The Nida Summer School,  Lithuania, April 2006
A series of training sessions were organized over a period of one week, as follows.

•    Introduction to the project for teachers
•    The project Help Desk
•    Understanding games components (based on Play Station, Nintendo and PC games).
•    Understand the platform concept, components and how they work.
•    Alternate Reality Games

The Alternate Reality Game concept used Nida was the starting point of the try out of the platforms. Understanding before the concept of ARG, can help to understand what the game was about, a concept that proved to be good for playing games.
An Alternate Reality Game is a cross media game that deliberately blurs the line between the in-game and out-of-game experiences, often being used as a marketing tool for a product or service.

While games may primarily be centered around online resources, often events that happen inside the game reality will "reach out" into the players´ lives in order to bring them together. Elements of the plotline may be provided to the players in almost any form, some of those used have been:
–e-mail (used in Nida game as an introduction to the game and make the player doubt, see kunas email in the amber room section)
–websites, both those obviously connected with the game and those innocent looking - often where the bulk of the game lies, these sites provide puzzles in many forms, e.g. cryptography (the desktop game provided this kind of clues and winning conditions)
–phone calls to a player´s home, cell or work phone (used by players on SMS and chat format and for upload content to the game desk)
–land mail
–newspaper articles or classifieds
–chat/Instant messaging and so on - the games have been known to initiate conversation (provided through emapps.com platform very intensive use during the game proved pervasive media is a cool tool)
–IRC channels, downloadable files, exectuables
–real world artifacts related to the game in play (used in emapps.com real documents given live in the territory)
–real world events utilizing actors who interact with the players who attend (used in Nida actors without previous dialogue)
•These games always have a specific goal of not only involving the player with the story and/or fictional characters but of connecting them to each other. Many game puzzles can be solved only by the collective and collaborative efforts of multiple players. (Puzzle where given to the players some of them based on UTM coordinates)
•Alternate reality games are usually earmarked by a large game-reality in the form of multiple websites, all of which take themselves as being totally real. In fact, sometimes it is difficult to tell if a website is fictional or not. These websites form the foundation of the game´s universe, and are usually the primary storytelling vehicle, although the various media listed above will be used as well, creating a situation where the game´s alternate reality and the real world collide. (used in Nida with 10 different sites providing hidden information for the game base controllers. See ARG pages in the menu)
•Important to alternate reality games is the concept of "this is not a game." To be most effective, these games don´t advertise themselves as such, and never really admit to being a game at all. The mystery of what´s going on and who is behind it all is a major factor, as is the general thrill of discovery (one website leads to another, and another, etc.) for the players. (Concept used and announced to the players while playing the game)