I vacuum-sealed dog biscuits and mailed them to various people, some of whom didn’t get it, and I put up some interesting websites here and there.
All of this was in support of an Alternate Reality Game, which in some respects could be considered the bleeding edge of narrative. Sort of a cross between a Video Game and a LARP, the “puppetmaster” (who role-playing geeks would think of as a gamemaster) sets up a rabbit-hole that leads whatever random participants who care to follow into the world of the game where they follow the threads of the story to websites, video, social-networking sites, live events, all tied to the ongoing story. Probably one of the better known examples would be the Lost Experience. Of course, I had no finances, and my corporate support was pretty much a blog post, so I was a little less ambitious, and the storyline relatively simple. Despite the feeling of those folks on Making Light commenters on Making Light that have absolutely nothing to do with Teresa who respond to the word marketing as if it was kryptonite, the story was an end in itself. My connection to it was discovered prematurely primarily due to my inexperience.
Props (and/or blame) for my involvement in this goes to my Hamster pal Maureen who is deeply involved in the actual commercial ARG industry. (No, these things aren’t developed in house, it’s such a rarefied skill that she’s probably only one of a dozen writers getting paid to do this sort of thing.) She got me started, helping design the rabbit hole and the initial draft of the storyline. The things that worked, we can attribute to her. Beyond that, it was a one man show, with me doing everything.
For those of you who want to see how the whole thing played out, the main folks involved have pretty much documented everything in a thread here. So I want to give a special thanks to all the Unfiction people who played in my sandbox, it made the exercise worthwhile.
4 Comments
michelle · September 18, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I have to say, I’m impressed you pulled this off and were able to stick with it considering you have a regular job as a database manager, wrote …2 books, I think, during the time you were working on the ARG, kept up with your blog daily, wrote the ARG, went on our annual Pennsic camping trip vacation, which requires so much planning, and been dealing with our elderly Labrador who can’t stand or walk anymore. That’s a lot on one person’s plate. I know you enjoyed the ARG, and am proud you were able to do all the programming and geeky stuff yourself. I just have one request: If you ever do this again, can we NOT hermetically seal zillions of dog bisquits?
I hope the ARG folks enjoyed playing it as much as I know you enjoyed writing and programming it.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden · September 19, 2009 at 12:32 am
Pffft. We did too get it, and we don’t object to marketing per se. We were playing with it, but you never wrote back, or came over to our house to play.
The law explicitly says I’m not responsible for responses posted by P. N. Elrod, or for that matter any of our other commenters. I don’t know why she reacted that way. You should have come over and asked her.
S Andrew Swann · September 19, 2009 at 8:43 am
If this was some other effort, I might have. But the ARG thing has developed some norms of its own and those who most heavily involve themselves tend to look down on that kind of self-pimpage. Out-of-game actions by a puppetmaster can really turn them off.
I wasn’t holding you responsible, but some of the comments were somewhat amusing.
S Andrew Swann · September 19, 2009 at 9:04 am
PS-Just came over to your house and left some words of explanation 🙂
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