It’s not a game to me

The Arcane Gallery of Gadgetry (AGOG) is a sort of narrative wunderkammer of an alternate reality game (ARG), a “cabinet of curiosities” combining a rich and oftentimes mysteriously fragmented historical tapestry with what Rob MacDougall has called “playful historical thinking.” By incorporating counterfactuals and re-imagining the past, AGOG is designed to lead players into a newly enfranchised relationship with history, teach them STEM and information literacy skills, and help them discover the secret stories outside most history books. In the first full-fledged season of the game, middle school players raced against time to gain cryptographic, archival, cartographic, and inventor skills that would help them prevent a dangerous rift in the course of history. In today’s talk, attendees will also take part in an activity. With each season of the ARG based around a different intriguing lost invention from the Arcane Gallery of Gadgetry, there’s always a new story to uncover, a new rabbit hole to fall down–and it’s never too late to change the past! The AGOG ARG was part of “ARGs in the Service of Design and Education,” an NSF-funded study of the design process and educational use of ARGs. The purpose of the ongoing research around the ARG is to better understand how transmedia storytelling experiences can be used as novel educational activities and how experts and novices create transmedia experiences and experience them. The AGOG team includes Kari Kraus (iSchool/English Dept.), Beth Bonsignore (iSchool), and Amanda Visconti (English Dept.) at UMD, Derek Hansen at BYU, and Ann Fraistat. Read more about the game and the research behind it at ArcaneGalleryOfGadgetry.org.