Storytelling in new media: The case of alternate reality games, 2001–2009

Abstract

New media allows previously passive consumers to tell and shape stories together. Yet most information is still disseminated in a top-down fashion, without taking advantage of the features enabled by new media. This paper presents five Alternate Reality Game (ARG) case studies which reveal common features and mechanisms used to attract and retain diverse players, to create task-focused communities and to solve problems collectively. Voluntary, collective problem solving is an intriguing phenomenon wherein disparate individuals work together asynchronously to solve problems together. ARGs also take advantage of the unique features of new media to craft stories that could not be told using other media.

Riding in cars with strangers: A cross-cultural comparison of privacy and safety in Ingress

“…Players relied on the technology provided by the game to observe how other players interacted and the locations and times others played to make inferences about whether the individual was someone with whom they would meet. Additionally, and in keeping with previous research on MRGs (Kim et al 2009), Ingress players rely on communities that are based in social networks, specifi cally Google Plus, to learn about teammates and subsequently to use that information to infl uence their decisions about whether to meet in person.…”

Gamificação e Crowdsourcing no Combate Sustentável ao Aedes aegypti

“…De fato, jogos de realidade alternada (KIM et al, 2009), no qual o jogador ora está imerso em um universo virtual ("imaginário") da narrativa (estória do jogo), ora realizando uma missão, como parte do jogo, no mundo real, podem servir para ensinar assuntos ao jogador, em preparação para tarefas no mundo real, e então, retornar para o jogo para obter os resultados da realização da tarefa.…”

Entertainment Architecture: Constructing a framework for the creation of an emerging transmedia form

“…All the while I ask the reader to keep in mind that these examples present first steps, not fully-fledged Entertainment Architecture. Some of them do not even combine all four entarch elements in one product, and are therefore technically not Kim et al 2009;Dena 2009;Hon 2007;Phillips 2009Phillips , 2010Martin and Chatfield 2006). In this paper, all ARGs are treated as a subform of Entertainment Architecture.…”

“…The term was inspired by interview partner Sean Stewart's colleague Elan Lee who originally used it to refer to a set of websites that collectively told a story over time, and through doing so were originally meant to hold together the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) and several video games (Kim et al 2009;Elefante 2010). The project evolved very differently from its original conception and these websites, now fairly unrelated to other products, came to be known as the very first http://cultural-science.org/journal alternate reality game (ARG) that was unofficially named The Beast (2001).…”