Call for Chapters: Alternate Reality Games and the Cusp of Digital Gameplay
Series: Approaches to Digital Game Studies, Bloomsbury
Editors: Antero Garcia, Colorado State University & Greg Niemeyer, University of California, Berkeley
Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) challenge what players understand as “real.”
Though prominent examples of ARGs have persisted over the past two decades, only recently have ARGs come to the prominence as a unique and highly visible digital game genre. Adopting many of the same strategies as online video games, ARGs blur the distinction between the “real” and the “virtual.”
We seek chapter proposals for a proposed collection that explores and defines the possibilities of ARGs. With ARGs continuing to be an important and blurred space between digital and physical gameplay, this collection offers clear analysis of game design, implementation, and ramifications for game studies. Divided into three distinct sections (noted below), this collection emphasizes first hand accounts by leading ARG creators, scholarly analysis of the meaning behind ARGs from noted critics and researchers, and explication of emerging visualization and data collection methodologies. We are particularly interested in cultivating research from various disciplinary perspectives; by balancing the voices of designers, players, and researchers, this work highlights how the Alternate Reality Game genre is transforming the ways we play and interact today.
We seek chapter proposals that fit within one of the following three book sections:
Section One – Development and Execution
Chapters in this section of the book detail the design and implementation of ARGs. Authors pay attention to specific fictions, audiences, and goals within these ARGs and offer a clear step-by-step behind the scenes look at how these game designers engineer new modes of play and participation.
Section Two – Alternating Reality – how ARGs are changing games and society
These chapters focus on analysis and critique of ARGs. While some chapters may focus on specific games, other chapters in this section invoke larger trends in ARGs.
Section Three – Data Visualization and Collection
As the ARG genre is dependent on responding to the ways participants interact with one another and with a story’s content, this section of the book looks at how we interpret and construct data. In particular, the genre of digital games is reinventing new data visualization methodologies and this section should illuminate ways games display information during play and as synopsis after a game concludes.
This edited volume has received initial interest from the Digital Game Studies series editors and we are currently seeking additional chapters to share with the editors and secure a book contract. The deadline for proposals of 300-500 words is August 15, 2014. Please email your abstract and a 100 word biography to anterobot@gmail.com (please indicate to which section of the book your proposal is directed). All authors will be notified of acceptance by September 2nd and full chapter manuscripts would be due in April, 2015. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions at the above address.