A few days ago while in a discussion with peers from the eLearning industry, I came upon Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG).
I will share some of my views on this. Before I do that, let me borrow a line from Wikipedia which explains what ARG is about:
“An alternate reality game (ARG), is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.”
As you can see from the explanation, ARG can be used to impart learning but how effective it will be? The story in ARG moves forward based on the decisions of a participant. Isn’t this similar to real life? Our future is based on the decisions we take today. What distinguishes ARG from all other gaming is that the game itself did not acknowledge that it was a game. There was no existence of an acknowledged rule set for players. The participants determine their own rules by trial and error method. The narrative in an ARG will present a fully-realized world. In this world any contact information that is provided is authentic like phone numbers or email addresses, websites. The game takes place in real-time and cannot be reset or replayable.
There can be a sort of puppet master who controls the characters in the game. These characters function like real people and respond authentically. Some events can involve meetings or live phone calls between participants and characters. No artificial intelligence(AI) controls the characters.
Some important reference sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game
http://www.seanstewart.org/interactive/args/
