[arg_discuss] Open Source ARGs

[Mike Monello]

I honestly do not understand your point. Are you saying that professional ARG developers don't know how many people are actually engaging in their experience? I can't speak for others, but we measure everything. I know how many unique visitors we get, how many repeat visitors, how many pages they view, how long they stay, what the bounce rate is (the people who walk by without paying attention), etc.

All of that is easily measured. And if what you are doing is marketing, you can also measure how many people you send to a corporate or retail website and often even if they make a purchase or not.

When it comes to qualitative measures - did the experience change someone's opinion pf a brand, for example, there are ways to measure, but it is not as exact as the kind of metrics above.

Are you suggesting that people are lying about their numbers? Well, everyone always puts their best foot forward, so the metrics that are touted are always the ones that make the project look most successful. That's no different than movies or book sales ("The Number One Romantic Comedy in America" for the fifth highest grossing film that week for example), or anything else.

If you are looking for a standard set of criteria to measure success, then join the entire advertising industry. The truth is, it's impossible because individual campaigns have different goals. I've got projects where some goals are simply to get people talking about something, whereas other projects are tied to direct sales. Both require different approaches and both are measure differently. If I have a campaign that nobody on this list ever heard of but has reached 1 million people and has exceeded all it's sales goals, then I've got a success. On the other side, if turning something into a worldwide cultural event is my goal, and I've only reached 1 million people, then I've got a failure.

If you are suggesting that people are lying to clients about their metrics, well then that's an ethical issue and has to be dealt with accordingly.

As for your second point, I still don't get it. Try this one:

Before I made Blair Witch with my Haxan partners, I had never experienced an ARG because there was no such thing back in 1998. I had never engaged in any kind of cross-media entertainment, nor had I engaged in any theater that breaks the boundaries between audience and spectator in such dramatic ways, but that didn't stop me from doing Blair Witch and accomplishing what I think was a successful execution of a cross media entertainment.

So again, I just don't understand your point, but I do get the Sex Pistols!

Best,

Mike

On 8/1/08 7:17 PM, "Mark Heggen" <markheggen at gmail.com> wrote:

"If they just likes the colours, that's OK, isn't it?"


Of course it is OK that people enjoy art to whatever depth and in whatever
doses they so choose. The problem emerges when the artists, and others
involved, believe that lots and lots of people are experiencing the works
when in fact this is not necessarily the case. The problem lies in the
reality gap, not simply the level of audience participation.

Imagine a studio where a team of dedicated painters spend months and months
laboring tirelessly over their paintings, working out each detail
meticulously. When they finish a painting it is placed lovingly in the front
window of a gallery below their studio, where it is largely ignored by
people walking by. As the painters hears the footsteps of the people passing
by they congratulate one another on the thousands and thousands of people
who must be enjoying their hard work, when in fact very few people took more
than a passing glance at the art.

This is not a healthy system. It isn't crime or a disaster, but it is not a
good way to reach people with your art and your message, nor is it a good
way help the painters grow in their craft. Things get even worse when the
painters attempt to convince local business owners (standing in for
advertisers in the analogy) and academics that their paintings are in fact
reaching a lot of people. If you were aware of the situation you wouldn't be
right to force the painters to stop their work, but you probably ought to
let people know what was really happening.

Regarding the Sex Pistols; the notion that the Sex Pistols started their
musical career never having HEARD a full song is preposterous. The Sex
Pistols, being active participants in a culture, were deeply steeped in a
musical history and a musical zeitgeist which influenced and shaped their
own work tremendously. Someone creating an ARG without having ever played
another ARG fully is not like someone without a traditional sculpture
education teaching themselves to sculpt; it is more like someone reading the
first half of the Wikipedia article on opera and then trying to create their
own opera. This wouldn't be unholy or apocalyptic, but it would deserve a
healthy dose of skeptical attention.

_Mark
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