unforum

[Agent Lex]

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[mac_monkey]

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[VQ.Wavecrest]

Oh, my poor Hook.... I shall avenge thee! Pink shoes! The horror!!
I also thought of more questions! So...

If you hadn't ended the game at this time, where would the story have gone? Er... rather, which plot line would have been most stressed? Since it seemed as if Pi was going to continue (with that vid), then the chapters came out and it finished.

Do we get to see the dissertation (since it'll be published)?

[taureanfreak]

[WolfHawk]

Hmm, my questions...

1. Was there something I was supposed to do that I didn't catch? Igot several cryptic messages that sounded like I was supposed to "get" something, but, being rather dense, I didn't.

2. Did Violet Nightshade ever contact you about why she just disappeared? Her story line was pretty good.

3. I suppose we all want to know if we made it to the future or not. (Of course if I'm in my hidden bunker with taurean and the others then DC may not kow if I made it!)

4. Not really DC related, but Adam, how'd you find me in Facebook???!!!

I'm sure I'll think of some others. I will also answer your questions when I've thought through my answers.

[ThusQED]

1) What was your favorite aspect of DC? Explain.
PvP was probably the most interesting game mechanic with the intense player pm interaction running a second. Unfortunately, pvp is a bit flawed for ARGs because of the problem of group community. There's no way to really imply PvP because there's always going to be that one person who probably will leak to the "other side" sensitive information. Furthermore, there's no way to truly keep track of all of double/triple agents which means you can never really divulge anything deemed "sensitive" either. So while you have multiple "sides", in the end, information will just be distributed to everyone. There's always a big status quo and basically there's no way one side can have an advantage over the other except if there's some in-game scripted event that makes one have advantage over the other. And that's not really pvp either because the players had nothing to do with it.

2) What was your least favorite aspect of DC? Explain.

Infrequent updates was probably something everyone hated so I'm not going to touch on that. However, I was a bit annoyed that there were so many game mechanics and doodads that were implied but never implemented. It's frustrating to have them suggested but not being able to use them. Actually one bit that bothered me was a running line between Bishop and myself involving my sending stuff to the future. Originally in my mind I thought it could eventually become a player-activity involving either time capsules or digitally sending passages/quotes of books to the future. Because of the time/future aspect you could have interesting concepts in that say... a bottle of wine in a time capsule could technically age well to the future. Technically. I ended up having one or two interesting messages about it before I stopped getting messages at all. I think that if the PM's thought about using that as a potential game mechanic, it shouldn't take too long to decide...it could work/ it could not work/ not now and just message a player about it.

3) What would you like to see change in a future similar project?
I think that one of the major issues of the ARG for the PMs was too many things to do, not enough time/manpower. I think that a good way to improve this is to promote player-created content. Rewarding the good player created content such as Agent Hook's Manifesto encourages people to interact with it while simultaneously keeping the PM workload down. I think that one could delicately delegate certain things to long-term hardcore players too. Off the top of my head, you could get the most trusted/"good" ones incentives to help out new players as a sort of newbie guide or offer unique information to player-created groups and have them play off each other instead of primarily off the PM's. Of course you have the eventual problem of a bajillion player created groups but PM's could just ignore the new groups and not give them content as a punishment for being either an uninteresting, redundant, or deleterious organization.

4) Did DC push the current boundaries of ARG/CF? Explain.
It brought interesting new game mechanics pvp/ increased PM interaction. The increased PM interaction increased game-quality while the pvp could have pushed the boundaries had it worked effectively.

5) Was the "one year time line" successful? (11-11-06 to 11-11-07)
To tell you the truth, I didn't even notice there was a time-line set. Unobservant of me I guess.

6) How did you find out about DC? (specify IG/OOG and/or trailhead)
I think I found it oog while looking for a new ARG to follow.

7) How does DC's structure compare to the commonly accepted 4orty 2wo entertainment model of player interaction? http://www.42entertainment.com/see_images/triangle.jpg
I think that the structure seemed a bit reliant on potential new users figuring out backstory from old users. It's hard for casual or even active new users to really get into the game which means eventually the game suffers attrition of sorts. Since there's no easy way for people to catch up (ex. synopsis) there's less vested interested and so there's less people to replace those who leave due to loss of interest or whatever other reasons people leave games.

8 ) How does your interaction compare to the 4orty 2wo entertainment model of player interaction?
I think I fit between lvl 2 and 3. Overall I was a lvl 2 player except once in a while I'd try to pitch some content idea to make it to lvl 3. I think I'd probably be a lvl 3 player if I was a better puzzle solver, had more time, and had been either a part of a group or had started one of my own.

9) What do you see as the future of ARG/CF?
I think that it'll remain a sort of niche gaming market that will remain primarily a marketing/information gimmick or form of viral marketing until it figures out a way to make a profit off those participating.

10) Would you play/avoid a "grass-roots" low budget ARG/CF (such as DC) versus a big-budget "Commercial" ARG/CF?
I'd play a grass-roots one if it's quality was good. Quality of course is a factor of writing, pm interaction, and flash doodads/gizmos. Big-budget commercial args can increase their quality with money spent in fancy technology for player interaction (ex. perplex city or the heroes 360). Grass-roots ones don't have that kind of money which I can forgive if it makes up for that loss in the non-money related fields.

11) Rank the following "ARG/CF elements" from most to least important: Design (website, graphics, pics), Story (writing), Puzzles (tasks), Player Interaction (forums, IM, etc), Real-world elements (non-internet), Videos (acting, sets, youtube, etc), Other (specify)

Story, Player interaction, Puzzles, Real-world, Videos, Design*

Design has a star because while you can get away with not having a fancy GUI or pretty technological feats of aesthetics, it still has to work and do whatever function its supposed to do. So... I'd rather have a not as pretty website that allows for pming/ karmar/ credits than a pretty website that only gives information.

12) In what ways was DC "broken" or a "failure"?
I think DC "failed" because a lot of its goals were very ambitious for what I suspect was a small workforce and not so much capital. Also a lack of time. Which isn't really to blame of the PM's although I would (probably redundantly) point out that if you're going to plan such a large ARG without an obvious means of income for it, you better have a large amount of donated money/ capital prior to starting it. Not to mention be pessimistic about the amount of time you need to put into it.


Queries:
1.) Is it possible for accounting information to be available. I'm kind of interested in how much it cost and how much money you made from those google ads. I doubt the google ads actually paid for the sites themselves but I'm curious how much money they made. (I admit I clicked on one of those ads every once in a while as a sort of "donate to DC" thing).
2.) What did you make of my character anyway? I hope I didn't bug you guys too much with the time-travel business. I guess I was attempting to start a potential group that played off both sides to make sure the time-stream didn't go paradoxically crazy.
3.) And the self-serving question... is there any chance of one becoming a part of any future team project that you're working on?

[skywing]

whoa, it ended

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