In this paper, we outline specific roles that are used by designers of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) to help promote and sustain player participation and provide educational scaffolding. These roles were derived through analysis of a representative sample of ARGs and two case studies of small scale, education-based ARGs. In particular, we found that the approach that designers take to incorporate in-game protagonists ("protagonist-by-proxies" and "protagonist-mentors") can influence the ways in which 1) players gain access to the disparate narrative and ludic elements within an ARG and 2) designers can integrate collaborative learning opportunities authentically into the narrative and gameplay.
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Bonsignore et al. (2016) studied this question.