No! Alternate Reality Game is not only the last trendy marketing tool to launch products while generating buzz!

- Overview : Narrative & interactive game, a new kind of treasure hunt game (a game in which players try to find hidden articles by using a series of clues or outdoor activity involving the solving of clues to find buried treasure), that mixes many supports and medias to provide game resources to the players. The content is spread among online resources (internet, email, newsletter, blogs, sms, chat/instant messaging...) and real world medias (newspaper, classified, letter, book...). Players try to solve puzzles and resolve enigmas to go futher in their quest. Strange and unpredictable events or news are generated to foster players curiosity & implicate more players in the adventure. Some game puzzles will need cooperative play between players and that they exchange informations, hints, resources...

- Challenge for game designers :
- huge narrative opportunities and very open design patterns
- great game design experience
- deal with cross-media, multi-platforms information management system
- deal with spread, propagation of information (and effects like distorsion, deterioration, transformation of messages)
- encryption, puzzle design
- game that can be open to a new public (not only hard core gamers) as it doesn't require a strong time commitment, specific skills or experience in video games
- design a long life cycle game
- ...

A lot of good reasons to look at it and design innovate new concepts for this category by providing new kind of player's experiences and ARG that are more than just a trendy new kind of marketing tool (even if that's indeed a well adapted concept to develop innovative marketing operations). This category of game is not really new but new communication technologies offer great opportunities for innovatives cross-media approaches on them.

More information and examples : WikiPedia on Alternate_Reality_Game

You need any further information, you're looking for a game designer for a project of this kind ^_^ Feel free to contact me.