What is the difference between an Alternate Reality Game and a Virtual World or MMORPG?
Virtual Worlds and MMORPGs are self-contained environments programmed to provide a place for their users to escape from the real world and immerse themselves in this other place. Instead of this approach, ARGs take the entertainment experience to the player and alters how they view their existing reality. It tweaks every-day things to get the players to see their normal lives as somehow essentially different and part of the narrative. One way to think of the difference is a push vs. pull experience. Virtual Worlds and MMORPGs require users to make a choice and “pull” the entertainment to them. In ARGs, players opt-in to more of a push experience where the game reaches out and alters a players reality to put them in the center of the action, within it, instead of reaching in from the outside to pull the entertainment to them.
