unforum

[jokerstrademark]

Yeah, they merged and then both ended like 10 days later. It was kind of a waste of a merger, but it could have gone worse.

[PokeKiller]

[Phaedra]

Incidentally, regarding trailheads:

Call me a traditionalist, but when someone sends an actual object to ARGN, even if it's just a postcard or a letter or a fancy-shmancy invitation to a tea party, it tends to give me a little more faith about how much effort the PMs have put into the game than when it's a random email or IM.

Some great games have had lousy launches (no offense, anyone, but as I understand it, LockJaw was launched by a PM posting to the Cloudmakers group saying "ooh! Look at this!"). But we also have to take into account when it happened. I would hope the genre would evolve. That is, LJ was a very early ARG, so the PMs didn't have a whole lot of launch examples to look to for inspiration.

A lot of games have launched in a lot of different ways since then, so I don't think it's unfair to expect that PMs look to previous examples of good launches to help inspire them, rather than taking the lazy way out and posting an in-character trailhead or popping into #uf.

So, when someone does one of these really cliched, lazy launches, where, in the past, I might have said, "How else can launch a game for free?" and assumed that the game might still be good, as more and more games launch, providing more and more ideas to draw from, it starts to look less like the only resort of a grassroots PM and more like laziness.

And laziness, from the start, does not bode well for the quality of the game.

Now, innovative, creative ideas don't always come simply for the asking.

Maybe you've prepared a well-thought-out game. Maybe you've run it past a lot of people, and they've agreed that the ideas are good. Maybe you've put the players first at every step of the development process, and you're sure that what you have to offer will be entertaining and compelling.

But although you've racked your brain, you can't come up with a launch that's New and Exciting.

At this point, I say send something to ARGN. Even if it's not particularly plausible that your character/s would do so. Maybe you can wink a bit at ARG precedent -- "I heard that you were of great help to _____________, so I'm hoping maybe you can help me with my problem."

But make it nice, okay? Because if it looks like a substantial amount of effort went into it, I, at least, am a player, am willing to cut it some slack, and think, "okay, so this character probably has no reason to actually mail a [whatever] to ARGN, but, hey, if they put this much effort into it, maybe they put as much into the rest of the game!"

[Wolf]

The Cloudmakers/LJ tie-in: Brooke posted to CM asking for women gamers' experiences for a zine article. Once the zine launched, said article had tiny little coordinates at the bottom that (ideally) would point players to their first in-game site.

I believe it was Cloudmakers message #45912.

But we all know things didn't quite go according to plan because someone found another in-game site first.

I don't believe any of the LJ PMs came out and posted anything blatant to the CM group, but I've also slept since then.

[Phaedra]

[GuyP]

When I'm looking at trailheads, I'm basically looking for something that shows the PM's are hardworking, committed, and taking the whole endeavour seriously. I'm probably more jaded than most, but I need to be impressed.

There's two parts to a launch: the material, and the mechanism of it's discovery. When it comes to shilling on the boards or on IRC, I'm not gonna be blown away - but I appreciate the difficulties of getting the game into the hands of the community, and therefore I'm mostly willing to turn a blind eye to such matters. Unless you do it in character. Because that really is a bit annoying. If you can find a better way (and it's definitely worth trying) then go for it.

In fact, emailing the guy who wrote the PC Gamer article was pretty smart.

So players have a foothold into your game. Now's your chance to really grab them.

Ideally, I'm looking for proof there's some kind of concept or idea behind your game, not just another "CONSPIRACY!!11!!eleven!!" If you were selling a guitar on eBay, you wouldn't just say "Guitar for sale. Email me for details." You'd put it's model, manufacturer, condition, and so on. You don't need to play your entire hand, but a quick glimpse of a card or two would sure be nice.

It's not that you're not allowed to have a conspiracy, but FYI: people in real life conspiracies don't tend to refer to themselves as "part of a conspiracy."

Of course, I appreciate that the essential element of ARGs is mystery and missing information. If your game design makes it difficult to provide any real plot hooks early on, then there's that trusty fallback - quality.

Sending an email asking for help? Then for the love of all that is holy, make it a good one! Get the players to see how your character is really feeling - afraid? tense? paranoid? Please, just make the writing shine.

Giving one of your characters a blog? No problem! Make that blog have posts going back for months. (Blogger, for instance, lets you edit the date/time of each post.) You can slip in allusions to some of the back story and really flesh out the character. Have them blog about their cat. Anything.

And there's other ways to show quality, too. If it fits, make the design fancy, and if it doesn't make sense for the design to be fancy, then make it clear why. Quality is also implied by what you don't do - a quick bit of morse code / binary / ROTtage shoehorned into your trailhead sets my alarm bells ringing.

An original rabbithole. Evidence of a plot. Quality content (especially writing.) Avoidance of clichès. A sense of scale. David, who could live in a trailhead like this?

(Before people start explaining how such-and-such corporate game didn't do this, and why don't the rules apply to them and ohmygod you hate grassroots - when you can put your website URL on a movie trailer, that engenders additional trust. Do you see?)

[Varin]

[Nightmare Tony]

Agreed there, Varin. Money spent is not a pointer in game quality. On anothe rplace, I posted how to launch a game that looks like thousands of dollars for a sum of 50 bucks. Its all about howe the moeny and design is spent.

some games may NEED a low key rabbit hole on purpose for their mystery. It all depends on game context.

If you give too much glitz and hi key launching, it may blow the game effect.

But thats all in the creative choice, really.

and yu, the one point mentioned earlier which gets to me at times, trite storyline and puzzles thrown in at random. Cant wait to see an arg with a smart and working storyline and puzzles that fit the storyline context.

Happily, the pms of the future are writing those today.

[Varin]

[hkdl]

[skilletaudio]

Honestly, its not like "IM somebody" isnt bad enough.
"IM hkdl" was just ridiculous to the point of hilarity...maybe not for poor hkdl.
Hint: until we are up against our first "parody ARG", then your launch should not result in hilarity!

[Nightmare Tony]

If it was a good clean im to you resulkting in a game worthy of the player's time, it would be more forgiveable, hopefully. Still results in hilarity, though.

[rose]

Believable puzzles