ARG: The Carer-Responses

Saw II

Lewis the Second@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 15:33:59 +0000

No it wasn't.

Cheers,
Lewis
The Carer

Saw II

Lewis the Second@forums.unfiction.com — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 19:38:30 +0000

I don't think so. Wouldn't it be a better idea, if you were creating an ARG to help promote a movie, to not pull the plug on the game months before the promotional material for the movie started to come out?

Have you read through the PM chat log, perchance?

Saw II

Lewis the Second@forums.unfiction.com — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 19:33:12 +0000

Is this ARG in someway promoting the Saw II movie?

[PM CHAT] Questions for tonight's chat.

JebJoya@forums.unfiction.com — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 22:50:26 +0000

[PM CHAT] Questions for tonight's chat.

JebJoya@forums.unfiction.com — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 19:05:48 +0000

Depends if the real start is 8pm GMT or 8pm BST....as its the diffrence of me being home or just leaving work :)

If i'm not alive then please ask these questions:

1. Was the Dennison meet a last second change or planned from the start?

2. What was your reaction to the (un-anounced) security leak on your blog? (The anonymous posters were me and Beano).

3. Is there anything major you would of changed about the game now its been played? say if you had a chance to do it all again from the beginning.

4. How did you find managing so many in-game communications at the same time? Alot of people mentioned that we'd get a storm of emails from time to time, especially noticable for people who emailed several characters at the same time, only to get responses pritty much the same time...

4b. Do you think this broke the flow of the game?

[PM CHAT] Questions for tonight's chat.

JebJoya@forums.unfiction.com — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 17:35:20 +0000

I won't be around for the chat tonight I'm afraid, so if someone wouldn't mind asking the following questions on my behalf?

1/ Why so many ancillary characters that didn't appear to have much to say? Wilson, Ascott and most puzzlingly Abhu had either tiny snippets of useless information, or were unwilling to give out other things. For instance although appearing to want to help, Abhu declined to tell me the location of the HQ :)

2/ You going to do another ARG? Do you play them, and what made you do one?

3/ Did you find the PMing of this to be enjoyable and fun? What was the best bit for you?

4/ Did you originally intend it to be a game that could be won/drawn or lost, or did that just flow a bit? Personally I quite like the design that allows for people not solving the push of puzzles and as a result, losing!

5/ Oh, and if we had called #1 on time, would he have stopped it? :)

The End - Post mortem..

chippy@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 20:21:31 +0000

and me in new york too!

The End - Post mortem..

chippy@forums.unfiction.com — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 03:33:05 +0000

How irresponsibe of a game to end while I am in Las Vegas :roll: :P

The End - Post mortem..

chippy@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:06:02 +0000

Of course, the other solution is to design a game that people can lose :)

I think it has to be quite short though, basically a gentle build up of evidence and information without anything REALLY progressing, followed by a second buildup to a climactic ending that ends well or badly depending on player interaction.

In our case we got that. There were 7 people captured throughout, Amanda was never safe even though she escaped, same with Derwent obviously, so basically we always had a "there are 7 captives in a house somewhere" situation.

We then got the CD which gave us quite a few other bits and bobs to work on, this was the final buildup. Obviously we failed on that as we didn't manage to contact #1 or another member to try and stop it.

We then chose not to choose. Not a bad decision I don't think, if we'd chosen to kill amanda, the ending would have to have been that he kept the other 5 anyway, if we'd chosen the 5, why let amanda live, she'd seen some of them etc.. I can't see how it could have ended differently other than winning. (though they do say they had the 4 endings, win, lose, save 5, save 1 I assume).

Anyway, when I rule the world, ARGs will be more mass media. ;)

The End - Post mortem..

chippy@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 02:50:37 +0000

The lurker population is actually quite a bit larger, as most of those guys don't bother to register. I typically see about 3-5 times as many unique hosts visiting the site as there are registered users. However, the vast majority of those lurkers are quite unlikely to delurk unless they are particularly enchanted by something, so this point doesn't really affect what you're saying, I'm just adding a bit of trivia. ;)

The End - Post mortem..

chippy@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 01:29:28 +0000

... wow. I never thought about player base being a problem, but I guess you may very well be right. What I want to know is how OurColony got a crap load of people to play, while a game as good as this hardly got anyone?

How did OurColony get a crapload of players, you ask?

1) It was fairly obviously connected to the XBox. So it could count on the XBox contingent.

2) The ants, and the fact that it was clearly advertising for the XBox, made people wonder if there was an Ilovebees connection. So, at least at the beginning, it got the beekeeper contingent.

3) For that same reason, like Lenny's Xanga, another abortive piece of crap, got a lot of people who missed ILB but wished they had played. So it got the beekeeper wannabe contingent.

4) Micro$oft.

So, the numbers aren't all that difficult to figure out.

Also, and I can't remember if I alluded to this in my previous post, and I'm too lazy to open another window and check, but it appears to me that the PMs of TheCarer aimed their game squarely at Unfiction, without making much of an effort to attract new players.

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.)

so yer definitely right - you have to keep the new new ones in mind :)
well if you don't it's hard to have new players, and if you don't attract new players, you aren't going to have many players at all. because, let's say, the current "population" of unfiction is 1000, and of those 1000, 500 are playing the 'big games,' and another 200 are solelylurkers, waiting for the next 42 game, and 100 are pms/pms in training
you've gotta assume that there are about 400 potential players to an average grassroots game and, right now, there are, what, 10-15 going on and you've gotta share 400 players. the most you will get (and i think this is generous) is 40-50 unless you look outside the current arg community
how viable is a potential 40 player game... keep in mind that getting 10% out of lurking status is rough going. 40 player game = 4 posting players, tops. you have to think of your playes as an iceberg: 90% (or more) are underwater... they are just lurking there
Yeah... 90% of them would just sit there and lurk. In the iceburg.
denounced, like most statistics... those were made up on the spot. but, with a bit of awareness. i mean, i've been observing for quite some time and i've had access to a few studies (though i question them as well)
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. :)

The End - Post mortem..

chippy@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:29:52 +0000

... wow. I never thought about player base being a problem, but I guess you may very well be right. What I want to know is how OurColony got a crap load of people to play, while a game as good as this hardly got anyone? Maybe it was just advertising.... It really is too bad it had to end this way... I've been following this one for a while, and it was pretty good. Let's hope it is a sign of good things to come. :D

[ARCHIVING] In the name of posterity...

kholdstare@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:22:46 +0000

It might take me a little while, but I shall send the one or two E-mails I sent/ recieved... just give me a day or two :)

[INTERACTIONS] The Grand Unified Interaction Thread

shambles@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 17:03:53 +0000

chippy did post a link to a picture of me standing in Millennium Square after the drop-off, looking at least semi-female :? )

eh... somewhat. :P

.....I can expect death shortly probably...

[INTERACTIONS] The Grand Unified Interaction Thread

shambles@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:49:44 +0000

Hahah, never been called a scouser before... :lol:

I will have to get an avatar (although if I remember rightly chippy did post a link to a picture of me standing in Millennium Square after the drop-off, looking at least semi-female :? )