{"id":672,"date":"2003-08-21T16:32:48","date_gmt":"2003-08-21T11:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/archives\/672"},"modified":"2003-08-21T16:32:48","modified_gmt":"2003-08-21T11:32:48","slug":"argh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/archives\/672","title":{"rendered":"ARG(h)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago I had posted a desperate cry for help<\/a> in locating a forum about immersive gaming. Someone pointed me in the right direction<\/a> a couple of days later. What I was seeking is called Alternate Reality Gaming<\/a>, or ARG.<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago when the movie A.I.<\/a> came out, there was a massive immersive gaming experience in order to promote the movie. History and massive spoilers can be found here<\/a>. Basically there was some weird stuff on the movie posters that got a group of people interested, who started digging for information. The group came together and called themselves Cloudmakers<\/a>. The game was known as The Beast.<\/p>\n

Not long after, Electronic Arts<\/a> launched their game called Majestic<\/a>, which was conspiracy theory laden. The game came to a halt on September 11 with this letter to players:<\/p>\n

EA has temporarily suspended service on Majestic. Given the recent
\n national tragedy, we feel that some of the fictional elements in the
\n game may not be appropriate at this time. We will contact you again
\n concerning resumption of the game. <\/i><\/p>\n

Alas, it was not to be. The game was never resumed. <\/p>\n

Fine, you say, but what’s your point, and what is an ARG? Well, as Fark<\/a> would say, “In Soviet Russia, game plays you<\/i>“. Alternate reality gaming is played on the web, but also via instant messaging, email, IRC, phone calls to and from you, postal mail, and occasionally elements are played in person<\/a>. When you sign up for a game, you can choose to give them as much information as you feel comfortable with.<\/p>\n

The web puzzles are usually devilishly difficult, which is why people team up to work them. It generally takes a group of people to figure them out. I read about one that had letters interspersed through a block of text. You had to extract the letters, then find out how they had been coded (base 64 and rot 13 are popular choices). Uncoded, they came out to something like “WHO ROBS CAVE FISH OF THEIR SIGHT WE DO WE DO”. You had to realize that those were lyrics from a Simpsons episode about the Stonecutters, then go back to the URL you were previously looking at and substitute “stonecutters.html” for the page.<\/p>\n

The ARG community can be as persistent as a yap dog on a pants leg. The site www.8march2003.com<\/a> generated such buzz that the authors had to put up a disclaimer so that people would leave them alone. The blog She’s a Flight Risk<\/a> has had people speculating for months whether it is a factual or fictional account.<\/p>\n

So where can you go to try out the experience? A very short (some campaigns last for months) game can be found at Random House’s DaVinci Code site<\/a>. There’s a game on at Jaded Media<\/a> which is not exactly full-blown alternate reality, which usually has a very complicated plot, but gives a good example of the types of puzzles you’re likely to encounter while playing other games. Martha’s Boarding House<\/a> has a rundown of games that are ongoing. Currently, the active games seem to be Chasing the Wish<\/a>, Capture the Flagmonkey<\/a>, Search4E<\/a>, and Jaded Media<\/a>. Other recent games have suffered meltdowns, as either the puppetmasters (parlance for those who run the game) have realized they bit off more than they could chew, or gamers lost interest.<\/p>\n

Coming up is Acheron<\/a>, which has been advertising a Summer 2003 start but is rumored to be waiting for Chasing the Wish to end.<\/p>\n

The true immersive games don’t have any replayability factor, nor can you play them after the game is ended. You have to be in the game as it happens. I’ve signed up for the Acheron game and am anxiously awaiting its start. In the meantime I’m amusing myself by reading up on past games and speculating about those in the future.<\/p>\n

Other resources:
\nAlternate Reality Gaming Network<\/a>
\nUnFiction<\/a> and the UnForum<\/a>
\nCollective Detective<\/a>
\nMartha’s Boarding House<\/a>
\nCloudMakers<\/a>
\nDeadDrop<\/a><\/p>\n

Also check out Yahoo Groups<\/a> for the game you’re looking for. There are several groups on there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago I had posted a desperate cry for help in locating a forum about immersive gaming. Someone pointed me in the right direction a couple of days later. What I was seeking is called Alternate Reality Gaming, or ARG. A couple of years ago when the movie A.I. came out, there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}