Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) have officially entered the museum world. What’s an ARG? To understand, I’d suggest looking at I Love Bees and World Without Oil as examples. But they in themselves won’t go far enough to define a genre of gaming whose definition is still in its formative stages. These aren’t ordinary games – there are no game boards or defined rules. In ARGs, participants work together and solve puzzles as a group together — usually online, and sometimes in real-life situations as well.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC recently announced their ARG, “Ghosts of a Chance.” Their rabbithole, or website that starts off the ARG, mysteriously counts down to a date 31 days from now and asks participants to “Email your eye, or your lover’s eye, to eyes@ghostsofachance.com.” Let the games begin! ARGs are increasingly popular, so this is interesting as the first Museum ARG – we’ll have to see how it pans out. Nina Simon from Museum 2.0 recently pointed out that Jane McGonigal [who I saw speak about ARGs at SWSW - she was great] was looking for people to employ as part of her new ARG. Museums and ARGs pop up again. Which leads me to wonder about the closing quote of ABC’s article that says, ‘this is where entertainment is going’ – is this where museums are going, too?