[arg_discuss] TINAG and the curtain: necessary?

[Brian Clark]

Continuing this in the spirit of testing ideas.

"but I don't really think they encouraged anyone (in a quantifiable drove)
to buy Halo 2 or 3 /solely because of the content of the ARG/ [...] I
classify these things as "ARG to market", because they're enjoyable
awareness campaigns, but don't affect my buying decisions."

We have quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, though. There are some
direct impact on sales awareness, and product awareness, and all kinds of
measurable things. It might not have an impact on your buying decisions;
ARGs are also good for energizing existing fan bases, certainly. 

"When I say 'sell a product or build a brand', I mean something like 
Perplex City's puzzle cards, something that didn't exist before or had 
any existing buy-in."

Both Blair Witch and Freakylinks are interesting case studies in that
regard: they would seem to be "build a brand" by your definition of
"something that didn't exist before or had any existing buy-in" and part of
the "greater tree of ARGing". 

"Once you get into the activities of selling something physical (as opposed
to finding or giving them away, ala Chasing The Wish, etc.) in retail
markets, concerns of snake oil starts coming into play"

I'd argue that's always in play, from a marketer sponsoring a commercial ARG
to independent artists fleshing out universes that include products (like
films, comics, cards, etc.) I think what you're really doing is tip-toeing
around some kind of "commercial game/grassroots game" dichotomy but trying
to pigeonhole associated product sales and brand building to just one side
of that difference instead of both.

"> making sure that prizes aren't misperceived as fictional, or that the

> consumer's money wouldn't be wasted on an irrelevant product, or that

> consumers wouldn't feel no one is held accountable?


I don't know of any ARG that would be relevant to answer those questions by.
Help me out."

I guess I'm trying to say all of them do. Any ARG with a prize doesn't want
that prize to be misperceived as fictional (defeats the purpose of having a
prize.) Any ARG that will ask their participants to spend money on a
product, even implicitly, doesn't want to sell a false bill of goods and
then disappoint (defeats the purpose of having curious word of mouth). Any
ARG, no matter how mysterious, should still desire to make sure their
audience feels like someone is ultimately accountable (defeats the sense of
trust you need with the audience to get them invested in the game.)

All of these are really just wrinkles of the trust dynamic. How does an
audience learn to trust a puppetmaster enough to take risks? How much does
that happen for each and every participant, and how much of that is a
dynamic of the group experience?

"The difference is that they have nothing to lose. They already have buy-in,
and can "throw away" a million dollars on an experiment"

Unfortunately, that isn't an accurate description of the real environment
out there. I've never had an ARG funder so cavalier that they feel they can
pour $1M away on an experiment with no results ... but maybe car makers and
electronics manufacturers are just stingier than Microsoft? They might be
willing to take different risks, but ultimately the success or failure of
project (and thus of the people who evangelized it and executed it) always
still relates to some measurable accountability.

I think the issues of accountability and risk stay pretty similar even as
you add 0s to number of digits in the budgets: no one who green lights an
ARG thinks they are taking a safe risk, but none of them think they are
taking a stupid risk ... whether they are risking thousands, tens of
thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions.

"If they were attempting to build a brand (or, even, a player base), they
did a horrible job of it, because they're losing me, and the people I played

with in IRC and forums."

That's a different argument, and I've never known an ARG that couldn't stand
a bit of critical review at some point, eh? It is worth remembering, though,
that at least in this list, you're more likely to run into one of the
practitioners you're critiquing as a case study ;)


>Was this a general rumination, or meant to specifically address 60BWC?


It was a reaction to your statements about it requiring a mix of IG and OOG
elements to enjoy an ARG. I was offering up the wrinkle that is only true if
you're not utilizing OOG where you could find a cleverer way to execute it
IG (almost as a corollary of the "show it don't explain it" mindset of
immersion that is part of TINAG attempted to express.) So, no, not meant as
a specific comment on your project, just a reaction to the essay you linked
to in your post.

So I don't necessarily disagree with criticizing the curtain ... lord knows
there people laughing right now thinking that me, of all people, is offering
up a Curtain Defense :) In general, though, if something is playing out in
real time, you don't necessarily want a running meta-commentary (like a
sports broadcast) at the same time ... especially not from someone who
already knows how the game ends :)


>People keep telling me about EE. I simply /must/ get into it.


People are indulgent and too kind. We're in an interlude between books so
I'm permitting myself a little bit of public meta-abstraction before the
next wave of narrative starts, but during the first five months we were
fairly tight-lipped about what was going on in an OOG sense.


Brian