The Game
Alternative Reality Game - Experiment with the definition of games.
Visual Designer
ABOUT THE GAME
The Game is a multi-player alternate reality game that is happening around you.
The Game uses different media types to make the player jump between reality and the virtual world. The player is trying to play a game they start, break a puzzle they design, read a story they build, and finish an adventure they create.
INSPIRATION
As Attested as early as 2600 BC, games are a universal part of human experience and are present in all cultures. However, there is still no certain definition of what a game is. As a group of students from GSAS (Game and Simulation Art and Science), we want to push back on the definition of games by challenging the game definition that existed.
French sociologist Roger Caillois, in his book Les Jeux et Les Hommes (Games and Men), defined a game as an activity that must have the following characteristics: fun, separate, uncertain, non-productive, governed by rules, and fictitious. While we agree on most of these elements, we found the characteristic we speculate: Separate. By using separate, Roger Caillois wants to say that the game is circumscribed in time and place. We want to design a game where you are not sure if you are playing until you think about it, and here comes The Game.
WHY THIS GAME
The achieve our goal, we brought out several different game machines during the brainstorming part. When talking about uncertain environments, dungeon crawler games immediately came into our minds. However, we also want to combine reality and the internet since this will break the limitation of space. From the safety side, we finally chose to design a riddle-based scavenger hunt.
With this direction, we research several alternative reality games and easily find that all ARG has at least one website with simple design and a lot of hidden hints.
The name comes out fast and easy. Since we don't want to show any obvious information to the player until they realize they are in the game, The Game becomes the game's name.
GAME FLOW and PROPS
To achieve the goal of joining the game without realizing it, we decided to use posters and USB drives as our game props in reality. Once the players see the poster and USB drives, they become part of the game. We chose card-shape USB drives so we can display information on the cover of the drives.
Also, to connect reality and the internet world, a website is necessary. We hide the code riddle inside the USB drives and the key to translating the riddle is the website. As a result, the riddle connects the USB drives and the website, the reality, and the internet together.
VISUAL DESIGN
As The Game is an experimental game, I don't want to make its visual effect too stylish. A distinctive style can influence players' first impressions of the game, which I want to avoid. The only information we want to deliver is something that is going to start on a certain date.
As a result, I decided that there would be no pictures, shapes, or vivid colors in our props and website. What's more, I did not use black and white. I chose two different grays as the main color because black and white are still too outstanding when surrounded by colored posters. Since we still need to attract players to come and play, a little bit of purple is mysterious but not eye-catching, and when someone notices it, their curiosity would be aroused. As a result, a bit of deep purple has been added to the cover of the USB drives
RESULTS
They found it, played it, and discussed it on the internet!
What's more, the player challenged us by further building The Game in their own way. Now nobody knows when The Game will stop. It now belongs to no one or everyone.
It was gratifying to see how people reacted to The Game, as well as seeing that there were players who engaged in finding the secret location. This leaves us wondering what other players who find the location will do, and what if this will be something that will continue, like USB drives, as stickers, or as holograms.
CONCLUSION
We challenged the concept of space and time. The space is everywhere, as the players don't know where the USB drives will be. The start time is the thing we had control over. However, we don't know the ending time of this game. In fact, nobody knows. As a result, we can say that Separate is not necessary for a game to be tenable.
What’s more, by jumping out of the box, we find another train of thought about how to design an interesting game. A game is more than a project with a lot of limitations. It is a bridge between the designer and the player. It is a conversation with no words or a song with no lyrics. The game now is more a media we communicate with each other that can break the edge of the time and the space.
Additionally, we found something else: innate human curiosity. We designed The Game to cater to curiosity, and it works. Natural curiosity can be one of the critical elements to make all different types of games echo down and develop. Letting players come up with their conclusions and inspiration in our game is a fun experience and builds a ride between them.
In the future, we believe that the game does not only belong to the designer. In other words, everyone is a game designer. Again, a game can be a communication tool that everybody can use to express themselves. Driven by curiosity, human beings can create another universe connected by games.
MORE WORKING PROGRESS
