[arg_discuss] What if ARGs had a real festival?

[Brooke Thompson]

In my mind, it would look something like this...

A series of presentations and case studies - some post-mortems, some  
introductions. Running along side this or, perhaps, adjacent to it,  
would be a lot of activities. Some would be fairly stand-alone sorts  
of things like the Hidden Park game or other Augmented Reality type  
things. Others would be ongoing types of things - like local  
geocaches. Still others might be live events for currently running  
campaigns such as we've seen happen at comic-con (or using a different  
TDK/WSS example, there could be a political rally for Harvey Dent). I  
think it would be great to reach out to people working in the urban  
gaming area, as well - maybe get a city-wide scavenger hunt or two  
going on. There may be deeper character interactions, similar to what  
John mentioned (or akin to the activities we've done in Eldritch where  
players spend an extended amount of time with characters - who, funny  
he should mention LARPs, we've often cast out of LARP troupes).

It would be a large mix of games and experiences. Some things would be  
time specific and some might require sign-up. These things could be  
registered for online and at some sort of ARG HQ which would also have  
some breakout areas for impromptu presentations and whatnots. All of  
this would be documented on some sort of big board and/or website so  
people have an idea of what's going on when & where. The trick, in my  
opinion, is to have a wide variety of experiences without having so  
many that it's complete chaos. And, of course, some "control" by  
listing official events (because you just know some would want it to  
appear less "scripted" and want to be off the grid - that's ok, but if  
too many do it, it gets confusing and was this for game x or game y).

Oh! and of course there has to be a huge crazy party. Maybe with some  
costuming. Possibly with some roaming characters. Definitely with some  
insane electronic augmented music sort of something or other.

(admittedly, I have been thinking about this a lot lately because of  
ARGFest 2010 planning... hinthint... keep the ideas rolling ;))







On Sep 2, 2009, at 3:51 PM, John Evans wrote:

> So people would attend this event, interact with story characters,  

> interact with each other, solve puzzles...Basically it sounds like  

> Live Action Roleplaying without character sheets.  That's not a  

> criticism, of course, I'm all for LARPing.



> -----Original Message-----

>> From: Michael Monello <mmonello at campfirenyc.com>

>>

>> What if ARGs had a festival, ala Fringe Fest or Come Out and Play,  

>> where you could actually go and have ARG or ARG-like experiences?  

>> What would that look like and how would it work?