This is a re-version of a talk I gave at the Let’s Change the Game conference held on Friday 5 December 2008. It was a very casual, irreverent talk, but one that I hoped would bring some light relief to the day as well as (possibly in a rather confrontational manner) highlight some of the current problems – as I perceive them – with this whole “alternate reality game” business.

Unfortunately there isn’t a recording of the talk, so what I’ve done is taken my slides and interspersed them with expanded commentary from my rather haphazard speakers notes. This should give you a flavour of what I presented on the day.

The Taboos

I wanted to open with a reminder of what I was supposed to be talking about:

The taboos of alternate reality games - the number of people playing, the types of people playing and the degree of immersion and ask: where did it all go wrong? (and, hopefully, have some pointers as to how to put the world to rights).

which admittedly was written in rather a hurry. And in no way was I honing (writing) my slides during the talks earlier on in the day. I mean: I did have a pretty good outline of what I wanted to talk about, and had a good idea of the tone I wanted to strike, too. There are, it seems to me, a number of differing interpretations as to what an ARG is, exactly, and that makes them quite easy to attack. If you don’t know what something is, it’s quite easy for it not to have lived up to your expectations.

Predictably, I also had some glib advice I wanted to impart, too [...]

• Read on at: http://sixtostart.com/onetoread/2008/everything-you-know-about-args-is-wrong/
• Submitted by: Sven Neumann
• Submitted: 29 Dec 08