Deguiyu

Accessible alternate reality gaming

Deguiyu Deguiyu is the ELAN Award winning "light" alternate reality game (ARG) for Xbox Live's Indie Games platform. Deguiyu was created in two weeks for my graduate course on virtual worlds. The core gameplay mechanic involves sharing information across everyday virtual worlds and spaces. Both the gameplay and the narrative work together to explore the nature of digital information and our questionable relationship with it.

Deguiyu The first quest players are sent on explores one way that digital information is represented and manipulated – HTML and Javascript. Players must search through Deguiyu’s website source code to find a code associated with a character’s login information. A later quest brings awareness to the text messaging phenomenon. Players are required to text a message to an unknown service in order to receive their next clue. A third quest explores how players publicly represent themselves on Xbox Live by forcing them to change their gamer motto to a specific phrase in order to continue. Our ability to quickly process information is called into question through another quest where players must watch over twenty news tickers simultaneously in search of a small piece of information.

Unfortunately, due to the limitations of Xbox Live's Indie Games peer review process, Deguiyu is unable to be sold on the Marketplace. However, please feel free to check out Deguiyu's official website at Deguiyu.com – one of the main artifacts used in the game.

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