[arg_discuss] [meta] Introductions

[Michael Monello]

Andrea Phillips wrote:
> So who are you guys?

Thanks for inviting me to participate!

I come from more of a film background than game or tech. In 1998 I  
formed Haxan Films with some fellow film school grads and we made The  
Blair Witch Project. Following that, we created a hybrid web/tv show  
called Freakylinks for Fox. While the TV show was bastardized from  
the original concept (losing much of the links to the web world,  
alas), the website kept its integrity for the entire year it was  
live. We have an archive of the Freakylinks site here: http:// 
www.haxan.com/portfolio.html

Following that we created a large web narrative for a comedy, which  
ultimately fell apart due to a broken down relationship between us  
and the distributor. Of that world, Reemco remains online (http:// 
www.reemco.com).

While doing all that we were also occasionally directing TV  
commercials, and ultimately those two worlds merged with the Beta-7  
narrative campaign we did for Sega/ESPN (http://www.beta-7.com). When  
Beta-7 cleaned up at major advertising awards shows, we started  
getting more interest from clients and agencies for more. While all  
of the previous work had very ARG elements to them (real-time  
interaction, audience affects the story, community based, maintained  
a sense of 'reality' in the presentation, etc), our next campaign was  
actually a game for Sharp called "Legend of the Sacred Urns." About  
halfway through the first month of launch, someone posted a link to  
ARGN and that's when we discovered what we were doing was an ARG and  
we found the Unfiction community.

Our next campaign was Audi's Art of the Heist, which wrapped in June  
of this year and pushed us into more live interactions than we had  
done in the past. Art of the Heist was just named Campaign of the  
Year in the December issue of Creativity Magazine, so there will  
(hopefully) be more heat on ARG's in 2006.

During the Sharp campaign, we formed a new company, Campfire,  
explicitly to develop, design, and produce interactive, community  
based campaigns (including ARG's) for advertisers and clients, as  
well as develop independent content.

The advertising/marketing community is waking up to the concepts of  
collaborative media and community, so it's a great time to organize  
ourselves. I look forward to meeting you all and sharing information,  
both electronically and in person. Thanks to Adam, Evan, and Andrea  
for all your work in getting this SIG going!

Best,

Mike
__________
haxan | films | http://www.haxan.com