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[Omega]

Forced Recruitment

[Will 2.0]

I see it in a negative light. I understand when my games were going that I wanted as many players as I could get but when you refuse to let the game move along until everyone recruits two people, thereby tripling the amount of players, the task then becomes a chore and added stress on the players that never should be there.

Even if you have X amount of people, it's always expected to turn into X-1 or X-8 people. What you have left are the hardcore, the people who are most interested in your story and characters and those are the people in my opinion that matter.

[Jas0n]

I don't like it at all. When I see something like that, I just completely ignore the trailhead. At least try to pull me in before you force me to go out and bring other players into a game that I know nothing about and don't care anything for.

[xnbomb]

To restate the situation a little here (in a decidedly pejorative fashion):

• Some puppetmasters create a game
  
• These puppetmasters form some expectations of how many players they'd like to have
  
• A certain number of players get interested and start playing
  
• The puppetmasters decide that the players they do have are not great enough in number
  
• The puppetmasters then hold their interested players hostage/waiting for the game to continue, while they expect their interested players try to convince others to play along

Making the existing player base responsible for recruitment of a larger group that satisfies the puppetmasters' expectations is flat out wrong. Puppetmasters are the ones who are empowered to attract players by making their games fun. Requiring the existing player base to do this part of the puppetmasters' job for them, while withholding from those existing players content/the continuing progress of the game, is almost guaranteed to alienate some of the existing player base. And it won't work, because players are not the ones who are empowered to design the game and make it attractive.

There's no substitute for a game being fun. If players are enjoying a game, chances are that the community will hear from them about it. Whether it is through posts in these forums or in an article on ARGN, if a game is enjoyable people will tell other people, and it will attract players. Attempting to compel people to engage in word-of-mouth beyond what they would normally say to others if they were not so compelled just isn't going to work. No amount of coercion (and that's what this is) of an existing player base is going to make it possible for them to attract and retain other players beyond that group that is already enjoying a game because of their appreciation of its intrinsic merits.

[notgordian]

The only time I have seen this strategy work without a backlash is with the Dark Knight ARG.

The first "phase" of the game required unlocking a photo of Heath Ledger as the Joker by entering email addresses -- each email address would unlock a single pixel in the image. It was a fairly nifty puzzle, but it was also a form of recruitment -- because the PM team now had a collection of interested people.

I think the question remains, what would the team have done if they didnt get enough people "unlocking" the image?

[xnbomb]

[Nighthawk]

It bothered me enough to put my own write-up here:
http://www.brainclouds.net/Darklight/20080426/I-mean-business-here.aspx

I think the recruitment quota is just so that the PM can feel like he's special. As in "Hey! Look at me and my game! I got a billion people playing!"

I applaud the efforts of PMs using whatever means necessary to get people in to their game, but the level of participation should not be a REQUIREMENT for the game to proceed.

In your Dark Knight example... To be honest, do you know for sure they got the amount needed, or did they either overinflate the numbers or purposely reveal pixels? I mean, considering an image's resolution you're talking about tens of thousands of email addresses... there's no proof that they got that. If they didn't, should the game end there? No; keep revealing the image regardless of how many you get, but make people *think* it's working.

Another thing that I've mentioned in the threads in question... There are a lot of people coming to this game that don't know how this works in the "alternate reality." So, when they're forced to do excessive recruitment, they may decide to use unorthodox or inappropriate methods that could involve real world issues. For example, one person suggested faxing the recruitment poster to local hospital ERs... that's just insane.

It can very easily get out of control, and in a heartbeat you can have law enforcement, government agencies and civil services all over your "game". That's the last thing any PM wants, trust me.

I'll participate in this "game", sure, but I ain't doing one damn thing to recruit anyone.

[Big_Larry]

[Rekidk]

But there are also good ways to have players help recruit other players! (These are the kind that don't force a roadblock for players.) In MeiGeist, players were mailed 'lost cat' posters that essentially acted as a rabbithole for the game. (It worked IG but had the distinct OOG purpose of recruiting more players.) Everybody that was mailed a poster enjoyed hanging it up and whatnot, but that's because we were already enjoying the game by that point. It was a fun way to invite a few more players to the game rather than a--well, a not-so-much-fun way to force more players to join the game.

[faeryqueen21]

In order to recruit players to Hurts To Heal I just put a post about it in a forum for What Is This Game. They actually have a section there for "Other ARGs" so this is considered ok. Incidentally this brought like 5 people into the game which I consider good for one person. Thankfully, they are also ARGers so they know the rules.

As someone playing Hurts To Heal I am definitely bugged by the recruiting. I just hope that when we fail (and we will, 400 by Monday is impossible) the game will continue anyway with some sort of explanation as to why this was necessary. If the game does in fact end when we fail to reach his player number, I'll be taking names and starting a "PM Sh!t List".

[pancito]

I've posted on this elsewhere, including the hurts2heal thread, but I found this really insulting and more than a little tasteless. Games can do all kinds of things to get recruits, emails, snailmail, swag, despoiler, etc., and they probably should use some of those methods, esp. if the PM is masked or a first timer. And I agree that there seems to be a large element of vanity in it (see the 'I'll squish it' link in my sig). (Blatant hucksterism, but at least there are actually a couple of minor things to do there besides sign up, if anyone wants to bother.) Seems a lot like 'either I get to bat first or I take my ball and go home' to me... I'm lurking that thread, but because people whose posts I read post there, not because of any content.

On the other hand, some of the clueless noobs will stay and develop into players. Always the silver lining.

[Omega]

[Rekidk]

[redct]

As everyone knows, the only reason Cloverfield got crazy player numbers is the hype. The game might've sucked, but the viral marketing really worked its mojo there.

[Rekidk]