The Missing Student: Construction of an Alternate Reality Game – A pitch to attract applicants to the Game Design & Technology Master’s programme

Abstract: The master’s program Game Design & Technology at the University of Gothenburg wants to try new ways of marketing the program to potential students and has created this Bachelor’s for that purpose. By advertising using a game, one reaches people that are already interested in the area and by having an interactive advertisement such as an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) one can have the target group interact with each other further solidifying their interest. This Bachelor’s thesis aims to create such a game that is both ready to be used and modular enough so that it can be re-used between years. In this context the target group would be people who have a Bachelor’s degree relating to software engineering or similar areas. The ARG was created using React and a Node based server with the use of JSON to store all resources and carefully programmed sites in order to keep it modular. During development the separate puzzles were tested by internal and external testers with good feedback. With the feedback that the puzzles were fun to solve we draw the conclusion that marketing through the use of an ARG could be successful depending on the level of involvement of the players.