ARGs are an increadibly powerful force for good, and charities and educational institutions are quickly realising their potential for teaching and fundraising. Throw those two rapidly developing areas together with broadcasters, who are quickly realising that the internet isn’t just for streaming TV and you get some very interesting discussion.
The Let’s Change The Game Conference, organised by Adrian Hon and Law37 saw a meeting of lots of individuals interested in ARGs as serious games and I must admit, I was really surprised with how many people there are working behind the scenes at bringing this emerging medium to attention.
Having been asked to develop an induction ARG myself (unfortunately I was too busy to say yes), I can see how fun and interesting it could make the boring process of teaching people how to use a University Library and familiarising them with the area. I wasn’t aware however, that there are already a handful of people around the country doing exactly that as reasearch for Higher Education institutions.
Katie Piatt spoke about 3 projects and their mixed results. What really interested me are her engagement statistics relating to the three projects, and interestingly that the least interactive had the highest take up. This definately highlights some of the problems with ARGs; they’re hard to get into and even the people who are involved need a lot of persuading to do really wild things.
Nicola Whitton talked about developing a reuseable framework for ARG building (for orientation, socialisation and induction) for educational institutions. I find this very interesting and an ARG-in-a-box is something that I think could prove to be very cheap and valuable in the long run. My only concern is how we go about ensuring teachers understand the concept of an ARG and ensuring the story and gameplay are well thought out. I’m sure Nicola’s probably got some ideas.
Alex Moseley is also doing some interesting work in the field. I’m very interested in the completely transparent assessment that was mentioned (by playing the game which was graded, players / students could see as they progress what their mark for the course is, and if they’re on track for passing it).
I was also particularly interested in hearing what the broadcasters had to say. Phillip Trippenbach detailed some interesting ways in which journalists and the BBC in particular are moving away from more traditional forms of journalism and more to user generated content. The example he used was the Mumbai and how the BBC incorperated tweets from witnesses twitter feeds into their live blog. I think this is a great example of the same sort of collaborative power that ARGs can cause and the effect: a quicker, more flexible, more robust community. Though such forms of collaboration have their problems. Phillip also noted that it’s very hard to sort through the amount of content in terms of editing, and suggested that communities could self edit and check errors and that this is much more effective.
Alice Taylor talked about some upcoming projects being created for Channel 4 that will be used as educational tools for teens. I was very interested to hear how commissioning is changing within broadcasters, and how online content can exist without having a Television series to back-up. Nicola Smyth emphasised what Alice said and gave an interesting talk about the thinking behind some of the BBC’s latest experimental projects.
I’m really glad I went to the conference and took part in the Operation:Sleeper Cell panel (which raised some interesting questions about what ARGs need to do to be more effective for charities). I learnt lots about the other side of ARGs that I’ve not really seen before (education) and met some interesting people. Lets hope the discussion continues.
Tags: ARG, BBC, broadcasters, Channel 4, charities, education, Twitter