The first ARG, or “alternate reality game,” was Ong’s Hat, which started in 1993.

The first ARG, or “alternate reality game,” was Ong’s Hat, which started in 1993. The idea was that the absolutely abandoned New Jersey Pine Barrens town of Ong’s Hat was the site of a hippie cult of white jazz musicians known as “The Moorish Science Temple” who’s members included some theoretical physicists who created “cognitive chaos theory,” which they used to travel between dimensions.

One of the main architects of Ong’s Hat would later be one of the creators of the later overly complex online hoax, John Titor, Time Traveler.