BloomingLife: The Skeleton Chase

BloomingLife: The Skeleton Chase is an alternate reality game designed to promote physical activity and a healthy lifestyle among college freshmen. It involves an interactive fictional story—a mystery that takes eight weeks to solve—unfolding across a variety of media (e-mail, Web sites, phone calls from fictional characters, physiological monitoring) and real-world physical and mental challenges that players must surmount to gather clues. A study of this game compares impacts of competitive versus collaborative game versions.