There should be, and I think we’ll see more (soon, probably) marriages of ARGs and MMOs, but that’s to say that the ARG genre as it stands is still so young that we’re seeing a lot of experimentation.

I find it interesting that there’s so much fixation on the ‘this is not a game’ aspect of ARGs. If anything, I think it’s becoming increasingly apparent that to break out of the (relatively) small audiences that ARGs have garnered to date, producers are pretty much dropping the ‘this is not a game’ aesthetic completely. There’s a few reasons for this:

1) the novelty just starts to wear off: you *know* you’re playing a game, and just because it can seem like you’re not doesn’t necessarily mean that all games must pretend not to be. Instead, they can just be self-sufficient in terms of their setting and be internally consistent.

2) It’s very limiting (not that limits are necessarily a bad thing, either) to only tell stories where you have to pretend everything’s real. It doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of Lord of the Rings (either the literary or moving picture form) to know that *it didn’t really happen*, nor does it detract from my enjoyment of Crash or Back to the Future. Although it would be cool if Back to the Future were real.

I think the distinction is partially false in that “ARGs” are considered an inflexible arrangement of attributes, rather than a free-form set of elements ripe to be borrowed and incorporated. Can you imagine an MMORPG with:

a mysterious story revealed through clues?
a world and plot that responds to the actions of players?
that reaches out into different media?
with challenges requiring massive collaboration?
with mind-bending puzzles?

I reckon so. Who cares about TINAG? It’s really a hopelessly obtuse and outmoded concept that doesn’t do anybody any favours, least of all the ARG industry.

Michael, I think you’re misinterpreting the TINAG philosophy.

Yes, I was. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found it was more total blend than self-descriptive.

You might even be playing an ARG while you’re in Second Life.

I think this statement seals the deal that it is very, very possible to “marry” MMOs with ARGs.

Also, who says the reality has to be the Earth one?

Michael, I think you’re misinterpreting the TINAG philosophy. Like most of the terminology surrounding ARGs, it’s a little confusing. TINAG isn’t just about not admitting it’s a fiction (lots of things do that, including plays and many games), it’s about embedding your game in a larger existing space (usually the web, but not always). Second Life has very well-defined boundaries. Sure, it might not be a game, but it’s a definite space.

When you’re at a bus stop reading billboards, you’re not in Second Life. When you’re in a rustic cabin in Tennessee, you’re not in Second Life. When you’re searching for an old book in a library, you’re not in Second Life.

But you might be playing an ARG in any of those cases. You might even be playing an ARG while you’re in Second Life. The whole point of TINAG is that you just don’t know.

You mean besides Second Life?

I don’t believe that Second Life has the TINAG mentality. At no point does Second Life every claim not to be a game or have mechanics based around this. As you say, “MMOs escape reality”. A player has to pass into the “magic circle” in order to play an MMO. ARGs, on the other hand, do not have this “magic circle”. Their is actually no way to tell if this post was part of an ARG, unless you were actively playing the ARG. When a player logs into Second Life, they know they are playing a game.

I thought it was very creative Thrall 08?

Thanks for the link love Raph.

I believe one of the issues with ARG/MMO cross-over is the TINAG mentality of ARGs. The entire content of ARGs revolve around it not being a game. No MMO has taken this stance. There is a definite line players have to cross to enter the game (the login screen) unlike ARGs. In fact, ARGs exist inside of a time-based space that MMOs usually try to avoid. An ARG can be completed and cannot be played anymore, unlike the current MMO model.

I suppose one of the other issues is the usual stand point of MMO content, which exists not in an alternate reality but in a different world completely. Since the main outlet for ARGs is the internet, most sites have to at least look legit. Take “I Love Bees” for example. The website could be a legitimate website for people to visit. I am not sure how their could be a MySpace page for Thrall, for instance, without it breaking the TINAG mentality.

Of course, a cross-over would be possible using MMOs as a rabbit hole or puzzle location through the use of player created avatars. These avatars could be specifically created as a contact for an ARG. Or even an ARG based around the MMO’s company. The possibilities are there, but I think that multiplayer mechanics of ARGs and that of MMOs are different. While both use cooperation, MMOs cooperation is based around self-rewards while ARGs are based around group rewards. Everyone benefits from the completion of puzzles in an ARG in all situations. No one person is given higher rewards than others, unlike MMOs in which rare-drops can only be won by one player.