unforum

[danteIL]

Why a curtain?

[konamouse]

In some cases it has really enchanced the TINAG concept (i.e. the first Sammeeeees).

In other cases, it helps lend legitimacy and promise of quality (i.e. EE).

I think it depends on the game design and the ability of the PM to avoid muddling with the play.

[catherwood]

Re: Why a curtain?

[xnbomb]

Re: Why a curtain?

[Rekidk]

You may find it interesting to read about Jeromy Barber's ARG, RedEarth88. Since the end of the first chapter (Maddison Atkins) back in late April, Jeromy has not had much of a curtain. Recently, he made the decision to go 'back behind the curtain,' because the players were spending too much time trying to get information out of him instead of exploring his universe and solving the puzzles in-game. He found that the lack of a curtain damaged his game.

Read his blog post about it here.

[imbri]

I think a curtain is a necessity. However, I do not believe that one must have an "iron curtain."

We started Metacortechs with an "iron curtain" and it worked very well for us. However, I don't think that the experience was harmed in when someone(s) found their way around the iron curtain and word got out that it was not an official experience and was being created by a grassroots team. I do, however, wonder if the experience would have suffered if we had been open from the start - my gut tells me we would have had few players and that may have had some impact.

We have your standard living room curtain in Eldritch Errors which works very well for the experience. There are a number of benefits that come with this approach, but what I love most is that it allows us to open the curtain on occasion in order to document the experience for others interested in the genre from a PM perspective.

Most games, however, have a more stage curtain - they're big and heavy and you rarely see a toe sticking out from underneath. However, when you walk into the theater you know you're going to see a production on a specific topic and it's produced by a certain company. You might not have gotten that information from the game but from the article that pointed you to the game. I like this approach as it lets you email the producers of the game if there you have reason to inquire about the game, but if, say, there's a problem with the website you can email the webmaster about it, or want to tell a character something you can email them. It lets you keep out of game stuff out of game and in game stuff in game. The danger with this approach is that once you've come out from behind the curtain to fix a minor detail, you might fumble a bit as you try to get back behind it. Any breach is much more noticeable.

It's all a matter of degree and depends on the needs of the experience. Hopefully, however, whatever curtain is chosen, the game is designed with that curtain in miind. I think, for the most part, that's usually what happens.

[mapmaker]

On the other hand, I don't think there's much of a problem with communicating with PMs about non-game stuff. The curtain is a funny shape in that way.

[SpaceBass]

Short Answer:
Because that's the way it works best. Note: this is not intended to be a cop-out along the lines of "It's always been done that way." As Rekidk pointed out above, Jeromy Barber has managed to relearn the lesson empirically.

Medium Answer:
There are at least two ideas behind the concept of a curtain in the context of Alternate Reality Gaming. First, the curtain can be used to hide the identity of the Puppetmasters from the Players. This is an optional usage, as seen above but which when exercised counter-intuitively facilitates the meta-communication between the Architects and the Audience because (again, example above), it creates an artificial tension that is required to sustain the meta-communication in the first place (if communication by other routes is easier or more efficient, they will be used instead).

The second idea is that the curtain is the game space. You said your focus was not on the division of in-game from out-of-game elements but this is the core purpose of the curtain and it is integral to how an ARG functions. The label is misleading in a meta-fashion because it implies a mere boundary line between two elements but it works well in a metaphorical way because it incites at least a certain level of expectation based on past experience.

There are in fact three elements: The Puppetmaster side of the curtain, which is out-of-game; the Player side of the curtain, which is also out-of-game but (ideally) unconnected to the Puppetmaster side (yet observable by them); and then there is inside the curtain, which contains uncertainty and possibility, and which is the only boundary-definable game-space that is entirely in-game.

ARGs as a system and a process contain more than a single communication dynamic. Magic happens behind the scenes on the Puppetmaster teams, the Players work their wizardry on their own, but inside the curtain is where we make the magic happen together.

Long Answer aka "My god, it's full of stars.":
Stay tuned. See here.

[natas]

Why a curtain?

[krystyn]

natas, you just made me laugh.

Space, I think you have some competition in the ARG erudition arena.

[vpisteve]

Re: Why a curtain?

[labfly]

i LOVE the curtain as a pm and as a player.

as a player for many of the reason you guys have listed above. for me, it's like reading a book or watching a movie.. i don't want the author or director/writer popping out in the middle of the story to chat about the hows or the whys.

as a pm i want to concentrate on one thing, telling the story. not that i don't obsessively check in with the forums for feedback. i am always snooping. i just feel that stepping out as the pm to comment would really break up the storytelling process for me. i would rather address issues as best i can within the story world. and i don't know what other pms do when they're orchestrating a game but i really fall into my story and characters. my actor friends say i'm a "method" pm. someone else said it's more of a jan the mad scientist mode. who knows what breaking out of my mad scientist mode might do?

i love what spacebass said about how the curtain creates a space where the magic can happen between the players and pm. that's lovely.

...that said, it's been interesting to watch the eldritch errors crew move back and forth with the curtain. their process seems to work very nicely for them. and the fans seem very happy with it.

so, i guess it really is a pm preference/design question.

[danteIL]

There seems to be at least two aspects to the 'curtain as immersion' argument:

The first appears to concern primarily the willing suspension of disbelief. That is, some people state that they would find games less fun if they were to have interactions with the PMs that were not mediated solely by in-game mechanics, because that would shatter the internal illusion of the game world. I can understand that, although at some level I think 'YMMV' applies. For me personally, I don't feel that having access to meta- aspects of the game hinders my enjoyment of ARGs at all. Indeed, I like those aspects very much, and I also feel like I can pretty successfully slip in and out of the game world pretty easily when I need to. Note, however, that this issue of 'suspension of disbelief' seems orthogonal to the more specific question concerning access to the PMs. Indeed, if one were to take the immersion stance to its limit, then this would suggest that players shouldn't congregate on IRC or even on UF, because this is not what your 'in-game' self would do. Clearly, that's not a serious position, but it explains why I don't really buy the simple (and possibly strawman) version of the immersion argument. If interacting with other players out of the game doesn't impair one's ability to enjoy experiences in-game, then I don't see, on that level alone, why interacting with the PMs would be any worse.

Second, however, is the more specific (and more relevant) issue that people seem to feel that interacting with the PMs somehow makes one needlessly aware of the messy underbelly of the game and that a curtain (of whatever material) helps preserve the 'magic.' Part of this comes down to, again, YMMV. Different people have different feelings about knowing what's going on behind the scenes, and I understand that the more conservative position is to have a curtain rather than not have a curtain. I just think that it's a very weird situation where everyone agrees that the PMs and the players are collaborating together to create this wonderful shared experience, but the only generally accepted means of communicating about that experience is through the experience itself. My discomfort is that player communication to the PMs (that is, when they mean to communicate directly to the PMs and not to characters in-game) becomes, by necessity, very passive-agressive -- tapping on the magic mirror and hoping for a response. There are times (particularly when frustrations arise) when I'd like to sit down and discuss what's going on in the game with the creators of the game -- not because I want to know secrets or how things were done, but because I want to know that they understand how decisions they made fostered certain reactions. Most ARGs are structured in a way that thwart that second-order level of mutual knowledge. PMs reading fora obsessively is not communication.

Note that this is written from the player perspective. I appreciate that a few PM-types have responded with their own good reasons for having a curtain.

[natas]

coincidence????

[ScarpeGrosse]

But... but... if you take away the curtain, you also take away the fun of PM stalking! :O

also,