Wait, I just answered my own question.

There are already alternate reality games that are massively multiplayer with persistent-state worlds: White Wolf’s Mind’s Eye Theatre is the first that comes to mind, followed by the swinging-sticks-in-the-woods LARP games like SOLAR. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to include the Society for Creative Anacronism, although if you don’t think Second Life (big sandbox, no goals) is a game, you won’t accept SCA as one either.

Augmented reality games could be made massively multiplayer, and online, with little effort. ARQuake is the first game that comes to mind, and it’s a negligible step from high-score lists to experience points. Oh! Why didn’t I remember Chore Wars? or PMOG?

[...] Raph’s Website – Fascinating ARG Stats Dan Hon on the TINAG philosophy: “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.” (tags: gaming alternativerealitygaming augmentedrealitygaming biggaming ambientgaming chaoticfiction mmorpg narrativeenvironments virtualworlds storytelling transmedia) Filed in delicious [...]

[...] what Raph asks, and interestingly (and annoyingly predictably), the conversation soon strays into the “ARGs [...]

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.

There’s also the fact that it’s very hard to actually change the world in any way, restricting the sorts of things that you can do. We managed to leave some corpses around and unexpected items in the auction house and obviously used the mail system, but we were mostly limited to what we could do in our characters when we were logged on. That was another issue – if you want higher level characters then you have to be relatively serious to want to spend the time to level them up specially!

[...] out with someplace to live in the Big Smoke soon.Blown away by this video:Raph Koster wonders why there aren’t more MMOG/ARG crossovers, followed by a load of the usual crap in the comments about “OMG TINAG!” Woohoo.Also, been totally [...]

That’s what a genre is.

“Wake up, Neo. The Matrix has you…”

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.

[...] Raph’s Website » Fascinating ARG Stats Raph: “Why aren’t there more marriages of ARG and MMO?” (tags: arg mmo raphkoster christydena statistics questions genre blending) [...]

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?