Podcast

I have been listing to the Tech weekly podcast from The Guardian. This week Adrian and Dan hong have been interviewed about there ARG Young Bond which is to promote the last book in the series of The Young Bond. Some good information has been said by both developers mentioning technology and what there game does and how it works. There company Six to Start has had a lot of work and is creating ARG's to help advertise books, shows and more. They even helped at advertising Misfits on E4 and got more visitors than the itv x factors forum.

The first thing i would like to mention is how they discussed their issue of time and technology, to make a ARG real its putting you/the player into the story. But they relized that they had a problem, a story that is set in the past. How can they then get players to feel part of this story when they are using modern society technology to simulate being in the past? What they mentioned was instead of usual websites they used creativity to make webpages that looked like billboards so it would be something you would of interacted with back in the set date. This both a problem with technology with ARG's and also a good point with technology of ARGs. "Most if not all Alternate reality games are based in the present or future. You can involve mobile phones, mobile and all these different things and it makes sense to have website and google." They also discussed how this would become repetitive and how it already is in a way. How games are repeating puzzles and hiding information in similar ways.

They next moved on to discuss the freedom in creating a story for a ARG, and how they can have freedom in writing but overall its what the company wants. They are interactive with the main story writers and this allows them to create more purpose built stories to extend onto what they are trying to market. There latest ARG Young Bond plot was written by the write of the books they are advertising so this means there isn't going to be a jump of difference in story or style. Difficulty curves are hard to predict as the mass of players may vary in age, intelligence and how good they are at playing ARGS. Six to Start have mainly focused on easier games and fun.

People today are more used to the internet and using technology, even from a early age. Today ARGs are falling under the marketing title and its harder to get people to pay for games when most are free. 'traditionally people have seen things like alliterative reality games as something that should be free'. Perplex City was a game that shown how ARGs can be self funding.
Perplex City was created by Mind Candy, this game told a story of a aftifact was stolen and buried and a reward would be given if found, the reward £100,000. It funded itself with a optional buy and receive cards. The more cards the better chance of finding out the clues and hints but the game could be won without paying for the cards. This ment they were getting the best out of the community with people willing to spend and players who wouldn't spend, the game got over 45000 registered players.

They briefly mention how there needs to be a cultural change to companies if ARGs are going to be able to produce games for charities and games that have series.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/audio/2008/sep/02/tech.weekly.podcast?popup=true
http://www.sixtostart.com/
http://www.youngbond.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perplex_City
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/audio/2008/sep/02/tech.weekly.podcast