Editing Alternate reality game (section)

== Scholarly views ==
Overall, academics have been intrigued by ARGs' potential for effective organizing.  Across the board, a diverse range of organizations, such as businesses, nonprofits, government agencies, and schools "can learn from the best practices and lessons of ARGs to similarly take advantage of new media and collective problem–solving".<ref name="firstmonday" />  As such, implementation of ARGs in these different settings involves finding best practices for honing the collaborative, transmedia elements of ARGs for these respective institutions.

Much of this scholarly interest stems from the evolving media ecology with the rise of new media.  In sustaining cooperative online communities, ARGs build on "an alignment of interest, where problems are presented in a fashion that assists game designers in their goal while intriguing and aiding players in their goals".<ref name="firstmonday" />  This returns to ARGs' framework of transmedia storytelling, which necessitates that ARG designers relinquish a significant degree of their power to the ARG's audience, problematizing traditional views of authorship.<ref>Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/HnxVsVetrDI Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20100727190848/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnxVsVetrDI Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{cite web |last=Stewart |first=Sean |title=Bard 5.0: The Evolution of Storytelling |website=[[YouTube]] |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnxVsVetrDI |access-date=11 December 2011}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

The majority of the scholarly review on ARGs analyzes their pedagogical advantages.  Notably, in the classroom, ARGs can be effective tools for providing exigence on given topics and yield a [[collaborative learning|collaborative]] and [[experiential learning]] environment.<ref name="Whitton">{{cite web |last=Whitton |first=Nicola |author-link=Nicola Whitton |title=Alternate Reality Games for Developing Student Autonomy and Peer Learning |url=http://www2.napier.ac.uk/transform/LICK_proceedings/Nicola_Whitton.pdf |access-date=11 December 2011}}</ref> By the same token, weaknesses of classroom learning through ARGs include the need for a flexible narrative conducive to collaborative learning in large groups and a sophisticated web design.<ref name="Whitton" />

In a contribution to a volume focusing on play and cities in Springer's ''Gaming Media and Social Effects'' series, [[Eddie Duggan]] (2017) provides an overview of pervasive games, and discusses characteristics in ARGs, LARPs, RPGs, assassination games and other games where the notion of the "magic circle" as elaborated by Salen and Zimmerman<ref>Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. (2004) ''[[Rules of Play]]: Game Design Fundamentals.'' MIT Press. Cambridge. pp. 94-99.</ref> is confounded.<ref>Duggan, E. (2017) "Squaring the (Magic) Circle: A Brief Definition and History of Pervasive Games". In: Nijholt, A. (ed) ''Playable Cities: Gaming Media and Social Effects.'' Springer. Singapore. pp. 111–135</ref>