I’ve wanted to get my teeth into planning a good Alternative Reality Game (ARG) for a while now, so I was interested to see this come my way courtesy of Stew Gurney.  it’s an ARG based around the upcoming Olympics in Beijing.  what strikes me is how slick this is…  very high quality audio-video content and great design of the navigation of the evidence.  the whole site can be viewed here.

it will be interesting to see where this one goes…  ARGs as a concept, have struggled from a perception of being too niche – capitalising on the Olympics could be a sound strategy to breaking into the mainstream (it would seem that the nature of the interface has been designed with entry-level in mind)…

also I’m clueless as to which brand this is for, or whether it’s for the Olympics itself…  but I’m not sure this entirely matters!  half the fun will be finding out…

Daniel Terdiman has written a great summary of the initial box of evidence which he received here…  let the AR Game begin!

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Update: Thanks for Stephen Bedggood for the heads up that this ARG is for McDonalds…  great effort on their part… smart and unexpected.  it will be interesting to see how and if this translates to any in-restaurant activity come August