[arg_discuss] ARG Information & Resources

[Jason Chrest]

For a gnat's attention span:

Alternate reality games are a fictional interaction between a large audience and a story which may be tied to a brand or product.  They play out through any type of social media available, allowing a large viralesque reach for the content of the game.  This reach combined with an entertaining interaction for the audience and the depth of face time the game gets with the audience compared to simple magazine ads, television ads, and the such give the game the most beneficial b opportunity to connect the audience with a brand or product.

Now there can be another answer for people just wanting to use them for entertainment.  To me, args give me the best entertainment rewards for my audience.  I use star wars as an analogy to friends.  Say you're watching star wars - you're looking at the screen with no interaction as a common farm boy transforms into a galactic super hero.  After the movie you're likely to fantasize about having the same opportunities.  The same is true for books, but you get the opportunity to imagine what the "screen" looks like as you're reading, but again no interaction and you're left to daydream.  ARGs (when built right) let you become a hero - transform from an ordinary whatever you are into a hero helping to advance the story through interactions which directly impact the narrative.  This let's you live out what you would otherwise fantasize about (so long as you participate when given the opportunity).  Video games have been so successful because they're the closest thing to living out the life of the hero and visualizing it, but you never leave your couch and you're still left fantasizing about the life the super hero led.



Jason Chrest
Aporia Cross-Media Entertainment
www.aporiacme.com
jason at aporiacme.com


-----Original Message-----
From: D B Wall <dbwall at mac.com>

Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:39:21 
To:arg_discuss at igda.org
Subject: [arg_discuss] ARG Information & Resources


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
_______________________________________________
ARG_Discuss mailing list
ARG_Discuss at igda.org
http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/arg_discuss