unforum

[MageSteff]

Budgetting

[cornapti]

For me, and I'm sure a lot of people, this is a big issue... I have nothing to contribute in the way of answers, but I do have a question: do you think it's possible to be taken seriously without spending much money (i.e. free hosting [no ads]; no .com domains, etc.)?

[ProfMoriarty]

I've never PMed, and I'm still the middle of my first ARG as a player, but I imagine that a good serious game can be played with nothing but a few free e-mail addresses, a blog, and access to a variety of forums. However, this wouldn't suffice for more ambitous ARGs.

[FLmutant]

Re: Budgetting

[Alzheimers]

Just a quick note from the "Zero-Dollar-Budget" camp:

While it may seem like a good idea, it's actually a lot harder than it seems. Forget about the community's attitude towards free hosts for a moment -- dealing with Banners, Spam, and all sorts of other advertising freehosts rely on can be a major pain. They play havoc with Javascripts, they can disrupt redirections and hidden directories, and the first time a 404 message with someone else's logo and a million popups comes up, you're toast.

That being said, there are some very useful FREE tools out there that can really be a help to your project.

The first and foremost is Gmail. The thread-sorting features alone make this free service the greatest tool a PM can have. Accessable from anywhere, with a near limitless storage capacity and VERY smart spam filters, the only downside is the ubiqitous text links on the side of the window. Learn to ignore them, and you're good.

Second, Proboards allows you to manage your own message boards for the very reasonable fee of one medium ad banner. If you're willing to pay, you can even have that removed. User and post management is simple to use, and if you lock down the anonymous posting feature you have yourself a very handy inter-character communication tool that the players can eavesdrop on without fear of "breaking" the game.

Finally, if your ISP offers additional services (emails, webpages, etc) and multiple profiles -- take advantage! You're already paying for these features, you might as well use them. Earthlink offers *7* extra identities, each with their own email and 10mb of webspace, as well as simple web creation tools and a weak but serviceable stat reporting system.

Take the time to investigate what you already have, and you may find yourself in a better situation than you thought. If you want to make money off the game, Cafepress, Amazon Recommendation links, and even Google Adwords are all prospective ways to make income.

[Liqidcrack]

[Duckie]

Some other resources that helped *me* with a zero-cost ARG:

blogger is a very easy tool, and believable if your blogging character shouldn't have the technical expertise to make their own blog from scratch. Also, if you're anticipating traffic, blogger is running a campaign that will pay you depending on server traffic (which for most blogs is none, but for an ARG... ILB would have made millions). ALSO it allows you to edit the HTML. Take a source code from any in game site and presto, your blog has been hijacked by your in-game company (or whatever else you wish to do with this).

IM, while free, can get annoying, as it forces players to get online according to your schedule, which is often neglected.