The Commercial Viability of Alternate Reality Games : A Proposed Framework for Profitability and Scalability

Alternate reality games (ARGs) utilize the real world as a platform for storytelling. These experiences deliver real world stories that may be altered by a player’s decisions and actions. However, these experiences were largely developed to function as onetime use marketing tools for particular products or services (Szulborski, 2005a). Consequently, ARGs evolved very little insofar as developing sustainable and profitable revenue models or any degree of scalability. As such, this paper will seek to coalesce existent research in the fields of ARG scalability and revenue modelling in order to generate a novel and theoretically sound framework for creating profitable and reusable ARGs. The major overarching elements within the aforementioned novel framework include design elements contributing to scalability, revenue modelling and experiential delivery. Leading with a brief discussion of dominant ARG elements, this research will draw on disparate existent research to support contributions to the consequent framework.