[arg_discuss] Open Source ARGs

[wendy]

On Fri, 1 Aug 2008, Mark Heggen wrote:


> It is a troublesome fact that most of the people who will MAKE an ARG in the

> next year never really played OR lurked on any numbers of seminal ARGs, or

> possibly any at all.


Hmm, I agree with you Mark that getting good metrics is a real problem for 
the genre, but it's most difficult if you think of ARGs in isolation. If 
you think of it in comparison to a 30-second spot (be it a public service 
announcement or movie trailer... I'm talking about form, not content here) 
when they do surveys to find out how effective those 30-second spots are, 
they count it a success if the respondents know what the product/message 
is - they don't only count those people who can repeat lines from the spot 
or tell them in detail what the content consisted of.

So I don't think we should completely disregard those people who just 
follow a few links in an ARG. They're aware of what's going on, and to me 
that's a win, albeit a small one.

As to your concern that the people making ARGs have never played one... 
(or haven't played one recently) all I can do is point to other 
entertainment art forms. You may be appalled to find out how few 
television creators watch (or even like) televsion. Book authors are 
always struggeling to find time to read books.

This isn't an unusual conundrum for creators of any medium. We do our best 
to keep up with what our peers are doing, but creative endeavors often 
consume our lives.

Just defending the lurkers, I guess.

Wendy Despain
quantumcontent.com