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.
| Name | Year | Developer | Story summary | Gameplay summary | Scale | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ong's Hat | 1999 | Independent | Legend Tripping, on-line experience. | Puzzle solving by online communities. | Very influential. | http://www.incunabula.org/ |
| The Beast | 2001 | Microsoft | Murder mystery set in the future featuring human like robots. | Puzzle solving by online communities. Rewards in the form of new websites and videos. | Very influential. | http://www.cloudmakers.org/ |
| I Love Bees | 2004 | 42 Entertainment | An AI from the Halo 2 universe is stranded in our world and needs help. | Puzzle solving by online communities. Information released by phone calls to public telephones. Rewards in the form of new websites and videos. | 600,000+ players. | http://www.ilovebees.com/ |
| Last Call Poker | 2005 | 42 Entertainment | A cursed gun, passed down through generations, threatens the granddaughter of its last owner. | Puzzle solving by online communities. Real world missions in cemeteries. Online poker with dead characters. Rewards in the form of new stories and videos. | Over 500,000 active participants. | http://www.lastcallpoker.com/ |
| The Lost Ring | 2008 | AKQA | 6 olympians from another world came to help us save this one. | Puzzle solving by online communities. Real world missions. A new Olympic sport "The Lost Sport" was introduced. | 3.000.000 players from over 150 countries. | http://www.thelostring.com/ |
| CommanderVideo | 2008 | Puzzle solving, currently, done by online communities. Email correspondence, Twitter, and various Internet interactions are the areas of play. | New; Ten recruits are the major players thus far. | http://commandervideo.com/ | ||
| Year Zero | 2007 | 42 Entertainment | Set in a dystopian future where the government surveys everyone. | Players solve puzzles, listen to recordings, and watch movie clips, to gain more info and find sites. | ||
| Xi | 2009 | The worlds first console and virtual world-based ARG created by nDreams. It was set in secret areas in the world of PlayStation Home where users helped to find Jess and the meaning of Xi. | Users solveed puzzles, watched video clips, and did objectives in and out of Home to gain more information to help find Jess and the meaning of Xi. Users searched in Home as well as in the real world depending on the puzzle or objective. | Over 5 million visits | http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/03/23/xi-has-begun/ | |
| Gbanga Famiglia | 2010 | Explore real-world locations to take-over your city and become the Supreme Mafioso. | Join or start your own Mafia Famiglia and take-over virtual establishments you discover whilst walking around the city. Establishments are linked to real-world establishments, so players must physically move between locations. A successful take-over depends on the Famiglia's power, determined by the number of Famiglia members and the cash total for special items collected. | Worldwide | http://gbanga.com | |
| Jadusable | 2010 | Jadusable | A haunted Majora's Mask cartridge leads viewers through a mystery to discover a cult that worships the moon and wishes for the apocalypse. | Players interact directly with the characters using YouTube video replies and forum posts, in addition to being able to upload videos of themselves playing songs in the game that would effect the course of the story. Puzzles were never what they were before, often teasing the players when the previous method was attempted. This game has been lost and rewound using the Song of Time several times, often after a key character has been killed, only to reveal the death could not be reversed. | Over 8,000,000+ views as of 2013 | http://www.youtube.com/Jadusable |
| Lewis Hamilton: Secret Life | 2010 | Centered around Lewis Hamilton, a secret agent in the game, showcasing a new Reebok technology such as RunTone or ZigTech. | Players worked together to solve puzzles and complete tests online, on mobiles and in the real world. | 637,000 players from over 154 countries | http://www.ndreams.co.uk/secretlewis | |
| Conspiracy For Good | 2010 | The Company P | Tim Kring's narrative focused on charity and against the fictional corporation Blackwell Briggs exploiting Africa | Players cooperated online, on mobiles and in the real world. Four big events took place in London during summer 2010. | Gamers on Unfiction, on the game web and in the streets of London during the summer events | http://www.conspiracyforgood.com |
| A Map of the Floating City | 2011 | Thomas Dolby | Set in a dystopian dieselpunk past, a global cataclysm has left the world's inhabitants suffering from amnesia and struggling to move north to the "Floating City" to escape the rising temperatures. | Players worked cooperatively and competitively as tribes to collect items, make inventions, solve a mystery, and move north. The game was unique in that the inventory was all based on lyrics from Dolby's back-catalog and (at the time) upcoming album of the same name. The winning coalition of tribes received a private concert as a prize. | Worldwide | http://www.floatingcity.com/ |
| Potato Fool's Day | 2011 | Valve | GLaDOS of Portal is attempting to reboot herself. By playing a selection of 13 independent games, you can assist her. | Solving puzzles using clues found in aforementioned games | Anyone who purchased the Potato Sack on Steam | http://valvearg.com |
| Veil Nanoscience | 2011 | Immersive Fiction | Narrative followed the abduction of character Cory Wester and unraveled the mysterious past of Veil Nanoscience, Inc. that led to his disappearance. | Used fictional corporate websites, e-mail, blogs, and live events. Players interacted with characters to discover the past of Veil Nanoscience and it's mysterious founder Alec Veil, which in turn led them to discover the location of Cory Wester. | Readers of Unfiction | http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=33246 |
| Partido CyberPunk | 2012 | Possibleworlds - Diego de la Vega co-op | A clandestine political party conspires over the network to establish a series of actions on and offline, with the hopes of achieving effects on material reality. | Different platforms, from email to websites to live events, newsclips and cut-ups. It aims to become a real political party thru media intervention and live actions & events. And it includes participation in institutional venues, so far in 3 countries. | Subscriber base of the Diego de la Vega co-op | http://partidocyberpunk.org |
| We Are Earthborne | 2012 | Immersive Fiction | Set over 250 years in the future, this game explores the political turmoil between Earth and the rest of the Interplanetary Union, focusing on a resistance group called the Earthborne United and their fight against a corporate government, Horizon Industries. | The game uses multiple platforms, such as email, mobile phone, physical mailings, fictional websites, live events, and an audio-based story to weave its narrative. | New York City/Online | http://www.weareearthborne.com |
| The Pizza Code Mystery | 2012 | C J Horn (Black Mesa Team) | An alternate storyline of the Black Mesa Game, following a group of scientists working on a secret project (Still Running as of 12/12/12). | The game uses IRC, Websites, In-game clues (Black Mesa), interactive characters and Email. | Black Mesa Fanbase | http://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?t=13735 |
| Cicada 3301 | 2012–present | Unknown | A secret society known as Cicada 3301 is attempting to recruit "intelligent individuals" via an online/IRL test. | The tests have focused on cryptography, steganography, number theory, literature, poetry, art, etc. Challenges have included cracking low-bit modulus RSA, finding real-world dead drops in major cities around the world, bootable linux CDs, and music. | Worldwide | Mental_Floss Article from Dec 2012 |
| Charlie one Umbra | 2012–present | Unknown | A series of audio recordings tell a story of a commando operation. The messages consist of a list of spoken numbers which are encrypted. The series of transmissions on spreaker.com continues until today (Jan 2013). The messages, when decrypted, apparently refer to an underground organization, operating on a world wide scale. The jargon is strongly military. Phrases like "FIRE TEAM SIZED ELEMENT CONDUCTING RECON AND SURVEILLANCE" appear to tell about the ongoing operation. | The main task is to decode the encrypted messages and occasionally pick up hidden objects like USB-drives with encrypted files on them. Some audio messages contain embedded images, encoded with SSTV. Geographical locations, e.g. drop locations of USB-Drives, are encoded in the MGRS system. | A few hundred players worldwide (est.) | Spreaker.com channel |
| Ingress | 2013-beta | NianticLabs@Google | Players of the game belong to one of two factions. The game-play allows players to enclose regions of territory on the surface of the earth with virtual links between virtual portals, which are visible in the game software. | The top-level goal of the game is for one’s faction to control large numbers of “Mind Units”, the estimated number of humans within the regions of territory controlled by the faction. | MMOG | Ingress (game) |
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, alternate and/or games:
“Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)
“I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.”
—Linda Pastan (b. 1932)
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)