Just got the completed draft from Mark Heggen of an article he’s just finished about serious investigations into ARGs. I’ve been pondering the genre over at if:book, so he asked me to contribute. Then he sent me two questions that triggered horrifyingly long trains of thought about culture, play, narrative, rationalism, and a host of other things and spawned a very long and rather digressive reply.

So I get the draft through, re-read it, and discover I’ve been quoted alongside Sean Stewart and Dan Hon, two leading lights of the burgeoning ARG genre. I’m very flattered indeed. But looking over what I wrote, I feel rather like the sherry-sodden uncle at the party who rambles at you about Hogarth for three hours when you only asked him for the time.

I really, really must learn to edit more thoroughly. Or at least try and avoid condensing the entire contents of my head into 2,000 words on a hot day…