unforum

[catherwood]

Defining ARGspace on the Gaming Continuum

[bill]

Nifty idea!

If I were doing it, my three primary circles would be Puzzles, Participation (community), and Plot. (I like the 3 P thing ). The intersections would then be Tasks or Actions (Puzzles/Participation), Interactivity (Participation/Plot), and Gaming (Puzzle/Plot).

Immersion strikes me as a great concept, but hard to pin down objectively. Plus, it is something you get from sum of all the other elements.

Just my 2.35080057 yen (rate subject to change-consult your bank or google for up to the minute blah blah...)

[CreativeEmbassy]

For me, I've always defined an ARG as having the following:

Immersion, through multiple forms of interaction. If a game is only played through one interface, then it cannot be an ARG. Several forms of communication are necessary.
Plot/Characters. I put these together because you need both, and if you don't have one then it's hard to have the other. Agreed.?
Gameplay. Includes puzzles, interactive activities (redundant?)...

Here's how I would break it down:
If it has immersion and plot but no gameplay, then it's immersive fiction. (Think Daughters of Freya maybe, trying to come up with better example)
If it has plot and gameplay but no immersion, it's a webgame or social experiment. (Think the Still Life Webgame)
If it has gameplay and immersion but no plot, then it's a social experiment. (Think SF0 or Neurocam).

So, I think this constitutes the more strict rules that some people have put on what is/isn't an ARG.

[colin]

Just thought of another way to divide things, fwiw:
Physicality (web pages, phone calls, etc);
spirituality (not as in religion, but the intent things are done with i.e "in the spirit of the game").

I guess I came up with this because I've never liked to define an ARG as containing specific things, such as webpages. Spirituality offers a certain level of abstraction which moves the discussion away from implementation and realisation.

[catherwood]

Thank you for the feedback. It's keeping my head spinning around concepts and keeping me from slapping together an unwieldy list of questions for the survey.

CE and Bill both offer equally valid ways of categorizing elements. Bill's secondary overlaps more closely match CE's primary circles. I think I'll be building a survey with 6 or more categories and find out where the games themselves have placed the emphasis.

Colin, I hope we don't define an ARG by the things it implements and how they are done, but it is those outward things which are easier to quantify and measure. After we look at the elements involved, we can then talk about the spirit or concepts they embody.

I was actually trying to get away from Ehsan's criteria of "multiple websites" and instead looking for what property is enhanced by having multiple websites. To me, that goes in the realm of making the game's universe "real" or "believeable", not in the sense of non-fiction but rather in how much detail there is to support it. (The guys at GMD might call this "texture" -- take a drink!) A game with only one website could still go overboard in building out its universe, giving so much detail and history that you really feel like the place exists beyond the visible boundaries. It also gives the characters a place to live and breathe, more than just a stage to perform on. Can a "gAIM" with no websites at all have the same depth of universe, just in how much detail the characters provide in conversation? Maybe. (Do people who enjoy playing gAIMs even think about such details?)

I also don't think you can just assume that if a game takes place in our world, you have depth; the game still needs to pinpoint a city and draw you into their point of view and surroundings (in my opinion). A well-done effort doesn't just tell you where they are, but shows how that world permeates the action, in such a way that there can be no doubt about where the characters are. Those games with only a plot and some characters but no world depth of its own are just on that fuzzy border of what some people consider not-an-ARG, but we have no good term for what it is. Should we even exclude it from ARGspace at all, or simple say there are subgenres that are a matter of personal taste?

I think we all agree that "interaction" is not the same thing as "interactivity", as you get by clicking a Flash gizmo or playing a Timewaster. If an ARG is defined by it, how can we measure the amount of Character Interaction in a game? The tally of "multiple forms of interaction" and "several forms of communication", these sound more like implementation issues, same as with the way "multiple websites" contribute to World Depth. What is the essential element being driven here? My assumption is that the interaction and communication is how the characters touch us, the players, rather than us passively watching them perform on stage. We can ask people about the amount of contact with characters they have seen in past games, regardless of the number of avenues -- many players never take advantage of ALL available forms of communication anyway -- and the importance of two-way communication flow had on the game's progress. Perhaps it is logical for a character to communicate only thru Instant Messenger, but if the quality of that conversation is superior, then we can only measure how many players found that to be fulfilling the interactive requirement of the ARG.

I like the term Gameplay to include puzzles and other tasks, but not interaction.

I am re-thinking the term Immersion. Players immerse themselves; the game can only offer the avenues for entry. Immersion can be experienced by players doing deep digging into websites and exploring the world without ever meeting a character; immersion can be equally realized by players who live for character interaction. (And my spectrum image above didn't account for both types, but rather assumed that the "Characters" circle comes with interaction.) I do want to split those two approaches to Immersion for the survey, to see if players are building their own internal definition of ARG based on preferences rather than what the games offer. As Bill said above, "Immersion strikes me as a great concept, but hard to pin down objectively. Plus, it is something you get from sum of all the other elements." So i'll eliminate the term for now, and see what falls into its bucket later.

One thing that I'm not sure how to represent is the necessity of community. Bill put it under Participation, so how do we quantify this, how do we measure how much a community participates? It has been said that an ARG needs to be played as a group. That could come under the realm of tasks (where you need many people to accomplish something). In a way, the community that builds up around a game is an extention of the game's world (especially with in-game forums). Maybe Community is like Immersion, something we say defines an ARG but which results from the sum of other game elements.

Back to the white board...

[Ehsan]

Random Thoughts

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On Defining ARGs:

I think something like this is long overdue. I understand concerns many have for "defining" an ARG, as it may create boundaries and suppress ‎creativity. Yet I think without these boundaries ARGs will only confuse more people who are trying to get into them or understand them. The most firm definition we have is "I'll know it when I see it" but that doesn't help the genre grow, and growing the genre is what we keep chanting.

Defining media and genre is good. Films, books, videogames, and other forms of genre presentation have a loosely defined structure which offers audiences the comfort of knowing what to expect and look for.

A movie is generally 90 minutes long, has actors doing things on screen and a soundtrack. If you watch a movie you expect these things and get annoyed if they are not there. A movie without a soundtrack and no actors may be considered a creative art form by some, but will only end up doing badly at the box office and annoying a lot of people.

A movie with an aroma distribution system, audience remote controlled actors, and interactive scene development where the viewer writes the dialogue is not a creative movie... it's not a movie anymore.

However, withing the commonly acknowledged boundaries of a movie, film makers can be very creative in their own way: See Donny Darko or Memento (which did piss a lot of people off but managed to be creative within the boundaries).

A book is a book. It is written on paper not sheets of metal. A song is a song... It is not 90 minutes long with 80 minutes of static in between. A videogame cannot be written in haiku, it has to be a programmed, compiled, and distributed interactive experience.

Boundaries are good.

Even if that was not cather's goal, I think ARGs have to be defined properly. The definition on Wikipedia today is too broad and vague. We cannot keep on saying we know it when we see it, but need to define what "it" is clearly. It will not hurt creativity, but create a structure

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On Immersion:

The perfect ARG, in my opinion, would not have multiple websites. It would have NO websites.

Immersion is playing a game which resembles the real world. The real world to me is waking up, going to work, eating, going out, talking to people, and other real life activities. A perfect ARG would mimic all those elements. I would wake up knowing I'm playing a game today... go to a fake company... be attacked by aliens... my co-worker is kidnapped... I run out fighting aliens and looking for ancient relics they left behind to decode the secret to boarding their spaceship... and eventually rescue the missing person.

But to create a perfect ARG you need to be very very rich in order to create a fake environment in the real world (see The Game--create fake corporations, hire lots of actors, and that's only for one player) or create technology beyond our capability today (see Star Trek's Holodeck--the perfect tool for creating an ARG).

So we go to the next best thing--the Internet. Why? Because first you get access to the masses... you get to create one experience which many people can play. Sure it's not targeted towards one individual, but it has reach and is easily deployed.

It also mimics a side of our reality which we are already immersed in... I already spend 50% of my day online. I interact in my daily job with people and corporations I have never met, but only know through their websites and e-mail correspondences.

The online world is a huge part of our "Real Life". Even this site and the people I talk with in #unfiction everyday are just people I know online... It is immersive because it is reality, and thus an online world which mimics these elements is also immersive.

Looking more closely at the Internet, it is mainly composed of web sites, e-mail, and chat. Of these I consider web sites to be the most important and prominent because that's what people consider to be The Internet. I know a lot of people who call the little blue IE icon the Internet... and when I replace it with Firefox they cry "Why did you delete the Internet!".

So an ARG with at least one website would be good, but the more websites there are that resemble reality, the more immersive the experience would be, simply because in real life there are a lot of websites with interconnected properties. Sure you can do with one website IF it has a lot of content and history and depth, but I've seen that with one website designers get restricted and there's only so much information you can put in a website about honey or a blog about crop circles. More websites should generally mean more content, which is a Good Thing.

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On Puzzles:

Puzzles are not "puzzles". They can be better defined as Challenges. I think an ARG can have zero traditional puzzles--nothing to decipher and no mathematical or logical conundrums, but the story in itself can present a challenge when being interpreted.

The G in ARG is for Game. It is and must always be presented as such, but what game elements the creator uses should be open and unrestricted. In the end, the game must present challenges that create enjoyment and entertainment by encouraging players to reach a defined goal within a set of rules.

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On Interaction:

I don't think interaction means online chat, sending e-mails, or solving puzzles.

To me, the act of entering a URL and browsing the websites is a form of interaction. I would be more than happy just to receive passive information. On a certain level, I would like to have no interaction with the ARG... This contradicts with the above "Holodeck" experience when defining immersion, but because of the limited medium we are using today, I believe that what passes for interaction does not fit the medium... I do not get AIMed by random strangers in my daily use of the Internet... I do not send e-mails to strangers... and I do not help websites evolve and events to progress in the real world.

I would be more than happy to just follow an ARG without performing any visible active actions. In fact, I assume that most people would like to do so because the number of lurkers is far greater than the number of active players. That's what the majority of people want to do--Read a book not write it, watch a movie not produce it, and follow an ARG, not effect it.

Yet there are a few who enjoy full interaction, and are essential to the growth of the lurking community... which leads us to:

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On Community:

For every game there are hardcore fanatic followers who actively participate, speculate, interact, and discuss. The active community is what drives the ARG. They are the "visible" players... but for every visible player there are ten lurkers who are interested in seeing what the visible players are doing. Take away the visible community and the lurkers go away... The game seems dead because nobody is discussing it.

In a way, the active community is part of the game, because they offer entertainment and challenges which co-exist with those presented by the game. Some people enjoy spec and others look for meta. The parody site, the "what's our group name" poll, and the constant bickering about PMs is just part of the game. I don't think an ARG can be complete without that. The discussion forums are an essential part of that experience. I didn't enjoy WIBS because I felt their in-game forums took all that away... But it offered a new form of immersion which compensates for the lack of traditional active community traits such as meta discussion.

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On catherwood's Fancy Graph of Elements:

Looks good to me, but I'd replace Characters with Storyline as I don't think Characters are pivotal, but come as a given subset with your Word Depth and Storyline. Likewise the Puzzles (challenges) should be combined with the Storyline so that all tasks are justified by the plot. The tasks can even be understanding the plot and thus the challenge is the storyline and the tasks subsection is clearly defined.

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On TINAG:

Not directly relavent to the above discussion is a widely confused mantra. The combination of TINAG and TIAG are what ultimately create the perfect experience to me. I don't want to receive any surpise calls after midnight, thank you very much, but I do want to be able to call a corporation and confuse the operator by telling her she's a fake actor... and have her respond as if I'm crazy.

From the Game's perspective, it is never a game.

From the Players' perspective, it is always a game.

Creating the perfect balance and deploying the above in the ARG elements discussed is the challenge the PM is presented with. LCP didn't work for me because it considered itself to be a game... Ghosts don't make websites... that broke suspension of disbelief for me from day one... Mu was amazing because I knew Metacortechs is a fake website from day one, but the website itself and the information presented on it was realistic and never admitted being a game.

It's fiction, but it's not. It's a game, but it's not.

TIAG(N).


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On Skipping to the End:

Yeah so I write a lot... long text on the Internet is hard on the eyes so I understand your need for skimming all that and jumping here... but I kept the good content in the middle

[colin]

[krystyn]

I posit that if we were to walk away from definitions, the 'genre' would still flourish.

Because people like to play games.

[imbri]

Quite the post there Ehsan

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On Immersion:

[MageSteff]

[bill]

If you want to play a game that emulates the mundania of real life, why not just play the Sims and be done with it? Plenty of immersion and games, but I hear the plot is a bit thin.

I'm looking for games that take me into someone elses life, hopefully one more exciting than my own.

Part of that excitement involves doing things I wouldn't do in RL. e.g. Emailing a total stranger, getting that unexpected call.

[catherwood]

(oooh, sections, we're being so organized now)
------------------------------------------------------
on Definitions, Boxes and Labels:

I read a suggestion (elsewhere) that "ARGs should be being defined more broadly and broadly as time goes by, not more narrowly." Perhaps so, but with many styles of gameplay and narrative elements competing for the attention of its players (even within the same game), you'll find that no single game does them all in equal proportions. The edges of ARGspace are littered with "almost an ARG" and "ARGish" games. So as the umbrella gets larger, what does that gain us?

Another suggestion (elsewhere) said, "Take [Internet Archaeology and Connecting the Dots] away, and even if you do have puzzles, narrative and interaction, you have no ARG." This is what we need to avoid, this form of tightening the box on the definition, relying on "either/or" measures and just one or two criteria.

I look at LCP (Last Call Poker) and ILB (i love bees) as being nothing like The Beast or Metacortechs, and AotH (Art of the Heist) and WiBS (Who is Benjamin Stove?) as being different from both of those two styles as well. That gives us 3 buckets right there, and surely more from the lesser games. They don't necessarily "fit" into mutually exclusive boxes, however; it's all a continuum.

Imagine being able to build an ARG profile, maybe a snapshot of something like your stereo equalizer, with bars going up on different elements. Then a game would be described by the area under the curve, in proportions of elements. Whether or not we can then put a label to a common reoccuring "profile", that might be more convenient. Gather up enough of these profiles for games we all agree on, and there may well appear to be a distinct "classic ARG" category which visibly differs from the profiles of other ARGs. We could go on to categorize "persistent public play" or "nextgen ARGs" or "immersive narratives" or "gAIMs" as being subgenres still under the ARG umbrella, with overlapping profiles instead of separate boxes. If we have no terminology for how these games vary, we cannot very well discuss why some work and some don't, or why some people prefer one proportion of elements over another.

So my goal is not a strict definition or an array of subgenre boxes, but a common language. The labels should not be about grassroots vs. corporate business models or the use of ingame forums or even specific PM factories, but the basic elements of game design.

Which should be a good segue back into...
-------------------------------------------------
Essential Elements

I ended my previous post by trailing off with this

[Rogi Ocnorb]

[imbri]

[Phaedra]

Heh, imbri, you beat me to it on the internal consistency thing.

I know a lot of people are probably going to disagree passionately, but for me, any game that forces you to roleplay at the basic level of the game's reality isn't an ARG to me, it's an RPG.

An "alternate reality," to me, means I'm still me. There may be circumstances in which, if I want to participate, I have to pretend to be someone else, but the basic game reality acknowledges that I am me and doesn't ask me to be anyone else.

So for me, Unleashed, for example -- which appears to have a game reality that insists that you're a vampire -- isn't an ARG, it's an RPG.

I'm okay with occasionally having to pretend in order to participate in a specific way. In ILB, for example, if you didn't want Melissa to hang up on you, you had to pretend to be one of her crew. But the game itself (and most of the other characters) still acknowledged that you were you -- and pretending to be someone else when talking to a crazy woman is something that I could see myself doing in real life, for that matter.

So for me, the "alternate" in "alternate reality game" refers to the game world, not what the game expects me to be. If it says to me, "You are an elf/vampire/secret agent/employee of whatever company/etc." it's an RPG to me, not an ARG. (And, incidentally, something I'm unlikely to play -- I hate being forced to roleplay.)