but oops, it's after 7 and this isn't a brooke chats about her daily struggles chat :) so hey! how's everyone else? happy :) (we should have one of those some time) fine :) now, i'm sure that there are probably people here that are working on things that we shouldn't know about. so let's keep in mind that this channel holds some secrets and things that are accidentally slipped are quickly thrown out of our minds :) heh I have a mind like a steel trap, old and rusty (where'd I steal that from?) other than that, it's a place to support one another and offer thoughts, suggestions, and questions about how things have worked in the past and how we think things might play out in the future ...this isn't the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? Damn, they lied to me. * Hellion pokes Takeru one of the questions that came up before i got all about me, was what it's actually like to be behind the curtain... is it really as hard/big/scary/overwhelming as rumors suggest and what do people actually do while people are playing games and i think that's a FINE place to start especially with the edition of some of the recently concluded omnifam PMs (woo! way to go guys! congrats!) * Hellion applauds edition? well, edition as in varin just chatted and bill's always in here :) :) addition oh, fine, be all correct english on me :) addiction? who was in on omnifam??? sorry, just clarifying for myself. bill, varin, want to have at it a bit? tell us about the life and struggles of being a live PM (and clue us all in on who all worked with you) as opposed to those dead PMs ;) * imbri giggles at putting them on the spot * imbri notices the silence and hopes they didn't fall asleep at the keyboard (though wouldn't be surprised... mmmmm, sleep) in their silence, here's the credits page: http://followersoframbaldi.com/credits.php cheers and, hopefully they'll wake up (dingdingding bill! varin! wake up! dingdingding) but i can say that the rumors are not overstated. being a pm when the game is live is life-consuming * AmberJoy glances over at varin, snoring in her chair * AmberJoy aims a paper airplane at varin, with morse code telling her to wake up my day, working on LJ and MU, was about as follows (when the game is live which is slightly different from when it's not) hey I'd get up and first thing i'd do would be check the forums and see if there were any issues that needed immediate attention (broken pages etc) I'd also log into the development forums and see if there were any issues there that needed my immediate attention (help clarifying an idea, editing, bug testing, etc) usually that would take about an hour or so to go through wow, so many awesome people were involved in omnifam, then i'd check out our chat and discuss the plans for the day with everyone see who was working on what, how i could help. explain what i was working on, how they could help. then it'd be a couple hours of developing content and fighting any fires that needed fought that would change by the day to a degree...depending on updates and whatnot update days are far busier it was about making sure that everything that was supposed to go was ready to go if it wasn't ready, it had to get ready if it couldn't be ready, it was about figuring out the purpose of that content and how we could do something else instead that all could take anywhere from 3 hours to 10 hours, depending on what needed done then it would go live and you'd have to watch to make sure that everything went live as it was supposed to and then decide whether you fixed any mistakes or just let them be out there and, ofcourse, we'd be watching the game chat and forums w/a mix of fear and glee to see how it went over oh hey i'm here too hey all! Is it offensive to the PMs when they see players complaining about parts of the ARG? hah ( I snuck out for dinner ) let me say that you need to have a thick skin ;) Amber: Must be constant offendedness * varin nods - thick skin! elephantine * Magesteff snicker as having been a big complainer as player on Acheron Bill, I'd think there's a difference between the players going after you, and the players going after the game, albeit a small difference I always worry about how the PMs feel when I see posts or chat that is complaining about part of the ARG. i never take it personally if anything, it motivates me to do better They don't know who it is behind the game, it's not a personal thing, it's just showing points that can be improved on and.. this is why you'll probably NEVER see the PMs chatlogs ;) lol takeru: it's a very small difference when you're stressed and tired and putting so much of yourself into the game... sometimes it really feels as if you are the game and the game is you and it can be v. hard to make that distinction That's what I was thinking, imbri. The ARG becomes a baby, a child, to the PMs. you become very vested in how it goes * Takeru is now known as Takeru|Shower of course you walk away from the screen and, hopefully, perpsective returns and returns quickly on the other side of the spectrum - there's nothing better than seeing the players having fun haha yeah that's the best part for those that are PMs for fun and not pay, how do people around you react to you spending so much time on something for no profit? typically with confusion and the absolute certainty that you are insane ;) my wife is convinced args are part of an evil cult :) at least that's been my experience ha haha you just need to convince them to become involved too Bill, it's cause they are :P yet you still do them :) personally, I'm trying to build an arg around that in my spare time ;) with her as the main character hehehe * Gupfee hides the emeter and the copy of "Dianetics and ARGing" hehe * varin throws a paper airplane at the room how long does it take you to develop a storyline like the one for omnifarm? we're going to defer answering specific questions about omnifam until the player chat next week i'll make sure the date is posted when we finalize it ok, well, it took us about 9 months to develop the storyline for Lockjaw though the time wasn't spent as productively as it could have been i need to read with my kid for a bit and get her settled for bed. bbi 30 for Metacortechs, we had about a month ciao bill see ya bill... congrats again! wow, a month? that is pretty amazing for the storyline, yes and how many pms are involved in developing the storyline? though, honestly, it was done in about 3 days... the other 30 were spent in more finetuning then, after that, it was filling in some side stuff (wongmo came about after the basic storyline was done, for example) and starting the development but I guess some of the themes /concepts were things that were stewing in your minds long before that ... you bring some old pet ideas to the table, maybe? probably and steve, space, and i did the lion's share of the early development on the game (though the others were certainly involved a good deal) if you had it to do over again - what would you change about the early development of mu or lj? and we'd been chatting together about doing a game for a good year+ so we really knew how each other thought and were on the same page in many areas that made it all go much more quickly than, say, lockjaw where we didn't know each other at all and had no clue what we were doing early dev for LJ, hmmmm probably cutting the size of the team far earlier we also had some crazy crackpot idea of various distinct teams where noone really knew exactly what the other teams were up to and there'd be some person or group controlling all the little subgroups a pretty cool idea in thought in reality - hahahahahaha we started w/100 and wound up w/6 and some of us (in the 6) were far more active than others (different places in our lives, work schedules, etc) 100? wow yeah, it was insane. someone posted on the cm list hey... let's make a game and 100 people joined the yahoo group for it before it was made private and noone else could join actually, i think it was mroe like 106 i don't know what i'd change about the early points of MU development we were amazing, really we were in each other's heads and it just came together beautifully like a symphony yeah there are definitely things that we would probably utilize now that we didn't have then (various groupware things, communication methods, etc) and steve and i have both gained a great deal of experience by working on a professional level that would probably change the way we approached it again but it worked and it worked well as it was (on a phpbb forum and irc chat) all the other bells and whistles wouldn't have changed things and, actually, might confuse ozy and clay who are both admittedly tech-dumb :) they get scared when things like "wiki" and "cms" and "groupware" come into the conversation :) hehe you make an interesting point there indirectly, which is that how well you know your team makes a big difference absolutely! and, i think, along with that is knowing when to step aside and letting someone else take over for something i'm thinking of Dina when i was working on the plot, i LOVED dina and i would have LOVED to have written for her in team-oriented endevors that I have been a part of (not just ARG oriented stuff), there is a lot of feeling out in the early going, that takes up a lot of the time and energy if people are working together for the first time but i knew that krystyn could make her shine in ways that i couldn't so, much as i wanted her, i went to krystyn and said... hey, dina... she's in there for you and so we designed dina to fit krystyn even moreso of course, at that time, dina was MOM or some other strange name... so glad it changed to dina :) knowing your team and knowing their strengths is huge esp in a volunteer effort... people should be able to work on what they like and what inspires them otherwise it becomes too much of a job and, without pay, it becomes too easy to quit and that's really why lockjaw took so much longer than mu... we didn't know each other and had to learn those things a lot of the struggles in lockjaw (and probably any game with a newly brought together team) were a direct result of that ain't that the truth. hey jamesi :) hey :) have any advice for PMs based on your experience w/JMX or observance over any number of other games? don't launch until you are damn sure it's ready for public consumption mmmm we get to consume the public? and alpha test all of your puzzles. twice. Fireball is in charge of public consumption, I would really like to taste his cooking and he's not here to say no! perfect! woo! cheesecake for everyone (another lesson of PMing... take advantage of those that don't show up for meetings ;)) haha And I would warn people who have small children to become Puppetmasters. hehehe other than that, i'm here to listen and log but good advice on both counts :) * Magesteff thinks that most of us who don't have small children are the small children at least in our minds * imbri kicks magesteff in the shin and runs off with her toys ow! hey! * Magesteff chases imbri down the rabbit hole honestly, being a PM really is as timeconsuming or more so than people say that it is and not just when you're on the computer working just like when you're playing a game and start seeing the game in your daily life (such as people that played ILB freaked out when walking by ringing payphones or whatnot), the same thing happens as a PM it's always there you'll be at a party talking with your friends and feeling like you're a normal person and suddenly something in that conversation will send your brain down some crazy path of insane puzzles or moving story ideas * Hellion is now known as Hellion|AFK it's always there. * Bill steps carefully away from imbri though, there are times where you can shut up that crazy little voice for long enough to enjoy reality so, in effect it helps to be crazy going in. Lessons the culture shock of turning crazy halfway through. yes bill, hits too close to home? lmao...aren't most ARGers here because the general pop thinks they are odd to begin with? :P heh hehe so, i think we've hit the "pming sucks up your life" topic you don't know how many times I've gotten a viagra spam and thought what a cool puzzle the filter-busting misspellings would make is there anything else we should hit on? How hard it is to come up with puzzles and trails that are unique? bad bill. bad. you'll have us filling up UF with every spam we get! amber, for some people it seems like second nature hehehe hey! there's gotta be something here! really! *nod* i have found that I can make good puzzles, but not necessarily on a schedule isn't that how all creativity is bred? off schedule? some need a deadline, some need anything but ... how bout linking the puzzles to the story, any tips? other than it's pretty much essential? I know people I could go to and tell them "I need a puzzle to this or that." and I've got a work of genius in my hands the next day I'm a big fan of puzzles that aren't put in just for puzzles sake yeah one thing that i've fond that helps is to set up some decent reason for someone to make puzzles the puzzles have to make sense for the story imho that lets you get away with things, to a degree *nod* hence the preponderance of paranoid and delusional characters ;) hehe another way to do it is to have puzzle themes the puzzle cards in dreadhouse were genius such as we did with the paintover things in mu... there was a reason (they had to hide) mu? and there was a constant method (a background picture, a quote, a bit that refered to a website) metacortechs metacortechs so we could build a puzzle on the fly and it easily fit the theme and had a purpose (very much new to the party) welcome aboard AndreaNEON thanks. (run away while you still can!) ;P I'm a game designer too - strategy card games, though. it's an older game (2003) that revolved around the matrix universe... but there was a hacker character that had to hide info wish I knew about this chat =) oh, right imbri * xnbomb is now known as xnb[o]mb * xnb[o]mb is wanted in the kitchen mmmm bring us food lol virtual food brings no nurishment (just as virtual food brings no pain) =) * guns and tastes rather bland so, what did I miss? that PMing is time consuming :) there will likely be a log made available afterwards who else here PMed? about half, i think, have done something (at least behind the scenes) * Bill thinks a lot of people are lurking ;) :) I'm really interested in running an ARG at some point. But I'm busy running my online card game (Chron X - chronx.com) and my new paper card game coming out very soon (Duel of The Spellcasters - duelofthespellcasters.com) =) (sorry for the cheap plugs, couldn't resist) running a company is time consuming =) yes, yes it is have you ever had problems with - whats it called - arg-jacking? arg-jacking? players trying to subvert your game by posing as ingame characters well, spacebass did the gentel janitor during lockjaw haha, I read that as "genital janitor" heh which, fortunately, i knew about in advance and knew that he was behind it (so it wasn't much of a threat) hmmm we finally just fired the janitor and he left and in metacortechs, there was an attempt at it hehe but we had a device in play that allowed us to prove that it was fake maybe there is a way to let people in? honeypot theory give people an approved way to become really part of the story and then they will do less non-approved things all of the ingame websites were marked with an image that came off of a certain directory at a known ingame site (not honeypot in the I Love Bees sense) * Hellion|AFK is now known as Hellion and were specific to the website so players could tell (by looking at where that image came from) that it wasn't ingame smart stuff a method we use, not to prevent arg-jacking but to help solidify the notion that a website is 'ingame', in the corporate training games * Magesteff can speak about the semi arg jacking in AWARE I nice trick * AmberJoy bows to the PMs is to provide a search engine in game and if you put in certain websites (ingame ones) you'll get a certain response some are set up like a search engine and some are set up more like a website used in The Beast where there were two input boxes and the correct combination of words provided a different result http://aleph-naught.cloudmakers.org/ nifty image trick! but that way there's never any real doubt if a site or character is ingame and that allows for a method to stop the arg-jacking i 'stole' the search engine idea from Chasing the Wish :) it gets more complicated when the game isn't just played on the web (credit where credit is due) like the first day we had axons for ILB, someone showed up at one wearing a beesuit i don't know what his intentions were, but people thought he was ingame for at least a few hurs hours lol...it's funny that someone would actually do that Bill - works for 42? um, no sorry I'm a bit confused. =) i was one of the player moderators for that game trying to contain the masses in chat ;) how were you included? Andrea, most of us here are just for fun. The PM chat for the GUN game was the other night yah, I read that log. I played at LCP and completed the Salem MA favor most of us are involved with grassroots games (though I was a day late =( ) I'm asking mostly because I'd like to run an ARG at some point. As opposed to my current games, which seem more like an AAARRRGGGHHH. =) depth is a good thing. * Takeru|Shower is now known as Takeru * AmberJoy looks around the room * imbri looks back * varin tap dances you've asked some good questions amber... got any more? oh I always have questions :P varin: careful not to fall in the sink but then jamesi said that people with little kids should probably not be PMs :P that rules me out, then =( that was advice only sounds like good advice though from personal experience Both times I puppetmastered, I was also rehearsing and performing in a play in the suburbs. or at least be honest with yourself about the amount of time you can *really* dedicate I had another question - it is talked about on the forums how do you pull people in, without spamming? Have a good story. That first -POP- moment That's the fun part, Andrea! the subtle launch so subtle people almost don't realize hmmm AndreaNEON, we talked about that in a previous chat here here's the transcript http://deaddrop.us/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=238 (my website) thanks so what did you decide, subtle smooth or big bang? Andrea, you can also contact the site administrators if you are trying to find a creative way and ask for their help rather than spam the board tip: do not post on the forums that you need help because they borke in and hit you on the head you have to know who your audience is to answer that question if you are writing it for the existing ARG community, send the trailhead to steve, myself and spacebass not steve me I'm assuming the existing ARG community will get wind of it anyway. That's what you do. =) someone will post it and the players will dissect it faster than a ravenous pack of ants on a dead lizard lol Steve & jamesi = ARGN.com gotcha steve is on hiatus I got to witness that last week. ah, i missed that transition bill and spacebass are from where? spacebass is mr. unfiction Bill = dead drop and I'm always willing to accept trailheads in the mail, as long as there's some cash invovled :P hehe yes, jamesi is the big guy behind argn now :) (go jamesi go!) heh She will accept trailheads as long as it sucks her in without the cash outlay (that too) * Magesteff winks at Varin she who? (blink) Varin of varin.org VERY nice. the trick would be getting their addresses ;) whois is like ARG 101 :p hehehe well, yah Space you can send a PM through the Forums jwaite@argn.com and Varin at hers or at UF * varin checks to see if her whois is updated I mean physical addresses, so much cooler Wait, Jamesi = ARGN? I miss something? one thing that we did during lockjaw was to set up an email address specifically for times we had to peak around the curtain steve is now working for 42 conflict of interest I guess oops, I better fix that it was nagahead@yahoo or something like that and it allowed us to contact Steve (player moderator) in the few instances we had to I knew Steve started working for 42. Couldn't believe I was seeing him at the PM chat, lol. were any of you contacted by PMs directly, for trailheads with complete anonymity and isn't that wierd? Does that ruin the game for you? * Bill got a honey jar once if they do it right, it's good, Andrea. but it didn't say "FROM THE PUPPETMASTER" right. don't contact them yourself, do it IG heh. but don't do it in some strangely encrypted email... i don't think anyway yeah, I've gotten a letter in the mail and I also go the "trailhead" for OurColony :/ +t * varin hides the LCP launch started with a FedEx-ed set of promotional cards and an anonymous email heh, "OurColony" mine came regular mail i know, as far as argn is concerned (and jamesi can say if he doesn't agree w/me), we're so 'behind the scenes' at this point and I was so excited because I thought maybe it was 42! we've all been around the block a few times quite a few that something rather straightforward is appreciated ILB started with the jar of honey yah we're always gentle when reporting possible game launches doesn't mean it has to say "hey, i'm the pm of a new grassroots game, could you tip off the community" couldn't believe that when I read it. but i don't think i'd be offended or put off the game in anyway if it did * j[a]mesi goes to be with family... ttfn heh imbri = varin.org? see ya jamesi varin = varin.org varin = varin.org no, varin = varin.org no, imbri is imbri :) heh imbri-mirlando woah. varin.org. i'm mirlandano.com (which was my old nick for everything)