What is an ARG?

According to Wikipedia, an ARG is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions. This essentially means that an ARG is a game, given that ARG means augmented reality game. More depth is explored below.

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What differentiates an ARG from other games?

One of these things is that an ARG is ran by people instead of a game ran by coding. The ARG tends to bend and change depending player interaction with the narrative and characters. As well, an ARG uses platforms that we use in our day to day lives such as Twitter, YouTube and Reddit to convey their stories, given it a sense of immersion.

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How can I find an ARG?

ARGs can both be easy and hard to find. A for sure way to find them is to go to a specific ARG platform such as r/arg on Reddit, www.argn.com, or any sort of ARG centered Twitter. A slightly more fun option is to just search, but you aren't always guaranteed to find them. Links could be all over the place and hidden, be it a normal URL or a QR Code or a link in an image.

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Are ARGs mainstream at all?

This depends on what you classify as mainstream really. Some well-known entities have used them, for example, the Halo franchise and the TV show Lost both had ARGs tied to them. Even EA Games tried to make a pay-to-play ARG at one point. However, ARGs are mostly known by those who are in the know.

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What's with all the codes here?
Well, codes and ciphers have become a sort of commonplace in ARG culture. Many ARGs use them to add a level of challenge which some enjoy. Others find the 'trope' annoying and over-used, leading to a sort of split on opinions on the matter.