Participation, collaboration and spectatorship in an alternate reality game

Abstract

In this paper we present a study of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) called MeiGeist -a cross media game in which narrative elements of a story presented to players across a whole range of on-line and offline media and through which players can interact with in-game characters and events. The study looked at player progress over the eight weeks the game took to play, following their behaviours through the on-line forums, chat rooms and in-game logging of player interactions. The paper explores aspects of collective participation among players, the motivations underlying such participation and the factors that shape these contributions such as timescale of the game. It discusses too, how the narrative is produced and progressed through collective player interactions and how the experience is created through a collaborative suspension of disbelief. Different aspects of participation are also considered, in particular how a more passive spectatorship is an important experience for many players of the game. Finally the game considers how the ideal of a collective ethos among players is sometimes challenged during game play and the efforts necessary to repair this.

Paraplay: Exploring Playfulness Around Physical Console Gaming

“…These audience members might have different levels of interaction in the situation. O'Hara et al [19] described differentiated participation by audience members in an alternate reality game: some audience members become tightly involved in a game session by adding commentary, making suggestions, and participating in other ways, while other audience members remain detached from the game, only becoming involved peripherally and sporadically. At both extremes -and at all levels in between -audience members can be involved in various playful ways.…”

Alternate reality games

“…In short, because this was our first time running an ARG, we knew very little about how players might participate. Research about ARGs has generally been limited to ethnographic studies because of exactly these kinds of problems [9].…”

The Malthusian Paradox: performance in an alternate reality game

“…Their ideas are changing our ideas, and vice versa… It's exciting, it's tiring though". The second factor was a clear desire on the part of the audience to maintain a narrative bubble around the game, the suspension of disbelief identified within previous work on ARGs [16] [21]. The fluidity of the boundary between real and fictional space ultimately acted to the advantage of the production team, allowing that fluidity to explain any potentially disruptive clashes between the real world of production process and the narrative world of the characters.…”

“…O'Hara, Grian and Williams extend McGonical's work to argue that such suspension of disbelief is "at times delicate and vulnerable. There were times when there were breakdowns in this behaviour and through these the real importance of this collective responsibility is revealed" [21]. The communal experience enshrined in models of collective intelligence is entwined with a desire to uphold the integrity of an ARG's narrative.…”