Alternate reality game

An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions.

The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real time and evolves according to players' responses. It is shaped by characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by an AI as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and collaborate as a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimedia, such as telephones and mail, but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium.

ARGs tend to be free to play, with costs absorbed either through supporting products (e.g., collectible puzzle cards fund Perplex City) or through promotional relationships with existing products (for example, ''I Love Bees'' was a promotion for ''Halo 2'', and the ''Lost Experience'' and '' Find 815'' promoted the television show ''Lost''). Pay-to-play models exist as well. Later games in the genre have shown an increasing amount of experimentation with new models and sub-genres.

Definition

There is a great deal of debate surrounding the characteristics by which the term "alternate reality game" should be defined. Sean Stacey, the founder of the website Unfiction, has suggested that the best way to define the genre was ''not'' to define it, and instead locate each game on three axes (ruleset, authorship and coherence) in a sphere of "chaotic fiction" that would include works such as the Uncyclopedia and street games like SF0 as well.

Several experts, though, point to the use of transmedia, "the aggregate effect of multiple texts/media artifacts," as the defining attribute of ARGs. This prompts the unique collaboration emanating from ARGs as well; Sean Stewart, founder of 42 Entertainment, which has produced various successful ARGs, speaks to how this occurs, noting that "the key thing about an ARG is the way it jumps off of all those platforms. It's a game that's social and comes at you across all the different ways that you connect to the world around you."

Unique terminology

Among the terms essential to understanding discussions about ARGs are:
* Puppet-master – A puppet-master or "PM" is an individual involved in designing and/or running an ARG. Puppet-masters are simultaneously allies and adversaries to the player base, creating obstacles and providing resources for overcoming them in the course of telling the game's story. Puppet-masters generally remain behind the ''curtain'' while a game is running. The real identity of puppet-masters may or may not be known ahead of time.
* The Curtain – The curtain, drawing from the phrase, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," is generally a metaphor for the separation between the puppet-masters and the players. This can take the traditional form of absolute secrecy regarding the puppet-masters' identities and involvement with the production, or refer merely to the convention that puppet-masters do not communicate directly with players through the game, interacting instead through the characters and the game's design.
* Rabbit-hole/Trailhead – A rabbit-hole, or trailhead, marks the first media artifact, be it a website, contact, or puzzle, that draws in players. Most ARGs employ a number of trailheads in several media to maximize the probability of people discovering the game. Typically, the rabbit-hole is a website, the most easily updated, cost-effective option.
* This Is Not A Game (TINAG) – Setting the ARG form apart from other games is the ''This Is Not A Game'' sentiment popularized by the players themselves. It is the belief that "one of the main goals of the ARG is to deny and disguise the fact that it is even a game at all."

Similarities to and differences from other forms of entertainment

* '' Computer/console/video games''. While ARGs generally use the internet as a central binding medium, they are not played exclusively on a computer and usually do not require the use of special software or interfaces. Non-player characters in ARGs are controlled in real time by the puppet-masters, not computer algorithms.
* ''Role-playing games (RPGs) and live action role-playing games (LARPs)''. The role of the puppet-master in creating ARG narratives and the puppet-master's relationship with an ARG's players bears a great deal of similarity to the role of a game master or referee in a role-playing game. However, the role of the players is quite different. Most ARGs do not have any fixed rules—players discover the rules and the boundaries of the game through trial and error—and do not require players to assume fictional identities or roleplay beyond feigning belief in the reality of the characters they interact with (even if games where players play 'themselves' are a long-standing variant on the genre). Also, the ''This Is Not A Game'' aesthetic is distinctive to ARGs, not being present in the RPGs or LARPs.
* ''Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs)''. As outlined above with computer games and traditional role-playing games, non-player characters in ARGs are controlled by real people in real time, not by computer AI; ARGs do not generally require special software or interfaces to play; the games do not require players to roleplay or create characters or avatars; and ARGs generally use multiple media and real life in addition to the internet to distribute their narratives.
* ''Viral marketing''. While ARGs are often used as a type of viral marketing, they diverge sharply from the philosophy behind "sponsored consumers" or other viral marketing practices that attempt to trick consumers into believing that planted shills for a product are other independent consumers. Similarly, they also diverge from sites or narratives that genuinely try to convince visitors that they are what they claim to be. Puppet-masters generally leave both subtle and overt clues to the game's fictional nature and boundaries where players can find them (e.g. through clearly fictional names on-site registrations) and many ARGs openly flaunt obviously fictional plots. The puppet-masters of the genre's seminal example, the Beast, ^{(see below)} made it a point of pride never to pretend to be players in order to solicit publicity or nudge players along, and the Terms of Service of Unfiction, a community site for the ARG genre, strictly prohibit individuals involved in creating games from posting about them without disclosing their involvement.

Influences and precursors

Due to factors like the curtain, attempts to begin games with "stealth launches" to fulfill the TINAG aesthetic, and the restrictive non-disclosure agreements governing how much information may be revealed by the puppet-masters of promotional games, the design process for many ARGs is often shrouded in secrecy, making it difficult to discern the extent to which they have been influenced by other works. In addition, the cross-media nature of the form allows ARGs to incorporate elements of so many other art forms and works that attempting to identify them all would be a nearly impossible task.

Possible inspirations from fiction and other art forms

G. K. Chesterton's 1903 short story "The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown" (part of a collection entitled '' The Club of Queer Trades'') seems to predict the ARG concept. In the story, a company called the Adventure and Romance Agency, Limited, creates adventures for its clients.

John Fowles' 1965 novel '' The Magus'' describes an elaborate series of "masques" collectively called "the godgame", an ARG-like scenario that involves many players in several nations, on both sides of the curtain, all working under the direction of one puppet-master. not all of whom are aware of who the others are. The novel ends ambiguously, leaving the reader to literally choose the ending they prefer. In his foreword to the 1977 revised edition of "The Magus", Fowles acknowledged some literary works that had influenced him, including Alain-Fournier's 1913 novel "Le Grand Meaulnes" ("The Lost Estate") for showing a secret hidden world to be explored, and Richard Jefferies's "Bevis" from 1882, for projecting a very different world.

In Thomas Pynchon's 1965 novel '' The Crying of Lot 49'', the conspiracy may be an ARG set up by Pierce Inverarity to bedevil Oedipa Maas.

The combination board and card game ''Vlet'' that many of the main characters in Samuel R. Delany's science fiction 1976 novel Triton play throughout his novel appears to be a type of ARG. The game's name was borrowed from a similar game in a short story by Joanna Russ titled "A Game of Vlet" from 1974.

Ludic texts such as the popular ''Choose Your Own Adventure'' or "Secret Path" children's novels may also have provided some inspiration. The first of these, Edward Packard's "Sugarcane Island", was published by R. A. Montgomery

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