There's imagination happening here: Extolling the Virtues of the ARG

Posted May 3rd, 2007 by Michael Roy, Middlebury College

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http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/04/benevolent_conspiracy.html

Ben Vershbow from the Institute for the Future of the Book has posted a nifty review/preview of the World Without Oil, the social consciousness-raising ARG (alternate reality game) that recently launched. His posting is interesting both for what it has to say about ARGs and their power as a narrative form, but also for its critique of Second Life. He writes:

"This couldn't be more unlike the whole Second Life phenomenon (which, as you may have noticed, we've barely covered here). Instead of building a one-to-one simulacrum of the actual world (yeah yeah, you can fly, big whoop), this takes the actual world and tilts it — reinterprets it. There's imagination happening here. "

As others have suggested elsewhere, ARGs represent a powerful new platform for creating engaging experiences that could be harnassed (in the case of World Without Oil) for social good, or (and here I know of no examples but would love to be corrected in the comments section below) education.

How to cite this work

Michael Roy. "There's imagination happening here: Extolling the Virtues of the ARG." Academic Commons Issue Name (Spring 2008): 21 May 2012. <http://www.academiccommons.org/>.

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There's imagination happening here: Extolling the Virtues of the

On May 3rd, 2007 Peter D. Naegele, Oberlin College Department of Psychology said:

It's an interesting concept, yet it seems that it will appeal only to the converted and those involved with the project already. It seems to want to further blur the lines of reality with VR. If an unsuspecting or uninformed individual accidentally ran across this site, it would seem most alarming. Perhaps this is the intent. I'm not quite sure since most of their resources are self-linked or to wikipedia. Even their faq is a ambiguous journey into a mixture of backstory and true history. Is this a journey into imagination or well veiled brainwashing?

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