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. different levels of depth. The paper also identifies barriers To some extent, reusable ARGs seem like an oxymoron. to reusable ARGs and design patterns for overcoming those How can a genre that prides itself on the improvisational barriers, drawing upon ARG designer interviews and interplay between game designers and players be replayed? games. How can those replaying ARGs, which require online Author Keywords research and participation in online communities, shield Alternate Reality Games, serious games, design, replayable, themselves from the puzzle solutions and story spoilers that extensible, adaptable, reusable. are scattered across the web? How can ARGs that rely upon geography be authentically ported to other locations? Is it ACM Classification Keywords possible to individually experience ARGs when their very J.5 Arts and Humanities; K.4.0 Computers and Society: nature requires collective problem solving and experiences? General; K.8.0 Personal computing: Games. Can an ARG be “repackaged” or even archived in the first General Terms place, given that it plays out in such a multitude of media Design; Human Factors. platforms? These and related questions highlight the challenge of designing authentic, reusable ARGs. Though a INTRODUCTION handful of ARGs have identified these challenges (see Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are an emerging genre of Background section), no one has yet provided generalizable large-scale, transmedia storytelling experiences [15, 18]. principles or concepts to aid ARG designers attempting to ARGs are “immersive, interactive experiences where create sustainable ARGs. players collaboratively hunt for clues, make sense of disparate information, contribute content, and solve puzzles The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for to advance a narrative that is woven into the fabric of the designing reusable ARGs: ones that can be replayed, real world” [9]. Successful Alternate Reality Games adapted to new environments, and/or extended for new (ARGs), such as The Lost Experience, I Love Bees and audiences. After introducing the framework, we identify Urgent EVOKE have solicited thousands of active barriers to creating reusable ARGs and then provide participants and, often, millions of spectators from around specific design patterns for overcoming the barriers using the world. They have created highly engaging and our framework as a backdrop. These design patterns draw interactive experiences in a range of domains including upon expert interviews and a review of existing ARGs that entertainment [15], marketing [18], education [4, 8, 16, 21], have some reusable component. and societal problem solving [20]. As new technologies for BACKGROUND supporting mixed reality experiences, such as augmented As noted earlier, ARGs are a genre of transmedia storytelling [15] or transmedia fiction [12], because their HCIL TECH REPORT (2012) core mechanic is to engage players in scavenger-hunt-like http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pubs/tech-reports.shtml missions to uncover, collectively interpret, and reassemble - 1 - the fragments of a story that is distributed across multiple Metacortechs/Project MU, an ARG based in the Matrix media, platforms, and locations. ARGs are also universe, created both a printed book and an online characterized as “games of progression,” because they narrative, complete with hyperlinks to all the ARG feature a series of interactive challenges (e.g., puzzles) that resources such as in-game sites, emails, puzzles, and hacker players must overcome, like decoding a cryptogram, as they chats [30]. While these player productions are indirect work through the storyline [17, 22]. In contrast, “games of imitations of live game play, they represent another avenue emergence,” such as Chess and Pong, feature a relatively for larger audiences to enjoy the experience, even long after small set of rules that can result in a high variety of play the original game is no longer available [11]. possibilities. Although games of progression, including To date, very little research in ARG design has addressed ARGs, can engage players for countless hours over days or issues of reusability [9, 21]. Most work on ARGs and ARG weeks, once the story is completed, there is little motivation design—whether in academia or industry—has focused on to repeat it [22]. Game designer Jordan Weisman has the development and distribution of story elements and compared ARG game-play to a “rock concert… a temporal interactive challenges [4, 16, 19, 23, 24, 29]; player event, a gathering of energies all in one place for a short participation [11, 14, 20]; or the challenges inherent in the period of time. And afterwards, it's a bit like hearing the preservation of distributed narratives [25]. Indeed, the most album from the concert. It doesn't ever have the vitality and prominent ARGs are not designed to be repeatable because the life of one that unfolds in real time” [10]. their primary goal is to generate heightened interest in a However, finding ways to craft interactive story worlds that one-time event, such as the release of a new album (Year can be experienced in multiple ways, over multiple play Zero), game (I Love Bees), or movie (The Beast), or the sessions, is not new. Videogames like Civilization (I-V) start of a new season of a television show (The Lost provide players with rich virtual worlds to explore and Experience). enlist them in numerous empire-building strategies [26, 27]. A handful of ARGs have dealt with repeatability either Similarly, multiplayer games, such as the Massively explicitly, during initial design (ARGOSI, AGOG, Urgent Multiplayer Online Role-Playing game (MMORPG), World EVOKE), or implicitly, based on player feedback (World of Warcraft® (WoW), offer rich story worlds with multiple Without Oil/WWO). ARGOSI was developed for a levels of play and diverse character roles to broaden replay university system with the goal of launching the game anew possibilities [28]. In addition to WoW, digital games like each year for incoming freshmen [31]. Consequently, the Disney’s Epic Mickey, Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda, and ARGOSI design team openly published all their design Bioware/LucasArts’ Star Wars-based Knights of the Old documents online for use by other university systems with Republic, represent “replayable progression” hybrids [22] similar goals. ARGOSI’s design documents included that combine compelling stories with elements of specific guides for narrative design, information-literacy- emergence, such as different story paths that arise from based challenge design, and marketing design, and a multiple player choices, or different character roles that collection post-game lessons learned write-ups [3]. open up new player perspectives on the story. Text-based Similarly, as one of the sponsors for EVOKE, the World antecedents to these interactive story worlds are the Choose Bank was interested in developing a game frame that would Your Own Adventure Series, which are both read and motivate participation over multiple “seasons” of play, with played at the same time [19]. each season recruiting new participants focusing on Literary examples for reusability include book series such emerging opportunities for global social innovation [20]. as the Sherlock Holmes, Hardy Boys, or Nancy Drew The final mission for EVOKE Season 1 was for players to mysteries or James Bond and Alex Rider spy novels. These crowd-source options for follow-on seasons [1]. The series feature multiple episodic extensions, with the same Arcane Gallery of Gadgetry (AGOG) was designed so that cast of protagonists encountering a diverse array of it could be replayable by different middle-school classes,