This Is Not A Game: Alternate Reality Game and Social Negotiations
Abstract
The paper discusses the dynamics of social negotiation between game designers and players in the context of Alternate Reality Games. On the one hand, participants aspire to spaces of influence within entertainment experiences that enable socialization, learning and identity experimentation. On the other hand, game designers use the strategies of gamification and transmedia storytelling to asymmetrically influence the behaviour of players, directing their involvement towards specific media consumption practices. The transmedia sandbox approach seems to rebalance the power relations, empowering players, giving them the means of production and not binding them to predetermined objectives. However, the non-public ownership of the platforms reproduces a commercial logic: selling online users to advertisers (once again, the sandbox itself become a gamification mean to keep users online). The need for autonomous spaces and player self-determination was the subject of reflection within Futour 2045, an experimental project based on participatory worldbuilding and independent design of Alternate Reality Game.
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