Advent Calendar: Day 14

By Circe -

One of the more intriguing things to come out of the advent of the internet is the idea of real-time interactive mass entertainment. I mean, I guess you can play MMOs if you want, but I find ARGs much more interesting.

An ARG, or alternate-reality game, is a form of what's now been dubbed "unfiction", a fictional narrative that purports to be real, which typically invites the audience to participate in the progression of the story in some way. There are unfiction projects that just tell a story that the audience can interact with, but an ARG specifically implies a puzzle element. Get a riddle, solve the riddle, get the answer to the puzzle masters, unlock the next bit of plot as a reward. ARGs can be run on a single message board, or span multiple web pages, YouTube channels, Twitter and Instagram accounts, phone numbers, telephone pole flyers, mailed packages, geocaches, and in-person live events. 

Precursor games have been run through newspaper ads for decades (see: the May Day Mystery, at the University of Arizona), but as far as the mainstream media is concerned, the ur-ARG is widely agreed to be the game "i love bees", run by a small team at Microsoft as promotion for the video game Halo 2. Entry points for these games are typically distributed in promo materials for the property being advertised; in Halo 2's case, the address of the initial landing page was casually given in a trailer for the game.

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