[arg_discuss] ARG Information & Resources

[D B Wall]

Hi all,

I recently had dinner with two top execs in the media business when the topic of ARGs came up. Long story short: in follow-up to the dinner, I wanted to give them more information about what ARGs are, how they work and some examples. It's 11pm. I'm in my office. I want to go home. I figured it would be easy to dig up a few links, copy-paste some text from Wiki or the SIG site and be on my way. Then I ran into a problem and I thought I'd share it with the SIG. 

I have a receptive audience, very creative, very supportive of new ways to engage and entertain people. They have deep pockets, and some very specific needs which an ARG could fulfill. These are exactly the kind of people (I would think) you would want to get interested in what you do. But..

These are 50+ yr old men, who have made their careers by being LOUD and BOLD, and crafting content for the masses of masses. They understand marketing and hyperpromotion. They're having a hard time understanding the subtle, stealthy, viral and social nature of an ARG and how that could possibly translate into ... consumer behavior, audience awareness, revenue ... it takes convincing them, especially when almost every element of an ARG runs counter to what they know. 

And they have the attention span of a gnat. As one of their colleagues told me, if you can't tell me why it's a good idea in less than 30 seconds, it's not a good idea. Further, I'd want them to talk about it with other execs, particularly advertising execs, who have the attention span of half a gnat. So the message has to be simple, clear and concise and at the same time compelling and memorable.

Wikipedia's entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game) is over 7,000 words long and reads as though its audience is you, not middle-aged media execs. I needed something shorter and simpler.

At the SIG site (http://www.igda.org/arg/whatisanarg.html), I found... well, again, something geared towards you, not the mainstream folks I want to convert. Between the navigation and the language used, there are already two barriers to entry. They're lost at "orthogonal perspective" and gone by "subsume." The concept is high-brow enough. No need to escalate that perception to elitist through word choice.

I ended up writing something from scratch, and asking Wendy to write something to post on her site for linking to as validation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game). I was also lucky that these people have a music industry background. I referred them to Wired's story about the NIN ARG, and now they (sort of) get it.

So... just as a suggestion to the SIG, for better traction with mainstream media, I'd take a second look at what information is available and how it's written, simplify the message and stop splitting hairs over what defines an ARG (no one outside of these circles care and it makes it look like the field doesn't have its shit together). If you know of anything that fits this bill, please point me at it?

Thanks (now, I'll go back to lurking),

db