| Page 19 of 35 [523 Posts] | Goto page: Previous 1, 2, 3, ..., 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, ..., 33, 34, 35 Next |
| Author | Message | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exarch |
I'm just gonna raise this just for in case but the matching letters fit my latitude/longitude theory. I have no idea why they might be sending coordinates unless, like with vanishing point, there will be a large intro presentation to the game in certain areas. Of course, that doesn't fit in with I Ching concepts. hmmmmmm
 Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:53 am |
||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
| Rolerbe |
'Promotion' not 'advertising'. Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:50 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Gertrude Wellie |
Reply
Thanks for the info, Phaedra!
 Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:47 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Phaedra |
Re: Questions
Yay newbies!
Chances are at least some of the people who get the packages will make the connection. Bast upped her chances by sending a bunch of packages to various META answer ("meta" refers to information outside the game world): The company behind this game also is familiar with Unfiction, and we're familiar with them, and a lot of the people who got packages also fairly recently talked in person with one of the puppetmasters (people who run an ARG) at ARGFest, and I hear he dropped some hints that something was coming. Generally speaking, most large-scale, commercial ARGs don't have such specifically targeted rabbitholes -- instead of sending packages to handpicked individuals, they might run ads in a newspaper or put a link in a movie trailer or use other much more publicly-focused means to get their game noticed. But often they also send a heads-up directly to us. They also may attempt to recruit other potentially interested internet communities by sending them personally-targeted rabbitholes as well. Most recently, for Vanishing Point, which was a game that promoted Microsoft Vista, the company behind it sent computers and other really nice swag with clues in the packages to various tech bloggers.
Generally speaking, finding out who's behind it is a secondary, meta goal. In this case, we already know because of to whom the site is registered. But that's an out-of-game activity. As for the game itself, we don't know yet. ARGs are narratives in which the players can participate, but that doesn't mean we get to read ahead in the story. 
As a basic rule of thumb, most ARGs share the same central question: what the heck is going on here? So that's usually the central mystery we're trying to solve, although as the game develops, other goals will usually become clear: find someone who's missing, stop someone from doing something, help someone who's in trouble, etc.
Usually that's the main reward, yes. The experience itself is the reward. Sometimes there are more tangible rewards, too, like game swag. In a few cases, ARGs have actually prizes for winners (e.g. Perplex City Season 1) but that's the exception rather than the rule.
Short answer: no. This is a stand-alone entertainment experience. Longer answer: Yes and no. The money's got to come from somewhere, so most of the large-scale corporate ARGs have been promotions for something. For example, the first and one of the most famous examples of a full-fledged ARG, the Beast, was a promotion for the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. That said, these aren't "ploys" in the sense of something designed to trick you into buying something. They're stand-alone art. Usually they are somehow connected with the product being sold (the game I mentioned above took place in the world of the movie, although it rarely intersected directly with it plotwise), but they're not going to push it at you. In fact in some cases, the puppetmasters and their client will both deny a connection. But if the game is good enough, you may be curious enough to seek out the connection. More discussion on ARGs and marketing can be found here. Basically, though, experienced puppetmasters aren't going to do anything that might make you feel like you've been used or duped by a marketing ploy, because it's counterproductive.
Don't be sorry! They're good questions. The Unfiction people were chosen, I assume, because sending us a package was more or less guaranteed to ensure that the contents of the package would be shared with everyone on Unfiction. Unfiction is the largest ARG playing community on the web, so that meant that the game would start out with a backbone group of players who knew what it was, and would start organizing and producing resources (e.g. the wiki and the chat channel) that could support a larger playerbase of ARG newcomers. You were chosen, I assume, because of your connection with a community of Lovecraft fans? (Which I'm curious to hear more about.) Don't ever be sorry for asking questions. Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:19 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Gertrude Wellie |
Tie In
Movie
Just reading through everything and it all definitely sounds like a tie in to the Lovecraft movie coming out. Interesting that even PST got something, and the timing puts it a few months out from summer release.
Do all the items received look like mass produced printings? or are they more original pages? A rookie here on ARGs, but looking forward to adding what I can! Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:18 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Worker |
Re: My package
What side is that page number on? The torn side, or not? EDIT: No need to answer that. It's the torn side. It's always the torn side. And the page with the image is 78. Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:14 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| catherwood |
Re: Questions
Heh, we simul-posted, great minds thinking almost alike...
It won't void the game for the rest of us, but that one person will miss out on some fun. We trust that the "puppetmasters" will find another way to get vital information out to the rest of the community, if someone neglects to share it with the world.
I think of it as immersive fiction, in which the point is not just to watch a story unfold but to participate in unlocking it, revealing secrets, and even steering it just a bit.
Yes, that plus the social rewards from working with a community of puzzle-solvers and story-speculators. Another analogy might be a book club, where you enjoy not only the shared story, but the sharing of the weekly meetings. (Oh, and the occasional swag gifts.)
"Ploy" is such a negative term. If you enjoy the Cthulu mythos enough to LARP it, imagine living it in such a way that it invades your real world. We like to think that the purveyors of a product are also giving us a unique experience. People today still talk about "i love bees" more than they talk about "that day we stood in line to buy Halo 2", at least my friends do.
Questions are good, it's how the lurkers learn too. And we're all just mundanes -- you can trust that the game itself doesn't play out on this forum, this is for discussion about the game, the characters and puppetmasters know to allow us this space to ourselves. If/when the time comes, they may have an in-game website with a message board or chat space where we will interact with BASaint and other characters... I'm getting chills of anticipation ;) Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:09 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Axys Denyed |
Re: Questions
If this were to happen, the puppetmasters would find some way to get the needed information to us. There's always multiple ways to get the information out
The point? We don't know yet. Finding out the purpose is also part of the mystery
Worry not about the destination and enjoy the path to it
I wouldn't call it a "ploy". The game is an unique experience in and of itself. With "corporate" ARGs (GMD being the company behind this one) there's usually someone backing the game and the game will tie into their product in some manner, but it's not like they browbeat you with the product. It's less "Go out and buy this" and more "Isn't this an interesting concept? Here's something else related to it you might be interested in."
Don't feel bad for asking question. If you don't ask questions, how are you supposed to learn? Stick around, you'll get to know us. Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:02 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Phaedra |
Ahhhh, sorry. I'm not sure that the packages don't have built-in redundancy as well -- I appear to have the same I Ching hexagram as someone else. But I think that they're -- for lack of a better term -- cross-redundant. That is, if my letter matches, say, Inio's, my I Ching hexagram matches thebruce's, rather than having my whole package match someone else's. I'd expect that the other package contents would be redundant, since they're puzzle pieces. I'd assumed the letters were just sort of...mood-setting. But okay, perhaps we should be cross-referencing. I've seen two letters that share the same distinctive leitmotivs as mine: line between reality and fantasy, madness lying on that line, dreams being so very real. Those are present in inio's and PST Productions' letters as well. Have we found matches to any of the others yet? Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:49 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| PST Productions |
Questions
Ok, I'm still not sure why or how I got the package. Hell, I first thought we had our very first stalker here at PST. Until I farted around in the internet, I didn't know it was a game.
We've had players in our events before send us stuff. Some neat props, books, CD, etc. What happens if people that get sent the packages don't make the connection? Is the game void? Also, what is exactly the point to the game? To find the person who created it, to find this fictional BA Person? What's the reward? Just the satisfaction of solving the mystery? Is this just a ploy in the attempts of a production company to sell a product or movie? Sorry for the barrage of questions. This would be the first ARG I've done. Still not sure why and how we were chosen. To be honest, I have no clue who anyone here is. Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:40 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| faster |
I know - but I don't think I explained my point very well 
What I meant was that if the second letter was intended as a fall back in case the first didn't get through or didn't get shared, wouldn't the rest of the package be identical as well - especially since it's fair to assume that the contents of the packages hold as much, if not more meaning than the letters? If that's the case, then - unless Bast did just run out of dreams to describe - then we should keep in mind that there might be that there's some other reason why duplicate letters have gone out: the overlap mightn't be redundant. Obviously it's hard to tell at this stage, but I thought it might be worth raising, just in case...Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:08 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Phaedra |
It was the letter that's redundant, not the package contents. So far it doesn't look like the contents of the letter are part of a puzzle, but if they're going to this much trouble to make sure that the contents go out to the player base as a whole (sending very similar letters to multiple people), maybe they are.
Or maybe Bast just ran out of dreams to talk about. Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 8:34 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| faster |
If it is just for redundancy, then why have different numbering for the (maybe) I Ching refs? Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 4:09 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| poeticexplosion |
Very very similar to Phaedra's letter. Just redundancy in case the packages don't get reported? If so, what's important here that requires redundancy? Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 3:44 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| thebruce |
Nice... the letter:
Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 2:59 am |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Page 19 of 35 [523 Posts] | Goto page: Previous 1, 2, 3, ..., 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, ..., 33, 34, 35 Next |
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group