Alternate Reality Game
As an Alternate Reality Game ( short form: ARG ) (about: Play with changing realities ) refers to a back cross to various media game in which the boundary between fictional events and real experiences is deliberately blurred.
It is often used in the sense of viral marketing to advertise a new product or a new service without having to praise this directly and leave readily recognize the game as a promotional event.
Game options
The players rely on various sources on the Internet, where it is not uncommon that the events in the game world to also extend into the real world of the players and the players move so to collective action. The story of a ARGs can be driven by a variety of different media. Among other things come into question following media:
- Artifacts from the real world that are associated with the game in action
- Blogs
- Chat, instant messaging and the like
- Events or events in the real world, in which actors interact with the participating players
- IRC rooms
- Post, ie letters, packages, etc.
- Telephone calls to the private or official landline phone or the player's mobile phone
- Sites are of two kinds, the one more than obvious to the game. The others are rather plain, giving the impression that they are not even part of the game. However, in reality they are the main component of the ARGs, and often contain different puzzles, for example in the field of cryptography
- Newspaper articles or classified ads
An ARG contributes not only to the players, the history and the fictional characters to meet, but it also meant that unite the players and talk to each other operates. Finally, there are puzzles that you not alone, but only together and solve by the joint cooperation of the other players can.
Alternate Reality Games are usually characterized by a large game universe in the form of a variety of web sites that all claim to be truly through and through. In fact, it is also difficult to distinguish sometimes whether it is a fictitious or a real website with a web page. These websites thus form the foundations of the game universe. They are normally used to propel the story, the media already mentioned above, are often additionally used. This creates a situation in which the reality of the game with the real reality collide encounters.
Another important part of an alternate reality games that it uses the concept of This is not a game in itself. To merge the fictional as well as possible with the real world, an ARG normally applies not as such and it will be very rarely read that it really is a game. Thus the mystery of the people behind all the whole is held in secret and the real thrill of the game is maintained in the foreground. The players therefore feel their way from website to website through history.