IGDA ARG SIG Whitepaper
So the International Game Developers Association has a Special Interest Group for Alternate Reality Gaming and it recently released a "whitepaper" on ARG. This is a document that is intended to be authoritatively informative about a certain subject (although UrbanDictionary defines it somewhat differently).
The whitepaper is an interesting read and certain sections are well done but Jackie Kerr has raised some pointed yet quite valid criticism of the paper and its editorial process. There are some major problems with this whitepaper that deserve scrutiny and correction; it is apparent that whatever process of production was in place broke down somewhere along the way, without pointing any fingers of blame at specific individuals. Somewhat ironically, it seems much of this could have been avoided had some sort of peer-review been solicited from the community of ARG players before the paper was published.
And that's exactly what should happen now. Declare the current version of the whitepaper to be a "working draft," submit it for review and comment to the ARG community as a whole (and listen!), then research and revise from there. There is a lot of potential in this whitepaper and it is in the interest of everyone who wishes to see this genre grow and succeed to support the effort. It seems to me that if that support is invited, welcomed, and taken heed of, the whitepaper can only improve.
