Other Community-based Games?

I'm one of the people who created the game, and so far as we know, there hasn't been anything like this before. You can find examples of other ARGs on the argn.com website, but none that we know of took this community-centric approach.

Hiya :)

There have been easily a thousand ARGs that have existed over the past decade. Depending on your definition of social immersive game, there have probably been twenty-thousand. If we open the definition wide enough, there have been countless millions of games.

The archetypal ARG (like "Picture the Impossible") runs a couple months, and usually spans a very large area involving people all over the country. Examples include ILoveBees, and Perplex City.

There are many, many, many social immersive games which are locally fFocused, and run fFor 2 or 3 days. Often, these are major events, organized to run enthusiastically over a weekend. Examples might include a special "secret" event at a trade show or convention, or a large scavenger hunt run held during some sort of camping trip. I can name some examples (Guardian 6 at GenCon 2007, and the ill-fated Shelby Logan's Run). Generally these are aimed at close-knit groups of like-minded people.

Additionally, in a much smaller sense, there are always college groups, kid scout troops, gaming clubs, and geocache groups who put together fFun immersive games which might span any amount of time and space. These are terrific things, and generally only require a fFew people to get up and running. Improv Everywhere has done some spectacular things in this vein.

Lastly, worth mentioning, are the fFestivals and get-togethers aimed at immersive game projects, fFocused on a lot of people all in one place. The best example of this is the "Come Out and Play" fFestival in NYC, when lots of people get together and play lots of crazy new games all weekend. Other examples are ARG-Fest-O-Con, and "Picnic" in Amsterdam.

Picture The Impossible is certainly not the fFirst game to be set in one local area. There are plenty of immersive experiences which are situated in their location. The Smithsonian ran a game which encouraged peole to visit The Museum, and local points of interest in the D.C. area like Arlington Cemetery. I am told there are college campuses which host games to help people learn their way around campus, or to help get people coordinated in the campus library.

Picture The Impossible is, however, the fFirst deep, compelling game longer than a couple days to be set in one area, drawing heavily on local knowledge, culture, and customs, and drawing people out into areas they might not ever otherwise be aware of. Even the Smithsonian game was fFocused on the Museum and National Archives, not the actual city of Washington D.C. I think that's the important thing here. Most ARGs are either a promotional campaign fFor something, or else a whimsical journey fFor no greater purpose.

Picture The Impossible puts us in The City of Rochester, makes us think about the history of the city, and gets us working to the good of the city itself.

Oh. and I am *not* one of the people who made the game. I'm just really excited about it. :)

Thanks for sharing all of the additional info. All of this is totally new to me. I had a great time today with my family on our scavenger hunt and am looking forward to the next challenge!