#argfest

If you are at all interested in things like puzzlehunts, cool viral marketing campaigns, alternate reality games, or any the rest of the awesome fancy-pants stuff that tends to fall under the heading of "transmedia," you should be in Seattle this weekend for ARGFest-O-Con 2013!

ARGFest has been running for 10+ years and is the place to connect with enthusiastic transmedia consumers, creators, and industry professionals. We've got some great speakers lined up for this year like No Mimes Media's Steve Peters and Jordan Weisman (of Shadowrun fame), and what will no doubt be a fantastic FestQuest this year, organized by SynthBio Productions.

Another year, another ARGFest. To say it that way implies that it's in some way routine, when in fact the only thing routine about it is that it's awesome.

I'm starting to catch on to the way things change each year -- the attendees and the panels both seem to have trends each year.

From what I recall of last year, there were a lot of marketing and industry types, especially film-oriented folks; this year there were more academics. Some were local attendees from the University of Indiana, but some were from out of town (though still, perhaps, lured by the collegiate location).

As for the panels, last year Andrea Phillips really set the tone of the whole con with "Beyond the Hot Brunette." References to the panel and to the tropes that repeatedly show up in ARGs/virals/transmedia continued throughout the whole conference. This time, the theme was a bit more ambiguous, partly because I would say the panel that hit on it most directly didn't occur till almost the end of the conference: Reed Berkowitz's "Reality as a Story-Telling Medium." His particular argument was a little bit of a flop in that he kept explaining it in the same not-terribly-clear way, and made some contradictory statements, but there was an underlying point that came through and was reasonably well-received.

This is where it really becomes obvious that I didn't take any notes, as I can't explain any better what his point was other than to say it involved reality and symbols and how everything stands for something to us, it's never just the objective thing. This concept of the differences and lack of differences between reality and things that only exist in our head, or while a game is running, or only in digital form, came up several other times during the conference.

Kyle Woollums had a whole panel on the idea of "swag" and how some ARG players have gotten stupidly fixated on it, to the extent that they'll play a game or not based on swag over story. Poor Kyle, bless his heart, got a lot of flak during the Q&A after his presentation -- but mostly quibbling on terminology. The audience was pretty on board with the underlying message of "swag is just stuff, it stands in for the transient presence of the game which has since gone away, it shouldn't define the game but rather represent it for your memories." We just love to quibble, especially when someone tells us to stop doing things like calling swag swag. :)

Speaking of the importance of story...one of Friday's events was the "Remembering the Beast" panel, which can be summed up with one of the final questions:

Questioner: (approximately) "What do you think the Beast had that modern ARGs generally lack?" Panel: (definitively and almost in unison) "Story."

I'm really fond of the panels that look back at formative events in the field. The Beast one this time was great, as was the Blair Witch Hunt one previously.

Note to self: never not taking notes at ARGfest again, I can't remember anything.

The keynote speaker at Friday's dinner was JC Hutchins, author of the "7th Son" books and co-author of Personal Effects: Dark Art (which I only really bought and read because of Jordan Weisman's keynote at ARGFest '09). Now, I say this in the most loving way possible: JC Hutchins is a huge nerd. It seemed like he not only really fit in with the idea of ARGFest, but also formed a powerful connection with the actual people in attendance. No offense to Margaret McHugh or Jordan Weisman, but I think his has been my favorite keynote simply because he was so grounded and in love with the crowd.

Also of note was the Skype presentation with Lance Weiler, of which I only really remember one thing, because I am convinced it is the most amazing thing ever. He described an upcoming project called "Robot <3 Stories," in which 40 kids in 2 school classes -- one in Cali, one in Canada -- collaborate and help a crash-landed robot (a complex, physical, interactive device) make its (I think it was even a her?) way from its own landing point to the place where its ship crashed, and make repairs to leave. Along the way they'd learn about a variety of topics through the framework of guiding the robot to different places, and then, get this: THE ROBOT WILL BE LAUNCHED INTO SPACE. I. I just. Are you kidding me?! I would LOVE to be one of those kids! Or one of the teachers! Or one of the people working behind the scenes on it! MOST. FREAKING. AMAZING. THING. EVER.

Looking through the list of panels to see what else I recall, John Maccabee's "Transmedia Patter" catches my eye. Having heard about his interruption of a 2008 panel with a tattooed bodybuilder in a banana hammock, I was immediately suspicious when his lovely assistant for the panel came in and took a seat at the back of the room -- clad in a pink jacket which covered her from neck to knees. Sure enough, as he guided us through a quick mini-game involving time-travelers from 1807 in a balloon with magnets for ballast, she took off her coat to reveal a "Miss Terra Firma" banner and a bikini. The final objective of the game was to guide the balloon over to her as she meandered around the room (to symbolize guiding the time travelers and their balloon back to terra firma in the year 1807. So in short: John Maccabee's fun...and a little weird.

There was a panel about elements of game design called "Let Your Players Play," which I wish had been longer. It was a little too much high-level overview for me, since I already am at least a little fluent with game mechanics.

The "Using ARGs for Marketing" panel left me thinking sadly of 1 vs. 100 on Xbox Live and how I have a positive association with Sprint to this day because of how much they sponsored it and how much I enjoyed it. The "Pitfalls of Transmedia" panel at one point made me think about Brian Bricker. To quote a friend: "fuck Brian Bricker and his fuck the audience mentality!"

And I think that about covers the panels, except for the one which gave me mixed feelings and no small amount of discomfort: "ARGs in Education." It's hard to describe why it made me uncomfortable (see: lack of notes), but in part it's because I still have the (admittedly naive) belief that students deserve a fair learning environment and not to have their academic careers played with. At least I know I wasn't the only one discomfited by the panel, and by the end the message hinted that setting up the entire educational system as a game was in many ways a failure, but that including limited "gamification" elements could be beneficial.

In between panels/events, there was a lot of eating. I ate at: a Mongolian BBQ place, a Tibetan place, the cafe in the IU student union, a place with pancakes a foot across, and a cajun themed cafe which a terribly amusing and friendly waiter. Also Starbucks, but that doesn't count. Also, since I signed up for a grueling* shift manning the registration desk Friday morning, I got to eat lunch with the speakers, panelists, other volunteers, and planning committee -- very fun crowd, and good food.

There was also drinking and Rock Band-ing, though I didn't monopolize a guitar as much as I have in previous years. I'm learning restraint! XD

A few of us played Apples to Apples and "We Didn't Playtest This," which is a lot like Fluxx. Speaking of Fluxx, I wasn't able to get ARGFluxx decks printed up in time, but I did get a lead on a place called GameCrafter that will produce them for you. Probably at a much higher quality than me! (Though I will note that my test cards are still in very good shape.)

FestQuest on Saturday afternoon was SUPER fun. It involved a not unreasonable amount of walking, some good puzzles, interesting locations around campus/town, and only one locked door that shouldn't have been locked.

There was also a puzzle in the program from Stitch Media -- they had one in last year's as well. I think I started working on it sometime early Friday, but it took all weekend to solve, including teamwork from about 8 people at various points. That puzzle ate my soul. I caught on to the general idea pretty quick -- it was about the legend behind Tanabata. The problem was figuring out how to form the answer Stitch was looking for, and they ended up giving us all a LOT of hints over the course of the weekend, which I appreciated...once they got to hints that were actually useful, which was basically Sunday. The lack of direction in how to frame the right answer was immensely frustrating, as was apparently Stitch's attachment to what I'm pretty sure is a damn obscure version of the legend (in which Orihime/the weaver girl is a fairy, not a goddess). Moral of the story: check for alternate versions of your critical mythology reference when designing puzzles.

...I may or may not be planning a revenge-puzzle for Stitch in which the solve is either "drink your Ovaltine" or "fuck that ridiculous fucking puzzle." XD

It was really great to see the ARGFest crowd again. There were a lot of people I think of as regulars who couldn't make it, but there were also some faces I'd never seen before, both newbies and old hands. I made some new friends, and I suspect many of the newbies will be returning. The whole atmosphere of the conference was wonderful, as well, due to the lack of stress on the planning committee (good planning!), the buzz of mutual admiration throughout the attendees, and the conference venue taking great care of us all (they were even very polite about the Rock Band noise complaints).