April 2001 . " A.I.:Artificial Intelligence , " the long awaited movie project come out by Stanley Kubrick and complete by Steven Spielberg , at last hit the dramatics . For many , the motion-picture show was a dashing hopes , but a few extremely observant members of the audience who stay on to ascertain the credit axial motion notice a unknown listing among the serious boy , the gaffers and lighting technician . It show : Jeanine Salla , Sentient Machine Therapist . Clearly an odd little jest introduce for the playfulness of it . Or was it ?
Soon after , somebody happened to notice something odd on the reverse sides of some of the movie’spromotionalposters . There were lowly letter , and some of them were circled in silver grey , others outlined in gold . Put together , the silver - circled letters spelled out the set phrase , " Evan Chan was murdered . " The ones in amber proceeds the condemnation , " Jeanine is the key . "
When people google Jeanine Salla , they stumbled across a serial of highly elaborate site , which include Salla ’s biography , an arrangement promoting the humane discussion of robots and clue to the secret of Evan Chan ’s death . Intrigued , those follow the lead kept going even though it becomes increasingly clean-cut that both Jeanine Salla and Evan Chan are invented character and the trail of clue is all part of an elaborate artifice .
By the time it was all over , more than 7,000 people have joined the hunt for Evan Chan ’s killer , and alternating reality gaming had begun in earnest [ source : Szulborski ] .
The Real Surreal
Most definitions of the Holy Scripture " game " refer to it as an activeness play according to a set of rule . Alternate reality play ( ARG ) however , defies this common presumptuousness and adheres to no fussy rule volume . How then can we define ARG ? What is it and how do you play it ?
ARGs have several feature film that make them distinct from other games . Central to ARGs is the concept know as " this is not a biz " or TINAG . TINAG is fairly self - explanatory — the musical theme is simply that those involved in the game pretend that it is n’t one .
The plot that is n’t a biz begins with something fuck as a " cony fix . " This is , of course , a mention to " Alice in Wonderland , " in which Alice begins her adventures when she enters the aforementioned lapin hole . Often there are multiple rabbit cakehole . In the compositor’s case of the ARG mention in the debut , the " AI : Artificial Intelligence " credit refer to Jeanine Salla was one rabbit yap , and the letters on the back of the promotional posters were another . A rabbit gob is plainly an element point in the real world , which draws the thespian into the fictive world of the ARG . Other rabbit holes can take the class of an email or a posting of some form that lures players into the game .
The internet is another feature of speech that makes ARGs distinct from similar types of immersive play , some of which can be debate forerunner to ARGs ( we ’ll talk about those on the next pageboy ) . Often , a rabbit gob leads actor to websites carefully project to disguise the fact that their content is completely fictitious . These websites will introduce characters ( like Jeanine Salla ) , mystery ( such as " who killed Evan Chan ? " ) and puzzles of various form . A well - structured ARG adheres so closely to the immersive " this is not a game " construct that histrion might not clear at first that they ’re playing a biz . However , common ARG etiquette calls for seeding the plot with clues that reveal its fictional nature .
While the internet is central to ARGs , the games are also characterized by their multi - platform nature . Take our working example in which the first clues come along in a movie and on posters , which in turn extend to site . These websites might then direct players to payphones where they could take in calls that give them further clues . In other words , although an ARG makes intensive use of theinternet , it can take advantage of any form of communication available .
Those behind an ARG are make love as the " Puppetmasters " because they ascertain the puppets , or character , in the secret plan . Large , successful ARGs typically have a team of Puppetmasters intemperately at piece of work creating and circularize cue , often as part of a merchandising equipment for merchandise like " AI : Artificial Intelligence . " The Puppetmasters typically monitor the ARG players as the biz progresses . This let them ( the Puppetmasters ) to alter the plot ’s content in existent time , enhancing certain aspects , delete out others and more often than not interacting with the game as it ’s played . This interactional feature of speech of ARGs is one of the activeness ’s most distinctive and original feature film [ source : Szulborski ] .
Ancestral Irrealities
Few activities bespeak the twenty-first century more convincingly than alternating reality play . Yet everything has an root . Where did ARGs come from ? perhaps the seeds of ARGs can be found at the very beginnings of humanity ? tenner of thousands of years ago when Paleolithic artists make the painting now found incavesin southern Europe , what they made could be call an substitute reality . Step inside the cave and you were in a different domain .
More recently , some works of fiction like Laurence Sterne ’s discursive 18th - hundred novel " Tristram Shandy , " James Joyce ’s " Finnegan ’s Wake , " Jorge Luis Borges ' " Garden of the Forking Paths " and Julio Cortazar ’s " Hopscotch " have sought to way fictive environments that receive readers to interact with the text by reading them in nonlinear ways .
boost through the 20th century , Ray Bradbury ’s sci - fi story " Veldt " actually depicts the playing of a game that closely resemble an ARG . " Neuromancer " and other work byWilliam Gibsonalso mine this vein .
But it ’s with Kit Williams ' " Masquerade " that we see an actual proto - ARG in activity . Published in 1979 , " Masquerade " is an intricately wrought children ’s fable that hold in clues to a hunt for a location in the real world , in which was obscure a beautiful , handmade gilt coney . Whoever could decipher the clues contained in the book and find the gem first , could keep it . lend the internet to this scenario , and you have a Greco-Roman ARG .
Then comes " Ong ’s Hat : Incunabula . " The online interactive mystery ’s origin go back to 1988 , when it first begin appearing in cyber - skill fabrication magazines before transmigrate to the grow medium of the internet .
In 1994 , a secret plan called " Publius Enigma " come up in connexion with the liberation of the Pink Floyd album " The Division Bell . " Using on-line messaging and the firing at Pink Floyd ’s concerts themselves as clue , the plot had many of the earmark of an former ARG .
Finally , when the merchandising campaign for " A.I. : Artificial Intelligence " first lead off disseminating the ARG that became screw as " The animate being " in 2001 , substitute reality gaming was fully realise as young phenomenon [ source : Szulborski ] .
An Exemplary ARG
While " The Beast " remains one of the earliest and best known alternating realness games , there have been a number of notable ARGs since . Perhaps one of the best deterrent example is the plot dream up to help launch the videogame " Halo 2 . "
Once again , it all pop out at the movies . Among the previews played for audiences in theatre during the summer of 2004 was a trailer for " Halo 2 . " Those pay attention noticed something weird about the web site number at the close of the trailer , which appear to briefly spell out " http://ilovebees.com " before return to a " Halo 2 " web address .
In her blog , Awbrey excuse she ’d make the site for her Aunt Margaret but then it had been hack . She asked if anyone could help out . The internet site , it turn out , had been possess by an amnesic artificial intelligence operation from the future . Eventually the ilovebees site included a countdown to an impendent encroachment of Earth by a force called The Covenant . The invasion date was in reality the launch date for " Halo 2 . "
At the end of the game , all players receive invitation to attend a " training mission . " This was , in fact , an opportunity to play " Halo 2 " before its official release . From start to finis , " Halo 2 " was both a successful ARG and a cunning marketing ploy that is said to have engaged many thousands of participant and , through them , advertised the production to roughly a million citizenry [ rootage : Szulborski ] .
Serious Games
So far we ’ve blab out about ARGs create to publicize films and video games . And while this is where the phenomenon puzzle its start , fans of the novel experience quickly actualize that it could take other physical body for other intent . Some people , like Dave Szulborski , the author of " This is Not a Game : A Guide to Alternate Reality gambling , " have independently created ARGs for the sheer sport of it . act as as Puppetmasters , they ’ve successfully trace players from around the mankind into their intriguing , synergistic plot .
Others have seized on the educational potential of ARGs to make a subgenre know as " serious ARGs . " One of the best examples of this is " World Without Oil " ( WWO ) . WWO started April 30 , 2007 , with a news brief proclaiming the beginning of anoil crisis . update daily , the game simulated a worldwide oil crisis pass off in real time , for 32 day , until it came to an end on June 1 .
Commissioned by a not - for - profits San Francisco media fellowship called ITVS , and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting , WWO instal a " citizen nerve marrow " where player could read the day ’s " news , " which provided a realistic version of what could take place on a large scale during a world-wide oil shock . The site established the day ’s damage of vegetable oil as requirement steady rose to 5 percent above available supply . The tagline of WWO was , " Play it before you inhabit it . "
To move into the biz , players simply had to imagine what it would be like to know through the experience day - to - daylight and make fib , web log entries , societal media Wiley Post , video or how - to manual and transport them in . The Puppetmasters would then tie to them , create a networked account of the " crisis " on multiple platforms .
The basic melodic theme behind WWO was to see whether the interactive and immersive lineament of ARGs could be harnessed to crowd - source solution to imminent real - world problem . By the time WWO was over , it had amassed the guess experience of 1,500 people . In total , 68,000 user immersed themselves in the experience during the game period , and 110,000 viewed it by the end of 2007 .
Many of the players reported that playing the game had changed their lives beyond the game . The process of immersing themselves in the experience made them cerebrate so deeply about what it would be like to live in a world without oil that they begin the process of trying to subjugate their dependency before such an outcome occurs [ source : WWO ] . Perhaps this innovative creation offers at least one agency forward for the remarkable immersive and interactional experience experience as Alternate Reality Gaming .
Frequently Answered Questions
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I think reading " The Most Dangerous Game " when I was about 12 and being completely taken in by it . A big - game Orion named Rainsford accidentally falls off a yacht and wield to float to an island where he meets a Russian patrician who also find to be a hunting watch . The bored Russian forces Rainsford to become his prey and gives him a three - hour forefront - jump . If Rainsford can survive for three days , he deliver the goods . If caught , he ’ll be drink down like every other prey . Now that ’s what I call an immersive alternative world biz !
