[arg_discuss] Open Source ARGs

[Mike Monello]

I don't believe ARGs are mature enough to warrant some kind of study before diving in and making your own. All of us have brought our various experiences from other media to bear on our past and current work without having experienced or studied ARGs in the past, so why should that be a requirement now?

10 years from now, we may start to get experiences from people who have grown up with ARGs, steeped in its past and aware of what came before, but until then we should celebrate the wild west environment we have today, the opportunity for crazy experimentation, the chance to push the definition beyond the confines imposed on it by others.

Five years ago, the word "puzzle" would have appeared in any definition of ARG - now, the word doesn't even appear on the "What is an ARG" page of Argology!

It's punk rock, man! All of us old geezers suck - form your band and destroy it all!


:)


-Mike

On 8/1/08 12:38 PM, "Mark Heggen" <markheggen at gmail.com> wrote:

As for the fact that many puppet-masters were never really players, I would
say that it is quite a different situation than we find in other forms of
mediation. In ARGs, we have situations where people are generating these
things having NEVER actually played one fully. Never ever. Even the
overworked author who complains of not being able to find time to read HAS
in fact read a great deal over their lives. Imagine if your friend decided
that they were going to start writing romance novels professionally, but the
closest they had even come to experiencing other romance novels was browsing
their covers in Borders. Imagine buying a board game, and then later
learning that the designer of that game had really never played a full game
of ANY board game in their entire life. Imagine writing a graphic novel, but
not being interested enough in other graphic novels to have ever read one
all the way through. Many of the grassroots games being put out today are
frighteningly similar to the above scenarios, which to me is a troubling
fact. This isn't proof of glorious independence or beautiful DIY innovation,
but more likely proof of dangerous amounts of johnny-come-lately flash and
hype without a solid base of craft, consideration, or aesthetic depth. Of
course anyone who wants to try their hand at puppet mastery should give it a
go, but it seems strange that so few people are concerned that they never
did their homework.


---
Mike Monello
Partner, Campfire
http://www.campfirenyc.com