unforum

[AUZ505]

I also think that is great.
It takes the important things from Weezel's post, is shorter and for me it also holds the "this is not a game" design.

Nice, to have a "bestselling" author in the community

[Troag Lee]

Weezel. This is a great idea, in true spirit with what the game itself wants: As many players as possible, all over the world.

[Lysithea]

Nice work Weezel and Elizabeth123.

[Emilio]

At the official site http://www.thelostring.com/howto/index.html I found this:


WHAT
The Lost Ring is a global immersive adventure.

It's an alternate reality game — an interactive story you help tell, by piecing together clues online and in the real world.

The game started in March 2008, and you can join any time.

It's free to play, and easy to catch up on what's happened in the story so far.

WHY
The Lost Ring is an adventure you experience with people from all over the world.

As a global team, you'll work together to uncover a secret that's nearly 2,000 years in the making.

Where does it all lead? To the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where players will join forces online and across the globe to help save the worlds.

HOW
If you're just getting started, welcome to the game.

Here's how to start playing:

* Watch The Lost Ring trailers to catch up on the story.
* Listen to The Lost Games podcasts to learn the legends of the Ancient Games.
* Meet the global cast of characters: Ariadne, Diego, Markus, Meihui, Noriko, Lucie, Larissa.
* And, if you're really hooked, check out the players' wiki to catch up on all the clues and latest discoveries.

[FlatCat]

The concept of recruiting is phenomenal, even with the long drawn text that I translated, I sent it to my dad for proofing, he is a university proffesor in Mexico. He replied after FMG had polished my rough attempt.

While correcting my poor spanish grammar, he was hooked on the concept of the ARG and share the concept of a live "myst" with some of his colleagues, who in turn are sharing with their students... we are on our way to recruit the masses this game requires.

[dreamerblue]

When we have something that we are happy with, I'd like to see it posted on a website somewhere so we can just e-mail out a link, those of us on Facebook/etc. can share it as a posted item, etc. Sure, we could send people a link to the wiki/etc., but it would be really nice to have a short "recruiting blurb" up somewhere so people can get an idea of what the game's about even more quickly.

[esperanto-tim]

My 2¢, for what it's worth:
-- advert: good idea
-- translated advert pointing people to their-language in-game forums: ooh, brilliant idea
-- Elizabeth's "in-game" text: good implementation of a fine idea; not saying it couldn't be improved though, so polish away, people!

[Isaac Dodgson]

Perhaps there is another approach we could take.

Where this method is direct and caters to that form of advertising, I remember stumbling upon this ARG through a very vague banner on YouTube, all it said I believe was "Find The Lost Ring" and there was a Picture of Ariadne, and some other blurb, short and sweet. Clicking it led me to the main website.

What if we (volunteering if need be) create a banner that advertises the game? Keep it vague, and yet interesting enough to entice someone to follow the link and hopefully get hooked. Now, 100% of people who click may turn away, but we should get twice as many potential players when their curiosity compels them to click

Besides... They want us to hide our secret in plain sight, this kinda of works for that

(On a complete sidenote unrelated to this...i found the account i accidently created, and found it by accident...Dodgson isn't supposed to have an E)

[Weezel]

Re: We need your help! (draft)

[Lysithea]

[Isaac Dodgson]

[thebruce]

heh, earlier on I was spec'ing to myself various ways to get the word out...

1. setting up a page to offer downloadable banner ads of various sizes for people to post on their sites
2. player-generated videos - more youtube responses from people searching for the ring
3. tv commercials/theatre trailers - hoping that IOC/McD wouldn't opt for meta-markety type commercials (like their web trailers - which are amazing, but still fairly meta), but rather go for in-game messages from the 6, paid for by Kai for mass distribution... or if we get involved, perhaps we could have a role in them. In a meta sense, the PMs would opt to use player-generated content for the commercials, rather than produce them entirely in-house. THAT would be something totally unique as far as I know for an ARG. Player influenced TV commercials. Entirely in-game. And they set up Kai as the perfect means but of course there would be oog legal matters to tend to, but it would be a sweet path to take...

[Isaac Dodgson]

[Elizabeth123]

Note that there's a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor (see the Find The Lost Ring pinned thread), who's writing an article on the game. CSM has a HUGE readership, so I'm sure that'll help. Can only hope the article comes out soon, though, because I think if I hadn't been involved in this from early on, I would've been overwhelmed. (I started reading threads a week after the uf forum was opened, and I was still overwhelmed.)

[Chid12]

Elizabeth raises a very good point. Perhaps this is why the game seems to have slowed down over the last few days - no new documents, e-mails or artifacts really. The more info there is, the less likely people are going to be to take the challenge on. I think there's just about an acceptable level of info you'd have to pick up were you to join the game now. But in a couple of weeks... perhaps too much.