[arg_discuss] Personal Influences/Antecedents

[despain at quantumcontent.com]

> It wasn't fully fleshed out and the site did have some sort of show logo

> on it that, I think, pointed back to the show's site on CBS. It was

> either Guiding Light or As the World Turns.



This is one of the quirks I ran into working with television ARGs. Many,
many of the "suits" just don't understand how people will make the
connection between the online materials and the show unless a logo shows
up somwhere on the site (preferably on every. single. page.)

There are also legal issues involved. But I'm pleased to see more shows
getting away from this lately. At least now we can point to successful
shows who have done online extensions without branding them liberally.

At one point I worked on a TV show which had a tie-in novel come out while
we were mid-ARG and the legal agreements for the tie-in novel stipulated
certain logos etc. always had to be used whenever the book was mentioned
in relation to the show.

To make this legally stipulated requirements fit the TINAG principle, we
created a fictional website for an existing company (the publisher, Tor
Books). That was fun. It had better design than their real site and more
than one user unaware of the ARG thought ours was the real thing (because
the other one looked fake to them).

We did this with TOR completely aware of our activities, of course.


Wendy Despain
quantumcontent.com