Month: January 2008

Anti-Hoaxing Strategies and the TINAG Fallacy

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A few days ago I published a post highlighting one possible reason why alternate reality games are perceived as hoaxes by some, and posited one strategy to circumvent the problem. The point seemed to caused a little confusion, as some thought I was saying that all the content and marketing should be targeted to the ARG community only. [Steve was right, this would be quicker over a beer at a conference.] To be clear, that is not how I see a launch operates in any scenario. Launches require putting lots of content out into different communities of interest. My point was that a work that looks indistinguishable from real content would benefit from having a community that identifies it as fiction early in the launch process. That is: to target the ARG community in the first wave. Whether other communities are targeted at the same time or slightly after is a design approach relative to the creator — but the point is to include an ARG community early.

But, since focusing on one strategy in isolation is evidently not the most effective approach, I will step back and look at the bigger picture. One of the issues with ARGs is that they are often referred to as hoaxes, and sometimes (rarely) experienced as hoaxes. So my questions have been:

1) Are ARGs hoaxes?
2) Why are ARGs referred to hoaxes?
3) Why are some ARGs experienced as a hoax?
4) Why is it most ARGs not experienced as hoaxes?

And here are the answers:

Read moreAnti-Hoaxing Strategies and the TINAG Fallacy

Possibility Post: Will Integrated Media Homes Kick the Holodeck's Butt?

In 1997, academic and designer Janet Murray published a book called Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. It not only gave voice to the dreams of technologists, fans and universe creators, but also inspired more. The thematic thread of Murray’s excellent book is the notion of the holodeck: First introduced on … Read morePossibility Post: Will Integrated Media Homes Kick the Holodeck's Butt?

Launching Strategy: Birth Your Alternate Reality in an ARG Community

One of the issues when creating an ”alternate reality game” is that it may receive negative backlash from being perceived as a ”hoax”. Alternate reality games (ARGs) if you recall, are (among other things) multi-platform works that remove any cues to its fictionality. So, if you put fake newsfootage online, there is no meta information … Read moreLaunching Strategy: Birth Your Alternate Reality in an ARG Community

Ep 002: Transcript of Evan Jones Interview

Hello All! More stuff coming to this site soon. 🙂 In the meantime, here is the transcript for the podcast interview with Evan Jones, which was uploaded on 23rd October 2007:

[Intro]
Christy:This podcast today is going to be about poetics, about design techniques involved in creating cross media trends, media 360 experiences, whatever you want to call. In exploring these techniques, I’ll be speaking with creators from all sorts of independent and commercial sectors. What is interesting is that I find that the best creators or producers are usually people that are thinking across media or multi art way before realizing it’s actually an industry trend or there’s actually an economic imperative involved in it. One such creator is my first special guest on this podcast. His name is Evan Jones of Stitch Media.

You may know Evan from his work on the ReGenesis Extended Reality Game that he worked on whilst at the innovative Canadian company called Xenophile Media. I’ll hopefully have the folks from Xenophile Media in this podcast sometime in the future, but for now we”re concentrating on Evan Jones and his many talents. So, without any further delay, welcome Evan.

Evan Jones: Thanks.

Christy: So, let’s start with Stitch Media. I love that on your site, you”ve got this very simple, yet effective little mantra there basically saying: “We make interactive stuff and we make stuff interactive.”

Evan Jones: Yeah. I really love some of the new sites that are coming out and the way that they’re branded with a much more conversational tone and so I wanted to be really personal in the way of describing what Stitch Media was up to. Really, it’s the reversal of those subjects and objects and flipping the language around to say that really what my strategy is, is to take traditional media sources, books, television, music, and film and to help them become interactive in different ways. Some of those ways involve websites and mobile applications and games, things like that, but really it’s about integrating the two and that’s where the stitching together comes into the business model.

Read moreEp 002: Transcript of Evan Jones Interview