ABSTRACT
This conclusion provides a summary of the previous chapters, returning first to the definitions and historical contexts of promotional ARGs. It outlines their emergence in the early 2000s, the rise in their use as marketing tactics, and their decline towards the end of the decade. It also details the various media marketing strategies and theories which promotional ARGs engage with to varying degrees. Finally, it summarises the dual focus of the book’s final two chapters: the manner in which promotional ARGs may challenge received notions about participatory culture, consumer/producer relationships, and political economies of labour in contemporary digital promotional culture. It argues that although the games may not allow for an empowered consumer via textual control, they do allow for other more affective modes of empowerment that are important to players. It also suggests that ARGs offer a more complex model of digital labour, which resists binary definitions of exploitation or resistance. Players may not be able to remove themselves or their work from systems of consumer capitalism. However, the nature of ARGs and the relationship between players and PMs may allow consumers to conceptualise their labour and participate in those systems somewhat on their own terms.
