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

[Global Police]

Two cents from a lurker:

 - In the current television/film/videogame landscape of product
placement and co-branding, it's a little naive to set up a contrast
between ARGs as corrupted, dependent art form and
television/film/videogames as pure and independent.  I think one problem
is that while people imagine a script being tweaked to add a character
who loves Ovaltine, they imagine marketing-ARG-makers starting with the
Ovaltine and building the art around it.  Even if that's broadly the
case with those projects, it would help to see an article or two
centered around someone saying, "we had this fantastic idea for a game,
and the only way we could make it happen was by integrating this
marketing aspect."

 - There've been enough ARGs attached to OTHER media projects such as
films and videogames that it's no wonder they are characterized as a
kind of second-order art form.  And after all, how could a genre that
remains unstable and amorphous (even though those are wonderful traits)
survive without leaning on its older siblings that way?  If each article
needs to simplify ARGs as collections of websites, public(ity) stunts,
some narrative, and interaction with an audience, then even independent
games can seem to "quack" like a marketing campaign.  I'm afraid that
those perceptions won't go away until time, popularity, and a couple
archetypal examples that "everyone" knows make ARGs = ARGs in the same
way that a film is a film.