Tiamat Media is an ARG that was specifically designed for Dragon Con 2013, the largest multimedia fan conventions in the country. It was designed to fit within the socio-cultural context of the convention, appropriating established convention actions into the design.
Our narrative revolved around the fictional company we created called Tiamat Media. Tiamat Media is a publishing company that specializes in publishing fan artwork. It operates under the guise of helping fans spread their artwork and encouraging fan empowerment. Unbeknownst to the outside, however, Tiamat's true intentions are to steal these works and publish them as their own.
The goal of the players is to peel back the facade of Tiamat Media and discover the sordid truth about the company. Players must then team up with those fighting against the company in order to turn the company from its evil ways.
The game had three main game mechanic modules for players to solve: a casual picture tag game, a hide and seek game and an artifact puzzle game. Each of these connected to each other through rabbit holes and once players unlocked the mysteries, they would receive information from characters that would help them take down Tiamat Media.
The Emergent Game Group {egg} was formed in 2006 by Georgia Tech Digital Media faculty member Celia Pearce to investigate the many facets of emergent cultures in multiplayer games and virtual worlds, and to explore design strategies that promote emergent social behavior. We frame our work as “design research,” which integrates outcomes from our sociological and anthropological research into design practice. The {egg} is housed within the Experimental Game Lab (EGL) in Georgia Tech's TSRB.
