TIME SHARE is a performance and a play on a consumer model within a time share sales experience as seen through basic design principles of the Alternate Reality Game and the basic principles of Consumer Theory. In TIME SHARE we will look at how in an Alternate Reality Game, Performance Play and Customer Sales Agents use Real Life as a Medium to win a game. We also look at what winning can produce for the player and how the win can add to the game narrative.
THE ALTERNATE REALITY GAME Alternate reality games use the real world as a platform to create an evolving interactive narrative in real time. ARG is a kind of randomized fiction that is defined by its rule set, authorship, and coherence. A Puppet Master (PM) designs the ARG rule set and remains behind The Curtain, which is performers will call the fourth wall, and what gamers will call the outer wall, between the PM and the players. A Rabbit Hole is the point of entry into the game, however to remain coherent ARG’s use the TINAG (This Is Not A Game) esthetic to maintain a seamless real world platform and to keep authorship open to the randomness of actual real world interactions. To maintain coherence an ARG utilizes Real Life as a medium, where a player operates within the game using his/her real-world identifiers, such as credit cards, license, address, phone number, but may build fictional stories to win challenges with other players.  PLAYING CUSTOMER AND CONSUMER THEORY The word customer is only a label, it entails that the individual is human and has potential to be persuaded to consume a product and will return to consume again. To influence a customer the sales agent: does not need to be human; must use sales tactics; must compile and use complied data on this individual; must understand a consumer. Consumers create demand for commodities, but a consumer is also a commodity that it is defined by what it does and does not buy. Different types of consumers create different consumption models. The “substitution model” exists within all types of models when a specific good or service is substituted by another product for a less costly one or one with “rewards”. There is also the, “gay lifestyle/subculture” consumption model based on service-scapes: consumption patterns in service environments. These models also rely on the assumption that the consumer; is rational but sometimes moody; has needs and is emotional; sticks to a budget; has taste, preference, or bias and understands that even with persuasion from a sales agent there will be exceptions to consumer behavior when the consumer will not act in self-interest. For an artist-as-customer, consumer behavioral models and sales agent tactics are the line on which an ARG such as the Welcome Tour and TIME SHARE can unfold. TIME SHARE is a performance of the code scripted for and by a customer within a consumption model. Defining the challenges within this play is the sales agent and a system of managerial power above her/him. The further up in managerial power the customer goes to enable a commodity exchange the less power the customer has, unless the consumer’s rules of play change or the player suddenly adapts to a different consumption model.  How I Perform “The Customer” To perform the role of The Customer I first consider consumption models, my purpose for shopping, and how my routines might be dictated or outsourced by a consumption model. When I become the artist-as-customer, I become as many shapes and types of customers as there are people watching when performing consumer routines: in public like at Target; semi-public like a drive thru; or private like online. To perform the customer you simply must show up at a place of consumption and be prepared to play the consumer.  The Consumer Play Toolbox Playing The Consumer requires: engaging in customer relations / doing exactly what is assumed of your character and knowing how to change what is assumed of you / indifference and saying yes to everything solicited to you / ignorance of quality / being sensitive to your surroundings / being personable with your sales agent / performing consumer weaknesses / keeping engaged in conversation with your sales agent / knowing how long your sales person can show you attention and respect you as a customer / being able to walk away / sometimes knowing how to be relentless in your goal as a consumer which is to consume / being sensitive to which sales agent appears as the best to approach for help / performing having or not having a spending limit / knowing how to push your agent to perform their product knowledge in a way that make them feel good / performing that you seek expertise / performing that you trust experts / having or not having an idea about what people do and do not do with the products they buy / having a mental map of the store / having a few cancelled credit cards in your name / acquiring your product within a specific amount of time / knowing how to develop an escape plan on the spot / believable pretexting / knowing who the sales agent thinks or knows who you are / knowing the store policies / keeping the receipt and a good understanding of the stores return policy.
Player Product: Player as Product The performance must look like a standard customer routine. The play must generate an outcome. You should consider your performance routine generative and the product your play generates is the documentation of your routine. Your product should also define your process and the breadth of your process will become definitive of your product. Your process should be replicated several hundreds of times in similar and different economic models.
The Right Sales Agent A critical stance at why and how products are sold to us is a crucial part of being a critical player of life but this critical perspective does not apply to the artist-as customer. A Sales Agents job is to represent a company and be on the selling end of a deal. I’ve come to know that a sales agent’s motivation is not so often capital driven as it is role driven, and that often sales agents are just looking to make a personal connection while selling you a product as it has been sold to them. It is important to determine whether your sales agent has dual values and is interested in being honest and feels responsible for both parties. If so, this may make your play difficult and you might determine that this sales agent is not a player of the game. You may want to seek out a sales manager. Sales managers bring game; they are often profit driven and utilize consumer strategy in order to sell the highest value product.
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TIME SHARE is a performance and a play on a consumer model within a time share sales experience as seen through basic design principles of the Alternate Reality Game and the basic principles of Consumer Theory. In TIME SHARE we will look at how in an Alternate Reality Game, Performance Play and Customer Sales Agents use Real Life as a Medium to win a game. We also look at what winning can produce for the player and how the win can add to the game narrative.
THE ALTERNATE REALITY GAME Alternate reality games use the real world as a platform to create an evolving interactive narrative in real time. ARG is a kind of randomized fiction that is defined by its rule set, authorship, and coherence. A Puppet Master (PM) designs the ARG rule set and remains behind The Curtain, which is performers will call the fourth wall, and what gamers will call the outer wall, between the PM and the players. A Rabbit Hole is the point of entry into the game, however to remain coherent ARG’s use the TINAG (This Is Not A Game) esthetic to maintain a seamless real world platform and to keep authorship open to the randomness of actual real world interactions. To maintain coherence an ARG utilizes Real Life as a medium, where a player operates within the game using his/her real-world identifiers, such as credit cards, license, address, phone number, but may build fictional stories to win challenges with other players.  PLAYING CUSTOMER AND CONSUMER THEORY The word customer is only a label, it entails that the individual is human and has potential to be persuaded to consume a product and will return to consume again. To influence a customer the sales agent: does not need to be human; must use sales tactics; must compile and use complied data on this individual; must understand a consumer. Consumers create demand for commodities, but a consumer is also a commodity that it is defined by what it does and does not buy. Different types of consumers create different consumption models. The “substitution model” exists within all types of models when a specific good or service is substituted by another product for a less costly one or one with “rewards”. There is also the, “gay lifestyle/subculture” consumption model based on service-scapes: consumption patterns in service environments. These models also rely on the assumption that the consumer; is rational but sometimes moody; has needs and is emotional; sticks to a budget; has taste, preference, or bias and understands that even with persuasion from a sales agent there will be exceptions to consumer behavior when the consumer will not act in self-interest. For an artist-as-customer, consumer behavioral models and sales agent tactics are the line on which an ARG such as the Welcome Tour and TIME SHARE can unfold. TIME SHARE is a performance of the code scripted for and by a customer within a consumption model. Defining the challenges within this play is the sales agent and a system of managerial power above her/him. The further up in managerial power the customer goes to enable a commodity exchange the less power the customer has, unless the consumer’s rules of play change or the player suddenly adapts to a different consumption model.  How I Perform “The Customer” To perform the role of The Customer I first consider consumption models, my purpose for shopping, and how my routines might be dictated or outsourced by a consumption model. When I become the artist-as-customer, I become as many shapes and types of customers as there are people watching when performing consumer routines: in public like at Target; semi-public like a drive thru; or private like online. To perform the customer you simply must show up at a place of consumption and be prepared to play the consumer.  The Consumer Play Toolbox Playing The Consumer requires: engaging in customer relations / doing exactly what is assumed of your character and knowing how to change what is assumed of you / indifference and saying yes to everything solicited to you / ignorance of quality / being sensitive to your surroundings / being personable with your sales agent / performing consumer weaknesses / keeping engaged in conversation with your sales agent / knowing how long your sales person can show you attention and respect you as a customer / being able to walk away / sometimes knowing how to be relentless in your goal as a consumer which is to consume / being sensitive to which sales agent appears as the best to approach for help / performing having or not having a spending limit / knowing how to push your agent to perform their product knowledge in a way that make them feel good / performing that you seek expertise / performing that you trust experts / having or not having an idea about what people do and do not do with the products they buy / having a mental map of the store / having a few cancelled credit cards in your name / acquiring your product within a specific amount of time / knowing how to develop an escape plan on the spot / believable pretexting / knowing who the sales agent thinks or knows who you are / knowing the store policies / keeping the receipt and a good understanding of the stores return policy.
Player Product: Player as Product The performance must look like a standard customer routine. The play must generate an outcome. You should consider your performance routine generative and the product your play generates is the documentation of your routine. Your product should also define your process and the breadth of your process will become definitive of your product. Your process should be replicated several hundreds of times in similar and different economic models.
The Right Sales Agent A critical stance at why and how products are sold to us is a crucial part of being a critical player of life but this critical perspective does not apply to the artist-as customer. A Sales Agents job is to represent a company and be on the selling end of a deal. I’ve come to know that a sales agent’s motivation is not so often capital driven as it is role driven, and that often sales agents are just looking to make a personal connection while selling you a product as it has been sold to them. It is important to determine whether your sales agent has dual values and is interested in being honest and feels responsible for both parties. If so, this may make your play difficult and you might determine that this sales agent is not a player of the game. You may want to seek out a sales manager. Sales managers bring game; they are often profit driven and utilize consumer strategy in order to sell the highest value product.
..continued in attached document