It’s that time of the semester during which I functionally disappear from all areas of life outside my office or the conferences I’m obligated to attend, so I apologize for becoming a functional internet absentee. It’s also that time in the semester when my students put the finishing touches on their ARIS ARG (alternate reality game) projects.
Last semester, despite a good deal of effort, neither of my class development teams managed to put together anything functional. One team came very, very close. This semester, however, appears to be a very different story. If you happen to be in Richmond and own an iPhone, I’d love to have you come to the UR campus and try their games out.
Team Zed and Team Omega have both produced workable, functioning games on the ARIS platform (free download at the app store), and both are designed to encourage students to learn more about their campus. For instance, they take students to museums and galleries that most students wouldn’t go into while drawing on actual places, facts, and history from UR and the surrounding city (Omega learned that there is a real mummy on our campus in North Court, and Zed is capitalizing on the legend of the Richmond vampire connected to the Church Hill train tunnel collapse from 1921).
One of the things we study in class is the purpose of ARGs – to incorporate game components and games into the real world in order to fulfill a purpose. McGonigal’s Reality is Broken offers suggestions like Chore Wars, designed to give points for doing household chores, as a good example of this. My students’ task is to build GPS-based ARGs on the UR campus that can be used to guide new or prospective students around campus or to encourage students to go new places or learn new things about UR.
If you happen to come to campus and want to play, search for Omega or Zed using the ARIS app, and then explore! (Also, be sure to let me know how it goes!)