unforum

[Alzheimers]

Real Time vs. Planned ARGs

[Varin]

Re: Real Time vs. Planned ARGs

[Alzheimers]

Well, unfortunately Ilovebees.com is the first ARG I've come across that was still running while I played. I've had experience with other AR games, but most I've played well after the fact, such as the Dan Brown ARG tie-in to the DaVinci code.

Maybe because of this I have a skewed vision of how an ARG should unfold. Since most of my experience has been with games that were completed way before I got there, I never had the chance to witness how the storyline/puzzle interaction worked.

My main concern is that by going against conventions, I might turn off many of the fans I'm trying to win over. I'm no expert at this, but I've got the bug and I'm certainly willing to give it a shot. I don't want to wake up and find a months' worth of work over in a few hours -- but I also want to make sure that the interaction between the game and it's players feels... well, realistic. As realistic a mini-ARG can be, anyway.

[Wishi-san]

Planning is obviously important as you'll have to know your characters inside out. You're trying to portray their life as realistically as possible after all.

Although lots of the design work and preparation can be done beforehand, there's always gonna be moments of inspiration or player actions inspired changes so it should never be set in stone.

As for it all being laid out online, I agree with Varin, it's not practical if you want the interactivity and updates of "real" sites.

I think every single PM team you ask will have a different method of going about it with their own advantages and possible disadvantages.

[Varin]

[catherwood]

I can't vote until i understand the choices. I thought a "complete ARG" meant complete immersion and thus would be in real time.

The thread title mentions "planned ARG" which I also do not understand.

[Alzheimers]

Perhaps I didn't use the best words, but I'm not aware of existing terminology for what I'm trying to describe.

A "Real Time" ARG would be one that shows changes over a time period. Events are in the past, in motion or haven't happened yet. Not all puzzles are available from the start -- they must "occur" first, before players can discover them. This also allows for "Live" interaction to occur -- email responses from PMs, player-enduced plot changes, etc. ILB, as it is right now, would be considered "Real Time"

A "Planned" ARG or Complete ARG would be designed to be entirely ready to go from start. All of the puzzles are online at the start, so an industrious player who works for hours could theoretically solve it in one night. It allows the player to work at their own pace -- events occur with the player's progress, not by the date on the calendar. All interaction would be automated -- the events have already occured or don't occur until triggered by a player, it requires less supervision but also removes the "live" element of the game. The Dan Brown/DaVinci Code tie-in ARG would be an example of this -- I completed it a year after the book was released, working just on weeknights from 11:30pm - 1am.

I understand for a large project like ILB or the Beast, live interaction might be preferable. For smaller projects, like the Dan Brown tie-in, a start-to-finish fully-realized "Complete" setup might be best. What I'm looking for are details beyond the simple comparisons I can give with my limited knowledge, to what really matters in an ARG. That is, which method gives a better experience, and in what circumstances?

edit: for those who don't know what I'm talking about, go to http://www.davincicode.com to access the tie-in games. At first, they appear to be nothing more than riddles, but to progress past a certain point you must use email, search engines, and a little detective work to proceed.

[catherwood]

[Alzheimers]

Does an ARG necessarily require live interaction? Does the illusion of such (Autoresponders, triggered sequences, etc) count? Or is it deeper -- plot based -- if the players don't have an affect on the storyline, does that make it less interactive? If a PM has a tightly woven script, I would imagine it would take quite a push from the community to move it off it's path. So would being a strict PM be any better than just scripting everything? And if you're going to lock down the script, why not just go all the way and make it all automated?

Which takes us back to my original point -- from a player's standpoint, does it matter if it's progressing live or on their own timeline?

[dnbmathguy]

[Fi]

I think you need a good balance of the two - real time and planned. By launch, the path you want your game to take should be clear in your mind, as well as technically achieved/able. But you also have to be well aware (pun? moi?) that the players may not take your game in the direction you expected, and have a flexible enough set up to accomodate the 'markets' needs. For this reason, releasing puzzles, sites etc in stages is more practical, realistic and engaging.

You might find some interesting stuff in this thread:
http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3842

Fi

[Magesteff-work]

[FLmutant]

I know, I know ... I'm bumping all of these old threads, but that's because my gag is off for a while between ARGs.

We tend to do a combination of the two: you're telling a story, so having your characters fleshed out and the general dramatic arch of the story worked out in advance produce the most engaging stories. But leaving enough flexibility in that story to adapt to the audience is where the real magic starts to happen. Good entertainment has always made use of "happy accidents" and flexibility means being able to incorporate more of those "happy accidents".

We sometimes use the metaphor of "interactive theater" -- theater versus movie, in that the performers are part of a feedback loop with the audience, and the performers play off that feedback. How much improvisation you want is something that you can fudge the needle on the dial from project to project, but you never want to sacrifice the "feedback" that you can get from the audience that makes it even richer.

Pyschology works to your advantage, though, because a good audience is ego-centric. If you setup a story point with tension, and then resolve that tension, they'll tend to think it's because of their reaction, rather than that their reaction was something predicted from the tension. Think about "cliffhanger" season enders on television -- they are done because they know they will produce unresolved tension.

If the audience also knows that they are really influencing some portion of the story, they will start to overestimate how much of it they are influencing. An interactive "MacBeth" ... even if improvisational ... is still going to be recognizeable for it's framework, right?


Brian