Nostalgia
Man, I miss going all-out on building a grassroots ARG. There’s something so liberating and scary about the freedom and malleability of a game that’s not beholden to corporate sponsors, but to its players. Where you can just totally change direction midstream without waiting a week for approval from the client’s legal team. Where you work insane hours and make exactly no money. Where you make such excellent friends with your fellow team members and alternately cry and laugh yourself silly at the latest crisis. (“What do you mean, our site was defaced by Somali hackers??”)
Reading back over some of our old chat logs, and then reading the ARG class presentation on Dread House (or Urban Hunt, if you’re so inclined), plus reading the all-too-infrequent checkins from past team members on our super-sekrit forum have me all melancholy.