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.
Maureen F. McHugh is an American science fiction and fantasy writer.
The Beast is an alternate reality game developed by Microsoft to promote the 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Entry points to the game embedded into the film's promotion centered on the fictional Jeanine Salla and the death of her friend Evan Chan. In 2142, Jeanine learns that Evan was murdered and her investigation uncovers a network of murders of humans and artificial intelligences. The game launched on March 8, 2001 and continued running past its initially scheduled end date on June 29, the film's release date.
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.
Lance Weiler is an American filmmaker and writer from Pennsylvania, and the Director of the Digital Storytelling Lab at Columbia University School of the Arts. He first was known for The Last Broadcast (1997), a found footage horror film which he co-wrote, co-produced, co-directed, and co-starred in with Stefan Avalos. The Last Broadcast made cinematic history on October 23, 1998 as the first all-digital release of motion picture to be stored and forwarded via geosynchronous satellite. Initially working as an assistant cameraman and camera operator on large commercial shoots, in Pennsylvania and later New York City, Weiler is known for increasing work in experimental combinations of film, AI, gaming, and related media.
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.
Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies.
Matt Wolf is an American video game and new media designer, director, producer, creator and board game inventor. Wolf also conceived the first alternate reality game to ever win a Primetime Emmy Award.
David Riordan is an interactive media executive, producer and designer, a documentary television producer and a professional songwriter. He co-wrote the number-one hit "Green-Eyed Lady" for the band Sugarloaf in 1970, and released his first solo album in 1974 called Medicine Wheel. In the early 1980s, while working as a consultant for Lucasfilm, producer of the Star Wars franchise, he began his career as an interactive media designer, producer and director that continued until the late 1990s. During that time he directed interactive entertainment groups for Cinemaware, Philips Media, Time Warner and Disney. He later became a producer for television shows that appeared on the A&E network, was the VP of media at Integral Life and the director of the Ken Wilber Biography Project. Riordan is currently the director of Story Studio TV, a convergence transmedia company.
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.
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.
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.
GMD Studios is a former experimental media lab and venture development firm. Their work focused on a number of areas including experience design, custom publishing, entertainment, transmedia storytelling, community building, and digital integration. Additionally, the firm providedadvertising services to agencies and brands like Sega, Scholastic, and Audi. The company was founded in 1995. Founder Brian Clark died after a cancer diagnosis in 2015 and the agency ceased.
Ken Eklund is an American game and experience designer known as Writerguy. He is perhaps most famous for World Without Oil, an early "serious game" in the alternate reality game genre he created and ran in 2007. His recent projects "explore the positive social effects of collaborative experiences and open-ended, creative play. "
Dispatches from Elsewhere is an American drama television series created by and starring Jason Segel that premiered on March 1, 2020, on AMC. It is based on the documentary film The Institute about the alternate reality game The Jejune Institute.
Alice & Smith is a Canadian transmedia storytelling and video game developer that specializes in alternate reality games.
Adrian Hon is an English writer and game designer specializing in alternate reality games and transmedia storytelling. He is the CEO and founder of Six to Start, creator of the fitness game Zombies, Run!, and a non-fiction and sci-fi author.
