unforum

[Ciaran_H]

Re: Apology

[Rusty]

Thanks Ehsan and Ciaran. And I really meant it, too.

[White_Knight]

Yay....Rusty you rock at least you can take constructive (if not slightly brutal on our part) critisism. This puts you one step higher than alot of other people that have tried and failed. And its also important to be able to take brutal critisism as it shows a level of maturity that people need when running a game.

[Rusty]

Thank you, W.K. You rock!!!

[MageSteff]

As part of the OC crew... let me tell you there are a lot of areas that would have imploded the game if we didn't have Varin sticking with it through the whole process. Because we as players have seen countless games implode we made certain we did one thing before launching.

We had a story arc planned out. There were still a lot of details that got filled in later, but we refused to launch until we had the story and the puzzles in place and ready to go BEFORE any player saw it. This is one reason why it took us two years. I personally believe that many games implode for 2 main reasons.

1. Going it alone or with not enough people behind the scenes to run everything. OC had to cut a lot of content out for that reason and you can see from the final credits how many people we had working on it.

2. Allowing too much freedom in the storyline. You can have multiple paths to a story, just make certain they are all well planned out in advance and have a contingency plan in place in case it goes too far off from what you have planned out. You can redirect players back into the main story arc, as long as you have the paths planned out and know where you want the story to go. Players can control what they ulitmately see, but that doesn't mean they control the total story. Have plans and have someone who can think on their feet to get things back on track.

As other people have said... You have got to respect your players. This ultimately will decide if your game is seen in a good light if you do implode. Saying "I'm sorry, I bit off more than I could chew" leaves a better feeling with the players than blaming the players for the plot holes. Players don't cause the plot holes PMs do. How you react to that shows a lot about your level of commitment to your game and to the community.

OC had a few plot holes. We had our way of dealing with them. You will have yours.

I will say this ... even after playing several games, and being involved as a Behind the Scenes person on a couple, I was not ready to tackle an ARG by myself. Having been a main PM on OC I am still not ready to tackle an ARG by myself. I doubt I will ever be able to tackle an ARG by myself. There are few people in the ARG community that could tackle an ARG completely and totally by themselves. Get help early and get help often. Listen to your BTS when they discover plot holes... they will help you fix potential problems long before the players see them.

One thing you could do by yourself is have a puzzle trail. While that needs some input from the PM, because there is no story line you must stick to, no characters to interact with, the time outlay is... Well... I don't know. I don't do puzzles that well, but I am certain that Ehsan, Dio, Jamesi, Martavious and others can tell you how it differs from running a full contact ARG.