Thanks to Nokia's partnership with Kring, their upcoming Ovi Store (aka the Nokia App Store) is going to kick off with some of the most innovative content that has ever come to the mobile platform. It's set to open in May soon after the store will feature Kring's new project and is code-named TEVA. As for what exactly TEVA will look like and what it will be about...well, details are still vague. Kring wants to make sure spoilers don't ruin the fun for the audience...or perhaps we should say "participants."

ARG Explained

What we do know, however, is that TEVA will be a combination of user-generated content and Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG). In you're unaware of what "ARG" means, it's when an interactive narrative is told using the real world as the platform. Instead of passively consuming this sort of entertainment, ARG players actively participate in it. A somewhat recent example of this is what ARG called the "Lost Experience," which launched back in 2008 as an online clue hunt developed by ABC for fans of the TV show "Lost." In this game, web sites across the net contained clues that when pieced together told a story that tied into and paralleled that of the show. Another example would be the ARG created for the band Nine Inch Nails to promote their "Year Zero" album. This time the adventure started when concert goers found thumb drives in the bathrooms that contained unreleased songs and clues.

TEVA is No Ordinary ARG

So the idea of an ARG isn't an entirely new one, but using the mobile platform to play the game is...at least like this. You see, TEVA isn't just a traditional ARG moved to the mobile platform - it only involves some elements of that type of story-telling mechanism. Another piece to this mobile experience is user-generation content. This is a new twist. In the past, ARG players would just interact with the story line - now they're going to help create it. And yet another aspect to this mobile experience will be local. Gameplay takes place in your city - not just in an application or just on the web. How exactly this happens, we don't know, but TEVA will use GPS and other location-based services in some way. 

So What Do We Call This?

When we asked if there was a name for this type of entertainment, Kring said perhaps we could call it a "mobile immersive experience." It's a bit long, but it works.

Since there aren't a ton of details about TEVA yet, we have to use our imaginations to guess at what sort of interactions might be included. Based on some of the other discussion topics that evening, one of the possibilities that may come into play in this new mobile experience is an augmented reality application.

At the dinner, one of the Nokia execs described how we could use our mobile phones to record geo-located images and videos and tag them with specific keywords. This media could then only be accessed when you arrived in the same geo-location with your mobile phone. For example, if you showed up at the local park, you could pull up a video of your friends playing Frisbee there last week. This "mirror world," as it is being called, isn't so much an "alternate" reality, but a real one...just one that's been recorded, tagged, and archived. With this, we sort of become the ghosts of ourselves.

The Possibilities are Endless

The TEVA project will initially launch in the Ovi Store while it's being developed for other mediums (iPhone? Web? This, too, is unknown.) What is known, though, is that Kring is extremely excited about the project. As a creative, he's less interested in the technical details of the technology itself - just what it can do and how he can use it to create an entirely new entertainment experience.

Kring noted that there are already mobile applications that allow you to go out into the real world and "collect clues, send things, create things, and share with other people nearby...using the locative qualities of the phone. Once you get the parameters of what these services can do," he continued, "then your imagination is the only thing that stops you...if you attach a narrative to that."

TEVA will launch this summer and will be rolled out regionally.

Above image is the TEVA logo.

This is a guest post by Muhammad Saleem, a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites.

Essential Elements of an ARG

Here are few of the 'must have' elements for a successful Alternate Reality Game:

1. Storytelling or narrative

Every ARG should have a captivating story to tell that extends beyond the product. For example, the Halo 3 guerrilla marketing campaign revealed specific elements of the third installment in the series, which would be interesting for people that are already fans of the game. These 'games' often serve as prologues for the product or event that they are ultimately marketing. Unlike with traditional advertising, these stories make the product/event more dynamic and more appealing.

Although ARGs are mostly used to market products that have found a loyal online fan base (e.g. video games, movies, music, and television), they can be used to market almost anything - as long as you have a story to tell. We saw this in Audi's "The Art of the Heist" ARG, which was made specifically to market the Audi A3, and Coca-Cola's "Zero will give you life as it should be" campaign for Coke Zero in Europe.

2. Discovery/deciphering and documentation elements

Any well-executed ARG will play its cards close to its chest and reveal information slowly, sporadically, using different outlets/ mediums, and over an extended period of time. The narrative should be broken into smaller pieces, often obscured or coded in some way, so that not only do they need to be found but also deciphered into something intelligible. As such, the discovery and deciphering elements allow different people/sources to 'discover' new information and forces them to work together as a collective to help the story progress.

While most people will be interested in closely following the story, to try and be the first to discover the next step (for fame/glory or just out of curiosity) there will be others that will play along just so they can document the game, analyze the marketing strategy, and learn from it.

3. Cross-medium interactivity

For an ARG to be successful, it has to use multiple mediums. It has to be pervasive and must be available and accessible on as many different mediums as possible. These mediums may include, but are not limited to:

• Articles or bits of information seeded online on blogs and news outlets
• Videos (clips, trailers, commentary)
• Print ads in magazines and newspapers
• Billboards
• Posters in shops
• People with placards on the streets
• Phone calls
• Radio or online audio broadcasts
• Email and snail mail

The more mediums you use, the more personal it becomes and the closer it gets to reality. Furthermore, with each medium you tap a potentially unique audience that you may not be able to tap into using other mediums (e.g. online/email versus offline/snail-mail).

4. Blurring the lines between reality and fiction

Because ARGs allow you as an individual and community (working together) to make decisions that have visible and often instantaneous results, or at least give the appearance of interactivity, they help blur the lines between reality and fiction.

For example, for the Halo 3 campaign, real people took to the streets and babbled indecipherable gibberish for days on end. Similarly, the Harvey Dent campaign was made to look like a real political campaign and at the same time required a 'grassroots' collective effort to unveil what was actually going on. When you walk into a store and are faced with a vandalized display and a floor littered with "The Joker" playing cards, in a sense you step out of theatrics and into an alternate reality.

Image from destructoid.com

Things ARGs Should Avoid

Just as there are some elements that any good alternate reality game must possess to engage an audience, there are other things that can completely turn an audience off. Here's a look at some of the elements that ARGs must absolutely stay away from.

1. Lack of interactivity, too linear

Too many ARGs give the appearance of interactivity and though it seems like the end result depends on your participation, the games are actually linear 'journeys' from point A to point B. No one wants to put hours into a puzzle when they know that their individual effort doesn't really affect the outcome.

2. Lack of a reward

People enjoy participating in ARGs because each puzzle you unlock gives you a new piece of information and helps progress a story. As I mentioned earlier, these games most often serve the purpose of a prologue. No one wants to participate if the reward is not tantalizing enough or there is no reward. The Coca-Cola Coke Zero campaign had this problem, because the participants ultimately realized that the campaign was merely for another flavor of Coke - information that in itself isn't 'virally appealing'.

3. No instant gratification

Just as important as having a reward is allowing readers to access it right away. We are living in a Web-enabled world where instant gratification is key and delayed gratification is like no gratification at all.

4. Too difficult

You don't want to just throw away the prize, but you also don't want to make getting to the prize so difficult that nobody wants to participate. There have been ARGs where I tried for a half an hour and then gave up, thinking that I would wait for someone else to solve the puzzle and just enjoy the findings; or I didn't bother going back out of sheer frustration. Finding the appropriate level of challenge can be one of the more difficult parts of any ARG-based marketing effort.

5. Same old game, different name

The ARGs that everyone talks about were successful because they innovated and came up with ideas and ways to engage that no one had used before. If your game is still using the same old tactics to market a different product, it's not going to work. Try to come up with something new, because the novelty value alone will be enough to draw in some people.

6. Too scripted, too commercial

An ARG by its very nature has to appear to be unscripted and non-commercial to succeed. Otherwise it just becomes an advertisement that people have to work for to see.

You have to keep in mind that on a very basic level, you must have a premise that people are interested in - or they could be interested in. Making an alternate reality game around cats will be difficult to market. It's much easier to follow the 4 steps above and avoid the 6 pitfalls mentioned, to take your good idea and make it a great success through ARG-based viral marketing.

ilove bees image from mitchrukat.com