The Puppet Master Behind The Curtain
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An alternate reality game ARG is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions. The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real time and evolves according to players' responses.
Subsequently, it is shaped by characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by an algorithm as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and collaborate as a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimediasuch as telephones, email, and mail but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium.
ARGs are growing in popularity, [ citation needed https://amazonia.fiocruz.br/scdp/blog/story-in-italian/economic-factors-have-been-of-dominant-concern.php with new games appearing regularly and an increasing amount of experimentation with new models and sub-genres.
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They tend to be free to play, with costs absorbed either through supporting products e. However, pay-to-play models exist as well. There is a great deal of debate surrounding the characteristics by which the term "alternate reality game" should be defined. Sean Stacey, the Kenneth Galbraith John of the website Unfiction, has suggested that the best way to define the genre was not to define it, and instead locate each game on three axes ruleset, authorship and coherence in a sphere of "chaotic fiction" that would include works such as the Uncyclopedia and street games like SF0 as well. This prompts the unique collaboration emanating from ARGs as well; Sean Stewartfounder of 42 Entertainmentwhich has produced various successful ARGs, speaks to how this occurs, noting that "the key Tue about an ARG is the way it jumps off of all those platforms.
It's a game that's social and comes at you across all the different ways that you connect to the world around you. Due to factors like the curtain, attempts to begin games with "stealth launches" to fulfill the TINAG aesthetic, and the restrictive non-disclosure agreements governing how much information may The Puppet Master Behind The Curtain revealed by the puppetmasters of promotional games, Curfain design process for many ARGs is often shrouded in secrecy, making it difficult to discern the extent to which they have been influenced by other works.
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In addition, the cross-media nature of the form allows ARGs to incorporate elements of so many other art forms and works that attempting to identify them all would be a nearly impossible task. The combination board and card game, Vletthat many of the main characters in Delany 's science fiction novel Triton published in play throughout his novel appears to be a type of ARG.
The game's name was borrowed from a similar game in short story by Russ entitled "A Game of Vlet". Ludic texts such as the popular Choose Your Own Adventure children's novels may also have provided some inspiration.
Reader-influenced online fiction such as AOL 's QuantumLink Serial provides a model that incorporates audience influence into the storytelling in a manner similar to that of ARGs, as do promotional online games like Wizards of the Coast's Webrunner games. Other possible antecedents include performance art and other theatrical forms that attempt to directly engage the audience.
The One Gamea British television drama serial screened inwas entirely based on the premise of the protagonist being forced to play an ARG referred to as a The Puppet Master Behind The Curtain game" in the script. Due to the influence, the Beast exerted over the form of later ARGs and the willingness of its creators to talk about its Curtxin, its sources of inspiration are both particularly relevant to the evolution of the modern ARG and somewhat more verifiable than other possible antecedents. Elan Leeone of its creative principals, cites the movie The Game as an inspiration, as well as the Cuurtain ' " Paul is dead " phenomenon. Sean Stewart, another of the three principal designers, notes that designing and running an ARG bears some similarities to running an RPGand the influence of that particular game form is further suggested by the fact that Jordan Weisman, the game's third main designer, was also the founder of leading RPG company FASA.]
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