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[Phaedra]

First of all, welcome!

I'd like to second (or third, or whatever) the assurance that a big game is not necessarily "harder" to play than a small-scale game. (And also, "indie" and "small" are not necessarily the same thing.)

Not to diss small scale games, but a lot of them lately (especially the AIM-based games) are being run by only one or two people.

That offers a lot less of a guarantee that they'll survive to conclusion, since if there's only one person running it, and that person gets sick/drops out of school/loses their job/gets a divorce/whatever, you can pretty much kiss the game goodbye.

Larger-scale games are usually run by a reasonably large team of PMs, so if one person has a personal emergency it doesn't spell the death of the game.

Commercial games probably offer the best guarantee that they won't die in the middle since the PMs (the puppetmasters -- the people running the game) obviously have a contractual obligation to the company for whom their game is an advertisement.

Also (and again, not trying to discount the possibility of the brilliant single PM), larger teams of PMs mean more people reviewing and refining ideas. Since they have to pass muster with more people, the chance of bad/boring/poorly-executed elements making it into the game is somewhat smaller.

Finally, the first ARG experience seems, for a lot of people, to have a special magic about it that subsequent games, regardless of their quality, can't quite match. So, if possible (that is, if you're here looking over potential first games rather than stumbling onto ARGs through a game) you probably want to pick a first game that isn't likely to have a meltdown in the middle.

As far as the ease of play issue:

Again, there's nothing to make small-scale games any "easier" to play except the scale itself.

You are correct in that many ARG puzzles require technical expertise in a lot of different fields. That's part of the fun -- you don't have to be an expert: most of the games allow you to get the information you need simply by researching. You don't have to have a degree in whatever field it is and all the accompanying knowledge and experience that that implies -- you just need to figure out where to find the information.

The many different areas of expertise that puzzle-solving in ARGs draws on is part of the attraction -- many puzzles are far too difficult to solve alone, which makes them ideal fodder for a unique feature of ARGs:

Collective intelligence.

No, you probably can't solve that puzzle involving detailed knowledge of e.e. cummings, HTML, and 16th-century lute tablature all by your onesies.

But with a large group of players, working together and each bringing their particular type of intelligence and areas of expertise to the table, you can usually be part of a unique and thrilling communal experience.

And there really isn't much that can baffle the collective intelligence for long.

An oft-quoted anecdote about the puzzles during the Beast (the first ARG) is that the PMs had a whole color-coded system for their puzzles; there were the puzzles that were supposed to take a day, those that should take a week, those that would take a month, and those that should be unsolvable until the PMs broke down and gave the players more info.

The players solved all those puzzles on the first day.

That's not to say that it's impossible to play many ARGs without interaction with other players, but the community is a big part of the draw for many people.

Anyway, I'd give one of the larger-scale games a try. You'll get acclimated very quickly, and if you don't understand something, please ask. Most people will be happy to help you out.

Again, welcome, and have fun!