Emitting User Experience through Alternate Reality Games
Keywords: Alternate Reality Game, ARG, User Experience, Fiction, Narration, Immersive Story
In a world where the internet blurs out the border between reality and fiction it becomes harder for internet users to clearly see that distinction. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) make a handy use of this vague distinction by putting fictive stories on the “real” internet. Stories are told by a mix of new and traditional media, artefacts placed in the real world and live happenings.
This master thesis focuses on the user experience generated by ARGs. ARGs have the power of submerging people into a story and bringing them together. This research is focused on why and how this happens, how spontaneous the user cooperation is and how ARG designers can and have to anticipate on this.
For this research an ARG was made and run in a high school. The ARG used some of the school Urban Legends told by the people in the school. One of them is that the school contains a high concentration of asbestos. The asbestos is the start of a string of strange events. During the ARG the focus is on how people will cooperate and how they experience the story.
The slower and woven story of an ARG gives a total new look on how stories can be told. Thanks to this method of narration, ARG designers can give the users an unique experience, they can more efficiently submerge the users into a fictive reality.
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