The Lost Ring
In Friday’s Globe and Mail, our national newspaper, Jane McGonigal, an “Alternate Reality” Game designer, games researcher and future forecaster, was interviewed by Patrick White regarding her latest alternate reality game: The Lost Ring. The title: “Sucked into Real Life by Online Fantasy Worlds” absolutely rocks and the article is top-notch providing readers with an understanding regarding why people are playing this game and the motivation behind their involvement.
As someone that has been actively playing the game, I can totally concure that it has become integrated with my real world. I check my blackberry for twitter messages from Ariadne, one of the game characters, and discuss the game with strangers I meet. Yesterday when I met Aleteia, whose name has Greek and Latin origins, I talked about Ariande, the games relationship to the upcoming Olympics and what I had learned through gameplay about Greek methology.
From the article:
A synthesis of conventional video game, role-playing adventure and scavenger hunt, ARGs have quietly nurtured a huge cult following over the past decade. The games start with a central mystery - a fictional murder, perhaps, or an abduction - and guide players through a months-long series of digital and physical clues placed all over the world. The key to unlocking one part of the puzzle might be placed in a blog; another in a Simon Fraser University locker.
What is really cool, as noted in the article, is the Canadian involvement. Ordinary people feel motivated to _do_ something, like Geoff May in Kitchener, Ontario.
Two weekends ago, a group of Kitchener players organized a labyrinth-running training session in hopes that one of the amnesiacs might show up. Mr. May, who has set up a wiki dedicated to The Lost Ring, persuaded 14 friends to form the walls of a human labyrinth on a snow-covered field. While participants comprising the walls hummed, a blindfolded competitor had to clumsily navigate his way out by sonar, avoiding contact with his training partners.
So get your game on and start playing — you won’t regret the experience and together across the globe we can work together to uncover the secret of The Lost Ring by the end of the Summer Olympics.
Pdf of newspaper version of article is here.
Flickr pictures of the Kitchener Labyrinth Training Event are here.
Follow Ariadne on Twitter here:
Relevance: Interesting how The Lost Ring becomes a part of everyday life and how the use of social media by participants and the game designers is used to extend the boundaries of gameplay.
