“There’s no question that all my synapses were firing in the virtual world and in real reality.” Margot Knight, alternate-reality game heroine

OK this is old news as far as Watercooler timescales are concerned, June 2007, slaps wrist. But as I have just stumbled across it, worth blogging about for reference, because not many have - Vivid Impressions is one I have pinched a few paras from below. Jeff Wirth, an interactive director at the University of Central Florida’s school of film created a cross-reality game based on art theft and the effect it had on the single players was of extreme emotions - as they received mobile clues, hunting/hiding and committing crimes in the real and virtual world.

He pointed to the fact that at one moment during the Friday night virtual-world element of the game, Knight and her crew had broken into the virtual-world gallery and were surprised to discover two police detectives walking down the street past the gallery. In a flash, the group realized they had to hide, and they did so, ducking behind tables in the virtual gallery.

“It was really interesting that the detectives who were walking by the gallery in the virtual world that night actually made her get nervous and want to hide,” Wirth said. “She didn’t know they were coming by, and when she heard their voices outside (the gallery) she said she needed to hide, which is interesting given that it was a virtual world. (But) there was still an emotional response that happened.”

The game was mostly played on the streets of Orlando and similar to many of our LAMP opening games, larger elements involve the parallel virtual world. For example at one point in the game the player ate dinner with her “crew” at a real and virtual restaurant.

According to Wirth, it was built around the fiction of a retired art thief who has made her fortune stealing from illicit collections–like those of Nazis–and selling the paintings to museums. She (Knight’s character) is a sort of Robin Hood of the art thieves’ world, Wirth said, who has worked with a crew she has mentored and to whom she plans on handing over her so-called business. But she is pulled back into her previous life when her nemesis frames her in the theft of a valuable painting and she realizes the only way to clear her name is to find the work and return it before she is caught. And she must rely on the help of her crew in order to succeed. “We’d done a couple of these (games entirely in the real world) and they’ve been very successful, and each time we look for a new challenge,” Wirth said. “Now we wanted to do it so the story took place in the real world and the virtual world. So sometimes she’s experiencing locations they go to in the physical world, and then later (they’re) going to the same places in the virtual world, or vice versa.” Essentially, Wirth explained, the idea behind the project is to explore the potential applications of interactive performance in digital media settings.

We have an extensive planning/storyboard wiki page with more than nine LAMP mARG games similar to the above but without as much real life, rich character role play, which is of course what brings the immersion in the real world, real location drama, to life. They referred to this game as a single player ARG and likened it to the film The Game (now seen as the most accessible traditional way of describing an ARG) which is a nice next step from traditional single player games on one console/screen.