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ARG article - Escapist Magazine
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novab
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 		ARG article - Escapist Magazine
(The bees were not my idea)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_128/2730-Where-to-From-Here

Enjoy and happy holidays!
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 10:37 am
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FLmutant
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 		I take it from your sub-heading that you might be the author of the piece. It's been generating some interesting criticism around some circles today as the next example of the rather rough coverage the genre has been getting.

It also continues this interesting trend among critics of the genre:

from the article wrote:
In these new games the product being advertised isn't a movie or a car - it's simply knowledge.


You (if this is your article) aren't the only one using that phrase in comparisons, Alice made a similar comment recently:

Wonderlandblog wrote:
ARGs are hard to describe. I was asked today whether I thought there would be a backlash against ARGs, or whether they were overhyped. "Depends how you define an ARG", I said: if we're taking multi-technological interactive entertainment (or interactive education), the goalposts are nice and far apart. But if we're talking short, buzz-focused stunt-based stuff designed to promote a car sale, or a movie launch, then I think there'll inevitably be a backlash of some sort, because there seems to be a lot of repetitive behaviour going on at the moment.


It is interesting, from a memetic standpoint, to try to deconstruct what that meme tells us about what some of the writers are rejecting or rebelling against. There haven't been that many ARGs or ARG developers to have work too hard to unpack who "cars and movies" describes as developers or games. I can think of several recent examples of movie "extentions" (like Dark Knight and Cloverfield), but can't think of a single car ARG ... was the Stove campaign from 2 years ago the last car ARG (even though it was really about ethanol education and not "advertising a car"?

Anything you can do to unpack that further for us, help the community understand better the core of that rejection and the preference for say ARGs that push a viewpoint or attempt to turn volunteer labor into charitible donation engines (both of which have also been traditional needs of businesses met with such tools a press releases and call centers in the past ... I have higher hopes than call center for the genre.)

Appreciate the opportunity to actually hear from the author rather than read people's complaints of the coverage, and appreciate it when writers choose to spend any time researching ARGs at all.

PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 12:31 pm
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novab
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Joined: 24 Aug 2005
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FLmutant wrote:
I take it from your sub-heading that you might be the author of the piece. It's been generating some interesting criticism around some circles today as the next example of the rather rough coverage the genre has been getting.

It also continues this interesting trend among critics of the genre:

from the article wrote:
In these new games the product being advertised isn't a movie or a car - it's simply knowledge.


You (if this is your article) aren't the only one using that phrase in comparisons, Alice made a similar comment recently:

Wonderlandblog wrote:
ARGs are hard to describe. I was asked today whether I thought there would be a backlash against ARGs, or whether they were overhyped. "Depends how you define an ARG", I said: if we're taking multi-technological interactive entertainment (or interactive education), the goalposts are nice and far apart. But if we're talking short, buzz-focused stunt-based stuff designed to promote a car sale, or a movie launch, then I think there'll inevitably be a backlash of some sort, because there seems to be a lot of repetitive behaviour going on at the moment.


It is interesting, from a memetic standpoint, to try to deconstruct what that meme tells us about what some of the writers are rejecting or rebelling against. There haven't been that many ARGs or ARG developers to have work too hard to unpack who "cars and movies" describes as developers or games. I can think of several recent examples of movie "extentions" (like Dark Knight and Cloverfield), but can't think of a single car ARG ... was the Stove campaign from 2 years ago the last car ARG (even though it was really about ethanol education and not "advertising a car"?

Anything you can do to unpack that further for us, help the community understand better the core of that rejection and the preference for say ARGs that push a viewpoint or attempt to turn volunteer labor into charitible donation engines (both of which have also been traditional needs of businesses met with such tools a press releases and call centers in the past ... I have higher hopes than call center for the genre.)

Appreciate the opportunity to actually hear from the author rather than read people's complaints of the coverage, and appreciate it when writers choose to spend any time researching ARGs at all.


Yes, I'm the author (hi!).

It is rather interesting to see that phrase make the rounds, as the point of origin is a statement I made in the ARG SIG whitepaper last year. Smile

I'm all for criticism that leads to constructive discussion on how the press can more accurately be involved in discussing the genre - as this isn't my first article about ARGs, I daresay it won't likely be the last.

It's good to get people talking about these things.
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:15 pm
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FLmutant
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novab wrote:
It is rather interesting to see that phrase make the rounds, as the point of origin is a statement I made in the ARG SIG whitepaper last year. Smile


Great to meet you, I see you jumping in on the ARG-SIG discussion as as well. I had no idea, though, that I had just bumped into the origin of the meme.

Two immediate questions come to mind. What context did you use that phrase in within the whitepaper in 2006? And what made you use the same turn of phrase again a year later?

The broader question I wonder about is how the perception of ARG advocates advancing that philosophy might impact places like Wired (where DK is described as a "marketing" using "hoax sites" and "real world games") -- it is a movie marketing launch, after all.

The answers might even help to reduce the meme. Thanks for sticking around and talking about this. You can ask people, I rarely ever bite.

PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:51 pm
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novab
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 		What I originally had in mind was Audi's Art of the Heist. The more recent use is designed to be a generic example, illustrating the wide range of promotions that have taken place via ARGs. By no means do I want to imply those are the only sort of promotions taking place or have taken place (there's really just not room to list them all); honestly it's just an almost too tidy summary of things (and in the later use, in an article that isn't very long indeed). Context is really rather important. When people say these sort of things, they really need more room to expand on everything else that ARGs can do/be. If someone's just taking that short phrase and buzzing it around (snappy as it is), it doesn't present the whole picture.

I would hope that any ARG advocate (I seem to have fallen into this category, although I'm a bit more academic in approach I suspect) in the press takes the time to dig a bit deeper, as there seems to be a bit of divide between a large portion of the press' perception of ARGs and the community/industry's perceptions.
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 5:15 pm
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FLmutant
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novab wrote:
What I originally had in mind was Audi's Art of the Heist. The more recent use is designed to be a generic example, illustrating the wide range of promotions that have taken place via ARGs.


You flatter me by trying to say my work is now a generic example. So by car you were thinking of Art of the Heist. And by car and movie you were meaning "the kinds of things famously marketed by ARGs". Is it fair to say that when you said "movie" you were thinking of The Beast?

So when you said "In these new games the product being advertised isn't a movie or a car - it's simply knowledge" recently you were trying to say "These new games aren't trying to sell the kinds of things famously marketed by ARGs?" And when you used it a year ago, you meant it as "things like The Beast and The Art of the Heist?"

You don't happen to have that quote from the whitepaper handy, do you? I find a car match in the "risk management" section (about Heist, but not the phrase you are describing) ... but nothing else. To many hits on "movie" to find it. Just interested in the context that you used that phrase which maybe meant "things like The Beast and the Art of the Heist" to you a year ago.

Memetic archeology is fun. You never know what you'll find next. Thanks for playing along.

PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 8:27 pm
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catherwood
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FLmutant wrote:
There haven't been that many ARGs or ARG developers to have work too hard to unpack who "cars and movies" describes as developers or games. I can think of several recent examples of movie "extentions" (like Dark Knight and Cloverfield), but can't think of a single car ARG ... was the Stove campaign from 2 years ago the last car ARG (even though it was really about ethanol education and not "advertising a car"?


Older car promo ARG = :k: or "that BMW game" (or was it just a puzzle trail? clues were in real places, like a coffee shop...)

Newer car promo "thing" = that Motorati island in Second Life (I thought it was mentioned in passing here, but I couldn't find any threads with a search)

And my favorite use of an ARG/extended reality/ TV show tie-in to promote a car = Push, NV -- in which they had a Toyota dealership advert in the Push Times online newspaper, as well as Toyota TV commercials which contained a clue (a phone number?) which was used in the ARG/contest "thing"

PostPosted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 11:51 pm
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imbri
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catherwood wrote:
Older car promo ARG = :k: or "that BMW game" (or was it just a puzzle trail? clues were in real places, like a coffee shop...)


We called it "Uncap the Ride" and it was a series of puzzles that were attached to "the subpot series" of BMW Films that led to a couple phone numbers and a final scavenger hunt in Los Vegas. Which is where, iirc, Steve & Kona first met. Very much ARG-like but more a puzzle trail than an interactive narrative.

IMO, BWM is on the top of the heap when it comes to advertising. They go for cool and innovative ad type things to help maintain a cool and innovative brand. Or something like that.

I can't be sure, but I would think that BMWs film series is probably one of the key bits and pieces that got Audi interested in doing Art of the Heist. BMW might have brought short films to the internets but Audi was going to take it to the next level with story and interaction.


Anyway, that's not what really interested me about your post. Much of the "conflict" here is perception - the way the press perceives ARGs and how that, in turn, feeds the way bloggers look at them and both of those combine to inform the general public on what ARGs are and are not.

Brian has made a point about how "movie and car" promotional ARGs are implied to be lesser because they are not promoting greater good such as WWO or education. That is a matter of judgment which, of course, comes from our society's complicated relationship with consumerism. Whether the game is promoting movies & cars or ethanol & oil, it is still about creating awareness. And, not to derail completely, but I've often wondered if people would have the same positive view of WWO if the game was talking about armageddon from a religious point of view and, instead of asking players to talk about how oil was impacting their life but, instead, how their religious beliefs were being tested and how they were going to "save" their friends and family. Same game. Still as good?

What's also interesting, from a perception point of view, is that when mentioned that he couldn't think of an example of a car ARG more recent than Stove from 2 years ago, Motorati Island in Second Life was brought up. If we are bringing up promotions in virtual worlds (and Pontiac is not the only car company to use Second Life), why should we be surprised when the press often gets "alternate reality gaming" and "augmented reality games" and "virtual worlds" mixed up and confused? We're so often quick to judge them for doing this, yet do things like this help them get it straight? When ARGN covers kinda ARGlike things but not really but it's a pretty cool viral promotion thing, what message is it sending the press who probably look to them for some direction?

Quote:
And my favorite use of an ARG/extended reality/ TV show tie-in to promote a car = Push, NV -- in which they had a Toyota dealership advert in the Push Times online newspaper, as well as Toyota TV commercials which contained a clue (a phone number?) which was used in the ARG/contest "thing"


From an in-game advertising point of view, I think Push hit it perfectly. Not just with Toyota, but in getting Sprint to add the Push, NV location to its website and provide little video and story clips from Push residents - brilliant and made Push a million times more "real" to me. It was far superior to how The Lost Experience handled their sponsors just a year or two later. That sublymonal page? Awful! There's a difference here, though. These were sponsors of a television property. The games were created to support the television property (primary) and the sponsors (secondary) - they were experiments in playing with new media and ways in which old media could continue to be supported by sponsors.

Which is, in and of itself, interesting. ARGs have been used, primarily, to promote a single product as a part of a larger advertising campaign. When television first started, that was also the case. "Soap Operas" as a name are a living legacy of this. Eventually, the media property and advertising thirst to get involved were strong enough that it made more economic sense for the shows to support multiple advertisers. It's really interesting to look at games such as Push and Lost to see how they have handled that and what works and what doesn't. Also interesting is that the press covers those "extended realities" very differently than they do a "promotional arg."

With the overall dissatisfaction of the recent coverage, I do wonder what it is that we can do to help them out. I certainly don't think that there is anything malicious about the coverage, but there is a lot to look through and consider when it comes to these experiences. Is there a way that we can simplify this for them while pointing them to the more interesting things going on (and not just games but things like trends)?

PostPosted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:35 am
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FLmutant
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 		Brooke, so much good stuff in your post. This part really struck me.

imbri wrote:
We're so often quick to judge them for doing this, yet do things like this help them get it straight? When ARGN covers kinda ARGlike things but not really but it's a pretty cool viral promotion thing, what message is it sending the press who probably look to them for some direction?


Thanks for being brave enough to raise this point too, Brooke. When I'm thinking about the role of the press in this, ARGN is among the press in my mind (it is just that research is rarely the issue with ARGN coverage.) I'm not into telling ARGN what they should write anymore than I'm advocating that for any of the other press outlets, but the policies say:

Quote:
ARGNet is an independent portal designed to provide news and information about alternate reality games. Our articles are motivated by a desire to inform gamers and the general public at large.


And then only a little later expand that a bit by adding:

Quote:
We have made a conscious choice to focus on alternate reality games, although we may also cover related topics we feel may be of interest to our readers.


It's a fair discussion, IMHO, to wonder whether not the last year's worth of coverage there sends the message to "gamers and the general public at large" that there is a difference between ARGs and virals. Some of the coverage, while excellent, seemed like it belonged more on a viral news site (Ditch Witch? News about vaporware ad agency projects? ) Meanwhile, Sammeeeees 2 (IMHO the best ARG of the year) got one article titled "In Case You Missed It... Sammeeeees 2!" posted after it closed.

Everyone here knows I love ARGN, but it does help to create the environment that makes it easier for other press writers to get it more wrong. Of course, it isn't ARGN's job to fix that problem. As always, this is the confluance of many factors affecting the overall press' reaction to the genre.

PostPosted: Thu Dec 20, 2007 12:14 pm
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Rekidk
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imbri wrote:
And, not to derail completely, but I've often wondered if people would have the same positive view of WWO if the game was talking about armageddon from a religious point of view and, instead of asking players to talk about how oil was impacting their life but, instead, how their religious beliefs were being tested and how they were going to "save" their friends and family. Same game. Still as good?


Bring religion into anything in the ARG world tends to really get people fired up. Remember the EverythingIsGoingToChange thing, which got a lot of flack from the community for being--essentially--viral marketing for religion.

I think that there are people who would enjoy WWO: Religious Armageddon Edition. I would probably at least check the game out. However, I know that there are a lot of people who would shun it just because it was promoting religious themes.

Or is that not what you're asking? Are you asking if the 'call-to-action' of WWO made it a better game than the average promotion? In that sense, it made it a more purposeful game, but not necessarily a better one.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:31 pm
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jamesi
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FLmutant wrote:
Everyone here knows I love ARGN, but it does help to create the environment that makes it easier for other press writers to get it more wrong.


It's pretty clear that while we at ARGNet try to make the site as great a news resource as it can be, the simple fact is that there aren't enough people contributing to the writing as there could be. We have tried to recruit writers many times over the past two years, but only a handful of volunteers step up to the challenge. This isn't a cry for help, but rather an admission of our limitations. We have a solid core of dedicated writers who do what they can, when their lives allow it, and those individuals have different interests of which they write about. One of the things we have talked about is soliciting the contributions of people playing ames as they are active, but even that takes a lot of work on our parts.

There is no simple solution to this issue, but I think it's unfair to assume that we aren't doing our damnedest to provide accurate, timely reports on games.
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 9:23 am
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FLmutant
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jamesi wrote:
There is no simple solution to this issue, but I think it's unfair to assume that we aren't doing our damnedest to provide accurate, timely reports on games.


I totally agree, and hope nothing I wrote sounded like I thought you guys weren't. I was talking about only a specific issue: the issue of the press tone about the genre, and how that is related to perceptions of "ARGs are marketing." The interesting question, though, is if someone doesn't know that there are internal pressures, might they mistake what ARGN wrote about and not wrote about as signs of what was important to community for the year?

As a publisher myself, I do actually understand the complexities of that, and know that my editorial teams have to be on constant check of that -- are we doing the best of job of covering the independent film community, even though we have extremely limited editorial resources? I'm sure you guys at ARGN ask the same questions. It's the flip side of media criticism: it's looking at yourself the way other's might who don't spend time in your newsroom (virtual or physical.)

I hope we didn't scare Nova away, though. I feel like such a dirty thread derailer now.

PostPosted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 9:48 am
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Jas0n
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FLmutant wrote:
I hope we didn't scare Nova away, though. I feel like such a dirty thread derailer now.



Nawe you're not a dirty thread derailer....

/me pours a bucket of mud on brian...

now you are Twisted Evil


Over on the SIG there's been a discussion regarding the curtain and how it effects various things between the players and the developers. What if there was an open communication between the developers and media outlets? Of course there would have to be limitations in place on what should and shouldn't be published, but the ability for media to understand more about the game than to read through the ramblings of players who don't really know what's going on.
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 5:40 pm
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vpisteve
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Jas0n wrote:
What if there was an open communication between the developers and media outlets? Of course there would have to be limitations in place on what should and shouldn't be published, but the ability for media to understand more about the game than to read through the ramblings of players who don't really know what's going on.


Honestly, I just don't see this as a problem that needs to be solved. There certainly is already plenty of access given by developers to the media, albeit the onus is definitely upon the developers to maintain/develop this based upon the needs/goals of the project.

Additionally, as far as I know, every ARG studio has plenty of detailed case study and promotional materials to let any journalist worth his/her salt get an accurate picture of how ARGs work, (this assuming that they care enough to look beyond Wikipedia).
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 6:08 pm
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novab
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FLmutant wrote:
I hope we didn't scare Nova away, though. I feel like such a dirty thread derailer now.


I think it is going to take a bit more than that, I'm just catching up over the holidays. Smile
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 11:42 am
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