Gamication—the use of game mechanics in conventionally nongame activities— has received attention in the eld of education. Games, however, are not reducible to the common mechanisms of gamication that target extrinsic motivation, and may also include elements such as role playing, world making, and collective storytelling. Here, the authors discuss the potential learning benets of largescal...

Alternate Reality Games (ARG) tend to have story-driven game structures. Hence, it is useful to investigate how player activities interact with the often pre-scripted storyline in this genre. In this article, we report on a study of a particular ARG production, Conspiracy For Good (CFG), which was at the same time emphasising the role of strong storytelling, and active on-site participation by ...

Alternate reality games (ARGs) are a new genre of transmedia practice in which players collaboratively hunt for clues, make sense of disparate information, and solve puzzles to advance an ever-changing narrative that is woven into the fabric of the real world. This paper highlights the potential for ARGs to promote 21st-century literacy skills. We propose a meta-level framework for 21st-century...

The Alternate Reality Game genre inspires a mode of play in which the participants choose to act as if the game world was real. Jane McGonigal has argued that one of the most attractive features of an ARG is the ‘Pinnochio’ effect: at the same time that the players deeply long to believe in them, it is in reality impossible to believe in them for real. In this article, we study “Sanningen om Ma...

The advent of the Internet has been instrumental in producing new Game Based Learning (GBL) tools where education and games converge. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are one such GBL tool. Interactive narrative games that use the Internet as a central communications platform, ARGs challenge players to collaboratively collate a fragmented story. When used for educational purposes, Serious ARGs pr...

Daily growth of the lower leg in a child receiving alternate day oral steroids for Crohn's disease was measured by knemometry. Growth occurred on days free of treatment. This may represent a direct observation of the growth sparing effect of alternate day steroid medication.

Forty-four patients with newly discovered biopsy-proven pulmonary sarcoidosis in roentgenographic stage II (adenopathy and interstitial abnormalities) who also had abnormal pulmonary function (TLC and/or DCO less than 80 percent predicted) were assigned in alternate sequence to either a daily or alternate day prednisone treatment protocol. Both groups showed statistically significant improvemen...

Most apparent medical discoveries are not subsequently confirmed, and reports of unexpected benefits of established treatments are particularly prone to being disproved. It is noteworthy, therefore, that the aspirin and cancer prevention story continues to stand up to testing, with the latest report from the Women’s Health Study (WHS) in this issue (1) confirming previous observations and offer...