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[Cortana]

Story and Plot, related, but not the same thing...

[SpaceBass]

Didn't you play LockJaw?

[Cortana]

[SpaceBass]

Re: Story and Plot, related, but not the same thing...

[vpisteve]

I would agree wholeheartedly. The story's the thing. Just like a good film, a successful ARG will have a compelling story, PLUS well-developed characters that you grow to care about.

I mean, just look at the casts of characters alone in The Beast and LockJaw, for instance. Even Majestic worked hard on character development, to their credit (Kendra, where are you??!!). These characters were really brought to life. As a result, the plot became even more important, as you cared about what happened to these characters.

I think PMs would do well to research the relative success of Episodics, for example.

Challenging puzzles are great, and fun, but without a great story and interesting characters, it might as well be just another online puzzle site.

I think some of the upcoming or newly launched games show great promise in this regard: TerraQuest just may be showing the beginnings of a cool plot and some character development, CTW looks well thought out in this regard, too.

It all comes down to holding your audience. IMO, there are many elements needed to successfully do so, but having a good storyline and character development are key.

Any PMs out there want to chime in?

[Cortana]

Re: Story and Plot, related, but not the same thing...

[SpaceBass]

Wow, that's in a excellent question. I don't know if I can answer for people who don't have any prior experience with the genre anymore. It's far easier for me to get into a game now that it was for the first one I found, the Beast. Those sites patently did NOT grab me right off.

The first time I was pointed to them, even knowing there was something odd about them from the link I followed, I just poked around and went "huh, weird," then ignored them for another week or so until I was pointed back again by a different site. That time around, it was finding the Cloudmakers list that sucked me in, not the in-game sites. Once I was in, I certainly got into and engrossed in the story but that wasn't the draw. Is this blasphemy?

A book is linear. It has a defined beginning and every reader starts at the same place. Even old-school adventure games started off in the same place for each player. Assuming you can write that attention-getting first few lines, you're golden. If the reader has some prior interest in attempting to get into the story whether or not they're immediately caught up (I know quite a few people who will read at least to page 50 of a book before they decide to toss it if it sucks), you can still have success if you at least build something intriguing fairly quickly.

Is there even a way to do that with a fictional entity that can have multiple starting points, or where people can stumble in to the middle and pass right by the eye-catching bits? Perhaps this means that an ARG has to be just as intriguing throughout as a book is in that first-line hook. Or maybe in an ARG you should attempt to lead the reader as quickly as possible to a community that will help build interest in each other, mass-hysteria style.

I'd love to hear some more ideas on this.

[Cortana]

[Wolf]

Not sure what this may contribute, but here goes.

We designed thepythia.net to be a cool, interest-grabbing thing from the start. We were assuming (wrongly) that that would be the first site found after the clue was planted at the 'zine. It had a high WTF factor going for it, since the images were presented with no explanation other than maybe some hidden text here and there that was interesting but not necessarily helpful--just to keep people coming back. Steve said early on (and rightly) that this slow phase was the lift hill heading to the first drop.

We debated for quite a while about how slow was too slow. We knew that we couldn't roll everything out right away, but we also knew that waiting five days between linked pages would be too long. I think we ended up linking new pages every couple of days or so, which seemed slow enough to build suspense but still fast enough that we didn't lose peoples' interest.

We also were very aware that it had to be about the story first and foremost. Myself, I'm not a puzzle person. In fact, I may be even less puzzly than Ozy, if that's possible. I think we were aware that we'd need to hit folks hard after the last pythia.net clue or risk losing interest among the player base.

Remember the payoff for being patient through "chapter one" aka thepythia.net? What you got for waiting was...a 404 error. But that was phony, and you suddenly were racing down the first hill armed with the knowledge that somebody was dead. Then, you found out a lot of the background. The story suddenly took off and progressed almost daily.

I guess, if I do indeed have a point, it's that I think the hook for these things needs to be a combination of strong WTF factor, interesting design, and either simultaneously or soon afterward you need to hit people with a reason to start caring. Then you have your real work cut out for you--KEEP them caring. Balance story with puzzles. Balance text with graphics. Nobody wants to just read and read, and nobody just wants to look at pretty pictures.

And pulsing your audience on a daily basis to find out what's working and what isn't is ALWAYS a good idea. Sure, the story arc needs to be fixed in advance, but it also has to be flexible enough to be able to react immediately to what your main players are doing.

I'll shut up now. imbri can actually probably address this better than I, because she was the one who really stood at the center of our self-made s*itstorm and watched it swirl around her.

--Wolf

[SpaceBass]

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