[arg_discuss] TOW: almost 8 years after the Beast, which is your favourite ARG and why?

[Mike Monello]

On 1/14/09 10:16 AM, "Andrea Phillips" <andrhia at gmail.com> wrote:


http://www.deusexmachinatio.com/deus_ex_machinatio/2009/01/wtf-is-an-arg-2009-edition.html


Nice post, Andrea, but I've got take issue with one detail and your conclusion. First, the detail: you state that Blair Witch didn't offer audience volition or puzzles, but that is not true - it's a common misunderstanding of many people who's experience of BW comes second hand, probably through reading. This is one misconception I'll be addressing soon in my series of blog articles, but for the record, Blair Witch had a great deal of audience volition. Much of the back story details of BW were fleshed out through the dialog between the BW community and ourselves. While the outcome was pre-determined (as in Choose your own adventures and many ARGs, the path we took to get there and what we created to fill out the story was informed by the community. People launched fan investigative sites and became characters in the larger BW myth, some of them even ended up in the 1 hour sci fi channel special that is part of the experience.

As for puzzles, well it did not have traditional puzzles, and I don't equate with gameplay, but we did have many game like elements in the experience, including hiding pages of Heather's hand written journal throughout the site and not making them live until the audience discovered them.

Remember that the Blair Witch community and experience existed for 15 months before the movie was released theatrically. A LOT happened in that time, and most of it has never really been documented, as there wasn't the kind of attention paid to what was happening with online entertainment that existed even a year later, when we did Freakylinks ( http://www.haxan.com/portfolio-of-past-work/ ), for example, or the year after that, when The Beast happened.

That being said, I wouldn't call Blair Witch an ARG! ;)

As for the semantics and definition issue (and I'm sorry I brought it up again), I'm not interested in redefining ARG. I agree with Brian's assessment that the definition is in place and changing the perception of it at this point is fruitless. I am interested in a broader term that embraces a larger subset of experiences.

But I disagree with you that all this discussion is just wanking. You might only be concerned with whether something is fun or not, but if you want someone to put up some money to pay you to make it, then you better be prepared to explain it, define it, and defend it from all the other definitions and buzz out there surrounding it.

Mike

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Mike Monello
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