ARG in the News
We're sorry we missed this article when it was originally published in the Portland Phoenix back on August 9. It's a well-written take on the genre from a perspective outside the closely-knit ARG player community. Jess Kilby does a great job of capturing the excitement a new campaign, and in fact the whole genre, can generate.
Get a clue – Alternative Reality Gaming taps into the collective detective
By Jess KilbyI have a confession to make: I was a Nancy Drew freak. While other kids my age were playing with Barbies and GI Joes, I was curled up in the big blue armchair in my living room, engrossed in my mom’s faded old copies of The Password to Larkspur Lane and The Secret at Shadow Ranch. Before Nancy, it was Encyclopedia Brown. And of course, there was always Harriet the Spy.
Though I eventually grew out of the mystery genre, I never lost my love for the sleuthing life. So imagine my delight in April 2001, when I caught wind of a strange new game that was afoot; a sort of viral marketing promotion for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming movie, A.I.
It started with a whisper of something odd about the A.I. trailers and posters: a woman named Jeanine Salla was listed as a “sentient machine therapist†in the trailer credits, and, on the back of the posters, letters circled in silver spelled out the phrase “Evan Chan was murdered.†Letters in gold squares formed the message “Jeanine is the key.†more
