Integrating realities through immersive gaming
pp. 93-102
in: James Frieze (ed), Reframing immersive theatre, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
In this chapter, alternate reality games (ARGs) are examined as an example of immersive and pervasive play, in which game play may escape a proscribed sphere and permeate into "ordinary", non-ludic life. Particular attention is addressed to this genre of games' dissimulative, "this is not a game" rhetoric, which seemed to early critics to promise (or threaten) a compelling engagement with a deviously simulated reality. Using the 2007 game World Without Oil as a case study, the chapter examines the potential for ARGs to blur the boundaries between in- and out-of-game realities in a practical sense without resorting to the sort of seamless simulation or requiring the naive reception that early criticisms assumed were features of play.