A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming

mediak writes "A new book is scheduled to hit the shelves covering the emerging topic of Alternate Reality Gaming. This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming by Dave Szulborski will be available in e-book and print-on-demand format in mid-January 2005 and in a traditional print version in February 2005. The first 2 chapters of this book are available for download. From the site: "...While Alternate Reality Gaming has been around for several years, the recent phenomenal success of the online game "I Love Bees", produced by Bungie to promote the release of the video game Halo 2. ARG/immersive gaming has been featured in media venues such as CNN, Trendcentral, BBC, New York Times and countless other sources as of late."

Re:Pray tell, what was the game in I love Bees?

[centauri]

Many of the hidden messages were merely fragmented, and required someone to piece them together. Many hidden messages were whole, but consisted of puzzles, the answers to which were the names of audio files on the site. There were no links to those files, so you needed the file name in order to listen to them. Another aspect of the game consisted of locating and getting to pay phones that were set to ring.

Also...

[centauri]

... getting to the phone didn't count unless certain requirements were met. Sometimes this was just a password, but later it got more complicated, requiring "beekeepers" to coordinate with each other in a timely manner.

Re:Pray tell, what was the game in I love Bees?

[Relic of the Future]

It's been better described by others, but here's a humorous review [masterninja.com] from a self-depricating geek.

Am I so clueless...

[ebrandsberg]

I've seen postings about the "i love bees", went to the website while the game was in progress, and still have absolutly no idea about what this was about? Am I the only one?

Re:Am I so clueless...

[centauri]

It was pretty hard to jump into the middle of it. I got interested around the time of the first countdown for "WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL." At that time, it wasn't too hard to catch up with the story so far. Even now, though, there are summaries of what went on, if you bother to search.

ILB by 4orty2wo

[badnova]

Technically speaking, I Love Bees was produced by 4orty2wo [4orty2wo.com]. Bungie weren't directly involved.

An interview with the writer.

[NashCarey]

If you are interested and wish to know more http://www.arginsider.com/modules.php?op=modload&n ame=News&file=article&sid=16&mode=thread&order=0&t hold=0 [arginsider.com]ARGInsider had oan interview with the writer only hours before the book was launched.

As a colleague of Dave's with a creation of a few games myself, I must say, from what I have read so far it seems like the Bible to Alternate Reality Gaming.

Re:How successful?

[toppsoft]

The traffic from /. was a drop in the bucket. They logged over a million unique visitors over just a couple of months. IIRC, that poor little website was running on a cluster of load balanced servers with static content coming off of mirrors in akamai's server network.

Any mention of Jane McGonigal?

[ashground]

I'll be interested when I see Jane McGonigal [avantgame.com] in the writing credits. As far as I know, she's by far the leading expert on Alternate Reality Games. A lot of her papers can be found on her website, and are a really good read.

Re:Any mention of Jane McGonigal?

[skotte]

Yes in fFact. jane was the person doing all the emails, writing all the blogs, reading *every* *single* fForum message, and watching everything all the players did everywhere around the world. She was the eyes and ears of the puppetmasters, with her thumb quick on the pulse of the community.

Jane was a huge part of ILB, yes.