Alternate reality games (arg's)

I’ve been thinking more of how to include ARG (alternate reality game) elements into “Zombie”. For those of you unfamiliar with ARG’s here is a link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game
Im sure you could all find the wiki page yourselves, but here it is just in case you are some kind of space alien who is also Amish, but on Rumspringa (it took me like 5 min to look up Rumspringa, I couldn’t remember the word for the life of me...well at least that joke was so great. If you were unsatisfied with the level of humors in that joke please send hatemail to humorbot 1.0 who is a script designed to increase levels of humor in posts, as well as be a poor attempt at humor himself)

http://www.argn.com/
A great resource for currently running games and info etc.

http://www.personalizemedia.com/alternate-reality-games-in-virtual-spaces/
an interesting article about arg’s and the game second life

I think that ARG elements are a vastly underused and under explored element that could really enhance a video game. It could be a great hook for a game, and a real selling point. Plus they are like living in a game. Who hasn’t wanted to look for real buried treasure or sift through web pages and kinda break into them and not go to jail. For me they are an added level of immersion that deepens play.

From time to time I get questions about how to get started on arg’s. I’m not really an expert on them or anything but I have played a few. http://www.giantmice.com/features/arg-quickstart/ should give you a great start and some basic info. Cathy's Book is a pretty good one to get started with. It’s geared a bit towards a younger audience. There are 3 books in the series so far. The first 2 have been solved I think, not sure about the third. The fact that they have already been solved means that you can go online and look up solutions to puzzles and get a feel for how things work. It also means that you will miss out on being the first to crack something or help find a new lead etc. And that is really a big part of it. Also depending on your personality if a puzzle is already solved the temptation might be to great to just look it up instead of challenging yourself to solve it. I would still recommend that if it’s your first ARG you start with one already solved, just to give it a look and see how things work. Though all ARG’s run different it should give you a good idea on what types of things to look for etc. Or if you are a bit more adventurous just jump right into one that is live. Another good one that is long since solved is perplex city. The sequel has been in limbo since like 2007 but if it does ever release I would definitely recommend playing that one when it’s live. If your looking for a live game check argn.com they have a section for it. Then just find something that sounds interesting to you. For example say you love zombie movies, check out zombie truth. Or maybe that new movie district 9 looked really interesting. There is one for that. There are all kinds of different ARG’s for all kinds of different things, movies, video games, even nine inch nails had one. Just pick one that seems interesting to you. Anyway, point is I'm working on some arg stuff for "Zombie". I found the design doc for "brain slug" and started organizing it and adding detail. Should have it up on the site before the end of the week with any luck.