From Steve Diddle coming forward and revealing his true identity, showed his emerging respect for the people he befriended, and the respect for the arg community. JW was upset because Steve’s actions could have had terrible repercussions on the brand of argn.com that had been carefully shaped through the years, but Jonathan handled it very well; explained why he was upset, set the record straight, then moved on.

I think that showed a higher level of professionalism of the arg society, and this web site.

Well done. And I do look forward to reading more from Steve Diddle – if in fact that is his real name.

I have been referring to PV707 a lot in the last several weeks as an example of how and why a community can overcome feelings of deception. For those of us working & studying in this space, it is one of the best examples out there of just that thing. In part because it’s current but also because PA:DA is an accessible project and one that is fairly easy to explain or expound upon if the audience is interested in learning more. This is, I think, a good thing!

When PV707 was first revealed to be fictional in the game blogging community – some felt deceived. These feelings came out in different ways: from anger to laughter and a whole myriad of emotions in between. However, over the following months, she continued to contribute to the community and the issue whether or not she was “real” faded away. She was, and still is, value-add.

Throwing out another recent example, the Blood Copy blog for True Blood. There was controversy here because the blog was “bought” by Gawker and, so, the posts began showing up in other places in the Gawker Network. People were upset and though much of that was express in anger over the role of advertising, I think it came down to the fact that people don’t see advertising as adding value to their lives. So, here’s a blog with some interesting posts that in another situation might have value, but takes value away when it is pushed on users and “muddying up” a site that they would like to read.

Which brings us to Martin Aggott. For me, he was value-add. We had some great conversations on the genre and he even helped me out with a community site. So, when he told me that he was fictional, I laughed. More than that, I got excited about the conversations that would happen once he came out to the community – even more added value. However, others have not felt the same way and, for some, he came at a cost. This includes ARGN because, while at first he added value by volunteering an article (that proved to be quite popular), it came at the cost of ARGN’s reputation and respectability. A website that reports on Alternate Reality Games should certainly be able to recognize a character from one, no?

It would be fairly easy to have a discussion that focuses solely on the current situation but that discussion wouldn’t be as rich without having other examples to draw on for comparison. For me, PV707 won’t go away for just that reason. It is a great example and one that is very much relevant to discussions about things like deception and what it means to be real.

I don’t think you were coming to pick fights, by any means. I’ve appreciated your comments and your contributions to the discussion. Perhaps we can work out a way to follow up on the original article, to reflect the situation since then?

I understand that you’re not directly comparing the two projects. Maybe this is a minor point, but I think there’s a difference between a reader feeling misled by a blog, and an editor/owner being misled by a contributor. I wanted to point out the distinction that PV707 may have botched things with the readers, but we didn’t violate the ARG community’s rules, or the professional relationship between a writer and an editor.

As for Michael Abbott, I would never say anything against what he writes. I’m very familiar with Michael’s work, and he’s an amazing writer and a truly great guy. That was his reaction, and his post is totally fair. But Rachael has corresponded with him very amiably several times since last November, and Michael has made friendly jokes about it several times since then. If he still had a problem with the site, that would be completely fair – but it’s my impression that he doesn’t.

Anyway, it wasn’t my intention to seem like I’m coming in to pick fights. This thread probably wasn’t the way to do it, but if there’s any way for me to shed any light on the PixelVixen707 project beyond what happened last November, I’d be really interested in doing that.

You make a pretty bold assumption that PV707 is going to be brought up “everytime somebody feels duped about something.” As far as I can tell, this is only the first time we’ve ever directly mentioned the negative reactions to PV707 — it’s not even part of the original article by Michael Andersen, nor is it mentioned in the follow-up article. In this article, I said that people felt misled by PV707, which is true, based on reactions we saw publicized at the time. We’ve never used the word “duped” in relation to PV707, but Michael Abbott did. Perhaps your defensive comments need to be directed at the source, rather than at us?