consuming - you can’t create an ARG overnight. You’ll need to research and spend time creating the various media for the game if you want to succeed. You’ll need to create written content, puzzles and possibly video and audio content. Dave Szulborski, creator of several independent games, mentions in his book that he spent 5 months creating one game. You have to decide if you want to spend that long on a project.

Once you begin running a game, you’ll also find that answering players questions and keeping the story on-track also requires lots of time. If you don’t have the time to create a game yourself then you could always try to sponsor a game.

Requires a knowledge of many different areas - you’ll need experience in lots of different areas to create a successful ARG. You’ll need some experience with running websites, along with, creating media, puzzles and the ability to craft a great story. And remember, no matter how good the media you create is, if you can’t package it together in a compelling story then you’re unlikely to reach many people.

Community management and development - you’ll also need to have some experience with managing a community. Different players will want to play at a different pace, so keeping both the hardcore and casual player happy could prove to be a difficult challenge. You’ll need to reach out to new players who might not have heard of these games before while still entertaining more experienced participants.

Alternative Reality Game Links

argn.com - Keep up-to-date with all the latest news on ARG’s

ARG Whitepaper- Download the ARG whitepaper here.

christydena.com , cross-mediaentertainment.com and universecreation101.com - Three excellent sites from a busy lady that are sure to get you thinking

Gamasutra article with Elan Lee

unfiction forums- Your chance to chat with independent game developers and play along

avantgame.com - Number of excellent essays

seanstewart.org - writer for several alternate reality games.

mssv.net Blog from Adrian Hon - one of the creators of Perplex City

Video Discussions from ARGFest

argnetcast - Podcast and round-up of the Alternate Reality Game scene.

vexappeal.com- Worked on Perplex City (and the Jesus LOLCats is a must see)

And here are a few companies who are making ARG’s and Cross-Media entertainment:

42entertainment.com

gmdstudios.com

fourthwallstudios.com

stitchmedia.ca

Over the next week or so, we’ll list a few resources that could help independent ARG developers, so don’t forget to sign-up for the RSS feed below

Technorati Tags: ARG, Alternative reality games, marketing