[arg_discuss] Loose fish project

Adrian Hon adrian at mssv.net
Wed Nov 14 07:41:32 EST 2007


On 13 Nov 2007, at 15:23, Andrea Phillips wrote:


> I'm starting to think (and I can't claim this thought is original)

> that when people say 'ARG' the meaning they're trying to fumble

> towards is something like 'natively cross-media content.'



I don't think it's even as focused as that; I've seen people calling
games that exist only on one medium an ARG.

I've never been particularly interested in debating the 'correct'
definition of an ARG, mainly because I feel that the genie's out of
the bottle now and people are appropriating it for all sorts of uses.
It's one thing to talk about it here or in Unfiction, but you should
see how people use the term in the advertising, broadcasting, casual
gaming and entertaining industries... it would drive you mad! :)

I wrote something about this on my blog, saying that the term 'ARG',
in common use, no longer provides much useful information as to what
sort of game you might be talking about: http://mssv.net/2007/11/02/a-game-by-any-other-name/

Instead, it's become a catch-all term for non-traditional gaming. Look
at the Chain Factor game for Numb3rs - notwithstanding the tie-in with
the TV show, I don't think it's used any cross-media stuff (e.g. phone
calls, real life events) and I don't think it will do in the future.
And yet it certainly *feels* like an ARG.

Then there's Goodcaptain - little to no interaction, so you could
hardly call it a normal game, but like Andrea says, it feels like an
ARG.

Adrian

--
Adrian Hon - mssv.net
Chief Creative at Six to Start - www.sixtostart.com
Founder of Let's Change the Game - www.letschangethegame.org



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