Alternate Reality Games

Slideshow Transcript

1. Slide 1: ALTERNATE REALITY GAMES and why you should care
2. Slide 2: A Story  Margaret’s Honey website gets “hacked”  Interested visitors talk to Dana, the webmaster, about what’s going on  Visitors find garbled “mayday” messages, fragments of a story in embedded code and corrupted images  Ongoing blog/email contact with Dana, mysterious artificial intelligences deepen mystery
3. Slide 3: A Story, Cont.
4. Slide 4: A Story, Cont.  Players come across puzzles hidden in the site, leading to more messages  Players are lead to payphones across US  Over 12 weeks thousands of players congregate at phones to hear story fragments, talk to an AI, and perform missions
5. Slide 5: What’s in a name?  alternate reality? no  games? no  actually, sort of
6. Slide 6: Pervasive Gaming (in a nutshell)  (Social) Play  Narrative  Technology  Cross Media & Common Modalities
7. Slide 7: Pervasive Gaming (in pictures) cyberspace in-between meatspace also:
8. Slide 8: Interesting Numbers  Tie-Ins / Marketing  Art of the Heist: 45mil impressions  The Beast: 1mil players  I Love Bees: 2mil players  Independent  Chasing the Wish: 3k players  MetaCortechs: 12k players  Perplex City: 40k players
9. Slide 9: The Technology (in a nutshell)  Web (2.0 and otherwise)  Blogs, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter, Forums, Websites, etc.  Email, IM, IRC  Mobile  SMS, Location/Context-Sensing  Telephony  Phones, Asterisk ?
10. Slide 10: Play traditional MMO
11. Slide 11: Pervasive Play  Low barrier  Constructive  Dynamic  Flexible  Scalable Community
12. Slide 12: Narrative
13. Slide 13: Pervasive Narrative  Immersive  Dynamic  Flexible
14. Slide 14: All Together Now  Actors inhabit same space as player collaboration
15. Slide 15: The Technology (in pictures)
16. Slide 16: The Technology (in pictures)
17. Slide 17: Why is this so cool?  Immersive!  Novel  Meatspace is fun  Dynamic - constant improvement  Flexible - constant surprise  Agile development
18. Slide 18: Why is this so powerful?  Collective intelligence  Collective empowerment  Reality <--> Game “To make people believe is to make them act”
19. Slide 19: TorGame (long-lasting meatspace)
20. Slide 20: TorGame (long-lasting meatspace)
21. Slide 21: TorGame (long-lasting meatspace)
22. Slide 22: TorGame (long-lasting meatspace)
23. Slide 23: World Without Oil (preparing for the future by having fun)
24. Slide 24: World Without Oil (preparing for the future by having fun)
25. Slide 25: World Without Oil (preparing for the future by having fun)
26. Slide 26: World Without Oil (preparing for the future by having fun)
27. Slide 27: The Future  The future of entertainment?  Integration with traditional entertainment media  Integration of more recent technology  Problem solving  Greater emphasis on social networks