Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternate Reality Gaming

Welcome to WikiProject Alternate Reality Gaming. A WikiProject is a group of pages specifically about managing a certain topic within the "Wikipedia" namespace; and, simultaneously, a group of editors committed to using those pages to create new articles, carry out editorial tasks, and improve the quality of information available to Wikipedia users. We are not here to write articles directly, but a gather together and organize the writing and editing of articles. This group focuses on articles about Alternate Reality Gaming and Alternate Reality Games.

Getting Started

Right off the bat, there are a few things you can do to get your feet wet:

• Add yourself to the Roster.
• Read and watchlist our general discussion.

Scope and Goals

The scope of WikiProject Alternate Reality Gaming is all articles related to the field and industry of Alternate reality games.

In general, we are attempting to find and identify notable people, companies, projects, games, and ideas related to the topic of alternate reality games. Using this knowledge, we want to create accessible, informative, well-written articles describing these thing, to improve understanding of alternate reality games and create a resource for readers to look back at the history of ARG as a genre, or specific ARGs. To this end, we will work to

improve the quality and scope of articles about ARG topics.

• Create articles for major game projects.
• Edit and improve the writing style of existing articles.
• Add references and factual information to existing articles.
• Add media content, where appropriate and available, to better illustrate articles.

develop consistent and understandable article structures for ARG-related articles.

• Add articles to and manage .
• Create a standards for notability of ARGs.

Guidelines

1. All articles about games should be written out of game, except sections about plot, which can be written in game.
2. Spoilers for puzzles should not be written while a game is in progress
3. All explanations should use past tense (not "There is a puzzle to solve", use "There was a puzzle to solve")

News and Updates

• 2/6/2010 - Anybody out there? Feel free to join in -- there have been a lot of changes since '07.
• 4/15/2007 - Please join in on our discussion to help develop notability standards for ARG articles.
• 3/8/2007 - The ARG Wikiproject is one of the starting initiatives on the newly launched IonARG Alternate Reality Gaming Initiative

Articles

New articles

Please feel free to list your new Alternate Reality Gaming-related articles here (newer articles at the top, please). Any new articles that have an interesting or unusual fact in them should be suggested for the Did you know? box on the Main Page.

• Perplex City Stories

Review

If there is an ARG related article that you would like reviewed separate from the Peer review process, please put it below.

• Perplex City - Made some majory edits to this recently. I did a major expansion of the plot section. Firstly, there's probably a bunch of minor errors. I'm considering adding some relevant pictures in the Plot section just to break it up. Also, I'm concerned that the Receda Trail section may be too long. I'm working on finishing up the plot, but for now, I'd like some feedback on how it looks. Thanks. -AtionSong 23:08, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Nice job! I don't know enough about the game to be any help with checking for accuracy, but I did proof, edit, and slightly condense the Receda Trail section. All the original info is still there; I just made it a bit less wordy.  :-) Phaedra777 20:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for New Articles

If there is an ARG related article that does not currently exist that you feel should, post link to the article below.

• We talk a lot about how ARGs work, in very clinical terms with un-engaging language. I would like to see an article with some of the fFun and interesting things ARGs have done. something like: ARG landmarks, describing some of the particularly impressive things some ARGs and ARGers have done, such as art of the heist killing hitshermark, vanishingpoint commandeering the bellagio fountains, mind candy hiring a black helicopter to sweep away 'the mole' -- in general, some of the more mind blowing things ARGs have done. A sort of chronicle of what makes ARGs so awesome. As it is, we sound like we could be talking about selling soap to someone's grandmother. Skotte 06:03, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Which is exactly how an encyclopedia article should sound: objective, solely factual, and unsensational. Wikipedia is not here to promote ARGs or to provide a Hall of Fame for Greatest ARG Moments or to otherwise "sell" anything. It's here as a resource. And in order to be trustworthy and reliable it has to eschew exclamation points -- both the literal and the implied ones. Create an article like the one you're suggesting and I guarantee you it will be nominated for deletion almost immediately. And rightly so. If you want to promote the genre, there are avenues for that. Wikipedia is not one of them. Phaedra777 23:53, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

• I'm considering creating a template for ARG articles saying something along the lines of: "The following article about an Alternate reality game may discuss plot as if it actually occurred. However, unless specifically noted that an event actually happened, assume that it is fictional." Not worded very elegantly, I know, but what do you think? -AtionSong 22:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I think that some sort of overt distinction between fiction and reality is a good idea, especially given Jamie Kane's misuse of Wikipedia to promote the game.

That said, I think it's already accomplished just by the basic format for describing fictional works. Look at the A.I.: Artificial Intelligence article, for example. The rest of the article describes a movie. The plot section describes the plot without asserting that it's fiction, but it's clear it's fiction from the surrounding context of the article itself.

So long as the initial summary blurb at the top of the page acknowledges that it's an alternate reality game, I don't think there's a need to disclaim the reality of the plot within the plot section -- it isn't done for movies or books or games or any other fictional construct.

But I do think one of your suggestions is extremely important from the opposite angle.  :-) We don't need to assert that the plot described in an article that identifies its subject as a game is fictional. But we do need to clearly identify the real-world events that the plot incorporates.

In sum, no, I don't think we need a template, but this is a good reminder that we need to check game articles to make sure that the "real" events are clearly distinguished from the fictional ones. Phaedra777 17:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

• Metacortechs - obviously I have significant bias here as a creator of the game. However, I do think that it's notable not only for the success achieved as a grassroots game, but as a major work of fan-fiction. Additionally, the players have gone on to write a book which is the first time that players have documented the playing experience in print form. And, funnily enough, Metacortechs.com gets listed on the List_of_fictional_companies.

Templates

• Template:WikiProject ARG
  • INFO: General project notice template
  • USE: Talk pages of articles in scope of project
• Template:Argplot
  • INFO: Warns readers that article on ARG, so things stated as "occuring" are most likely fictional
  • USE: Top of ARG pages that do not distinguish between game and playing well

Categories

• Category:Alternate reality games

Userboxes

• {{User WP Alternate Reality Gaming}} - WikiProject ARG Contributor Userbox
• {{User:AtionSong/Userboxes/ARG}} - General ARG Userbox
• {{User:AtionSong/Userboxes/Perplex}} - Userbox for players of Perplex City

Resources

• www.idga.org/arg/
• Unfiction
• ARGNet
• IonARG