我好奇故我在

Jane McGonigal 是一個大美女，可自行google圖片。摘要2007年wired雜誌對她的訪問，特別挑出跟行銷相關的：
(source:http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/15-06/st_arg2)

Wired: How would you get someone interested in playing? 你怎樣讓人有興趣玩ARG？

McGonigal: A call to action is really important. You want to get people involved in some kind of mission or mystery, or big confounding enigma that makes them feel like they have a purpose in playing. Every good alternate reality game asks a question. In the game Perplex City, the opening question was: Where is the Cube? Find the Cube. For I Love Bees it was: Who hacked the site? For AI it was: Who killed Evan Chan? You need some kind of a central problem that people can rally around.

讓別人採取行動是很重要的。你希望讓人們可以參與某些任務、神秘事件，或一個很大混亂的謎題，讓他們覺得他們在玩中有一個目的。每一個好的另類實境遊戲都問一個好問題。在Perplex City《尋謎之城》遊戲中，開頭的問題是：「方塊在哪裡？找到方塊。」。對於I Love Bees 遊戲，問題是「誰駭客了這個網站？」。對於電影AI，問題是：「誰殺了Evan Chan?」你需要有一個中心問題讓人們可以聚集。

註解《尋謎之城》：2007年二月初，倫敦北部一百英里，一處寒風刺骨的森林裡，巡邏警隊驚訝地發現數10名年輕人在森林中穿梭，拿著鏟子在潮濕的地上到處挖洞。這是一個叫做《尋謎之城》（Perplex City）的線上遊戲，歷經長達15個月的跨國尋寶行動，總共92國、超過5萬名玩家參與。部份玩家組成團隊以擴大自己的闖關資源，每個玩家都必須依照線索指示，最終到達一個埋有「羅塞塔方塊」（Receda Cube）護身符的地方。「羅塞塔方塊」最後被一名獨自闖關、來自倫敦的玩家達利（Andy Darly）挖出，他拿到20萬美元獎金。(資料來源：數位時代)

PS：會另開文討論I Love Bees

 

Wired: Who is the target demographic? 誰是目標受眾？人口統計輪廓是？

McGonigal: That changes from project to project. A lot of these games start out by engaging an existing community of fans. So the Lost alternate reality game started with people who liked the TV show Lost. It actually engaged a fairly large subsection of the TV fan audience.

每個專案不同，很多這種類型的遊戲是由既有的粉絲社群開始，所以Lost的另類實境遊戲是由喜歡這個電視劇的人開始的。他包括電視觀眾中的蠻大一個部分。(這部美劇很紅，基本上故事也很懸疑，每集都有隱藏的線索，有熱心觀眾看電視真認真，一一剪下電視畫面，作分析。)

A lot of times you start with a fan group with one common love for a certain medium or a certain kind of intellectual property. Beyond that there are a lot of women playing these games—more so than we typically see with videogames or [massively multiplayer online games] or console games. It tends to be more in line with casual games, which they say is about a 50/50 split men and women. And then there’s the whole range of audience, from high school students and college students to people in their thirties, forties, and fifties. We’ve had people in their sixties show up to live events. It’s a pretty big demographic reach in that way, but your particular player base will be largely determined by working with an existing fan community or trying to create one from scratch.

跟一般小遊戲一樣，男女玩家比例是一比一，可能是30, 40, 50幾歲。我們曾經有在現場活動中，有60幾歲的人士參與。但是話說回來，主要玩家群還是既有粉絲群。

Wired: If there isn’t a preexisting community, how do you go about creating one? 如果沒有一個已經純在的社團，你要如何創造一個？

McGonigal: We have one really interesting historical precedent. It’s this grassroots alternate reality game called Metacortex. It was developed by fans of the genre around one of the Matrix movies. They hijacked the release of that film to create an alternate reality game.

我們有一個很有趣的歷史前例，是由駭客任務電影迷所發展出來的叫Metacortex的另類實境遊戲。他們駭取電影資料來作game。

PS: 駭客任務電影中，Neo工作的公司名為METACORTEX（Meta譯為『後設』或『元』；Cortex指『大腦皮質』）。

Depending on whether you’re doing commercial or going grassroots, you can look at niche audiences or communities and try to make a game that will lure them in as well as draw the existing alternate reality gaming fan base. If you launch an ARG and announce it to the ARG community, you’re guaranteed to get eyes on the game because the ARG community is pretty supportive, and they’ll check out anything that launches to see if it’s any good. You can always speak to the ARG community, but if you’re trying to go massively scaled, with hundreds of thousands of players, it’s good to look for a subgroup to hack into.

這種game可以官方或是民間自發，端看你想要怎樣作。你可以針對利基受眾，譬如在ARG社群用一個game吸引他們，而這個ARG社群是十分有支持力，他們一定會查剛啟動的活動，看看好不好。但是如果你想要走大眾路線，跟更多的玩家互動，可能需要找另一個次級團體來參與。

Wired: Why are we seeing this influx of media-created ARGs? What do you think is the appeal to the creators of shows like Lost or Heroes?為什麼我們看到由媒體匯聚創造的ARGs？你認為對於電視節目像是Lost或是Heroes來說，主要的吸引力在哪？

McGonigal: There may be characters you love but can’t really develop in 60 minutes. Or there may be themes to a song that you’ve released or an album you’ve released, but you can’t articulate them explicitly in the lyrics. Part of it is the idea that you have all this content that you wish you could share - ideas and possible subplots and inspirations - that don’t neatly fit into that single entertainment object, but that you could really develop if you had the whole world as your platform. Think of it as unlimited space, unlimited time, and unlimited media to develop what’s at the heart, or even on the periphery, of the main story you’re telling. I think that it’s the biggest story ever told. It’s the most expansive experience ever designed. So there’s something really exciting about being able to unfold a story or a concept that you love in all of these new dimensions.

可能有些你喜歡的角色無法在60分鐘的電視節目中好好發揮發展。或者是你發行的一首歌或一張專輯，其主旨無法透過歌詞很直接表達清楚。想法中有個一部份，你很想要分享，但是又無法透過一個單一的娛樂媒介分享，所以你用整個世界當你的舞台。把它想成是一個無限制的空間、無限制的時間、已經無限制的媒體來講你的故事重點、故事中心、或甚至是故事的次要部分。我想這是前所未見的最大的故事，是一個很廣泛規模的經驗。用新的面向講故事是很令人興奮！

For the players, I think there’s an intimacy in the contact that you have when you’re playing one of these games. So in the Heroes ARG, when I get a text message on my cell phone from this game it feels personal to me and intimate to me in a way that mass communication doesn’t. And, sure, I might know that there are thousands of other people getting this message, but it comes to me in this very personal way. I feel more connected and more engaged. I think it’s a way of letting the stories and characters you love fold themselves into your real life in a way that lets you live with them, lets you dwell with the story. It feels so personal. I think that’s the appeal.

以很個人化的方式接收訊息，讓你所喜歡的人物在擬真實生活中出現，讓你跟他們一起生活、讓你住在這個故事的世界。

題外話：有興趣看這位美女的履歷怎樣寫的嗎？

MCGONIGAL_JANE_CV_DEC06.pdf