Over the past few years, there have been many discussions on what makes something an Alternate Reality Game. All of them have focused on story and puzzles and interaction and community and play and, yet, none of them was able to accurately define what it is that makes something an Alternate Reality Game. It’s always been the very subjective case of “I’ll know it when I see it.” Each further attempt takes another stab at narrowing us in to this little box without seeming to take a step back to look at the actual box. Sean Stacey did just that over on unfiction in an article titled Undefining ARG.

He proposes that ARGs are a part of the larger Chaotic Fiction and goes on to describe three key elements, or axes, of Chaotic Fiction: Authorship, Ruleset, and Coherence. What we’re left with is a three dimensional space that contains all sorts of creative efforts, including Alternate Reality Games. What’s very nice about this model is that it is not restricted to fiction and, at the end of the article, he points to other examples such as the Chaotic Fact of Wikipedia or the Chaotic Programming seen in the Open Source Software movement.

So, while he did not define Alternate Reality Gaming, he did a wonderful job of defining the box in which it sits. Even if that box isn’t as much a box as it is a big cloudy sphere.