These are materials for a session on alternate reality games, in the "Experience IT" track, at the Educause ELI 2006 national conference, San Diego. We will draw in part on a small demo ARG in progress, starting with Caleb Navidson's Livejournal.
Please post questions, comments, suggestions in the comment box.
0. Introduction
John Borland, "A novelist turned gaming innovator." CNET, December 15, 2005.
Sean Stewart, The A.I. Web Game.
Dave Szulborski, This is Not a Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming. Pennsylvania: New Fiction, 2005.
Brooke Thompson, ARG Quick Start Guide.
Jesse Walker, "Games People Play: Life invades games, and vice versa." Reason, August 29, 2005.
I. ARG Storytelling Aspects
Mystery
Characters
Timeline (staggered)
Sites for/as/about characters
II. Structure
Workflow
Preloaded content
- Media pieces (Mu: photo, Flash)
- Platform structure
Dynamic content
Nongame content
- Google and links
- The world's intrinsic weirdness: numbers radio
ARG arc
- Trailhead and rabbit hole (Tulse Luper)
- Collaborative play (Fora [Unfiction], p2p, web publishing, f2f, lurk)
- Closure (MUcredits)
III. Puzzle pieces
Site identity
Hidden text like this - easy, isn't it?
Anagrams (I, Rearrangement Servant)
Binary (Nick Ciske's delicious binaries)
Morse code (Stephen Philips' resource)
ROT-n, or Caesar cipher (Unfiction ROT machine)
- Try this one: h zptwsl pklh aoha dpss johunl aol dvysk
(Perplex City)
Vigenere cipher
Sharky's Vigenere, Christopher Nevison's
Steganography
JPHide, Camoflague, CameraShy
Word frequency (Web Frequency Indexer)
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