Alternate reality game in education: A literature review

Using the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) game type to improve non-game products is more and more popular in the 21st century. However, as an important field of ARG implementation, the usage of ARG in education area is still at its early stage. This paper seeks to provide an overview of current research about the implementation of ARG in the educational field, as well as make a general conclusion of how ARG techniques can benefit the education context. The authors undertook a literature review that systematically examined the general development trend of educational ARG implementation from the perspectives of timeline and by field of education. By bringing together previously separate and disparate literature, this paper contributes to providing new understanding of this emergent area of gamification research. In the final section, we discuss our findings and propose some challenges to be faced in the future for gamificatiojn in general and for the AGR game type in particular.