[arg_discuss] is ARG just a marketing technique to the press?

[Brian Clark]

Nova, it hadn't really occurred to me that you'd be on this list (I'm not
even sure if Alice is on this list), but I'm certainly not an advocate of
having an iron gate on who can participate or not.

And I certainly hope you don't really feel that I'm "dismissing" these
articles -- I meant to show them as a spread, some pushing one way and some
pushing another, around the elephant in the room. It provides an interesting
way to talk about the elephant in the room. Heck, I don't even disagree with
the Guardian piece, just that it isn't very thoughtful (it doesn't even
acknowledge the new adoption of Games for Change style thinking in the ARG
community, for example.) They are examples of the press reaction to the
genre (with no insult intended to your role as Research Manager for the
company who published the article, which wasn't apparent to us as readers.)

Unlikeable was hardly the point of the collection of links, my opinions are
more nuanced about each of them. I hate to derail the main conversation and
make you feel like you have to defend your particular piece. It did seem to
suggest though that self-sustainability has been basically worked out, when
in reality the space is very dominated by "craft over art" -- education,
corporate/industrial, fundraising and marketing are (IMHO) crafts more than
arts, with no value judgments associated with those two terms (I'm a
craftsman as much as an artist.)

I'm more in Mike's camp (and also playing similar both-sides-of-the-coin
strategies) -- until we actually solve that problem of sustainability,
comparing the relative values of "craft utility" in one discipline or
another is really about who ELSE can find a way to get value of this "art".
If that value is really there, we should be able to leverage it for
ourselves, right? Doctor, heal thyself ... hasn't produced any shining
examples to hold forth in 2007 (and I personally think that is bubbling
under the assumptions of each of those articles, just not clearly expressed
in any of them except perhaps Alice's.)

Mike and I come from the same "artistic school of origin" though so it isn't
surprising our views are similar on this :)

-----Original Message-----
From: arg_discuss-bounces at igda.org [mailto:arg_discuss-bounces at igda.org] On
Behalf Of Nova Barlow
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 12:21 PM
To: 'Discussion list of the IGDA ARG SIG'
Subject: Re: [arg_discuss] is ARG just a marketing technique to the press?

Hi,

Thought I should say something here, as my article is mentioned in this.

As Research Manager I'm given the opportunity to present an occasional piece
in the Escapist. A fair portion of those articles happen to be about the ARG
genre (thus my subscription to this list). Why? Because I like them and
they're fascinating. :) Admittedly, my interest is rather academic and so my
articles probably read a bit like that (I wish I had time to play everything
out there).

You'll notice I almost never speak up on this list, and that's mostly to
keep an independent observation process in place. It's how I work.

Having read several articles in the mainstream press lately about ARGs (most
notably the Guardian article, which I completely disagree with), I'm not
sure they can all be rightfully clustered together, tarred, feathered, and
dismissed with such a distinct hand wave. Perhaps mine was the last straw. I
don't truly know, and it isn't important to me other than a need for the
press and ARGs to come to a happy medium of sorts. 

I am disappointed you may have found the article so dislikeable, when the
intent was to take a direct look at what's being talked about these days and
things that are going on in ARGs. It's probably rather incomplete, I'm sure.
Unfortunately I don't get space to talk about every interesting thing going
on - and undoubtedly many on this list are going "well now, I can write
better". There is room enough in the press for all sorts of views, and not
just the tired cliches. We can even create all new cliches if we work things
right. 

Perhaps part of the larger issue here is the press' perception of ARGs. It
strikes me as a direct call for more voices, and getting more people
involved, and more people in the industry speaking out. For the press to do
better, we all have to work together.

I encourage anyone interested in talking to someone in the press whose
interest is not to paint either an overly rosy glow of things nor a bleak
and discouraged one to drop me a line off-list.

Thanks,
Nova Barlow
Research Manager, Themis Group/The Escapist

-----Original Message-----
From: arg_discuss-bounces at igda.org [mailto:arg_discuss-bounces at igda.org] On
Behalf Of Brian Clark
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 11:12 AM
To: 'Discussion list of the IGDA ARG SIG'
Subject: [arg_discuss] is ARG just a marketing technique to the press?

Hey, SIG,

It's been quiet around here, but there's been a ton of recent press (not all
of it very flattering) about the successes and shortcomings of the genre for
the year.

I thought this Wired article was interesting for how it avoided the phrase
ARG and substituted it with "the marketing ... has been a long process of
hoax sites and real world games":
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/12/the-joker-sends.html

I'm sure it isn't helping when the majority of cinema blogs are also calling
it "infecting the web with viral sites" and opens with disclaimers like "I'm
always hesitant to report on 'viral marketing' sites for movies":
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Dark-Knight-Infects-The-Web-With-Viral-Sites-
7015.html
 
Alice at least gave a more thoughtful discussion to the labels in her blog,
but even she says "But if we're talking short, buzz-focused stunt-based
stuff designed to promote a car sale, or a movie launch, then I think
there'll inevitably be a backlash of some sort, because there seems to be a
lot of repetitive behaviour going on at the moment":
http://www.wonderlandblog.com/wonderland/2007/12/one-problem-wit.html

She's kinder and more thoughtful at least than the blog at the Guardian,
which called the whole "alternate reality game circuit" as the gaming
disappointment of the year because it didn't "transcend the filthy lucre of
corporates":
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/2007/12/14/games_of_2007_part_2.h
tml

The Escapist manages to somehow mix abject optimism with scathing implied
criticisms that academia is where the interest is since "in these new games
the product being advertised isn't a movie or a car - it's simply
knowledge." This is actually the one that I personally think has the worst
factual errors as well as the perceptual issues of the prior ones :(
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_128/2730-Where-to
-From-Here

I love the way "promote a car or launch a movie" has become a code phrase
for talking about a little group of practitioners ;)

Ultimately, though, this coverage is intensely interesting to me
specifically because we don't have a horse in the race -- we didn't do any
marketing ARGs this year, so aren't really the subject of the critique (even
if I recognize how the brush might be ready to paint me as well.) There's a
push and pull around the idea of "ARGs as stunt marketing" though that is
new from last year, when perhaps the perception was still more about "ARGs
as branded entertainment or gaming form".

At ARGfest back in February, I tried to express some of my concerns that I
saw this trend bubbling. Maybe I even felt a little responsible for part of
that "car and movie" cliché. Unfortunately, there really hasn't been a clear
positivist statement from the players, the developers or academia on what
the hope for the genre is to counterbalance the inevitable "filthy lucre"
dilemma that faces every art genre.

If the world believes that an ARG is a marketing format, does that means it
has become one already so much that people are having to reject the genre in
proxy as an extension of their rejection of marketing?




Brian




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