Part of the Volume on the Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning. This essay describes the design and successful deployment of a series of massively collaborative game missions in I Love Bees, the alternate reality game. Alternate reality games (ARGs) are massively multiplayer puzzle adventures that combine online interactive content with real-world game events. McGonigal proposes "stimulating ambiguity" as the central design philosophy of ARGs. She explores how ambiguous game content stimulates massively collaborative game play that allows for a greater share of leadership and meaningful participation in large-scale player groups. She also outlines how the open-ended puzzles of ARGs inspire multiple, creative interpretations that allow for diverse problem-solving strategies to flourish in a single player community. The essay is grounded in a close reading of player-produced content and their interpretations of the core puzzle of the I Love Bees game: a series of several hundred GPS coordinates, dates, and times that were listed on the central game Web site.
Open-Ended Video Games: A Model for Developing Learning for the Interactive Age
Contributing Organization(s): MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative, The
Author(s)/Creator(s): Kurt Squire
Publishing Date: 2008-01-01
Issue Areas: Children and Youth; Media; Education and Literacy
Ownership/Rights Info: Copyright 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Unported 3.0 license.
Access this research:
Available at: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/dmal.9780262693646.199
Intended Audience: Advocates; College/University Professors; General Public; Researchers; Teachers-middle school; Teachers-high school
Type/Format: Whitepaper
Language code: English
Type/Format: Whitepaper
Language code: English
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