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

[Steve Peters]

Strong Disagree! :)

Year Zero for Nine Inch Nails and Why So Serious for The Dark Knight are, I
daresay, just two examples of very recent "ARGs" that "worked," based on
just about any traditional metrics (even though quantifying what the *real*
measure of success is for any given ARG is a topic for another day).

When they *don't* work (promotional ARGs, that is) is when the advertising
cart gets put before the creative horse. When clients insist on using
traditional metrics and methodologies over good storytelling and just plain
fun. It then becomes tantamount to telling a filmmaker to just work hard on
the trailer for his film, not the film itself, since it's all about creating
buzz and getting butts in theater seats, not the experience once they're
there.

It is indeed possible to build an "ARG" experience that is both satisfying
and fun, yet doesn't require a hardcore level of intense engagement from all
of its participants; that has a low barrier to entry while still providing a
non-watered-down experience. Build an experience that's rich and rewarding
and made with care, craftsmanship and respect for those experiencing it, and
just watch what happens. You won't need any Digg This buttons, that's for
sure.

Like Paul, ARGs (or *whatever* we call them individually) aren't dead. Those
of us who make them and shape them and morph them and grow them know that
for a fact. It's just our responsibility to be able to quantify and
communicate what it is that they are, despite them not being quite what they
were six months ago, whatever the heck that was. :)

We're still at Kitty Hawk, guys. And despite the fact that future
experiences will have fuselages of carbon fiber and on-board wifi and free
drinks instead of two propellers and fabric wings...they'll still fly!

And someday soon we'll be able to found our own airlines that don't depend
on us plastering billboards on the sides of the jets to pay for the fuel! :)


On 1/14/09 9:36 AM, "mj williams" <mj_williams at mac.com> wrote:


> Strong Agree!

> As someone whose worked for both digital ad agencies as a creative

> seeking to sell games in, and as a producer/designer for a

> broadcaster, I'm afraid to say something of a consensus has emerged.

> ARGs - as recent history has defined them - aren't right; that they

> haven't worked. That, dare I say it, they're dead...

> 

> You know, I wonder if ARGs have served their purpose. Maybe they've

> just been something really interesting on the way?

>   They've introduced the idea of a very explicit sort of game play,

> that requires high engagement from its participants and unites

> gameplay and storyteling in a whole new way, but they really aren't

> for everyone. They've been part of an explosion of how and where and

> why we play games and given rise to some sterling moments, but is it

> maybe a onetime only?

> On the plus side, what anyone holding a jar with money in it now knows

> is that games can mean anything - not that you can just badge a

> penguin-lobbing game clone with your brand and say you made a game.

> There is so much more you can do.

> 

> Something Andrea said really cut through: the fact that she has

> struggled to play any ARG since the Beast clairifed my own experience:

> I spent one afternoon absolutely lost, completely *in heaven*,

> wandering through the BWP. The way people talk about the Beast (which

> I missed) It sounds like the same thing: we all had one singularly

> powerful opening experience into the idea of game-and-story in

> combination.

> Anything I've engaged with since just hasn't done it in the same way,

> sad to say (but props for trying to We tell stories, World without Oil

> and Cloverfield)

> 

> So maybe it was all about seeing the idea for the first time and

> comprehending how much fun play, undefined, can be.

> 

> 

> 

> 

> --

> 

> mj williams

> | www.bushofgoats.com

> | mj_williams at mac.com

> | +44(0)7971 004821

> 

> 

>