[arg_discuss] Loose fish project

[Jay Bushman]

Thanks all for the great feedback.  I've been wanting to chime back in  
this week, but my job has been trying to kill me.

One of my inspirations for this whole thing was playing certain ARGs  
and realizing that I wasn't even all that interested in the puzzles.   
They served more as impediments to finding out What Happened Next.  In  
that sense, they functioned almost like commercial breaks, but more  
interesting that a sales pitch for a car I can't afford.

One of the challenges of doing an "ARG without the Game" is constantly  
having to re-evaluate my assumptions.  I think I was a month into it  
before I realized that "This Is Not A Game" doesn't apply.  And I  
constantly have to remind myself that interactivity is not really a  
goal.

On the terminology question, I've been toying with a bunch of names,  
none of which I really like.  I dig the word "transmedia" a lot, but  
it doesn't quite apply yet, since the first few projects are each  
isolated to one specific medium.

A phrase I love, even though I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of  
sense, is "Gremlin's Hypertext."  This is based on an idea I  
encountered in an improvisation class I took in grad school.  We had a  
textbook of essays on improv, most of which I skipped.  But for some  
reason, I skimmed the final essay, and in the last pages of it  
described, almost in passing, something that has continued to be an  
enormous influence on every creative thing I do:  a phenomenon called  
"Gremlin's Theater."

What that refers to is this - when you go to see a play, there's an  
implicit contract between the players and the audience: that the  
action is fictional, that the audience will sit quietly or respond in  
certain approved ways, and the evening will progress along according  
to plan.  Any emotional reaction or catharsis that occurs, happens  
within these safe, established boundaries.  But then, the Gremlins  
show up and something goes wrong.  An actor blows their entrance.  A  
set falls down.  A crucial prop goes missing.  And suddenly, while  
everything goes off the rails, the energy level in the room reaches  
heights well above anything that could have been experienced within  
those safe boundaries.  It feels almost vertiginous, since nobody -  
not the audience, not the performers, not the backstage crew - knows  
what will happen next.  In an improv context, this is not about making  
things always go wrong, but about trying to attain that level of  
energy, mystery and danger, to keep an audience on their toes and  
feeling like anything could happen at any time.  Strangely, outside of  
that one section in that once essay, I haven't been able to find any  
mention of Gremlin's Theater anywhere else.

So I started using Gremlin's Hypertext, because I think one of the  
goals of these forms is that when a player/reader/consumer clicks a  
link (or sends an email, picks up a phone, etc.), we want them to feel  
that same exhilaration of having no idea what will happen next, of  
anything being possible.  Isn't that the derivation of the idea  
"rabbit hole?"  I'd say that for me, the difference between ARGs that  
work and ARGs that don't is how well the story pays off that feeling  
of anticipation.

btw, Mike - I'm calling my next pubquiz team Dostoevsky Sausages


---------------------------------------------------------
The Loose-Fish Project:	<http:www.loose-fish.com>
The Good Captain:		<http://twitter.com/goodcaptain>






On Nov 14, 2007, at 4:24 PM, Adrian Hon wrote:


> On 15 Nov 2007, at 00:15, Mark Heggen wrote:

>

>> All around a lot of excellent thoughts on this thread. Just as

>> clarification, the Chain Factor game actually does have cross-media  

>> arms

>> outside the television episode. The casual game has locked powers  

>> which can

>> only be unlocked by entering codes that are found in text messages,  

>> banner

>> ads, subway ads, and it looks like possibly television ads (which are

>> ostensibly unrelated to Numb3rs). In a funny sort of way, it might  

>> be the

>> project that most accurately fits the term "Alternate Reality Game"  

>> as it

>> meets all definitions of a *game* (unlike almost all of what we  

>> call "ARGs")

>> and it exists in a sort of *alternative reality* which contains a  

>> murdering

>> game designer who has hacked into commercial media advertising.

>

> Cool, I had no idea. I like the concept behind Chain Factor a lot,  

> the idea that you can pull people in using the casual game and then  

> wrap an ARG around that. I would say that Perplex City met the  

> definition of being an ARG just as much, but that's another story :)

>

> However, I would maintain that *even if* Chain Factor had no cross- 

> media interaction, if it was 'just' a webgame with surrounding  

> hidden story that involved mass collaborative action, fake emails,  

> etc etc - but no text messages, subway ads, TV ads - then it would  

> still be classified by many (including me) as 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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