[arg_discuss] is ARG just a marketing technique to the press?

[Mike Cox]

Hiya Patrick,

A number of other players and I interviewed Michael Smith after Mind Cany
abandoned plans for season 2 of Perplex City (though looking for it now that
podcast has gone AWOL along with Perplexorum closing its doors
http://tinyurl.com/2pk6v9 I'll see if I can track it down again, I think
there was some interesting information in that) and the model for season 2
was something that was discussed.  They were to change the model so that the
cards stood slightly more apart from the ARG, the backs of cards had
backstory for the ARG, but weren't directly embedded into the game as was
the case with a number of the season 1 cards.  The revenues for funding the
ARG would instead come from advertising within the game world, companies
could advertise their products and services in Perplex City.  The problem
seemed to be that whilst Mind Candy was regularly approached to make bespoke
ARGs for companies, convincing them to pay to advertise their brand within
another brand was tricky.  I remember seeing ads for the BBC on the in game
newspaper's site, though as they were also involved in Frozen Indigo Angel
that's not quite the same.

Also of relevance to recent discussions, season 2 was designed to consist of
short, replayable episodes which would have been a nice test of that
structure.

Mike

  1. Re: is ARG just a marketing technique to the press?

>      (Patrick O'Luanaigh)

>

>

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

>

> Message: 1

> Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 08:39:21 -0000

> From: "Patrick O'Luanaigh" <patrick at ndreams.com>

> Subject: Re: [arg_discuss] is ARG just a marketing technique to the

>        press?

> To: "'Discussion list of the IGDA ARG SIG'" <arg_discuss at igda.org>

> Message-ID: <000901c84b88$a6680710$51fd28d9 at nDreamsRock>

> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"

>

> RE: Ian's comments about monetization

>

> Does anyone know whether Perplex City broke even and ended up making

> profit?

> For me, this was one of the bravest and most creative ARGs I've seen so

> far,

> but I've assumed that because the team didn't go straight into a sequel,

> it

> wasn't the successful monetization that Michael Smith had hoped for. For

> me,

> selling puzzle cards at retail doesn't sound like a monetization solution

> that could support more than a few ARGs. My view is that whilst the

> majority

> of ARGs remain short, free advertiser-funded promotional vehicles (despite

> the best efforts of the creative people behind them) it's going to be hard

> to either:

>

> a) get more mainstream awareness and recognition for this exciting area

> or

> b) find a monetization model that gets players paying to play in some form

>

> The route that interests my company most is taken from the games industry,

> as demonstrated by the superb "KartRider" game from Asia, which is worth

> looking into if you haven't heard about it. It's a superb game that was

> given away for free, but makes lots of money from micro-transactions;

> selling small objects, better clothing, modifications for your kart and so

> on. The key to this was getting lots of people to play the game over and

> over again - once you have a large community playing repeatedly, then it

> seems possible to start charging them small amounts to make their

> experience

> even better. In this model, the biggest challenges seems to be creating an

> ARG that doesn't end after a month or two (not an insurmountable

> obstacle),

> and getting the funding to create the game in the first place. Anyone

> agree/disagree? Has anyone tried the micro-transaction model?

>

> Patrick, nDreams

>


-- 
http://smallstaff.blogspot.com/

mobile: (44)(0) 7814 338065
office:   (44)(0) 151 795 4576 / Lab. 4580
fax:      (44)(0) 151 795 4410