unforum

[PastaBagel]

Explaining Myself

[Rasputin42x69]

Re: Explaining Myself

[Liqidcrack]

I'm just a little lost.

THe beast.. had I tried to play that by myself and not use cloudmakers would have made it impossible for me to follow along. I wouldn't have been able to solve some of the puzzles and also find information without them (my fellow cloudmakers).

I didn't totally follow the MU game.

And as for my definitions of MMORPG vs. ARG

I didn't see players going out doing tasks, earning levels and such. Which my book is all about RPG. ARG is about community of players playing. Interacting with each other and the game itself. Players aren't required to take an active role in ARG. They can lurk and follow along. Posting when they truly have a question or finally feel like they have something to contribute. What you put into an RPG to get further into the game is directly related to how much time you spent playing.

*shrug*

LC

[talax]

I "think" what pastabagel was trying to say was this:

The game was too "real time". If you weren't playing the game nearly every day (or at least regularly), you couldn't play the game. Websites disappeared or changed. Pages were taken down, etc.

In other arg's, the path is usually still available if you miss a couple days. you can still "catch up" by viewing the pages, etc.

For example, I went on vacation on the last week of Acheron, and thus missed participating in the ending.

I know that Collective Detective and this site do provide summaries, etc of what happened, but it isn't quite the same as doing it yourself if the original pages disappeared.

Don't get me wrong, I really don't mind this, it does make the game a little more real in that respect.


edited to add: Here is the most extreme example of this. The first time we found out about cbecker's login (I think it was his), the password only lasted one hour of real time. Is it realistic that this would happen? Yes! And I like that. However, if you weren't following chat, exactly when it happened, you wouldn't have a chance to be able to figure it out.

[Liqidcrack]

Ahh ok. That makes me feel like a dork for my previous posting.

I've always wanted to do an ARG that was truly real time. Just becuase it would make it much more interesting to players to see someone get online after they got home from work or got online from a internet cafe while talking about what was going on around them real time.

Certainly just another flavor of ARG coming out of the woodwork.

LC

[MageSteff]

Re: Explaining Myself

[ScarpeGrosse]

Re: Explaining Myself

[Guest]

The only alternative to coexistence is codestruction......

The thing is....everyone will have their own personal opinions and views on whether or not this and other things/methods work. Someone will always feel it's always okay, some will always feel it's never okay, and some will feel it's okay under certain circumstances.

Nature of The Beast, can't please everyone and all that jazz...

I think constructive feedback is important from all viewpoints with any style of ARG, with well organized thoughts and reasons for those thoughts. It can only serve to better the next game to have your finger on the pulse of the players. For instance if 95% of people somehow did feel put out by some twist on the generally accepted method of delivery....then PMs would probably take that to heart and not venture that route the next time around.

That being said, I think it would be hard to cull and use that information if people were afraid to post an opinion for fear that it would be in the minority or get attacked.

And if the opinion they post is biting or accusatory rather than constructive, then arguments break out and nothing gets accomplished.

Maybe we can just watch the manner in which our opinions are posted.
And maybe we can try not to take things too personally, it is just an opinion after all.

I dunno, I'm not trying to get in the middle of something but if we have a criticism of something in an ARG, maybe we can post in such a way as to say:

"I didn't really care for this aspect because it made me feel like ?blank?. Did anyone else feel the same? Maybe next time...." r

Rather than:

"You did ?blank? and it sucked big time."

Sorry....just trying to broker some peace.

[Sunny du Pree]

[Slyfox]

I agree with guest. One of the hardest things to give and take well in life is criticism. I find it best to point out all that was good and worked first. Then, as Sunny suggests, give reasons why you think things didn't work and ideas as to how it might work better next time.

Lets face it. If we didn't like this stuff we wouldn't be here so lets try and work together so that it gets better each time.

Final thought. If you don't like the way a free ARG is run, demand your money back.

[rose]

Where do we go from here?

[PastaBagel]

THEY CALL ME PASTABAGEL AND HAVE YOU TRIED WENDY'S NEW CHICKEN SANDWICHES?

The real time aspect was actually cool, the problem was that it was sometimes real time, and then static for days at a time. My problem was that the game moved at the pace of the message boards. In other words, when a puzzle got solved here in the forums, it triggered the realtime change in the sites, etc. Therefore, reading the forums was not just helpful in playing the game (like it was with the Beast), it became a necessity.


Rose, I did get your PM, eventaully, but a week or 10 days after you sent it. I couldn't check the boards every day.

Here's my suggestions for improving the experience for new players or latecomers to a game:

1. Message boards don't work for archiving knowledge or information. We need a separate file area or news area where things can be put.

2. In the filearea, things like images, screenshots, logs, etc. need to include reference to the following information:

- where they came from or how they were found (e.g.: "url for image link found from cracking the code on page x", for example

- Where it led the player to.

3. A list of currently unsolved puzzles or unresolved leads.

4. A news section, where upcoming realtime events are posted.

I think that this site (unfiction) was originally designed with this in mind, but the site appears to have fallen into disrepair (the same goes for deaddrop.us).

I have some mad programming and database skills and could probably put a site together if anyone wants to help.

Here are my suggestions for improving the ARG games themselves:

1. Decide what you want to be ahead of time. Do you want to be a real time game with heavy character player live interaction, or do you want to be more static/puzzle/hacker oriented, where all of the pages are loaded onto the web at the beginning, but they can't only be found by cracking login codes etc.

2. Come up with a plan and timeline for how you want the game to unfold and what you are going to to if players get stuck somewhere for longer than you expect.

3. ARG's are stories, like novels and movies but are just told in a different way. The techniques of storytelling apply here too. So there should be foreshadowing, clues very early on about puzzles that only arise much later on, etc. A problem I found with Acheron was that it seemed like they were making up the story as they went along. IT was technology and time trvel, and then it was physics and ley lines, then indian mythology, and then the devil. This would have been fine if there was some reference to any of this at the beginning. And the reference could have been simple, like a browser history file showing that jake browed certain sites. Yes, I remember the seemingly random listing of sites in the beginning of the game, but those sites related to everything, which meant they related to nothing.

I'm not saying that the game sucked, it didn't. If I thought that I wouldn't be wriiting any of this. It was clearly a lot of hard work, and it sure is easier to criticize after the fact (and fun too!) than to make something on of my own.

Email me at pastabagelSPLAThotmail.com

THEY CALL ME PASTABAGEL

[/list]

[Wolf]

Sounds like you'd appreciate a Guide, such as Adrian Hon's Beast Guide or Steve Peters' LockJaw Guide. Those are the best examples I personally have seen to quickly get up to speed and/or find information you might have missed.

Problem with writing a Guide is it's a huge investment of time, but very much appreciated by both players and PMs.

[grumpyboy]

[MageSteff]