[Air-L] Call for Chapters: Alternate Reality Games and the Cusp of Digital Gameplay

[Antero Garcia]

*Call for Chapters: Alternate Reality Games and the Cusp of Digital
Gameplay*

Series: Approaches to Digital Game Studies, Bloomsbury

Editors: Antero Garcia, Colorado State University & Greg Niemeyer,
University of California, Berkeley

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) challenge what players understand as “real.”
Though prominent examples of ARGs have persisted over the past two decades,
only recently have ARGs come to the prominence as a unique and highly
visible digital game genre. Adopting many of the same strategies as online
video games, ARGs blur the distinction between the “real” and the “virtual.”

We seek chapter proposals for a proposed collection that explores and
defines the possibilities of ARGs. With ARGs continuing to be an important
and blurred space between digital and physical gameplay, this collection
offers clear analysis of game design, implementation, and ramifications for
game studies. Divided into three distinct sections (noted below), this
collection emphasizes first hand accounts by leading ARG creators,
scholarly analysis of the meaning behind ARGs from noted critics and
researchers, and explication of emerging visualization and data collection
methodologies. We are particularly interested in cultivating research from
various disciplinary perspectives; by balancing the voices of designers,
players, and researchers, this work highlights how the Alternate Reality
Game genre is transforming the ways we play and interact today.

We seek chapter proposals that fit within one of the following three book
sections:

*Section One – Development and Execution*
Chapters in this section of the book detail the design and implementation
of ARGs. Authors pay attention to specific fictions, audiences, and goals
within these ARGs and offer a clear step-by-step behind the scenes look at
how these game designers engineer new modes of play and participation.

*Section Two – Alternating Reality – how ARGs are changing games and
society*
These chapters focus on analysis and critique of ARGs. While some chapters
may focus on specific games, other chapters in this section invoke larger
trends in ARGs.

*Section Three – Data Visualization and Collection*
As the ARG genre is dependent on responding to the ways participants
interact with one another and with a story’s content, this section of the
book looks at how we interpret and construct data. In particular, the genre
of digital games is reinventing new data visualization methodologies and
this section should illuminate ways games display information during play
and as synopsis after a game concludes.

This edited volume has received initial interest from the Digital Game
Studies series editors and we are currently seeking additional chapters to
share with the editors and secure a book contract. *The deadline for
proposals of 300-500 words is August 15, 2014. Please email your abstract
and a 100 word biography to anterobot at gmail.com <anterobot at gmail.com>
(please indicate to which section of the book your proposal is directed).
All authors will be notified of acceptance by September 2nd and full
chapter manuscripts would be due in April, 2015. Please do not hesitate to
contact us with any questions at the above address.*

-- 
Antero Garcia, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English Education
Ethnic Studies Faculty Associate
English Department, Colorado State University
359 Eddy Building
Campus Delivery 1773
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1773
http://www.antero.org/