ARG: Zoe's World-Responses

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:37:10 +0000

Hmm, no, he didn't give me the outright answer, but I've been meaning to sit down and solve it now that I have the translation and the key. If I get to it today, I'll post the answer.

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 05:16:18 +0000

1. The cipher under the 'dead' pictogram read "There are Six Sides to Every Story." The Zzzz picture indicated that 'Z' was a key letter of the cipher.

thanks for asking all the right questions, muddy
did they tell you what the actual
key to the cipher was? how would we get that?

thanks

labfly

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 23:02:07 +0000

5. The dimension where Zoe lived was an alternate history where the Germans won WWII.

Well that's an interesting concept.
I had always imagined more German speaking people in a world dominated by the Third Reich though..

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 22:56:50 +0000

Hi everyone. I had sent the PM my questions, and here's what I got back if you're interested:

1. The cipher under the 'dead' pictogram read "There are Six Sides to Every Story." The Zzzz picture indicated that 'Z' was a key letter of the cipher.

2. Chris, who posted the blog about the strange cube, was in fact IG. Razimus was not originally, but was recruited later. Tim Jones was OG.

3. The 'teruga' cipher was nothing.

4. The mispellings and grammar mistakes were unintentional.

5. The dimension where Zoe lived was an alternate history where the Germans won WWII.

That's basically everything I asked. :)

Muddy

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 20:37:59 +0000

Well, I did e-mail the PM as soon as the notice was made available to do so. Unfortunately I have not received any reply. If someone has, please post so we could get some more questions answered here. I will post mine once I receive it.

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 15:42:33 +0000

N/A Productions? That's suitable. :roll:

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 10:57:52 +0000

Hrmmpf, here I am back from a well-deserved holiday that sadly lacked palm trees, pearly-white beaches and more culture than you could shake a stick at (but I'm not complaining about that) and I find ... this. First I shrug my shoulders and go do the laundry, then I think "wait a minute, I seem to remember I invested quite some time in this game". So I go and read some of the post-game interactions (more time not doing the laundry) and I start thinking: I'm sure the PM(s) gave it serious thought, but the reasons given for the melt-down seem, ehm, somewhat unconvincing -- as already noted by everyone else.

Ok, terrorism may hamper the possibilities of real-life interactions, but ARGs are more than that. For one: why was the main character, and the only one we had significant contact with, killed off, but left unreplaced? A string of blogs does not fill in for that kind of contact. If the PMs are interested in why their player base dwindled, I can say that that was the point where my attention was lost -- that, and what I can only call internal inconsistencies: bad spelling (were they, or were they not kloos?), some unclear puzzles (but that might have been me), a game that suddenly morphed into pre-game, and an unclear storyline (but that might have been me again :)).

Considering that this was the game that tempted me into dipping into this ARGing thing in the first place, I am left with a bad aftertaste to add to my sunburn. I am really sorry that it ended this way, I was hoping it would get back on track (but honestly, I had my doubts). Still, I think the genre is much too promising and succesfull to be severely damaged by experiences such as these -- I, for one, am still around. If the PMs are interested, I would be up for a reverse reconstruction/evaluation in one form or another, because I do like this ARG thingy, and Zoe did have promise. But since there may be a "relaunch", I doubt much will happen in that respect, as much as I doubt the possibilities of that relaunch.
Better luck next time, I guess.

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 20:27:22 +0000

I was going to post something here, but realized it was going to be far more hurtful than necessary.

Oh wait. This is a post. Pwned.

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 18:38:09 +0000

damn. I was really hoping to get somewhere on this one....It's a shame.

Strange Cube 1-6/6

automaton@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 18:21:08 +0000

My Question: Since you proabably did have a story set out and a
number of possible puzzles and meetups/interactions planned, would you
ever consider carrying on Zoe's World as a grassroots game?

PM's response:

Well yes the story was planned with 3 possible endings, I did considder running
the game on my own but i just dont think i could deliver the results you guys
would expect/deserve. It was a tough choice, I hope I can start another ARG in
the future and run it fully however im sure I would do it quite differently, as
they seem all quite simular at the moment. "Zoes World" was quite different from
the start and would have got more expermental but sadly that didnt happen.

I really think the PMs should take note of Phaedra's response in the other thread though.

This was one of the first ARGs I've tried to keep up with (along with Perplexcity, but the amount of information that has been given over the year has been a little overwhelming,) and it's unfortunate that I never got to see it through.

Strange Cube 1-6/6

automaton@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 18:04:16 +0000

I couldn't ever get the "I" rather than them clue.

muddy, you did great to get what you did! this pm made up
some lame ass symbolic language and expected us to just
understand what this language was.. we had no reference!
we were just guessing all the time!
i'm so freakin' mad right now.. i could spit! this from a game
that misspelled just because they couldn't actually spell
and or find their spell check!!!
i can't believe these pms that start a story off and can't
complete them! what is is that you're all looking for? seems
there must be a lot of "wanna be" pms coming to this genre
for the WRONG reasons! i'm a writer and i cannot imagine
leaving a story unfinished! and i never write thinking "hey
i'll finish this story when i'm certain more than 5 people will
read it"... i write because i have a story to tell. these pms
obviously have nothing to tell us!
arrrrgggghhhh! :evil: :evil: :evil:

beyond all that.. i will miss all the players from our little
posse. :cry:

so yahoo, guys, let's go find another game.

:wink:

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:56:09 +0000

does anyone know number of people doing ARG's in the UK compared to the US?

I guess i just dont understand how they can want a huge player base but then not give opportunities to play the full game unless you live in a certain country.

I love to solve puzzles and help out in general, but now knowing where the game was going, im glad that im out before i got too excited about the game.

See ya in the next game...

Rob

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:12:36 +0000

Secondly the number of players playing "Zoes World" is not enough to constitute us continuing. This game was not a "grassroots" game from the start but this was assumed, we have a budget but not enough to complete the game for a handful of players.

Please fill me in if I'm missing something.

1) Are we sure he understands the difference between grassroots and corporate ?

Because if it isn't one, it's the other. And I wasn't aware that a corporation was sponsoring this game. Which corporation, precisely, was this game promoting? I don't see any corporation involved, which brings me back to how is this not grassroots?

2) Here we come back to the math of how many players a game aimed at the already-existing ARG community can attract. I haven't been following this one closely, just popping in from time to time and observing, but I didn't see anything to indicate that it was doing a lot to attract people who'd never played an ARG.

Please note: That is not intended to be a statement of blame of any sort. I don't know how one attracts all sorts of new blood without either (1) having tons of money to advertise one's game (and that sort of budget is generally limited to corporate games); or (2) doing a game based on a pre-existing world that has its own fan base (like Metacortechs -- or, for that matter, corporate games like ILB). I'm aware that it can be done -- Lockjaw and Chasing the Wish, for example, as far as I can tell, were both successful grassroots games not based on pre-existing worlds or characters. But I don't know what they did to get their new players.

Anyway, returning to the math of how many players you can get in a game, these days, if you aim it at the ARG community, I'll just quote from a post I made elsewhere:

As Imbri explained in one of the PM-training chats, this can backfire as far as player numbers. (Edited for easier readability and noise-to-signal ratio.)

[19:56] well if you don't it's hard to have new players
[19:56] and if you don't attract new players, you aren't going to have many players at all
[19:57] because, let's say, the current "population" of unfiction is 1000
[19:57] and of those 1000, 500 are playing the 'big games'
[19:58] and another 200 are solelylurkers
[19:58] waiting for the next 42 game
[19:58] and 100 are pms/pms in training
[19:59] you've gotta assume that there are about 400 potential players to an average grassroots game
[19:59] and, right now, there are, what, 10-15 going on
[20:00] and you've gotta share 400 players
[20:00] the most you will get (and i think this is generous) is 40-50
[20:00] unless you look outside the current arg community
[20:02] how viable is a potential 40 player game... keep in mind that getting 10% out of lurking status is rough going
[20:03] 40 player game = 4 posting players, tops
[20:03] you have to think of your playes as an iceberg
[20:04] 90% (or more) are underwater... they are just lurking there
[20:06] Yeah... 90% of them would just sit there and lurk.
[20:06] In the iceburg.
[20:06] denounced, like most statistics... those were made up on the spot
[20:06] but, with a bit of awareness
[20:07] i mean, i've been observing for quite some time
[20:07] and i've had access to a few studies (though i question them as well)
[20:10] and i think important
[20:10] yes, agreed that it depends on the game
[20:10] but without visible players it's hard to recruit new players

So, let's revise Imbri's numbers to reflect the current population of Unfiction, which is 7236. According to the memberlist, 4961 of these members have actually posted.

Rounding the numbers, that means that of roughly 7000 players, 2000 are lurkers. Imbri estimated 20% lurk, but this puts it closer to 30%.

She estimated half are here to play the "big games." Either they only appear during the big games, or they play one game like ILB or Our Colony or Art of the Heist and then vanish (and while I don't believe Our Colony was really an ARG, I include it here because it did bring players to Unfiction. Or, there are people like me who half-heartedly try to play some of the smaller games but never really get grabbed by them.

So, 3500 are here for big games, but a few of them could potentially be interested in a smaller game. Another 2000 are lurkers only.

At imbri's estimate (that is, 40% of the total membership is part of a potential audience for grassroots games), that leaves us with about 2800 potential players.

And those 2800 have to be shared between the currently-running games (assume 10-15 at a time).

That's 280 potential players for each game, if we assume a fairly even distribution (which, of course, doesn't happen in real life as some grassroots games are more attractive than others).

As imbri noted, getting more than 10% of the players out of lurking status is rough going.

So, that means about 28 visible players. (Which is reasonably close to my estimate that there were ~30 regular players here.)

There's an explanation for your numbers question.

This again highlights the importance, for grassroots PMs, of looking outside the established ARG community for players. Especially, I think, with the launch.

I mean, they don't really need to worry about the Unfiction populace finding their game -- if it's out there, we'll find it. But aiming the game solely at Unfiction limits the potential size of your player base. And less players means less ability to solve puzzles and figure out the plot.

Also, I maintain that the larger the group, the easier it is to predict behavior, which is also important for a PM.

Anyway, that's my theory and I'm stickin' to it. :)

Sadly we have also struggled to get any support from the major ARG websites as they seem absorbed in new games or larger projects, which this could have easily been.

I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean.

I mean, what the heck did he want?

Sites like this are player-driven. For example, the admins don't high-handedly decide which games are "worthy" of having their own forum: they go by player response . They look at which games are getting the most player traffic. If a game is getting a reasonable amount of traffic and/or people are requesting a forum, it gets one. That's it. The admins don't try and influence how much attention a game gets. They just go by player response.

Similarly, sites like ARGN are news sites designed for the non-ARG-expert. ARGN announced Zoe's World's launch. I'm not sure how the PM can reasonably expect it to do more, unless the game gets a lot of player attention. ARGN is not there to aid PMs in promoting their game. It's there to aid players and potential players in knowing what's going on in the ARG world.

It's the PMs' responsibility to make their game attractive to players, not that of the "major ARG websites". This is not the old days when there were only one or two games running at a time. This is an increasingly crowded market where games are beginning to have to compete for player attention.

If your game doesn't attract a large player base, it's not because the world hates you, or because ARGN and other "major ARG websites" have been unfair to you, or because there is a prejudice against grassroots games, or anything of the sort.

It's because your game didn't compete well with the others. And rather than complaining about it, it'd probably be more productive to dissect your game, and compare and contrast it to the others with which it was running simultaneously, and try to figure out the reasons why players found other games more attractive.

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Mudbrother@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:01:07 +0000

Okay, so they decided to launch at a really bad time, so what. What does the lack of players have to do with going through with the rest of the game? Finishing what you started?

If the PM decided to make the cruddy decision to make an agreement with a sponsor and lied to them by telling them "I can guarentee "X" amount of players" that's something that we have absolutely no control over and all the blame should then be put on the PMs shoulders. Everyone knows that you can not guarentee a certain number of players unless you have some games under your belt and actually have some numbers to go by. Even then you can run into guarentee problems.

There have been a lot of implosions in the ARG world lately. And they are mostly caused by bad planning. Let this be a lesson to any future PMs. Please plan everything out, prepare for the unimaginable and have an answer for as much as you can. Your implosions just don't cause harm to yourself, but to the community and this genre.

I, for one, am not willing to let this damper my spirits. I am sure that there will be a game along soon which will be something to admire. Something that will hopefully give ARGers, new and old alike, hope that the genre is still safe.

I can not guarentee that there will not be games that implode before that time though... sorry.

Strange Cube 1-6/6

automaton@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 14:29:13 +0000

wow, I actually guessed it. I guess keycodebot didn't approve me since I was still just guessing. hehe. I couldn't ever get the "I" rather than them clue.