Alternate Reality Games

Alternate reality games are (or can be) designed to incorporate the four fundamental rewards that we all crave: more satisfying work, better hope of success, stronger social connectivity, and more meaning. Alternate reality games (ARG) are meant to help us get more out of our lives, as opposed to games played to escape from our lives.

Must-Have Items for Everyone- on Sale Now! Shop the Gameshark Store now - 15% off stocking stuffers and FREE product with purchases!

Alternate reality games are mostly designed to be played in a real-world context as opposed to the vitual world of computers and game consoles. Because of these real-world conditions, some ARGs have at least the side effect of improving our real life. I prefer to believe that all ARGs have the possibility of improving our reality.

The design of any good game has the structure of goals, restrictions, and feedback. And within that structure are tasks to accomplish the goals, which can be anything we want.

The three key kinds of ARGs could be games that are designed to:

• make difficult activities more rewarding;
• build up new real-world communities;
• help us adopt daily habits that will make us happier people.

Game developers are exploring how ARGs can affect our real lives, like promoting the idea that games can be used to organize real-world activities. ARGs can provoke ideas about how to blend together what we love most about games and what we want most in our real lives.

Let's review some games to give you an idea of some possible life-changing alternative reality games.

Patient Empowerment Games

This is a video game1 newly developed by students and faculty at the University of Utah to lend a helping hand to doctors looking to slay big, bad cancer dragons. They are hoping to give kids the power to beat cancer by playing this game.

"If they can see themselves as super heroes fighting off an illness to achieve a state of health, that's exactly the kind of thing that we want them to experience," said Roger Altizer, adjunct professor at the U. and director of game design and production.
[More . . .]

Chore Wars

This is a game every parent would love to keep children motivated to make their beds and help with other daily chores.

This game is played in real life — not in a virtual life. You could say it's a simplified version of World of Warcraft, except that all of the tasks are real world cleaning chores (instead - World of ChoreCraft). And the people you play with are not scattered across the globe, but are your own children, roommates, family, or officemates. [More . . .]

(Read how one family created an atmosphere of of "teamwork" playing Chore Wars!)

Alternate reality games are not just for fun, they can help us overcome and understand some of life's challenges, deal with anxieties and change our reactions to them in a relatively successful manner.