arg

News

PlayStation Home’s Xi Comes To A Close

3:20AM Mike Fahey | Sony’s PlayStation Home alternate reality game Xi is coming to a close, and the door to the story’s dramatic conclusion now stands open for all. More »
News

Augmented Reality Camera Game Coming To DSi

11:40PM Brian Crecente | Swedish-developed Ghostwire will let you use the DSi’s camera to hunt ghosts in the real world through augmented-reality gaming, developer A Different Game announced today. More »
News

Xi – Join The Veilcorp Team

12:20AM Mike Fahey | The PlayStation Home alternate reality game Xi takes another step beyond the console as the shadowy corporate entity known as Veilcorp begins recruiting applicants in the New York and Los Angeles area. More »
Media

PlayStation Home Xi ARG Mingles With Reality

6:20AM Mike Fahey | The alternate reality game Xi, which has made PlayStation Home a much more interesting place over the past week and a half is now leaking into the real world. More »
News

PlayStation Home Gets Much More Interesting With Xi

3:20AM Mike Fahey | There’s much more to do in PlayStation Home than the Running Man today, as Sony launches the first console-based Alternate Reality Game, Xi. More »

Nokia Chooses Ghostly Phone Game

6:20AM Stuart Houghton | Nokia’s panel of experts has deliberated and ruminated on the subject of innovative mobile gaming and decided to award the top prize in the Mobile Games Innovation Challenge to Ghostwire. More »

Red Cross Offers Traces Of Hope

12:00PM Stuart Houghton | The Red Cross has launched a charity Alternate Reality Game called Traces Of Hope. Set in Uganda, the game lets you use real-world internet resources like email, Facebook and search engines to help guide a sixteen year old refugee – Joseph – back to his mother. “We’ve pulled out all the stops to create an experience where players will feel they are really interacting with Joseph’s world – by communicating directly with Joseph, players find themselves caught up in a hunt across the internet to reunite him with his mother,” said Dorothea Arndt, British Red Cross, New Media Manager. One slightly unfortunate side-effect of the game’s quest realism became apparent when I realised I had missed four of the email messages from Joseph because I wasn’t expectng them and they they triggered my mental Spam/Scam filter. Top tip guys, starting a seemingly unsolicited email with either “Hello! It is me Joseph… I am near Hopetown, Uganda!” or “Thanks for your email the other day” is going to set off alarm bells… My idiocy aside, Traces Of Hope is worth a look. The Red Cross are a great cause and they are genuinely trying something new here. [Traces Of Hope] More »

How Much Does It Cost To Make A Successful ARG?

10:20AM Leigh Alexander | At the Games For Change 2008 festival in New York, the key topic was creating games as agents for social change – and included in events today was a panel on alternate reality games (ARGs), defined as collaborative, primarily user-motivated events that make the distribution of information into an entertainment experience. You may remember World Without Oil, which invited people to visit a website to share fictional stories that imagined their lives in the event of a severe oil shortage. Player ideas were incorporated as part of the ongoing narrative on the site, and players could add photos or mail letters to the game operators. It’s considered groundbreaking, because it was one of the first ARGs that attempted to address a real world issue. So how much does it cost to make a game like that? Sounds easy, right? More »