[arg_discuss] Open Source ARGs

[Brian Clark]

Mark, I think this is an engaging discussion, so if I'm vigorous in my
response it is out of that academic "testing of truth" attitude.

"... the third type of person who visit our websites; people who show up,
get confused, and never come back."

I think that needs to be taken with a grain of salt: for even typical
content websites, it is typical to lose about 1/3rd of the audience with
each subsequent click. Banner bar campaigns are typically satisfied with sub
1% click-thru rates. 

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be focused on how to engage a larger
percentage of that audience, but in general with ARGs you find you engage a
much higher percentage of the audience when you aren't actively
advertising/promoting it (as the audience that finds you tends to do more
self-selection), but see a huge increase in unique audience with a
corresponding huge decrease in stick-time and pages-read-per-user when
you're actively spending money on promotion. 

"We, in general, consistently assume and put forward the notion that
our projects are populated by giant herds of silent lurkers, when in fact
this is quite often not the case."

I think you're jumping to a conclusion there: I'm not discounting the
question, mind you, but from my data is that is universal truth. If you pick
any particular metric of engagement, you find only a small percentage
reaches that mark (for example, registering for a discussion board.) Both
Dark Knight and WWO (which you bring up) likely have that exactly same
scenario present (for example, I count as a silent lurker of DK and a
non-player-aware-of-the-project on WWO).

"Clearly ARGs make for great buzz and nice blog posts, but we still have not
decisively proven to ourselves, advertisers, or academics that we can
maintain attention on a large scale, and I believe that our eagerness to
assume that people who have seen our sites but aren't visibly playing are
probably actively lurking is a key ingredient to this problem."

Again, I think the large scale is in fact what has attracted much of the
attention to the genre, and the buzz value of it is actually a subject of
debate (for example, did the DK ARG actually create much buzz outside of the
Batman fanbase?)

Let me tackle your questions:

"1) Did you check out WWO and DK? Did you see the image of the Joker being
unlocked by page views? Did you see the WWO homepage? Did you see
photographs of the Harvey Dent street team handing out campaign stickers?"

Yes, I saw. No, I didn't participate, neither of the projects were my cup of
tea. I also didn't go see the "Sex in the City" movie or read the "Secrets
of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood". Why does any particular piece of art have to
appeal to all people?

"2) Did you actively play WWO and/or DK? Were you pulling phones out of
cakes? Were you putting in real dedicate hours blogging about your
post-petroleum life?"

Nope ... for the reasons listed above. Why should any ARG advocate feel the
need for every ARG to appeal to them, when readers of novels don't expect to
be interesting all books and viewers of movies aren't surprised they aren't
interested in all films?

"3) Did you really honestly lurk on either of these projects? I'm not
talking about following a link or two, but did you seriously lurk. Did you
read the forums with regularity, energy, and dedication? Did you make these
games a part of your life in a serious way, regardless of the casual or
hands-off nature of your participation?"

See ... now we get to what might be your logical error. I was aware of the
progress of both games, of the controversies both games created among their
player bases. If the test of "a lurker" is defined differently -- say with
the definition of "visited the sites at least once a month" than I probably
count as a lurker of both. You're asking whether I followed every twist and
turn, which to me is still much much further down the funnel of engagement
than "lurk".

"The fact is, some people lurk on ARGs, some people actively play ARGs, and
many many people think they sound interesting but don't really pay them much
attention after their first exposure. This isn't a disaster, this isn't
reason not to make them, but it is something that we need to come to terms
with."

But this is true of all art, and even most advertising. Unless you're
selling something like water or toilet paper, you have a target market. Let
me do a comparison another way -- if you won the Oscar for Best Documentary,
you'd feel like your documentary was rather successful, right? But that doc
this year made only $250,000 domestically in the box office -- which is
25,000 ticket buyers. So is a YouTube video with 250,000 viewers 10x as
successful?

I personally am not interested in making an ARG that has to appeal to
everyone, and I probably wouldn't find an ARG designed for everyone to be
particular appeal -- but then I don't watch "American Idol" and I don't read
"People" magazine and I don't listen to "Top 40" radio either.

My perspective is almost the opposite of yours, Mark. 95% of the films,
novels, songs, etc. created each year suck ... but no one thinks sucky films
means all filmmakers need to rethink the art of filmmaking. Most of that is
failure in execution, not in media concept ... and ARGs, like everything
else, need to get to the point where they evangelize that best without
having to make apologies for the rest, right?

Great conversation, hope everyone has a great weekend!


-----Original Message-----
From: arg_discuss-bounces at igda.org [mailto:arg_discuss-bounces at igda.org] On
Behalf Of Mark Heggen
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 11:16 AM
To: Discussion list of the IGDA ARG SIG
Subject: Re: [arg_discuss] Open Source ARGs

Brian, thanks so much for your responses. To your points;

"I'd argue the "classical ARG" design limitation is the same as the
"classical MMPORG" design limitation: How do you provide the constant
stimulation that the "heavy user" population wants without closing the door
of progress on the more "casual user" population?"

"I'd argue instead that the large majority of people who have any
initial contact with an ARG never start "playing" it. There is a role of
spectators among the audience of the genre."


It is common, and often helpful, to split ARG audience members into two
groups; hardcore players and causal lurkers. It is clear from any
investigation into an ARG that this split does in fact exist. For creators
of - and champions for - ARGs it is obviously exciting for us to imagine
that the thousands and thousands of people who aren't actively posting on
forums or solving puzzles, but have visited our sites, are actively lurking
and therefore taking part in the experience in a concrete and important way.
Be they fanatic participants or simply captivated audience members, we are
glad to have them take part in our work.

The problem with this optimistic interpretation of our Google Analytics
numbers is that it largely ignores the third type of person who visit our
websites; people who show up, get confused, and never come back. As creators
of this relatively new form of mediated content, we need to be more honest
moving forward about how many people really are involved in these things we
make. We, in general, consistently assume and put forward the notion that
our projects are populated by giant herds of silent lurkers, when in fact
this is quite often not the case.

I'm not saying that everyone exaggerates their participants, and there are
of course cases when big numbers of lurkers have followed a game with great
involvement, but in general I would argue that an aura of overzealous
optimism clouds an honest evaluation of the effectiveness of ARGs to capture
and then hold the attention of people in large numbers. Clearly ARGs make
for great buzz and nice blog posts, but we still have not decisively proven
to ourselves, advertisers, or academics that we can maintain attention on a
large scale, and I believe that our eagerness to assume that people who have
seen our sites but aren't visibly playing are probably actively lurking is a
key ingredient to this problem.

I'll wrap this up with an experiment. Here we are, a group of people
interested in and/or dedicated to ARGs; we took the time to sign up for this
list, and many of us do this for a living. Let's consider two titans in
recent ARG history: World Without Oil and the Dark Knight ARG. These
projects came from some of the biggest names in the ARG world (McGonigal and
42) and were high profile in execution.

So, to a room of people who are dedicated to ARGs and in reference to two of
the more visible ARGs of recent memory, let me ask three questions:

1) Did you check out WWO and DK? Did you see the image of the Joker being
unlocked by page views? Did you see the WWO homepage? Did you see
photographs of the Harvey Dent street team handing out campaign stickers?

2) Did you actively play WWO and/or DK? Were you pulling phones out of
cakes? Were you putting in real dedicate hours blogging about your
post-petroleum life?

3) Did you really honestly lurk on either of these projects? I'm not talking
about following a link or two, but did you seriously lurk. Did you read the
forums with regularity, energy, and dedication? Did you make these games a
part of your life in a serious way, regardless of the casual or hands-off
nature of your participation?

I presume a lot of us would have to answer yes to question 1 and no to 2 and
3. This is a rhetorical experiment only, so we don't actually have to all
submit our answers, but I would encourage everyone to repeat the experiment
with other groups, particularly those who are "deeply" involved with ARGs.
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.

The fact is, some people lurk on ARGs, some people actively play ARGs, and
many many people think they sound interesting but don't really pay them much
attention after their first exposure. This isn't a disaster, this isn't
reason not to make them, but it is something that we need to come to terms
with.

_Mark










>

>

> I'm not trying to diminish your point, though: I think many ARGs suffer

> that

> overcomplexity, or an inability to layer that back out into

> understandability.

>

> >A large majority of people who have any initial contact with an ARG

> >stop "playing" before long because they are unable to grasp what is

> >going on, what they should pay attention to, what is a good use of

> >their time, and so on.

>

> I'd argue instead that the large majority of people who have any initial

> contact with an ARG never start "playing" it. There is a role of

spectators

> among the audience of the genre.

>

> >The once-popular notion that ARGs are popular BECAUSE they are so hard

> >to follow has by now surely been set aside as untrue, and yet still

> >most ARGs today are in need or more clarity and less confusion.

>

> I'm not sure that was ever a popular notion: I've never for a second

> believed that "hard to follow" was what made ARGs popular. Or is your test

> for player that they understand every wrinkle?

>

>

>

> Brian

>

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