This Is Not A Game: Alternate Reality Gaming and its potential for learning
July 2006
Tash Lee, Futurelab
Mystery messages encoded in film trailers, random telephones ringing in empty phone boxes, spurious clues on fake websites, odd classified ads in national newspapers, a bunch of bloggers who send you text messages and e-mails and get you caught up in their world. these are the tools of a new cross-media breed of storytelling and an emerging game genre - Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG).
This article takes a quick scoot through the history of the genre and looks at its unique characteristics to consider whether ARGs might have some applications in learning.
The nature of the beast
ARG, or 'immersive gaming' (also known as 'beasting', 'unfiction' or 'collective detecting'), is a predominately online melding of fiction and puzzle solving. The narrative of these games is revealed through a series of websites, Instant Messenger conversations, telephone calls, text messages, TV and billboard adverts, and more rarely, live events. At the heart is a good story.
It is the job of the game designers, or 'Puppet Masters', to weave the narrative through the different media to create a cohesive story for players. However, it is the players that drive the game forward, through the solving of puzzles closely connected to the plot. Generally puzzles are too complex to be solved alone, and so games are played with the support of an online community that works collaboratively to speculate, share expertise and overcome hurdles.
Storytelling is human nature, so the genre naturally has a number of antecedents; however, the birth of ARG as we know it is widely considered to have been in 2001, with the launch of an online 'wild goose chase' to promote Spielburg's film AI. It started with a credit in its marketing material for 'Sentient Machine Therapist' Jeanine Salla, alongside the actor's names. This anomaly tapped into people's natural curiosity and when they Googled 'Salla' they found her profile at 'Bangalore World University' where she worked - in the year 2142. From here there were countless links to other websites all set in 2142 - all convincing and seemingly 'real'. Those who had fallen down the proverbial 'rabbit hole' were rewarded with the discovery of an elaborate real-time story about a murdered man in which they were now active participants.
The game, posthumously known as The Beast (due to the number of game assets created totalling 666), spawned a self-generated and highly active online community known as the Cloudmakers, whose collective knowledge solved the puzzles far more quickly than The Beast's Puppet Masters would ever have predicted. They responded to this collective action by creating ever more creative and open-ended puzzles for which the Cloudmakers needed to develop their own solutions, and then the game grew organically around the solutions, accommodating and adapting to the players' input.
Is an ARG even a game at all?
In addition to the reliance on cooperative game-play and the inherent flexibility of an ARG to adapt to its players' contributions, there are other characteristics that set ARGs apart. In most games - console or online - the player controls avatars to interact in a virtual world. In an ARG, however, players are 'playing themselves'. Instead of helping an avatar to 'learn' skills and gain experience in order to develop, ARGs rely on knowledge that a player already possesses.
Similarly, in an ARG you interact with the fictional world through everyday artefacts (e-mail etc) that you use to interact with the real world - there is no special equipment, and no virtual world. The idea is that the game-play becomes integrated fully in players' lives - both on and offline. It is in this omnipresence that the genre's mantra of 'This Is Not A Game' (TINAG) is cemented.
Some other ARGs
Not long after The Beast, EA Games released Majestic. The game was funded by a monthly fee but this, amongst other things, proved too big a barrier and the game was a flop. Since then, all the prominent ARGs (Ilovebees, Last Call Poker and The Art of the Heist) have been part of advertising campaigns and therefore free to play. More recently, some other funding models have been explored and the genre, which enjoyed its first few years rooted pretty firmly in the US, is now having success in the UK.
Last year, two prominent home-grown offerings were released. Mind Candy's Perplex City and the BBC's Jamie Kane. Perplex City is funded by the purchase of trading cards with intriguing puzzles that lead players online and into the parallel universe of the game. Jamie Kane, based on a pseudo pop star, is an immersive mystery aimed at teenagers. The game utilises a play-per-day design lasting 15 days, its structured format making it a good first foray into ARG.
ARGs for learning
There is an ever-growing body of research into technology's impact on society. Two areas that are particularly prevalent in education are video games and
So what could ARG mean for learning?
ARG seems to be an adaptable, interesting way to get people involved, and when done right can be a very powerful magnet, as well as having the ability to create strong communities of action. McGonigal (2003) explores the power of immersive games in generating social agency. In a similar fashion, could this power possibly be harnessed to create learning experiences for young people? Could the alternate and authentic realities of an ARG provide 'safe' arenas for children to practise and learn the skills required of them in the real world?
While the design and development of an ARG is a considerable endeavour in terms of time and energy, it's not a costly artform, especially in comparison to the development costs of a typical commercial video game. The skills required are in storytelling, information structuring, project management and asset/web development - far more accessible skills than those required in games development. Indeed, in the US there is a thriving grassroots scene, producing a multitude of immersive games to fulfil different purposes and appeal to diverse audiences. It is not inconceivable that, as well as playing specially designed ARGs to develop specific knowledge and skills, students will be able to become their own Puppet Masters and create their own 'unfiction' masterpieces.
There seem to be many advantages of ARGs over video games for learning. Firstly there is the fact that players are their own agents and use their own experience and knowledge in playing the game, rather than playing the role of a fictional character. Tasks and puzzles absolutely require social interaction and collaboration and are not reliant on pre-defined 'save points', which makes many video games inflexible in terms of logistics/time. Also there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the ARGs appeal equally to males and females - which isn't the case for many other genres.
Considerations
Obviously, there are also countless challenges to take into consideration. Alluring as the games may be to ARG aficionados, the genre is not without its pitfalls. The authenticity and the intrusion of Majestic's automated calls were deemed too spooky so soon after 9/11, and a mock 'Institute of Human Cloning' created to promote the film Godsend caused both confusion and offence.
The underground nature of ARG may prove to be a challenge for education. Most games get started by targeting people that are familiar with ARG, they 'know' when they are being invited to play a game - if an immersive game is made explicit, does it lose its appeal? Also there would be a need to develop new channels of distribution. Perhaps it could be possible to create an ARG to enhance an existing physical educational attraction?
The genre is still a new one, but it has done nothing but grow. It combines games and
References
McGonigal, J (2003). This Is Not A Game: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play