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Salier80 · Guest

Statement of costs for an ARG?

**Posted:** Tue Dec 01, 2009 11:03 am

Salier80 · Guest

seriously? nobody?

**Posted:** Wed Dec 02, 2009 8:54 am

FLmutant

Too many variables: no two ARGs spend money on the same kinds of things.

**Posted:** Wed Dec 02, 2009 11:06 am

Salier80 · Guest

Totally right. Still a few drafts for comparison would be nice.

**Posted:** Wed Dec 02, 2009 1:45 pm

FLmutant

Well, since all you really gave us to go on was "Germany" and a small budget range ... I guess no one feels like they've got a budget that would be easy for you to compare. Even small details like scale (national? in one city?), duration (a week? a month? three months?) and forms (live events? web? television?) might get you more responses.

Or, you might be better off asking some German companies for budgets of comparable things (either advertising bids or production bids of whatever type of relationship you're involved in) and make sure you're hitting all the expected requirements for that category (for example, are you responsible for liability and required to carry insurance riders?) Each of those disciplines have far more established budgetary best practices (which differ with industry and country) than ARG development does.

**Posted:** Thu Dec 03, 2009 8:10 am

Salier80 · Guest

The Arg will run for about 3-5 month (not sure yet), national and will be on web live event base with a few side trips to radio and newspaper ads.

Of course u are right and I didn't only ask here. Still I hoped for a bit input through this forum.

**Posted:** Thu Dec 03, 2009 2:46 pm

FLmutant

You'd have gotten more responses if you were a registered member: then people could have messaged you directly.

For the duration and scope you've described, you're working with a pretty tight budget (in the grassroots category.) So you're unlikely to find much to compare it to: are you planning on the creative labor being volunteer and that budget is for just mechanics of production?

**Posted:** Thu Dec 03, 2009 4:55 pm

Salier80 · Kilroy Joined: 05 Dec 2009 Posts: 1

Sorry didn't see your post.

Have registered right away and yes u're right.
I have a staff of about 8 people for the core team and a bunch of guys for a little additional work (like giving them ONE NPC to play but no additional work or knowledge). All of them are eager to work, but most of them have no ARG experience even if a most of them played P&P RPG before.
I myself made 2 grassroots (budget around 200EUR) before and had a ARG seminar in the university. So well I am not so much of a pro either.
We all are aware that this is more like a hobby than work for money Wink

So besides a drink for free party for the core team as our private final we won't get any money.

Budget will be more or less exact 3000 Dollar, just for clarification.

**Posted:** Sat Dec 05, 2009 5:26 am

FLmutant

So I realize this isn't exact what you were asking, but my advice would be to keep the duration short -- long hauls with volunteer teams can be challenging.

Find out what kind of insurance you might need as a producer, especially if you're doing live events. It isn't all that expensive (in the US, a few hundreds of dollars a year for $1M in liability protection.) If you're not doing live events, you might be okay without this (but even reserving parks in US frequently requires proving you have liability insurance.)

Take every other penny and put it into things that the audience will see with production value. Make sure at least half of that also has audience building in mind (IG ads, for example) as you'll need fuel to build scale.

**Posted:** Mon Dec 07, 2009 11:04 am