I still have to come up with a good title..

You know those mornings.. missed the bus.. freshy spring breeze.. Nothing better to do than reading a good book while waiting to go to work!
Here an excerpt from a book called “Changing the Game, How video games are transforming the future of business“.

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are another way that marketers are blurring the line between the real and the virtual. AGs, like virtual worlds, are not quite games in the traditional sense of the word.

ARGs are best described as collaborative, interactive narratives that blur the lines between reality and game. They employ a wide range of electronic and physical media to engage with players, such as Web sites, text messages, e-mail, real-world billboards, comic books, and staged publicity events. The end result is a storytelling experience that draw hundreds of thousands of people into an incredibly engaging puzzle-solving exercise that persists for days,weeks, or months on end.

Unfortunately, our description hardly captures the magic of a good alternate reality game. So please indulge us for a moment, and imagine that you are playing Changing the Game — The ARG. At 2:00 p.m. tomorrow, your cellphone might unexpectedly ring. A cryptic voice message explains that you r help is desperately needed, and subsequently directs you to a “secret” Web site that will be available for only the next 15 minutes. You frantically run to your computer and load the Web site, only to be confronted with total gibberish. Finding yourself incapable of translating the text, you visit an online message board frequented by other fans of ARGs. An active discussion has already began, and one fellow player has realized that the gibberish is actually just Spanish, written in reverse in the page.

The translated text is revealed to be a note from a “government official,” who has learned of a secret plot to topple the U.S. government and trigger a global war. Naturally, your help is needed to stop this from happening. The official’s plea for assistance is accompanied by another riddle, designed to keep “others” from uncovering his subversive activities. [...]  And so the adventure begins!

Although we invented the previous example, many ARGs of similar and greater complexity have recently been launched with the primary intention of promoting a product or brand. This includes I Love Bees, a famous ARG designed to promote the video game Halo 2, and Vanishing Point, an AG promoting the launch of Windows Vista. These ARGs have generally revealed to the public in a subtle but highly viral fashion; for example, I Love Bees was first unveiled via a barely noticeable Web address, www.ilovebees.com, that appeared at the bottom of the first Halo 2 promotional trailer. Halo fans quickly picked up on the address, and began researching the mysterious Web site associated with it, which appeared to have been infected with a computer virus. Thus began a multiweek campaign that involved a number of remarkable challenges, such as one event that required players to locate certain pay phones all across the country and answer them at precise moments. (One person reportedly braved a Florida hurricane to take a call in a Burger King parking lot.) Lucky players who answered the calls — effectively on behalf of the entire player community — were trated to conversations with live actors who carried the narrative into the next phase.

[...]

To call an ARG a complex undertaking would be an understatement. Even the simplest AG will, in general, be more time-consuming and expensive to deploy than many product placements and advergames. As such, when developing an ARG, it pays to understand what makes them compelling.

Jordan Weisman, considered by many to be the founder of [this] game (he is also the creator of I Love Bees), explains: “ARGs are the gaming equivalent of Woodstock — the big concert that everyone goes to for days or weeks or months, an then it’s over. They’re a social storytelling experience. There is no score. There are no winners and there are no losers. This form of entertainment is truly collaborative, and social standing is gained via contributions made to the community, not via competition for points.”

Weisman is equally insistent about the importance of being strategically and financially committed to an ARG; in other words, doing it right or not doing it at all. “There’s a misconception that this form of marketing entertainment has to be cheaper. Well, it’s not cheaper. A heck of a lot more effort goes into an ARG than a 30-second TV spot. You have to create a lot more content, and there’s a much larger editorial process involved. But the benefits, as opposed to the 30-second spot, are the level of immersion you create, and the level of affection that a person has for the brand and the experience, not to mention the community that grows around the brand and the experience. Those things provide real lasting benefit to brands. And one of the great things about an ARG is that, unlike with a TV spot, you know how engaged people are. You knowhow many people visited your Web sites, you know how many people are participating on the message boards  – you can quantify things.”

Three keys to success with ARGs

Among the keys to success with ARGs are the following:

Great ARGs are more than a series of complicated puzzles: A great ARG tells a compelling story, which makes a big difference to every participant, but especially to those who are more interested in simply following along than in solving complicated puzzles, or who have never played an ARG and might initially feel intimidated by the experience. The best ARGs will also include simple participatory experiences that players of all backgrounds and interest level can engage in.

Put it out there and let them find it: Part of what people enjoy about ARGs is the way they seamlessly blend fiction with real life. Given that, it doesn’t make much sense to formally announce the beginning of an ARG or to openly promote the marketing purpose of an ARG. Take, as an example, how the rock band Nine Inch Nails launched an ARG called Year Zero by selling T-shirts printed with European tour schedule. Sharp observers noticed that random letters on the shirt seemed slightly boldfaced. The letters “i am trying to believe,” and naturally, as soon as people figured that out, they began flocking to “iamtryingtobelieve.com,” which initiated the ARG experience. Nine Inch Nails mantained the mystery throughout Year Zero’s life cycle, never revealing to fans where the ARG was going or how it would end. Fans reported that this was perhaps the most exciting aspect of the entire experience.

Make it a true multimedia experience: In general, an ARG will prove more engaging if it takes advantage of multiple mediums, such as postcards, e-mail, realistic-looking news articles leaked through blogs and media outlets, billboards, phone calls, radio broadcasts, YouTube videos, print advertisements, and the backsides of T-shirts. This helps blur the lines between reality and the game and keeps players on their toes.

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