FWIW
My observation is that ARG's can undermine our (the general public's) ability to discern Truth and Sincere Intent from playful deception. Or malevolent deception for that matter. Here's an example--
Fwd: Sarah Palin and the Africa comment
The ability to see the truth has HUGE value, I hate to see it watered down by us as we, with sincerely good intent, break down the walls of what does and doesn't count as a game.
On the other hand, I find myself deeply annoyed by sincere, truthful, enlightened people who can't roll with a joke.
So, 'tis a puzzlement.
I suppose that it will end up thus: The currency of the Internet will not be information, but information sorting, which is based on a mix of humor and trustworthiness, which in turn is based on character.
It's an economy of personality.
--The Mighty Fat Man
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Olivier Lejade (http://www.lejade.org/) said, playfully:
Please define "Truth".
--------------------------------
I can't, but I think we can rule out the following:
"A scientifically disprovable thing which was made up by an individual with the primary intention of achieving financial gain or a feeling of superiority, rationalized as 'fun' or 'play,' by deceiving people."
Now, if the dude happens to accidentally luck into The Truth by doing that, then I owe you ten bucks, which I will happily pay.
At George's request, my reply from elsewhere:
I think that ARGs as they have currently become known are an oddity that will disappear pretty quickly, even now is dying. In particular I'm referring to the ARG as promotional tool for some other product - I have no hard figures to back this up, but it sure seemed like the user interest and size curve going from The Beast through I Love Bees and The Gun and so on kept getting smaller. The novelty of The Beast and the nice tie-in with its film (although The Game might have been better still) helped a lot in generating interest. But I do think that many of the elements of ARGs will find use, particularly the real-world space tie-ins, as iPhone and iPhone-like cell phones become widespread. When many people have big touch screen phones with good GPS capabilities and cameras, all sorts of gamelike activities become possible. In the serious game space we're really looking into this, and I expect that at some point a lot of on-the-job training will be done with phones and software that blends ARG qualities with other serious game and eLearning techniques.
my .02, having wrestled with similar questions regarding online social identity (which can be quite fluid) for years: all social identity is plastic, really, it's always been something that changes with circumstance (ie., the next big trend), only until recently that's been hidden under the pressure of consistent input from our peers about who we are and who we should be... which is mostly a good thing, it keeps us all operating out of the same play-book, as it were...
But the world is all a stage, and the play's the thing... learning that we have more freedom to experiment with who we are, and how we present ourselves, is, I think, ultimately a Very Good Thing (and I think it's what's happening anyway, so we get to learn to "role" with it - sorry, couldn't help myself...)
Similarly with ARGs... we live in a world where "reality" is often mixed up in "play"... the more we play with it, the more we learn to be good players?
Really sorry all, it just came out that way.
I have always enjoyed ARGs *more* when I was pretty sure that something "designed" was afoot. Maybe that says something more about me than about the genre, but I'm not at all interested in chasing non-existent rabbits. It's probably why I don't pay a lot of attention to the growing opus of Lee Harvey Oswald/Jack Ruby slashfic out there. If somebody is f-ing with me, I want to know that this mysterious someone has a clue about pacing, narrative, design and discovery. So, yeah, let me in on the fact that there is a woman behind the curtain. The fun is discovering what she is wearing, and which levers she has pulled. I'm OK stumbling into an ARG, but I'd like to know pretty quickly that that's where I am - so I can go make popcorn.
The exception to this is SETI@home. Maybe my favorite ARG - but the key is that I don't have to do anything to play other than installing a client that may or may not be doing anything other than taking my CPU cycles.
The truth is out there.
Hi George,
Please define "Truth".
Sincerly playful,
Olivier.
Disclaimer: ARGs are one of the things that pay my bills - I do this kind of thing for a living - so my point of view may be skewed.
The gadfly in me doesn't think it's a bad thing to remind the mainstream press that just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean it's true, and maybe they should check a source now and then.
The ARG developer in me has been contemplating this problem for years now and my current thinking is that the "surfed in from the outside by accident" method of pulling people into your ARG is bad game design. I think people need to explicitly agree to play along or know what they're observing. I'm not the only one.
So I think the problem will sort itself out over time. (Even if it requires some ARG makers spending time in jail for fraud at some point.)