Designing Reusable Alternate Reality Games Derek Hansen1, Elizabeth Bonsignore2, Marc Ruppel4, Amanda Visconti3, Kari Kraus2,3 1School of Technology 2Human-Computer Interaction Lab, 4National Endowment Brigham Young University 3Dept of English for the Humanities Provo, UT, USA University of Maryland, College Park, MD Washington, DC, USA
[email protected] {ebonsign,kkraus,visconti}@umd.edu
[email protected] ABSTRACT reality and location-aware devices, begin to proliferate, the Successful Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), such as The future of ARGs looks promising. Lost Experience, I Love Bees and Urgent EVOKE have solicited thousands of active participants and, often, Most ARGs are designed as one-time experiences. While millions of spectators from around the world. ARGs require this lends an authenticity and novelty to the hunting and significant resources not only in terms of initial design, but problem-solving elements of an ARG, it limits the number also in implementation, since live, dynamic interplay of potential players and reduces the return on investment of between players and designers is an inherent aspect of their time and resources. This is particularly true of educational interactive storylines. This paper outlines a novel design ARGs, which could ideally be tailored by educators to meet framework for creating reusable ARGs, that will help the unique needs of their students and classroom setting extend the lifespan of ARGs and allow them to permeate (e.g., length of class). If ARGs are to reach their potential, new domains such as education. The framework includes novel design approaches must be developed that support the three key reusable design objectives (replayability, unique properties of ARGs, while also recognizing the need adaptability, extensibility), each of which can be enacted at to make their content reusable.