unforum

[VQ.Wavecrest]

Do wikis hurt grassroot ARGs?

[catherwood-offline]

Are players just reading a wiki or reading a forum thread, instead of reading the game's website(s) or contacting the characters directly? I wouldn't say it hurts the game, but it might alter that player's experience of the game.

[konamouse]

I find wikis great for organization of resources and archives of the game stuff & the final puzzle solves (cause someday the game sites are gone but if there is a copy on the wiki, those screen shots last until the wiki is removed - nice 'museum'). But it's also good for keeping track of material.

The forum is where the discussions occur and puzzles are actively solved. For sharing information and meta. For communication (because many of us don't have access to chat rooms 24/7) and where those in different time zones can 'talk'.

[thebruce]

The way I understood wavecrest was that if the grassroots PM is focusing his observation attention to UF, and people don't use UF or his game's thread/area is relatively inactive, then UFers will think the game is 'dead' per se, and the PM may give up on it... which is another reason why it's smart not to focus just on uf, though that's generally where a lot of activity may happen... if there is a wiki, observe its activity... but more importantly, track in-game website referrers - find out if there are other websites/communities that are tracking or playing the game... if it seems dead on UF, that doesn't mean it has to be dead everywhere else.

But it's a good point about wikis... I find that sometimes as well - when there's an update, depending on who's following the game, people may want to make changes to the wiki asap, and really, once a puzzle is solved and the solution is posted for all to see (or numerous forum posts say "just go here") then it kind of puts a blanket over discussion. So, which is better: lots of redundant chat in a forum, or directed answers off the forum?

Also, while forums are for discussion, we usually find that if there is no off-site resource, first posts in a thread may become resources themselves. So in that sense, wikis do also by nature drive traffic away from forums - but now with the different nature of forums and wikis (forum=discussion not resource, wiki=resource not discussion), is that a good or a bad thing?

I think that's one reason why Sean/spacebass keep Despoiler a 'request-a-wiki' system, so the community decides when they want to move 'off forum', and for wikibruce, I tend to make wikis for games that I'm personally following, if one hasn't been made yet (mainly because in doing so, I'm dedicating some of my time to keeping it up, at least until others put more time into it than me (as with TDK and FTLR), assuming that even happens (as not with Hellboy)).

So yeah, I don't think every game needs a wiki, and to a degree, I think the op is right - wikis can be a hinderance to a forum's activity around a smaller, more independent game. But it doesn't have to be that way, and there are many factors that affect that, both on the players' and the PMs' ends.

[Nighthawk]

Christ, I use the player made wikis to keep track of my own games...

In a fast paced game, the forums can turn in to a zoo. Even with only one thread for LGL, at one point I got EIGHT PAGES in a single day. I can't imagine the players going through all that and making any sense out of it fast enough, and if it's not made sense of quickly they move on. The Wikis simplify and make the entry curve easier to bear.

[Vecheeso]

Meh, I dont exactly agree. I mean, if the wiki is kept up to date, and summaries of chats, and websites are on there, then i agree its a great source. But what if there arent that many people playing the game?
I think that the wiki is valuable, and reliable for references, but thats assuming the wiki contains the needed info and summaries etc.
For me personally, I also believe small summaries, or at least links to new developments being posted on the wiki should be made known on the UF threads. Otherwise, if chatroom discussions, and wiki updates is where its at, it detracts from new people coming along, especially if the wiki is not comprehensive enough for any new people who come along to pick up and play.
This is just my personal experience from playing a bunch of ARGs, but I always check the UF stuff, then (assuming there isnt 1000000 pages to a thread) go and look up what i need to on the wiki, like "we solved the puzzle! its blahblahblah!" and im wondering, "ummm where did that come from???" then i check the wiki.

In conclusion, I think wikis are important, if they are updated, and they contain all the necessary information for a new player to come along and be up to speed. But I also believe that they keep people from posting on UF, and I personally believe people should reference or summarize new additions to the wiki, to at least keep the thread seeming active. I know I have quit playing games that were still very much alive because the UF thread wasnt updated for days and I didnt wanna read a wiki on a game that seemed to be imploding. I imagine this is what other players do when looking to hop on a new game, and I'll bet that this contributes, at least in part, to lack of new players, and later on implosion.
I mean if a forum has had one or two new, and very short posts in a few days, but the wiki is being updated constantly, and you arent always looking at the wiki (or the wiki isnt very comprehensive), it will seem like the game lost its player base, or has no new content, or is imploding, right? And everyone is grassroots implosion scared as it is lol. Anyway, maybe this is just my observation, but I agree with Wave

[pancito]

I know this isn't true for all games or all wiki-ers, but I use the uF threads for almost all my updates to the wikis I'm maintaining. If it ain't on uF it ain't included. It's hard enough to keep a wiki current just doing that work. Maybe some are more dedicated than I am. I think wikis are a great resource for players, (What did that email say exactly?) newcomers (to catch up), evidently PMs, as an archive, a better place to dump huge files (with a note to that effect in the threads), many reasons.

But the forums are always the first place I look. If a lot is happening in chat rooms that doesn't show up in the threads I just get confused. If you want to get rid of a game destroying element, get rid of the chatrooms. I can't count how many times I've said, "Could someone post that solve, please?" Just to use Nighthawk's example, in LGL, most if not all of the discussion for solves happened in the threads. In BoL/SiD most of the puzzle solves have happened in the chat rooms. I prefer the former, though with a larger game like BoL/SiD it makes some sense. I can re-read the LGL thread and still get a rush (did it a few days ago) that I don't get with the BoL/SiD threads. Just me, maybe.

My only complaint about wikis is the time required to maintain them. Unless you have a good team it can be overwhelming. Or not get done.

[BrianEnigma]

In agreement with most of the other replies here, I think that wikis and forums are for two entirely different things. Wikis are a great place to capture and organize information for long-term storage and for bring-newbies-up-to-date summaries. They're great for reference material, but horrible for ongoing discussion. Arguably the MediaWiki "Talk" pages are there for a reason, but forum threads are much better suited for discussion.

Wikis and forums go hand-in-hand and are not mutually exclusive. New ideas are proposed and discussed in threads; the ones that "stick" get migrated to the wiki. IRC, in many cases, is a realtime extension of the forum "discussion" concept, even. Things get bounced around in IRC, things that stick go to the forums, and things that stick there end up in a wiki.

And Nighthawk's comment on PMs using player wikis to keep track of their own games: I have heard at least two other similar anecdotes. For example, the PMs of the Metacortex/Matrix/MU ARG personally thanked me for the wiki (or in my case, an archive--which was a sort of editorialized proto-wiki) I ran during the game.

Now, my question to the original poster (or his friend, who had the idea): why would the presence or absence of a wiki have any different effect on a grassroots ARG versus a "professional" ARG? It seems to me that if a wiki were to somehow detract from forum posting, it would detract equally from any kind of game.

[Nighthawk]

[krystyn]

Blaming players for a game not doing well is totally backwards.

"You're not playing it right!"


... o rly?



(eta: so basically, yeah, I don't think wikis hurt grassroots ARGs. I think it's important to look at the design of your game and figure out where you can have players feel more empowered to discuss the game and form a community around its themes.)

[VQ.Wavecrest]

[Rogi Ocnorb]

I LOVE the forums, appreciate the wikis and tolerate the chat rooms.

One thing we're not always very good at is sharing the information consistently (or, at all) amongst the three.

The worst of this is "In IRC, we figured out that x=1 y=7 and z=3.2" posted to the forums with no explanation as to how or why. Next worst is the chat room dump of the referenced conversation. Sometimes, these are so filled with extraneous stuff, they're almost useless (or at least, very hard to read).

So, kudos to those peeps that take the time to think about those who weren't part of something and how it looks from their perspective.

Many's the time I've been unable to fully follow something as it appears in the forums and subsequently "get it" via a wiki because the forums were skipped. (But wish I could have saved the extra step).

[Arcas]

I spent a lot of time today updating the wiki for one of the current excellent ongoing games, and I enjoyed it a lot! It made me realize there were a lot of clues and discussions that I had overlooked, missed or forgotten. The great thing about wikis is that by the simple act of updating one, you increase (or refresh) your understanding of the games details while reinforcing your sense of contribution, involvement and community.

You decide to take a look at the game's wiki because you haven't visited since it was set up, you see some glaring omission that just has to be fixed, while you're at it you figure you'll put in a couple of other links, you keep the forum page open in another window so you can go back and forth between the two. Pretty soon, you're scrolling back page after page in the forum trying to find something so you can put it in the wiki and you realize two hours have gone by.

Participation in wiki maintenance isn't for everybody, I know, but I think a lot of people could push their enjoyment level up to eleven if they spent a little bit of time in the wiki world.

Another thing, it is easy to miss they amount of thought a PM puts into something until it is chopped up and organized into categories, time lines and character summaries. When you're reading an active forum with people posting a lot, you don't remember that three weeks ago the PM did this one little thing that really pulls everything together.

[pancito]

Amen Brother! I agree with everything you said. I wish more people would wiki (and thanks for what you've done on Eklipse... If ever a 'grassroots' needed a wiki that's the one.) It isn't hard to learn, though there's a bit of a curve on the front end of that, but adding content is almost as easy as typing. And you can learn to do a bit more every time you add something. If you don't know how to make it pretty, let the head honcho do it (every wiki needs one or more). But getting content in is so important, and when you are the only one doing it, it gets to be not so fun after a while. Esp. if you're looking at 3-4 pages of updates in 8 different threads, and the boss wants that report yesterday.

But it is mostly fun, and you do understand what's going on in the game better than most other players, most of the time. And wikis do help you see connections that otherwise would be missed.

Go Arcas, and welcome to the society of wiki builders.

[tweez]

What about using a timeline tool, such as xtimeline.com? You could link to forum threads, embed the timeline and enable groups to update. You can also include images, video and audio. It's also easier than a wiki to update.

It just seems like a more visual way of updating players on the progress of game and will give a nice overview of the story so far.