View From The Front Porch
“Building an ARG is like running a role-playing game in your kitchen for 2 million of your closest friends.” This is an observation by Sean Stewart, the principal writer an early and influential Alternate Reality Game called “The Beast”, developed to support the opening of the Spielberg film “A.I.” (2001). The story-based game was developed to be followed across a range of media, including telephones, email, fax, and a website. Stewart states that the hallmark of ARGs consist of story fragments that the audience must find and assemble, a story not bound by a medium or platform, an audience that is massive and collective which works together through the advantages of information technology, and a story which allows a key role in creating the way it progresses.
Some of the most interesting points Stewart makes about ARGs are based on metaphors. He compares Alternate Reality Games to Opera in saying,“ARGs carry on the impetus of film, and opera before it, by gathering and deploying any other artistic resource- music, costume, drama, lighting, graphics, games, clowns on unicycles with their hair on fire- to deliver the story. In fact, one of our alternate names for ARGs is ‘search operas’.” Considering the appearance of the clown, perhaps he should have added Circus, or perhaps the "Bread and Circus" of the Romans.
Another metaphor is one that he makes when discussing how computer console-based video games, requiring expensive labor-intensive graphics, are missing out on using what he calls the “Infinite resolution renderer”, the imagination of the players. Thus ARGs can use the physics and resources of the real world to support the created reality of the game world.
By giving participants an opportunity to interact with each other while playing an ARG becomes an experience, one that is both personal and shared. This Stewart likens to the old fashioned Front Porch, where neighbors could chat and share gossip, an earlier form of social platform. This analogy gives a psychological framework which makes sense in explaining how ARGs can attract many thousands of participants no matter what combinations of technologies they employ. Whether it’s a new murder mystery game called Breathe due to take place in London clubs in upcoming weeks, or a game called Something In The Sea which has been sending telegrams by bicycle messenger lately to announce news from the main character, people will want to see what’s going on from their technological front porches.
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