Words You Can Use: The BAVC BLOG

By Carl Weichert, Training and Resources Strategist

My SXSW report in chunks . . .

Chunk 1

Most of the panels I attended were focused on some type of gaming. The first two I want to talk about were:

• The Future of Virtual World & Game Development: Rise of the Indies

• Cross-Media Cross-Pollination: Mashing Up Video Games and ARGs

Rise of the Indies was presented by Corey Bridges, Co-Founder of multiverse.net. Bridges reviewed the shift that’s occurred in the broadcast, music and newspaper industries as a result of people distributing their own content via sites such as YouTube (neatly summed up by Bridges: “Sucks to be you, Media Oligopolists”). He went on to assert that the video game industry was the next on the chopping block, citing issues in the current model, issues similar to those in broadcast and so on.

Trends mentioned by Bridges that are opening the industry to indies: faster connectivity, middleware (software that allows other softwares to talk with each other), and the move towards a universal client for virtual worlds (meaning a player in one virtual world, such as Second Life, could visit another world, such as There, with the same avatar).

He also discussed the rise gaming in social network sites, such as Facebook, that now allows users to add games, such as Scrabulous. to their pages, and software such as Flash that allows for easier development of simple games (if you want to check some out, try Kongregate.com).

What does it mean for the future? According to Bridges, new genres of games, targeted at niche markets, not just hardcore gamers. He also predicted the increasing use of games for purposes other than strictly gaming – in business, for example, the use of virtual world spaces for employee training; or in schools, to teach history and science.

Mashing Up Video Games and ARGs was one of the panels I was most looking forward to; unfortunately, it turned out to be a little weak, as all the panelists were coming from ARG world, without any representation at all from video game developers. As a result, it turned out to be not much more than a “state of the industry” type of overview of ARGs. At this point, I’m sure at least one person reading this is wondering what the hell an ARG is.

ARG stands for Alternate Reality Game, and while people don’t necessarily agree on a definition, they all seem to take a similar form: ARGs use the real world as their platform, meaning you might participate in an ARG via cell phone, email, websites, and possibly even interacting with people in the real world (gasp!); meaning these games have a relative low barrier to entry into the game (most people already know how to use a cell phone, send an email, surf the web, talk to each other). Another thing that differentiates ARGs from video games are that they are usually focused on narrative as opposed to hack’n’slash-style play. Some of the better-known ARGs that have taken place: Majestic, The Beast, and more recently, World Without Oil.

Good enough as far as it went; it was enjoyable hearing the overview, and it was presented by people who’ve been involved in developing some of the big ARGs, which gave a nice insider feel to the panel, but I was expecting an exciting cross-fertilization of idea between the two formats, which really didn’t happen at all.