What is the difference between an ARG and other Pervasive Games?
Here especially the boundaries are hard to define. In many ways the two disciplines inform each other and may someday come together. However, right now one of the defining differences is that ARGs all have an interactive narrative where players impact the outcome in some way. This narrative is one of the things that makes ARGs “feel” different from a Pervasive Game. Another difference is that Pervasive Games tend to have more defined barriers between play space and not-play space. They often use reality as a game space, but the rules are more defined than they are in ARGs. Alternate Reality Games blur the rules and use everyday functions as game mechanics.
