A little about ARGs: Part I The Rabbit Hole

If you're new to ARGs you might be wondering what they're all about. Alternate Reality Games have a relatively short history (or long in the dog years of the internet).
First, the basics. ARGs, unlike many other kinds of games, are meant to nearly fool the audience into wondering whether the game is actually a game or reality. ARGs vary in their distance from reality but the purists may suggest that players should at least initially be fooled by the "rabbit hole." These can take the form of an ad in a newspaper, a phony blog...some little hidden bit of story that only those who notice it and pursue it will follow into another world. For example, the Nine Inch Nails ARG, Year Zero, had one rabbit hole hidden in the characters on the back of a tour t-shirt.

The highlighted letters led to a website full of intrigue and mysterious conspiracies.
The rabbit hole for the ARG that accompanied Stephen Spielberg's movie AI, "The Beast", was hidden within the end of the movie's credits. A sentient machine therapist names Jeanine Salla was listed in the credits just as the rest of the crew scrolled by.

A surprise awaited those who were curious enough to give her a little Google...a complete website with all of her details and the beginning of a great game.
There are many more amazing examples of rabbit holes but it may be important to point out that they aren't strictly necessary for a good ARG. They have a few downsides. Because they're hidden and only apparent to people who are motivated enough to pursue them they can limit your audience. If you, like me, would like to have a targeted group play your game (such as students), you can't take the risk of using too subtle of a beginning for your story. Sometimes you have to point and say "Here! It's a game! You should play!" especially if you're trying to attract players who aren't acquainted with this form of narrative and interaction. The second downside is that it can take a painfully long time for people to notice a rabbit hole. You put it out there and hope and meanwhile, you sit with your finger on the trigger ready to launch a fantastic experience twiddling your thumbs (the ones not holding the trigger) knowing that at any time you'll need to be ready to go.
Personally, I find this waiting tedious. It's not that I don't have faith in the curiosity of the crowd. I just don't think that it's practical. Games that have a finite window (such as during a class, a conference, or leading up to an event) give you a useful constraint to keep the game going and to know when it must be finished. I am also of the opinion that a story can be engaging and fascinating even if you know it's a story. After all, there are no great films or movies that present themselves as anything else. You know that you're about to fall into their narrative and it doesn't diminish the experience.

What do you think? Does making a story overt ruin it? What kind of rabbit hole might you use to pull your audience into a story?

Resources:
To see a list of Rabbit Holes recently identified by avid ARG players be sure to check out the "News and Rumors" page over on the Unfiction Forums.
You should also check out the Seven Things to Know about ARGs article from Educause/ELI. It's a great guide to the basics and serves as a good introduction to pass on if you're trying to get others in on the idea of ARGs.
For some excellent insights into using ARGs in the classroom, Nicola Whitton's article "Alternate Reality Games in the Classroom for Developing Student Autonomy and Peer Learning"

Managing the chaos

Because our game relies on characters engaging with players each of them has a communication channel that they'll use to engage. These range from Twitter to blogs to Tumblr. Keeping up with all of those accounts can be a bit crazy. Never mind that we're playing characters which means keeping track of account passwords etc and not accidentally posting from the wrong account. Here are a few tricks that we're using to manage the chaos.
Tweetdeck (or Hootsuite): Both of these tools can run on multiple platforms and post to multiple accounts. I have Tweetdeck running on my desktop and use it to monitor both my personal Twitter account as well as the character accounts. It's handy but we have to be careful. Posting from the wrong account on accident could derail the game or confuse the players. These two tools are also helpful because they allow us to prepost tweets (scheduling them in advance) and create ongoing searches for special terms and hashtags (ours is #IUMM).
Google Docs: Throughout the design process our team has relied heavily on shared Google docs but they're even more important now as we prepare to launch. We use a spreadsheet as a production schedule (who does what and when) and a document that has all of the account information for every account and every character. This means that should one of us find ourselves unable to post something or respond that others can log in and take care of it. We also used a spreadsheet early on to share our puzzle drafts and give each other feedback on out ideas. Yes, we met face-to-face on occasion but we're all volunteers with busy schedules so much of our collaboration happened online just as our players' will.

The development to this point

Our team has been working on this game for about eight weeks. In that time we've gone through many rounds of edits, play testing, and lots of planning. But before we get into the process, it may be useful to know a little bit about the constraints that we set as we went about designing the game.
Constraints
Audience was our most important constraint. The game is primarily intended to help educators see the potential of games as learning tools so we knew that we needed to provide some easy-to-translate examples of applicable game mechanics. However, we also knew that a wider audience would make the game much more fun to play. To this end, we asked at every step "Will this be fun? Will it help people understand the potential of games?" If the answer wasn't "yes" to both then we kept thinking.
We also knew that most of our players wouldn't be familiar with ARGs so we wanted to be sure that elements of the game were familiar and easy to understand. As the game unfolds you'll see how this played out in the design.
Our second constraint was time. The academic schedule is predictable and we knew that spring break would be right around the corner. Students and faculty would leave campus and take the steam right out of the game. This was actually helpful to us because it meant that we could design a shorter game with tools in place to ensure that everything would be wrapped up before everyone left for break.
Design
We wanted to provide a wide range of game play experiences to attract players with varied interests. The puzzles should be interesting to everyone who decides to play but they should also attract players who might not otherwise play. We addressed this by creating suspects with as wide a range of backgrounds and interests as we think our players may have. Thus, every player should be able to identify (or vilify) at least one of the suspects. Each member of the team took on one of these suspects and created a bio, a persona, and a set of puzzles. It was great to see all of this work for the first time. The creativity and range in the puzzles is amazing.
We'll share more on the structure of the game once it's kicked off (can't give anything away) but I can say that we focused on a calendar and created a production schedule to build and run the game that we shared in a Google Doc and now it serves as game-central for us puppet masters.

Well, that's all for now. I have to get back to writing blog entries and other game content that will be released throughout the game. Stay tuned and feel free to post any questions or ideas you have about designing ARGs whether for learning or for entertainment.

T-Minus Six Days

After many weeks of preparation, we are now less than a week away from the launch of our campus ARG. This is as good a time as any to provide a bit of background on the project and explain where the idea came from.
The IU Bloomington CITL (Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning) is hosting a games and learning talk by Dr. James Paul Gee on March 23. In an effort to surround his talk with examples of games being used for learning, Maggie Ricci (instructional technology consultant extraordinaire) thought that perhaps an ARG (alternate reality game) should be one of the game types included. Maggie contacted me, Sarah Smith-Robbins, because I had designed and run ARGs for learning in the past. Then three amazing IU graduate students volunteered to help and off we went! The IU Missing Manuscript Mystery Game was born!
The game officially starts on March 1, 2012. It's easy to play. Just go to the blog of the "victim" here and dive in. Click the links to the suspect profiles and explore their Twitter, Tumblr, and blogs. Read the victim's blog entries to learn about the story. Start following the game's hashtag on Twitter #IUMM. There are lots of ways to start playing.
Meanwhile, as the game progresses from March 1-10, check in here to learn about the behind-the-scenes work being done to keep the game going, how the puzzles were created (only after they're solved! cheater), and to find examples of ways that you can begin to use similar games to learn and teach. And don't hesitate to leave questions about the game mechanics here on this blog. Meanwhile, over in Ariadne's world the mystery is about to begin!