Week 11 Q’s – Gray
1. In what may or may not be a cop out, (I’m leaning towards not, because it’s actually on-topic this week…) I’m gonna re-propose a question we didn’t get to last week re: ARG’s, because I think it might get us to some interesting discussion regarding a phenomenology of expanded cinemas/narratives: How, and to what extent, might we think of ARG’s, and the experiences they create, as “virtual” (as opposed to strictly “digital”)? (19-21)
2. In their introduction, Garcia and Niemeyer frame ARG’s in such a way as to suggest a space where it becomes possible, through a temporary remapping of environmental relationships/associations, to rehearse a radical politics. Considering this alongside the present political context of broad-spectrum “gamification”, is it possible to consider ARG gameplay as method for the “crossing over” of political strategies/conditions previously confined to (or only possible within) digital spaces?
3. I can’t shake the idea that there’s something revelatory about ARG’s, insofar as they describe ways of interacting with social/cultural/economic environments that exist separate from, and perhaps counter to, the narratives which typically structure those relationships. Is it going too far to suggest that (neo)liberal democracies (or any other alternative) are simply massive, all-encompassing ARG’s? What do we get from such a framing? How might it reorient the citizen/participant to: the range of possible actions available to them?
4. What’s up with the seemingly across-the-board mythologizing of ARG creators?