Cheshire: A design framework for alternate reality games

Abstract

Alternate Reality Games (ARG) have come very far in the last ten years. Great works by the likes of Steve Peters, Christy Dena and Jim Miller have pushed the genre forward, but it still lacks some of the tools created for other types of games. The design process for ARGs is, in the best case scenario, complicated. Given the enormous amount of media these kind of games use, things can escalate from complex to utterly impossible in the blink of an eye and sadly, there are currently no tools to help solve this problem or lower its impact in the finished game. This paper proposes Cheshire, a framework to enable categorization of games and alignment of these with defined sets of patterns previously detected in the design of the experience. This tool will help maintain the generated experience as loyal to the original concept as possible, and graphically represent which elements will support it in the best manner.