Customer Reviews

This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're interested in the phenomenon of Alternate Reality Gaming, this is an absolute must-read. Dave Szulborski knew more about ARGs than anyone else, and the book tells you everything - the history, how they're made, and how to run your own.

This is Not a Game is an interesting take on the ARG/Transmedia genre's early years (1999-2005ish) from the perspective of a player turned independent ARG designer. While not exactly encyclopedic and covering every game from that time period, it does a good job of looking at the early foundations and some of the big names as well as their aftermath and a case study of a couple indie-games that came afterwards. Its a great into to people new to the genre, that may have missed The Beast, Majestic, and any others from that time period.

Lots to learn here from Dave Szulborski(RIP), who has recently been named "World's Most Prolific ARG Developer" by Guinness World Records 2012 Gamer's Edition.

You did well with this one my brother. Thanks for letting me participate in it's inception and dissemination. I miss you, a lot but in some weird way, I know I'll see you again, somewhere, somehow. That last sentence had more commas than a Shatner monologue. ;-) You never got tired of that joke, did you? Peace.

I found this in Howard's notes on TINAG

North Bennington, VT

The Jews at Masada staved off the Romans for nine months. The Puppet Masters of immersive gaming staved off corporateland for over 12 years. A new book is being published that pulls back the curtain of the circus otherwise known as Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). Alternate Reality Games were the last vestibule of sponsor-free space on the web.

This Is Not A Game by Dave Szulborski is being heralded as the first book documenting the work of the great, original online gamers. That much is true. What this book lightly touches on is that when Microsoft commissioned Spoungey to create "I Like Bees" as a teaser campaign for Halo 2, the art-for-art-sake space has just become a whore, working for money like the vast majority of other projects that engage minds.

ARGs constructed a new space. They built something from nothing.

ARGs used micro-ads in mass media to attract players to a media-free zone where answers to puzzles became the currency of news and stories took bizarre twists. Populated by Internet mavens, this target audience was far too tempting for mass marketers. Now, instead of frolicking in the depth of geek perversion with fellow techno perverts, ARG participants are being played by The Man.

I drink to my memory of yesteryear, when an ad was an ad and I knew when I was being played.