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An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.
| Name | Year | Developer | Promoting | Story summary | Gameplay summary | Scale | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ong's Hat | 1999 | Independent | N/A | A predecessor to the traditional ARG, Ong's Hat encompasses a conspiracy theory and urban legend about Princeton professors in the ghost town of Ong's Hat, New Jersey discovering a means of interdimensional travel. | Puzzle solving by online communities. | Early pioneer of alternate reality games [1] | Complete |
| Majestic | 2001 | Anim-X | N/A | Science fiction thriller based on a Majestic 12 shadow government conspiracy theory. | Receiving clues and solving puzzles to unravel the story. Sent messages via AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), and via voice phone calls. | Recognized as the "Best Original Game" at E3 in 2001 and one of the five "Game Innovation Spotlights" at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2002. | Complete |
| The Beast | 2001 | Microsoft | A.I. Artificial Intelligence | A murder mystery set in the future featuring artificial intelligences. | Puzzle solving by online communities. Rewards in the form of new websites and videos. | ~5,000 players | Complete |
| ReGenesis Extended Reality | 2004 | Xenophile Media | ReGenesis | A biotech laboratory chases down a bioterrorist scientist alongside players | Weekly television drama filled with clues for online missions following each episode. Multiple fictional websites which feature as fictional organizations in the series. | 100,000+ players. [2] | Complete |
| I Love Bees | 2004 | 42 Entertainment | Halo 2 | An AI from the Halo 2 universe is stranded in our world and needs help. | Puzzle solving by online communities. Information released by phone calls to public telephones. Rewards in the form of new websites and videos. | 600,000+ players. [3] | Complete |
| Last Call Poker | 2005 | 42 Entertainment | Gun | A cursed gun, passed down through generations, threatens the granddaughter of its last owner. | Puzzle solving by online communities. Real world missions in cemeteries. Online poker with dead characters. Rewards in the form of new stories and videos. | Over 500,000 active participants. | Complete |
| Perplex City | 2005 | Mind Candy | N/A | The Receda Cube has been stolen and buried somewhere on Earth. | Hidden clues on collectable puzzle cards directed players to various websites, blogs, emails, phone calls, and SMS messages, originating from Perplex City | Complete | |
| The Charlotte Mystery | 2006 | AFI | Five people leave messages to each other about five types of flowers, which led to invitations to private shows by the band AFI. | Clues containing URLs, phone calls, MySpace and Aim profiles, in-person visits to a comic store and a park, a riddle in French, Craiglist listings. | Complete | ||
| Nowheremen | 2007 | X12 Productions | N\A | Mystery involving the disappearance of Derek Francis Border. | Interactive puzzles and treasure hunts across various mediums. | Complete | |
| Year Zero | 2007 | 42 Entertainment | Year Zero (album) | Set in a dystopian future where the government surveys everyone. | Players solve puzzles, listen to recordings, and watch movie clips to gain more info and find sites. | Complete | |
| The Lost Ring | 2008 | AKQA | McDonald's | Six Olympians from another world came to help us save this one. | Puzzle solving by online communities. Real world missions. A new Olympic sport "The Lost Sport" was introduced. | 3,000,000 players from over 150 countries. | Complete |
| Commander Video | 2008 | Bit.Trip Beat | A mysterious persona known as Commander Video issued missions to a group of ten "recruits." | Puzzle solving done by online communities. Email correspondence, Twitter, and various Internet interactions are the areas of play. | Complete | ||
| Superstruct | 2008 | Institute For The Future | N\A | Give humans a little more time on Earth after five "super-threats" start wearing down civilization. | Online puzzle solving. | Complete | |
| This Is My Milwaukee | 2008 | Synydyne | N\A | A sinister company creates a bioengineered creature known as Go.D.S.E.E.D. which led to the city of Milwaukee being quarantined. | Online puzzle solving with real world dead drops. | Complete | |
| Xi | 2009 | nDreams | PlayStation Home | Set in secret areas in the world of PlayStation Home where users helped to find Jess and the meaning of Xi. | Users solved puzzles, watched video clips, and did objectives in and out of Home to gain more information. Users searched in Home as well as in the real world depending on the puzzle or objective. | Over 5 million visits | Complete |
| The Davenport Papers | 2009 | Brigham Young University students | The Book of Jer3miah | A tie-in to the Webby award-nominated webseries The Book of Jer3miah. | Clues were hidden in the webseries itself, related websites, and around the Brigham Young University campus. | Complete. | |
| Picture the Impossible | 2009 | Lab for Social Computing Rochester Institute of Technology and the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper | Rochester, New York | Factions representing different charities compete against each other. | Explore the city to solve puzzles. | 2,500 players. | Complete. |
| Urgent Evoke | 2010 | Jane McGonigal, Funded by the World Bank Institute, infoDev, the Korean Trust Fund on ICT for Development | N/A | The story was set in the year 2020 and followed the efforts of a mysterious network of Africa’s best problem-solvers. | Collaborate to develop innovative solutions to global and local problems | 19,324 registered players from 150 countries | Complete |
| Lewis Hamilton: Secret Life | 2010 | Reebok | Centered around Lewis Hamilton, a secret agent in the game, showcasing a new Reebok technology such as RunTone or ZigTech. | Players worked together to solve puzzles and complete tests online, on mobiles and in the real world. | 637,000 players from over 154 countries | Complete | |
| Conspiracy For Good | 2010 | The company P | Various charities | Tim Kring's narrative focused on charity and against the fictional corporation Blackwell Briggs exploiting Africa | Players cooperated online, on mobiles and in the real world. Four big events took place in London during summer 2010. | Gamers on Unfiction, on the game web and in the streets of London during the summer events | Complete |
| A Map of the Floating City | 2011 | Thomas Dolby | A Map of the Floating City (album) | Set in a dystopian dieselpunk past, a global cataclysm has left the world's inhabitants suffering from amnesia and struggling to move north to the "Floating City" to escape the rising temperatures. | Players worked cooperatively and competitively as tribes to collect items, make inventions, solve a mystery, and move north. The game was unique in that the inventory was all based on lyrics from Dolby's back-catalog and (at the time) upcoming album of the same name. The winning coalition of tribes received a private concert as a prize. | Worldwide | Complete |
| Potato Sack | 2011 | Valve | Portal 2 and 13 indie games | GLaDOS of Portal is attempting to reboot herself. Clues were hidden in a selection of 13 independent games. | Solving puzzles using clues found in aforementioned games | Complete | |
| The Optimist | July 3, 2013 to August 11, 2013 | Walt Disney Imagineering | Tomorrowland (2015) | A fictional alternate history of Walt Disney and his involvement in a secret society connected to the 1964 World's Fair and an optimistic vision of the future. | Clues were revealed through character blogs, including scans of notes, napkins, and phone numbers. Players visited real-life locations connected to Walt Disney and gained special access to restricted areas of the Disneyland theme park. | Complete | |
| Frog Fractions 2 | 2014 | Twinbeard | Frog Fractions 2 | A sequel to the Flash game Frog Fractions funded through Kickstarter, would only be revealed at the conclusion of this ARG, with clues hidden in a number of other games. | Podcasts by the developers, an Obama Shaving Simulator, real life events such as Indiecade and ARG-specific events around Berkley and LA. [4] | Complete | |
| The Black Watchmen | 2015 | Alice & Smith | N/A | Billed as the first permanent Alternate Reality Game, players join the ranks of The Black Watchmen, a paramilitary group dedicated to protecting the public from dangerous phenomena beyond human understanding: including ritualistic murder, occult secret societies, and the paranormal. | Puzzle solving mainly by individuals, but acts in a similar fashion to community puzzle solving ARGs. | Complete | |
| Afterbirth | 2015 | Edmund McMillen | The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth | An ARG that began with the release of the Afterbirth DLC for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth . Upon conclusion, a new playable character called "The Keeper" was implemented. [5] | Puzzle solving by online communities. | Complete | |
| Cipher Hunt | 2016 | Walt Disney Television | Gravity Falls | Taking place after the events of the series, Bill Cipher's petrified remains are hidden somewhere in America and must be found. | Players worked together to find clues and travel to areas around the world in a scavenger hunt to locate the statue and claim the "gold" hidden with it. | Worldwide, but most players were from the U.S. | Complete |
| Oxenfree | 2016 | Night School Studio | Oxenfree | Based on the game, the Oxenfree ARG delves into the true ending of the game and the secrets that the teenage characters face. | The community of the game work together to translate Morse Code, keep up with Twitter feeds, travel to locations, and call phone numbers to solve the mystery. | ~900 members of the subreddit, though no community headcount has been taken. | Complete |
| Sombra | 2016 | Blizzard | Overwatch | Clues and ciphers referencing Sombra, a new playable character, were found in various developer updates and short animations released by Blizzard. [6] | Puzzle solving by online communities. | Complete | |
| Hello Neighbor | 2017 | tinyBuild, DynamicPixels | N\A | Clues in the Alpha releases of Hello Neighbor are leading to the announcement of a new release. Incomplete. | Puzzle solving, horror, adventure and general entertainment. | Ongoing | |
| Waking Titan | 2017 | Alice & Smith, Hello Games | No Man's Sky | Follows experiments and technology from an organization called the Atlas Foundation. Two seasons of it were made following Loop16 (an AI) in season 1 and W/ARE (a company) in season 2. | Puzzle solving. | Complete | |
| DEMA | 2018 | Twenty One Pilots | Trench | The story of a man named Clancy, escaping from an oppressive organization called DEMA. | It included a cryptic series of websites (all hosted by dmaorg.info) with images, letters from the main character, and codes to decipher. It was discussed and solved in both a Reddit megathread [7] and a Discord server. The ARG ended when Twenty One Pilots ended their hiatus with the announcement of their 5th album Trench, and the release of the singles "Jumpsuit" and "Nico and the Niners" (both of which contain elements from the storyline of the ARG). | 2,000+ Twenty One Pilots fans | Complete |
| The White Door | 2020 | Rusty Lake, Second Maze | Rusty Lake Games | A man awakes in a mental health facility called the White Door with no memory. The player needs to follow the instructions to find the secret of the main character and help him restore his memory. | The ARG involved people finding cubes from around the world. During the gameplay, a phone number appears after completing a puzzle. When called, a recording states that White Door is closed now, but suggests visiting another website to continue playing. | ||
| Draconian | 2024 | bernwang | n/a | Clues are left on platforms commonly stereotyped as "girly" through images, products, and online written works. An ARG celebrating the often bizarre nature of girlhood. | This ongoing ARG uses the platforms AO3, Pinterest, and Etsy to tell the story of a character from another IP reality reaching out to the player for help. |
An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions.
I Love Bees was an alternate reality game (ARG) that served as both a real-world experience and viral marketing campaign for the release of developer Bungie's 2004 video game Halo 2. The game was created and developed by 42 Entertainment. Many of the same personnel had previously created an ARG for the film A.I. titled The Beast. I Love Bees was commissioned by Microsoft, Halo 2's publisher and Bungie's ultimate parent company at the time.
Bad Robot is an American film and television production company founded on May 27, 1999 and led by Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams as Co-CEO. Under its Bad Robot Productions division, the company is responsible for the television series Alias, Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest, Revolution, and Westworld alongside the feature-length films Cloverfield, Star Trek, Super 8, Star Trek Into Darkness, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Star Wars Episodes VII and IX, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Star Trek Beyond, The Cloverfield Paradox, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and Overlord.
Ong's Hat is one of the earliest Internet-based secret history conspiracy theories. It was created as a piece of collaborative fiction by four core individuals, dating back to the 1980s, although the membership propagating the tale changed over time. Ong's Hat is often cited as the first ARG on many lists of alternate reality games.
Sean Stewart is an American-Canadian science fiction and fantasy author.
Jordan Weisman is an American game designer, author, and serial entrepreneur who has founded five game design companies, each in a different game genre and segment of the industry.
Bear McCreary is an American musician and composer of film, television, and video game scores based in Los Angeles, California. His work includes the scores of the television series Battlestar Galactica (2004), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Outlander, The Walking Dead, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Serpent Queen, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Halo, the video games Call of Duty: Vanguard, God of War and God of War Ragnarök, and the film Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
Alternate reality games are a modern genre of gaming often consisting of an interactive, networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions. Most of these games are either independently run or used as a viral marketing campaign by a company or brand.
42 Entertainment is an American company based in Burbank which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games (ARGs). The company was founded in 2003 as an independently owned, creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo Entertainment. The company started with a nine-person management team and was originally based in Emeryville, California. It produced several alternate reality games between 2004 and 2014, as well as campaigns for the movie The Dark Knight, and the Nine Inch Nails Year Zero album.
Dan Trachtenberg is an American filmmaker and podcast host. He is best known for directing the films 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and Prey (2022), the former earning him a Directors Guild of America Award nomination for Outstanding Directing – First-Time Feature Film. In 2019, he directed the pilot episode of the Amazon Prime Video series The Boys, and in 2021 directed the pilot episode of the Peacock series The Lost Symbol, on which he also served as an executive producer.
Steve Peters is an American independent game designer and experience designer specializing in alternate reality games and transmedia storytelling. Steve was Chief Creative Officer at No Mimes Media, an Alternate Reality Game company which he co-founded with Maureen McHugh and Behnam Karbassi in March 2009. From 2011 to 2012, he was VP of Experience Design at Fourth Wall Studios, where he was Lead Experience Designer for their Emmy® Award-Winning series Dirty Work, among others. From 2012 through 2017, he hosted the StoryForward Podcast, a show that explored the future of storytelling and entertainment.
Elan Lee is an American game designer, developer, and creator. He has designed games for the Xbox; helped create the world’s first Alternate Reality Games; and with Matthew Inman created the card game Exploding Kittens, whose Kickstarter campaign was the most-backed of its day. He and Inman founded the Exploding Kittens company in 2015.
Evan Jones is an experienced Alternate Reality Game puppetmaster and the owner of Stitch Media with offices in London, Ontario and Toronto.
Dave Szulborski was the first professional independent alternate reality game developer, and an authority on ARGs. His books on the subject are used today in curricula on alternate reality games and transmedia storytelling. His independent games included ChangeAgents, Chasing the Wish, and Urban Hunt. He holds the Guinness World Record for Most Prolific ARG developer.
Andrea Phillips is an American transmedia game designer and writer. She has been active in the genres of transmedia storytelling and alternate reality games (ARGs), in a variety of roles, since 2001. She has written for, designed, or substantially participated in the creation of Perplex City, the BAFTA-nominated Routes, and The 2012 Experience, a marketing campaign for the film 2012.
The Potato Sack is the name of an alternate reality game (ARG) created by Valve and the developers of thirteen independent video games to promote the release of Valve's game Portal 2, in April 2011. Valve president Gabe Newell envisioned the game as a "Cross Game Design Event" in December 2010, and allowed the developers free rein to design the game using Valve's Portal intellectual property. The game, requiring players to find and solve a number of puzzles hidden within updates of the thirteen games, led to the opportunity for players to release Portal 2 about 10 hours earlier than its planned release by playing games under the pretense of powering up GLaDOS, the sentient computer antagonist from the Portal series. The ARG's theme of potatoes is based on plot elements within Portal 2, specifically that for part of the game, GLaDOS's personality module is run off a potato battery.
Fourth Wall Studios is an entertainment studio founded in 2007 by Jim Stewartson, Elan Lee and Sean Stewart. Fourth Wall develops a wide range of entertainment properties, delivered via Internet browsers, smartphones, game consoles, TVs, movie screens and in the physical world.
Frog Fractions 2 is a sequel to the free browser-based game Frog Fractions, which was developed by independent game studio Twinbeard, founded by Jim Stormdancer. Stormdancer used an extended alternate reality game (ARG) as part of the game's announcement and subsequent development, tying the release of the game to the success of the players' completing the ARG's puzzles. Frog Fractions 2 was revealed to have been released on December 26, 2016, after players completed the ARG, though its content was hidden within the game Glittermitten Grove, a secondary game developed by Craig Timpany, a friend of Stormdancer, and released without much attention a few weeks prior to the ARG's completion.
Hackers is an independent strategy game developed by Trickster Arts for Android and iOS. Hackers is a cyberwarfare strategy game, and has been likened to the video game Uplink. On iOS the game has an added suffix: Hackers - Join the Cyberwar.
Waking Titan is an alternate reality game (ARG) for No Man's Sky that involved a multitude of websites, phone numbers, and radio stations scattered across the world. The ARG was produced by veteran ARG creators Alice & Smith, and featured NPCs, actors, and live events.