The ARG is…
There is a recurring meme in the ARG community… what in the heck is “Alternate Reality Gaming”?!
Does the term adequately describe what we do? Is it approachable? What does it mean? Does it mean anything anymore? Should we just kill it? This conversation has been going on since, at least, 2004. It will probably continue until 2024 and maybe even to 2424. It comes and it goes, sure. But it always seems to resurface.
Most recently, it resurfaced as a potential panel for SXSW: The ARG is Dead
Which, humorously, provoked someone on twitter to ask: How can I make an “‘Args are dead’ is dead” panel at SXSW?
But, the thing is, the panel didn’t provoke laughter from me. It provoked anger and frustration. Between the venue and the description, I was suddenly very upset about a topic that I actually tend to enjoy discussing and a concept that I’ve always thought would be fun.. a funeral for ARGs so that we can have some sort of rebirth and reclaim the phrase in our own way.
hmmm…. I’m getting ahead of myself.
The panel description is: Following a New Orleans funeral procession to the Convention Center, join a collection of pioneers from the alternate reality game movement as they deliver their eulogies to a label long past its prime. Share in the remembrance of what ARGs were, celebrate what they achieved, and help us provide comfort to ARG’s numerous children and extended family that survive its passing. Funeral attire recommended, but not required.
The idea of having a funeral has been floating around for a couple years now. I’ll give credit for the idea to Brian Clark and Mike Monello, but I don’t know if that’s completely accurate. And it’s been discussed by others on and off over the years. It seems to have a life of its own, seriously. And, as such, I’m sure that more than a few of us have our own thoughts and ideas of what this could ultimately be.
My ARG Funeral always took place at ARGFest where the community could celebrate the life and history of ARGs together before some grand rebirth. Funerals, after all, are for friends and family. Strangers are welcome, of course, but they’re always the outsider who isn’t sharing in the remembrance as much as they are hearing stories about someone they may have known of but really didn’t know. So, I have always seen the ARG Funeral taking place at ARGFest which is an annual gathering of ARG enthusiasts. Of course, I have grand visions for what happens then and proposed all sorts of craziness but then held back out of respect to Dave Szulborski, who passed away earlier this year.
So, for me, it was always about the community and, more, it was always about reclaiming and reinvigorating the term. Oh, there are practical reasons for this – not the least of which is that so many community resources are named Alternate Reality Game X. And there are emotional reasons – the term was coined by Sean Stacey (SpaceBass) for the Lockjaw Trail which means, on some twisted level, that I created the first Alternate Reality Game (I don’t believe that, but emotionally, I am very close to the term). But it is also because in this strange quest to be mainstream we are finally at a point with ARG that it can be mentioned in an article without an immediate and confusing definition. It often still is, but there is also an assumption that people (real, general, everyday people!) know what ARGs are or can easily find out. We are on some sort of tipping point of the ARG phrase being known by a mass audience so now is, in my opinion, the perfect time to give it life.
And the community. The funeral was, in my mind, never for SXSW where it seems like a gimmick for people just getting to know and understand Alternate Reality Games only to be told that they shouldn’t call them that. It was for the community who has been caring for ARGs for years. The community which the panel description claims doesn’t even know how to define ARGs, that they’ve stopped trying to define them. No, the panel is not for “that community” because they will be discussing what it means for “that community” to be creating in a post-ARG era (and sadly, you know, that community is probably to stupid to be post-arg because they can’t even figure out what ARG).
The truth of the matter is that the ARG Community that I am a part of hasn’t stopped trying to describe and understand ARGs. In fact, we touched on the subject just this weekend as we were discussing the future of ARGFest (which, I suppose, would have to be Post-ARG era Fest if the panel has its way). I heard similar conversations about ARG and what they mean at ARGFest. It wasn’t just the designer & developer types talking about it and the way they pitch them to clients – it was players talking about what ARGs mean to them and the qualities that they feel are important to the games they enjoy.
See, the thing is, it’s not that we have given up talking about it, it’s that we can’t get enough of talking about it. Like any community of enthusiasts, we have definition issues. We’ve all heard the example of Eskimos and their 40 words for snow. Or film school students debating the differences between videos, movies, flims, and cinema. And, so, it seems as if taking this debate which is somewhat tired for those in the ARG Community to the broader interactive community is like airing our dirty laundry. Or, perhaps it’s a desire to say “hey! look at us! we’re as cool as you! we can debate these subtle differences just like the big kids!”
I realize that I am reading a lot into very few words. But the panel proposal, just feels wrong to me. It’s for the wrong audience. About the wrong topic. Sending the wrong message.
But, perhaps, that’s what will make it a good choice. It’s got at least one person upset and it’s got a gimmick. And, I’m sure, they’ll use this to show how ARGs are all about the gimmicky events and controversy which is why, ironically, the ARG is dead.
Note: The panel is organized by Dee Cook & Brian Clark. I adore them both. They are great people who are very intelligent and smart. I know I’m fairly harsh (or, at least, wordy) here, but at the end of the day it’s nothing. And, honestly, I kinda wish it was the end of the day and we could head out for beers where we probably wouldn’t agree on this but would definitely agree that we love what we do and the community of people that surrounds it.
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I can’t even begin to address the scope of the criticisms you raise here, Brooke. Some of it feels like sour grapes, some of it feels like some kind of projection, and part of it is differences in opinion on what conversations are good for the art.
In my mind, SXSW is exactly the place to have exactly this kind of conversation with these kinds of people. It is a way to raise issues about digital creation and the variety of forms that are “ARGish” and the issues of why people cling to one label or another. It’s aimed at the people who think they know what an ARG is already (which is why it is an “intermediate” panel.)
It does certainly post sarcastic fun at the growing use of ARG by the press and digital gurus to describe things that most of us wouldn’t have called ARGs. To me, the diversity of forms is a good thing for digital storytelling and thus a good thing for ARGs.
But when it comes right down to it, your argument seems to be that SXSW isn’t the right place to have those kinds of discussions. I think it is, I think it’s a broader collection of similar practitioners than ARGfest assembles. Heck, transmedia and the wrinkles of this kind of stuff is what they are talking about at places like DIY Days too.
It’s about challening the cliche with the people who are most likely to form the cliche, not the Eskimos debating snow.
But … ouch! A pretty bitter critique of an abstract, Brooke. Ivan’s involved in it too (but I guess you don’t love him), and Evan had a hand in it as well. We’re all people you know, Brooke, but I don’t recognize that in your critique.
Oh, and remember to vote for us in the panel picker … especially if you like gimmicks and controversy!
I didn’t intentionally leave out Evan or Ivan. I was only going on the information that I was given by Dee. I don’t know Ivan, personally, though have only heard amazing things and you know I have the utmost respect for Evan. This wasn’t a personal thing.
I’m sorry that you see this as sour grapes and projection. I saw it as opening the conversation.
Girls Girls… you’re both pretty!
Now quit with the poking and the name calling and get with the Eldritch making!
Ha!
Yes, Ma’am
hey Brook & Brian – i’m going to jump in on this, since it also bumped me when i read about the panel as well. i thought about it last night and tried to examine why i was having an emotional response to it… rather than just laughing and rolling with it. and i think the reason this panel bumps me sits with the title – it begins with the declaration “the arg is dead” and then the theatrics of the funeral. believe me, i get what the event means for those putting on the panel, but i don’t really believe that those outside the small arg community will see it that way. (even those who think the understand args) my fear is that the funeral will be perceived, by those outside our in-crowd, as our way of turning our backs on the history of our young genre – like we want to bury it for some reason rather than celebrate it as a new baby genre that needs our care. perhaps the difference in our opinions of how to present the arg conversation is like different opinions about the correct way to parent. i truly can’t say you’re wrong. i can only say it does bump me and it wouldn’t be my choice for presenting a panel that i believe is about examining args strengths and flaws in order to move the genre forward.
Brooke, you’re missing my points, perhaps the short-form environment of comments on your essay hog-ties me. I didn’t think you left out Evan and Ivan … I was trying to point out that you know Evan, Ivan, Dee and I (so it’s surprising you’d think any of us would put on the straw man panel you suggest in your essay.) That’s what I meant by the shortcut phrase “projection”. Sorry if “sour grapes” as a shortcut for the more complex “comparing our panel proposal to ‘My ARG Funeral’ that you talk about extensively in your essay” tweaked you. I assumed from the setup that we were having a more thick skinned discussion than that.
Rhetorically, you’re trapping me. I don’t know how to engage in meaningful conversation comparing “your ARG funeral” with the strawman assumptions of what “this ARG funeral” would play out as. I’m left only to make the proactive case that this isn’t your ARG funeral, but it also isn’t the event you paint it to be. Is there some other conversation you imagined this producing?
Jan, I get your reaction to the title. Perhaps the difference here is “the label ARG” versus “the baby genre of art, much of which gets labeled ARG”. I think that’s a core theme of what the panel would be exploring. Panels evangelizing ARGs have been going on at SXSW for years, and as Brooke’s other blog post points out there’s tons of other proposals more similar to that. This is a vehicle for telling the story of that heritage, granted with a provocative setup, for people outside of the core ARG enthusiast community. We’re just burying the cliche.
and i still think the message/title “the arg is dead” is a pr problem. i’ve read the panel description and yeah, it states you’ll be discussing the term arg but it also includes question 7. “What were ARG’s greatest achievements and what had it hoped to achieve that perhaps one of the new genres will?” this is where we leave a discussion about the death of “the term” and move on to the genre.
i know there are plenty of other arg panels, but this is the only one employing fun theatrics (plus a good cast of characters/panelists) that will gather more attention. it is how it will be perceived by the casual/majority participant vs the enthusiastic community that worries me. won’t matter how much intelligent discussion goes on inside the panel, the casual participant (which includes those who just happen upon the panel description and don’t attend, those who only see the procession and those who attend who are still catching up) will take away one image, “the arg is dead”.
also Brian, can you (or anyone else on the panel that might be reading this) tell me how this will bury the cliche? and what do you think burying the cliche will do for the genre? how do you guys think it will be perceived by the casual sxsw attendee?
Brian, I’ll concede that I went about expressing my frustration with the panel in the wrong way. I thought having something to compare/contrast would be more helpful to the discussion than hindering of it. I was wrong.
My objections are similar to Jan’s. While I am not, ultimately, opposed to the idea of an ARG Funeral, I do wonder about the message that it sends to a broader interactive audience rather than to a smaller ARG Audience. I’m also not comfortable with how it has been presented. It feels very sensationalist.
I also disagree with the assumptions provided in several of the questions that the panel seeks to answer: “Why does the ARG community not even know how to define what the term means and has stopped even trying?” and “What does it mean to that community to be creating in a “post-ARG era” and what is their new metaphor?” This seems to assume that either the community just doesn’t care (they’ve stopped trying) or that the community supports the idea that ARG is dead (because they are in a “post-ARG era” and have a new metaphor).
In my experience, the community has not stopped trying – there are discussions going on all the time. Sure, some may be blatant and some may be more symbolic and some may be about entirely different things with just a hint of this issues, but they are happening. ARGFest, not even a month ago, was full of them. I’ve had other conversations since. So is it disingenuous to suggest that the conversations aren’t happening and/or that the ARG community no longer cares? Is there something to that suggestion that I don’t understand? What is the value in that suggestion?
And as for the “post-ARG era” – the only people that I really know talking about what comes next are people that are paid (or want to be paid) to look at what comes next – they often call themselves “strategists” or, maybe, “new media experts.” Some might also call themselves “producer” or “designer.” I rarely hear this coming out of folks that would say they are part of the “ARG community” – that’s just not where the community brain tends to be – it’s more current. When discussions of “metaphors” and “terms” come up, it tends to be of two types: creating a narrower definition or creating a broader one. The one thing that it is not, is an attempt to kill the term ARG or to figure out what’s next because ARG is Dead. For the community, ARG is very much alive. And that is where I break down with this panel.
The term came out of a community of players and has, over time, spread and been adopted by a larger audience. It seems to me, then, that if anyone had the right to kill the term, that right should belong to that community of players. (though I’m not fully sure that even they have that right any longer – a couple years ago, maybe). Which is one of the reasons why, I’d argue, the funeral would better belong at an event such as ARGFest (a gathering of ARG enthusiasts) than SXSWi (a gathering of interactive types).
The other reason, of course, is that funerals are celebrations of the life and death of something and, frankly, the community that has cared so passionately for ARG since it was first used in 2002 should be a part of it, But as they aren’t even aware it’s dead, someone’s gonna have to break the news to them. I don’t expect they’ll like it.
I, obviously, didn’t.
And much like Jan, I don’t like that, of all the panels presented, this is the one with the biggest/best PR hook (and, potentially, some of the best speakers and most dynamic speakers). The coverage of this is going to be that there was a Funeral for ARGs and that a bunch of known ARG designers have decided that “the ARG is Dead” and that they are moving on to x, y, or z. I don’t see how that’s good for the term, the genre, or the community. But, maybe I am wrong. I hope that I am wrong. Maybe your answers to her questions will make me eat crow (please! make me eat crow! and can I get a side of trout with it?)