I have been a huge fan of Alternative Reality Games (ARG) for some time now. Ever since my first romp through EA’s Majestic (Which I still think is Ground-Breaking), and Lurking (read: following) on the I Love Bees games… I haven’t been able to stop!
I have participated & lurked quite a lot over the years… some stories turn out to be very exciting, others have ended off shortly. I think there is a fine art to crafting a good ARG. Chaotic Fiction (another term for ARG) requires careful planning, lots of patience, and a commitment to the participants that there is something worth their time to follow/finish. Good writing also helps, as well as some knowledge of how popular culture disseminate its content.
Back when I first started out, there were only a few methods that the “PM’s” (or Puppet masters) could use to plant the seeds. Email, cell phones, fake webpages were the tools of the trade. Now with the advent of Web 2.0, newer ARG’s are utilizing Social Media services like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.
I am usually so busy with my job, that I am unable to play a lot of ARG’s year round. So I tend to pick up a few during Spring, then lurk a few more in the Summer. Since I am responsible for my companies End of the Year IT Audit, I tend not to participate on anything in the Fall.
This is a rare year, but if you are interested… here is what I am lurking/participating now.
If you are intrested, and want to learn more… check out these links:
- Unficition A Great Site for all things ARG
- Unforums Were all of the action is…
- WikiBruce Good Followup Wiki
- ARG Quickstart Guide A little outdated, but its good enough to get you started.
I will put together a ARG Toolkit in a subsequent post. If you like ARG’s or you don’t, please leave a comment.