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alexandraerin...or chances of success is that it's a product of Tumblr culture.
There are other, equally valid and important way to describe its genesis. But for purposes of this post, I'm focusing on how it arose out of Tumblr culture. A similar project with similar aims could have arisen elsewhere, but the specific manner in which it has been coming together would not be possible without Tumblr.
And if you don't understand Tumblr culture, you're not going to get what's happening with Arkh. Just knowing that Tumblr exists and understanding its basic mechanisms isn't enough. I used to have a Tumblr and occasionally read some Tumblrs, but until I started plugging into the dash on a daily basis and following dozens of people... not just Muppet picture blogs but people who follow and reblog and are followed and reblogged... I did not get it.
Tumblr can be called a microblogging site and a social network, but it's not Twitter and it's not Facebook. It's Tumblr. The flow of content through Tumblr is organic, it's ever-changing, it's... people should be studying this. They really should. The word "Web 2.0" was overused the second time it was uttered aloud, but Tumblr really is something new and unprecedented. Among people who are actively engaged with people who are actively engaged with Tumblr, it's the next best thing to group telepathy.
If you know the fan culture that exists spread out across Livejournal and its offshoots, imagine that. But imagine that it's not divided up into discrete communities. Imagine that connections exist anywhere and everywhere that one person overlaps two groups. Not in the "Oh, small world." sense, but in the "Oh, the world has collapsed into a gravitational singularity" sense. This is Tumblr, in a nutshell.
Ideas flow. Thoughts flow. They mutate. They cross-pollinate. Yes, this happens elsewhere on the internet. Yes, this happens off the internet. But Tumblr's "reblog" model, which makes it so that your blog is both "your blog" but also a channel customized for your viewing, it's your soapbox and it's also your community microphone... it makes it better. Faster. Stronger.
That's why it seems so hard for people who haven't been plugged into Arkh from the beginning to catch hold of it. That's why it seems like it's blown up out of nowhere, that it's raised thousands of dollars so quickly, that it seems to be the dream of one person and yet it's this big vast amorphous thing...
See, Arkh isn't the project of a game design team, it's an idea being stitched together by an ad-hoc community. It's a concrete plan for raising the money to execute the idea. Arkh isn't just a game, it's an entirely new way of making a game happen.
There are other, equally valid and important way to describe its genesis. But for purposes of this post, I'm focusing on how it arose out of Tumblr culture. A similar project with similar aims could have arisen elsewhere, but the specific manner in which it has been coming together would not be possible without Tumblr.
And if you don't understand Tumblr culture, you're not going to get what's happening with Arkh. Just knowing that Tumblr exists and understanding its basic mechanisms isn't enough. I used to have a Tumblr and occasionally read some Tumblrs, but until I started plugging into the dash on a daily basis and following dozens of people... not just Muppet picture blogs but people who follow and reblog and are followed and reblogged... I did not get it.
Tumblr can be called a microblogging site and a social network, but it's not Twitter and it's not Facebook. It's Tumblr. The flow of content through Tumblr is organic, it's ever-changing, it's... people should be studying this. They really should. The word "Web 2.0" was overused the second time it was uttered aloud, but Tumblr really is something new and unprecedented. Among people who are actively engaged with people who are actively engaged with Tumblr, it's the next best thing to group telepathy.
If you know the fan culture that exists spread out across Livejournal and its offshoots, imagine that. But imagine that it's not divided up into discrete communities. Imagine that connections exist anywhere and everywhere that one person overlaps two groups. Not in the "Oh, small world." sense, but in the "Oh, the world has collapsed into a gravitational singularity" sense. This is Tumblr, in a nutshell.
Ideas flow. Thoughts flow. They mutate. They cross-pollinate. Yes, this happens elsewhere on the internet. Yes, this happens off the internet. But Tumblr's "reblog" model, which makes it so that your blog is both "your blog" but also a channel customized for your viewing, it's your soapbox and it's also your community microphone... it makes it better. Faster. Stronger.
That's why it seems so hard for people who haven't been plugged into Arkh from the beginning to catch hold of it. That's why it seems like it's blown up out of nowhere, that it's raised thousands of dollars so quickly, that it seems to be the dream of one person and yet it's this big vast amorphous thing...
See, Arkh isn't the project of a game design team, it's an idea being stitched together by an ad-hoc community. It's a concrete plan for raising the money to execute the idea. Arkh isn't just a game, it's an entirely new way of making a game happen.