by Jean-Yves Le Moine, published on 13.08.2009

Alternate reality games blur the lines between the real and virtual worlds – between what we call reality and virtuality…. They prefigure what gaming has become in a hybrid world in which reality is enhanced by virtuality and virtuality consolidated by reality. There is no clear-cut definition of ARG, and we often range in this category any game that can’t be put in a pre-existing pigeonhole.

An ARG resembles a paper chase that takes place on the web and in real life, often enhanced by technologies spawned by mobiles and intelligent objects.

It is also a sort of role-playing game replete with game master, but in which the gamers are the masters of their own fate. The participants act upon the game, and you can see unforeseen forms and actions emerging that the game master has to take into account – or risk losing his community!

One of the leading lights in this domain is the Australian-based Jane McGonigal. McGonigal believes the reason gamers play so much is that reality is pretty sad nowadays without gaming. So she wants to add some game-playing to real life to make our reality more pleasant. For her, ARGs can serve as that life-enhancing vehicle in the workplace as well as in our social and family relations. She also sees ARGs as a way of getting different generations to interact, to overcome their differences and bridge the technology gap and/or social divides due to disparate collective memories.

Another – and not the least significant – aspect of ARGs is that, more often than not, solving the riddle is not the crux of the game. The richness of and motivation behind gaming usually lie in the game-playing process itself, in the quest. And the fact that this quest is undertaken collectively, collaboratively, by generating a collective intelligence, adds even more to its inherent interest. ARG is a new type of game that is lived as much as it is played. To Jane McGonigal, it’s more a new way of living than a new way of playing.