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What constitutes an ARG?
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Elijah Snow
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imbri wrote:
What are your thoughts on the matter? I'm really quite interested. As it is I feel as though this is an interview of sorts or maybe an essay exam.


I don't know if I really have any strong opinions one way or the other. I'm actually more interested in what others in the community think about these ideas. In the end what do I get out of it? More or less a brief quelling of my insatiable curiosity. Very Happy

I've lurked the Beast (like ya haven't heard that one before), played S4E and Alias, and am currently playing CTW (to the best of my ability). I've heard people here say that there really hasn't been anything new in the ARG world for some time. My hope is through this type of dialogue players can share their thoughts, and PM's (current and future) can develop new ideas.

As for the issue at hand, I don't think large public forums are necessary. I think it dilutes the experience overall, but it has some definite advantages as well. If I get some more time later, I'll pontificate.

ES
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2003 3:50 pm
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jamesi
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 		An ARG isn't an ARG until there's a talking robot/animal involved. The Beast had Teddy and all those Belladerma sexbots... Lockjaw had CaveBear (ok, not really an animal or a robot, but whatever)... and Push, Nevada had.... okay, Push wasn't an ARG. You can see my point.

Now, where's that post about the talking walrus in CTW... it's here somewhere...
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 12:29 am
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konamouse
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Quote:
An ARG isn't an ARG until there's a talking robot/animal involved.


CTW has "shadowtalk1" and CAROL from The Answer Project.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 12:46 am
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Ozy_y2k
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 		waitaminit, does that mean that Blue's Clues is an ARG??? Shocked

PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 11:06 am
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Varin
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Ozy_y2k wrote:
waitaminit, does that mean that Blue's Clues is an ARG??? Shocked


Only if you play along as you watch the show Wink
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 11:39 am
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Elijah Snow
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 		Get to the damn point!
OK, I said that I was going to talk about the evils of open forums, but I'd like to take a step back a give a little background on where I'm coming from.

A couple of years ago I read the book The Experience Economy (in fact I'm reading it again). The basic premise of the book is that just as economies shifted from goods to services, services will shift to experiences. An experience can be anything from a trip to Disneyworld, to a dinner at a theme restaruant, to a really great moment of service. Experiences don't need to be limited to the entertainment industry, but in the case of ARG's I would say these "reality-bending experiences" do live there. So as I look at ARG's, I see the oportunity to deliver "experiences" for the purpose of entertainment.

My original intent for starting these threads was to challenge the ideas that people have about what ARG's are and how these events are executed. I've been at picking things piecemeal, with my view kept in the back of my mind. Now let's put them on the table and see what we can do. Very Happy

So with the idea that ARG's are the design and execution of "reality bending" experiences for the purpose of entertainment, lets talk about open forums.

In its purist form, an experience is unique to each individual. With each "experience offering" I will have (and want) a different experience than Varin, and Varin will have and want a different experience from Imbri. In an ideal world, we would have the ability to tailor each ARG to the wants and needs of every single individual. You might say ARG's already offer this. In CTW (sorry not meaning to pick on CTW; if you like enter L3, S4E, or The Beast here) we have puzzles, interaction, cool websites, etc. This is not "choiceful design" and as a result people have to make sacrifices.

If I'm a poor puzzler, I have to sacrifice some of my experience to puzzles that may, in fact, confuse and irritate me. If I only want challenging cryptography, I have to sit through e-mail after e-mail from characters for weeks before the next puzzle surfaces. (I do recognize that there are people who want both, but I'm certain there are instances where these hybrid players have to sacrifice something of their own personal experience to play.) ARG's that try to include everything including the kitchen sink will only "truly" appeal to the lowest common denomenator. Now until the technology that is able to read minds on the fly and design ARG's instantly is invented, we can only provide the illusion of customization. Mass customization that is!

Using modules I could invision a system at the beginning of an ARG that asks a series of questions. How those questions are answered, determines what kind of experience will be tailored for you and you alone. For example, if there were five questions with three possible answers for each question there could potentially be 125 different exections of the same experience. However, the only thing the end user sees is a fully customized experience that satisfies most if not all of their wants and needs.

(Babbling. Must...get...to...the...point!) Very Happy

Open forums can quickly destroy the illusion of mass customization. If everyone were sharing their experiences on an open forum, it may quickly become apparent that the experience is really not customized at all. One complaint about CTW is that although there is a high level of interaction with characters via e-mail, most responses are canned. How did you know that?! It's because others posted their e-mails in the forum and you noticed that they were all the same...almost. Whether Dave realized it or not, he was using some level of mass customization with these e-mail responses. The bulk of the messages that contained the important information was exactly the same; however, he often includes three or four lines that are unique to the recipient. By doing this he doesn't have to spend hours writing a wholly unique e-mail, only a few lines to each respondent in order to make the experience unique. Customized exactly for them.

Whew! Embarassed I need to recharge. More on this topic later.

ES
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 3:14 pm
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Wolf
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Quote:
Open forums can quickly destroy the illusion of mass customization. If everyone were sharing their experiences on an open forum, it may quickly become apparent that the experience is really not customized at all.


OK, my two cents as a puppetmaster.

I don't think the illusion of customization is a good thing for these games. The whole point, to me, is to construct a reality and make the players feel like they've suddenly dropped in to the middle of the characters' day-to-day lives. Kind of like E-eavesdropping.

Web sites are created, stuff is written and published, and the characters act and react as they need to to move the story forward. Customizing the game to specific users would open up a horrendously unmanageable mess, IMHO...and what we don't need to see in the genre is another implosion based on poor planning or poor execution (ie, thinking you can handle a customized experience only to find out once you're in it up to your eyeballs that, oops, it can't work that way after all).

PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 3:30 pm
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Elijah Snow
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 		Controlling the Environment
Another fault of open forums is that in order to deliver good experiences you must have a reasonable amount of control of the environment. PM's have absolutely "zero" control over the forums, and as a result the experience suffers.

We talked about how forums can destroy the illusion of customization. PM's can do little to prevent players from sharing in these forums, unless they offer more attractive, substitute playing environments that they can more easily control. These could be small sub-forums where acess is limited, or pre-made interfaces that make "living" the experience easier and more enjoyable. People could play on teams of their choosing that have dedicated sites provided by the PM. Teams do, however, limit the ability to customize experiences for each team member, but the experience could be customized for the team.

Players often make sacrifices by having other members "tread" on their experience. How many times have you been clicking along with others on an idea and in the middle of the thread you see, "Hey this stuff is great! I'm new, and I have no idea what's going on. Where do I start!". I love newbies, but their ability to enter open forums at any time invites them to tread upon the experiences of those who've played for months. It's not the newbies fault, he just stumbled on something really cool and just want to have an experience of his own. Trolls also tread on other peoples experiences by trying to cause disruption and feed misinformation. Nobody likes trolls...except maybe other trolls.

A sacrifice that some players have to make, due to open forums, is the speed at which their experience is played out. Large portions of the ARG experience, especially puzzles, last only as long as the fastest player is able to solve it. I know people use the "spoiler" command, but sometimes its just too tempting to highlight it, see the solve, and move on. I know many times, early on in my days of playing, I'd see a puzzle and dwell on it for a while. After coming up with a few ideas I'd venture back to the forums only to find the puzzle was solved hours ago by someone else. In essence I was robbed of the satisfaction of solving a puzzle on my own, which in turn might be a very important part of my experience.

These are just some of my ideas on the topic. Anyone else?

ES
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 3:50 pm
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bill
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 		I think you might have lost sight of the fact that most people playing these games thrive on the cooperative aspect of gameplay and don't look at it as a competitive event.

Puzzles are often solved quickly, not by individuals, but by teams. Brainstorming and other group activities where knowledge and experience are pooled are going to yield speedier results.

If someone wants to have a 'custom' experience, then it would behoove them to either ignore the public message boards or only post in a new thread with discussion or questions and stay out of existing threads to preserve your own experience.

There is no right way to play, but the formation of player groups are inevitable. Most people want to be in on the forefront when they are actively playing and loners will have difficulty considering the breadth of knowledge and amount of research most games have required.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 4:29 pm
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Elijah Snow
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Wolf wrote:
Customizing the game to specific users would open up a horrendously unmanageable mess, IMHO...and what we don't need to see in the genre is another implosion based on poor planning or poor execution (ie, thinking you can handle a customized experience only to find out once you're in it up to your eyeballs that, oops, it can't work that way after all).


"True" customization, yes, but what about the illusion of customization?

wb wrote:
I think you might have lost sight of the fact that most people playing these games thrive on the cooperative aspect of gameplay and don't look at it as a competitive event.


Good point. How many people playing ARG's today do it because of co-op gameplay, would you say (guesstimate)? Is it core to the DNA of ARG's?

wb wrote:
Most people want to be in on the forefront when they are actively playing and loners will have difficulty considering the breadth of knowledge and amount of research most games have required.


I'd argue that for some players this is a sacrifice (i.e. puzzles are too difficult for one person to solve in a reasonable amount of time, so I must join the collective), and where there's a sacrifice theres an opportunity for an new PM to solve it. Very Happy

Good discussion!

ES
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 5:35 pm
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SpaceBass
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 		Re: Controlling the Environment
Elijah Snow wrote:
Another fault of open forums is that in order to deliver good experiences you must have a reasonable amount of control of the environment. PM's have absolutely "zero" control over the forums, and as a result the experience suffers.


First, I strongly disagree with your assessment that the experience suffers as a result of open forums. I've stated before my four building blocks for a succesful ARG, in order of preference: 1. Story; 2. Puzzles; 3. Community; and 4. Interaction with characters. And I'm not so sure about the last one anymore, but community is very important to me.

Second, you will never *ever* be able to stop them. Period. It doesn't matter if you make your own special in-game forum, the players will still have their own as well.

S4E figured out very quickly that it's players were strongly against having a PM-controlled forum. They ended up hosting an open one instead.

Remember TerraQuest? They really, really didn't want people to share information at all. Guess what the players did anyway?

The Internet is a communication facilitator. People like to congregate and share ideas and information and thoughts and feelings. Anything Internet-based will attract the types of people who already use the Internet in a collaborative way. Almost anything non-Internet based will also attract a fair amount of the same type of people, due to the now-pervasive nature of Internet access. Guaranteed.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 7:31 pm
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Elijah Snow
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imbri wrote:
First of all, you mention the move from commodity to service and service to experience. You discuss themed restaurants and Disney, this makes me leap immediately to the McDisnification of society and that is, I believe, something that ARGs should avoid (I also believe that society should avoid it, but it’s seeming more and more inevitable). You also talk about themed restaurants and experience and then leap to individual experiences. I don’t think that anyone that has ever entered the rainforest café has had an individual experience. It’s not catered to providing an individual twist, it’s catered to allowing everyone that enters a tropical rainstorm every x-minutes. While the patrons can walk around and see the gorillas and parrots on their own, it is a shared experience, not individual…much as ARGs are currently.


Good point...bad example. I can think of a couple of non-entertainment expereinces where customization occurs. For example, some hotel chains will collect information from your past visits, and will customize your room based upon this information to enhance your "lodging" experience. British Airways does something similar for its airline passengers to enhance their "travel" experience. Truth be told, I can't think of any entertainment events that have done this. Does that mean it shouldn't be strived for? No. I think it should be explored for this genre, but only if it enhances the overall "ARG" experience. My arguement is that it would.

Theme restaurants have lots of problems. Planet Hollywood for example hit hard times because, among other things, the experience never changed. You go once, you eat the overpriced food, and suddenly you've "been there, done that". I always thought it would be great if one of these restaurants, say Mideval Times, actually built in an on-going timeline and history into the overall experience that changes as time goes on. This would make the Mideval Times "dining" experience dynamic. In fact you might go several times just to see how the overall history/story is developing. Just an idea.

You'll have to explain "McDisnification" to me sometime too. Wink

imbri wrote:
Customized ARGs present a myriad of issues. What if one player faces a puzzle that he just cannot solve, where does he go for help? There’s no board for him to visit, no friends for him to talk it over with. What if a player decides midway through that he’s tired of it being a virtual novel and wants a puzzle or two? How does he change that and what effect does that have on the game? Finally, it completely and utterly shatters TINAG, which as many know, I’m a huge fan of. (if you haven’t read my opinion on that matter, feel free to check it out at DeadDrop)


Some computer games I've played have FAQ's and walkthroughs. I usually consult these when I get into a rut. I guess the open forums would be similar. Hmmm...I need to think about that one for a little bit. Smile

As for customization on the fly, I agree, that would be chaos. Ideally that could be worked out up front and through tracking preferences over time.

I read your article. I think what your saying is that requesting information up front in order to customize your experience destroys "TINAG". Right? The question I raise is has there really been a “TINAG” experience since The Beast? I had to register for both L3 and CTW (which did allow you to customize your experience by asking what level of emersion you wanted); thus, destroying the “TINAG” experience. The only way I could see “TINAG” working is that exists on the internet, someone stumbles upon it, forums are built, and the story is followed. The entire time you are questioning whether it’s real or fiction.S4E kinda had that going during the Beta, but it was trounced once they started the pay-for-play format.

SpaceBass mentioned the “community” experience was one of the top reasons he plays ARG’s. Are there actually two experiences at play here? The experience of being part of the community, and the experience of playing the game? Furthermore, does the game experience force the players to develop forums (i.e. the puzzles are too difficult to solve solo), or are the hive-mind problem solving needs of the forum causing the development of these games? A very “chicken or the egg” dilemma.

Now there are some advantages to open forums. Without the CTW forum on this site, I just wouldn’t be able to keep up. There is a big “time” sacrifice for me in playing ARG’s and as a result I have to depend upon the forums for on-going information. That is not to say that this method of playing doesn’t have it’s drawbacks. I don’t know how many websites that CTW currently operates under, but, in total, I think I’ve seen three. Most of my game experience takes place in the forums! In fact I’d go as far to say that someone could “play” CTW and never actually see any of the world the PM’s created. Puzzles are put on the forums. E-mails are put on the forums. News releases are on the forums. Why would I need to go to the websites?! As a result, the open forum gives me the option to never enter the world and skip the experience entirely. Now I said “option” because when it comes right down to it, I choose to participate via the forums not the CTW world. Because I have to sacrifice “time” to play ARG’s, I also have to make a “play-by-forum” sacrifice. I would guess that for ARG’s to become more broadly appealing, this time sacrifice will need to be hammered out.

So here’s a question…

Should the PM design a game so that it encourages the players to visit the world (websites) versus just visiting a forum?

The use of e-mails in CTW is a good example of where the PM is almost forcing me to play via forums. Most character interaction with players occurs via e-mail, where two are three e-mails are sent out to players, who in turn post them on the forums. I’m sure Dave doesn’t want to send every player an e-mail when he does this, so for logistical purposes this works well. But if I want to follow the story, what are my options? I can’t substitute out of the forum. I might e-mail the characters, but there’s no guarantee that they will respond. Might I suggest creating blogs on character sites to update people and create interaction. Sure people could post blog updates on forums, but now I have a choice. I can read the blog myself, or I can read it via the forum. PM’s would only have to write it once, and it still has the feel of coming from a “real” person (i.e. real people have blogs too). Give me a reason to visit your masterful websites and fully experience your world, otherwise I’ll take ARG-lite and passively watch from the forums.

I have a feeling some of these ideas will be argued, and even create some controversy…good. Bring it on! Laughing

ES
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2003 12:54 pm
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SpaceBass
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Elijah Snow wrote:
The question I raise is has there really been a “TINAG” experience since The Beast?

Too bad you missed out on LockJaw. That Flagmonkey dude is still running around loose though.

Elijah Snow wrote:
Furthermore, does the game experience force the players to develop forums (i.e. the puzzles are too difficult to solve solo), or are the hive-mind problem solving needs of the forum causing the development of these games? A very “chicken or the egg” dilemma.

Not that much of a dilemma...The Beast came first and once people found out about it through AICN or other postings, and found how much material there was to dig through and catalog, almost immediately the Cloudmakers group was formed to do so collaboratively. The game came first and the forum quickly and naturally followed. The system worked very well then and it's continued to be popular.

FAQs, Walkthroughs, Open Forums...these are all condensive points of contact for people to help organize their thoughts and catalog all of the important bits they've found. In an ARG there generally are a hell of a lot of important bits - so many that it would be quite difficult to keep them all straight without some reference, especially as they change and evolve over time.

To extend your example, I suppose it's also possible to 'play' through a videogame just by reading the walkthrough and visualizing what it talks about, but then are you really playing the game or are you making up your own game? In the same way, playing an ARG by proxy only through a forum would subtract the very root of the genre from the mix - the "alternate reality." Might as well just grab a Games magazine or something if you just want to work puzzles (or head over to Riddleplanet maybe). Wink
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2003 1:21 pm
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Elijah Snow
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 		OK, here’s a messed up idea…

What if there were an ARG that was completely played out in the message forums. The only twist is that the forum was the game?! There would be “character players” who post interaction from the “game” to the forum (puzzles, e-mail, interaction), but no sites would be mentioned or others couldn’t get access to them. In theory it might work, since some people play via the forums anyway, in practice I’m certain it would be found out very quickly.

I told you it was messed up! Laughing

If you’ve heard of the PS2 game .hack then its kind of a similar type of situation. The concept is you are playing an RPG about a character playing an on-line RPG similar to Everquest. You can read about it here.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2003 3:38 pm
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Varin
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Quote:
If you've heard of the PS2 game .hack then its kind of a similar type of situation. The concept is you are playing an RPG about a character playing an on-line RPG similar to Everquest. You can read about it here.


.hack is a great game. Those are the kinds of games that I love. No, the graphics might not be the best or the scripts that the characters say may be sort of awkward sometimes, but the plot and overall game concept is great. Its the same reason why I still have a Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo even though I have all the new systems too.

Why am I expanding on this in a thread about ARGs? To me, its the same thing with ARGs. The most basic, grassroots ARG with little budget can be the best game I've ever played. While one with a budget of half a million with expert web-designers that create fancy flash animations on every web page can be a worthless waste of time.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2003 5:37 pm
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