Anyone have experience with small-scale Alternate Reality Games?

The Game Room
1

There was a story in a recent American Libraries Direct e-newsletter about Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), a topic I’ve also read about occasionally elsewhere. The Wiki link has more info, but basically this is a kind of puzzle game played out in real life/over the Internet. I’ve been thinking that it would be fun to do a library-based ARG where I work as a promotional activity with some educational value, but before I bring the idea up to my boss I’d like to know more about what I might be getting myself in to.

Most of the information I’ve been able to find about ARGs refers to large games designed as part of a promotional campaign for movies, etc. Has anyone been a part of a small-scale ARG, particularly a campus-based game? I’d like to hear from anyone who’s played or, better still, organized one. I suspect that this is the sort of thing that will turn out to be vastly more time consuming than one might guess, but if I decided to go forward with this I could take my time and not launch the game until the spring.

Any ideas for a plot would be much appreciated. I’m not sure which direction to go with that at all. I know I’ll need a “hook” to get people interested, but I don’t know if it would be better to publicly announce that there will be a game and people should be on the lookout for clues or to just start planting clues and see what happens.

Here’s a little more info on the setting and resources I have available:

I work at a good sized (multi-floor) university library, with the usual bookshelves and magazine racks as well as a variety of study areas. There are open areas with chairs and desks and several small study rooms for 2-6 people. There are also assorted alcoves and other odd spaces suitable for hiding clues. The main floor has a public computer area.

I don’t have the ability to edit the main library website, but I have control over several online resource guides related to my academic subject areas. I’d be able to plant small clues there as long as I didn’t interfere with the main purpose of the page. If I got some other librarians on board they could do the same thing. I’d also probably be able to create a small page or two that would be linked to through one of my resource guides, but I wouldn’t be able to go too crazy with this because of space issues.

For most online clues I figure I could set up a Gmail account for the game and then also have access to Blogger and Picasa. But I’d like to keep most of the puzzles library related. We use RefWorks here (Web-based program for storing citations and generating bibliographies) and I can create an account that isn’t linked to my name or e-mail. Some clue could leads to the password for this account, and once inside the player would find citations for books at the library with more clues planted inside.

Although I’d have to do most of the work myself, I have a very smart and fun bunch of coworkers who will likely be willing to help. It would be fairly easy for me to arrange for there to be say an envelope held at the checkout desk for a student who comes in at a certain time and says a certain phrase. One of my coworkers also has some web video experience, and I may be able to enlist him to create a video clue.

2

I haven’t really gotten into any ARG’s since the first one, which is seven and a half years ago now, and it was the opposite of small. I’d say that if you’re going to do one, do a lot of contingency planning and as much production work as you can ahead of time. The reason ARG’s are so enjoyable is because unlike other computer games they “talk back” – events change due to player action. (Even MMORPGS don’t do this in the same way.) But because of that, you may find yourself flowing in completely different directions, so it’s could to know as much as you can about your characters and mysteries so you can fit them into new situations on the fly.

As for how to start it, that’s always a question. The motto of The Beast was “This is not a game,” and a lot of ARG’s take that as their design philosophy. That is, nothing in the websites, characters, or whatever the player interacted with ever broke the fourth wall. OTOH, that can cause problems for non-players who stumble upon your clues without context. (Or who get a threatening phone call in the middle of the night.) One of the very first homebrew ARG’s (maybe the first) was called Lockjaw and followed a group of people who did unauthorized explorations of the D.C. Metro. Can you imagine the shitshorm if somebody had followed the rabbit hole and got hit by a train? For this reason, other ARG’s make clear in the establishment of the game that it’s a game, even though once you’re in it the characters don’t wink at you about it.

–Cliffy

3

Yeah, since this would be an official event and taking place at my workplace, I really want to avoid anything like students getting into trouble for being places they should not be, or real concern over a fictional “missing” student. That’s why I was thinking it might be better to say upfront that it was all a game, although that does take a bit of the excitement out of things. I’m also a bit concerned that if students don’t know to be on the lookout for clues that my initial “rabbit hole”, or even the entire game, would be mistaken for a fraternity prank or something. An official announcement would also make it easier for me to get contact information from players later on without having to come up with a really clever ruse. I could still do something like have an in-game character request their e-mail address, but I think students would be more willing to do this if they knew from the start that it was a library-sponsored game.