unforum

[remotedevice]

 ARG FAIL: Design problems, classic PM missteps, etc

[notgordian]

My biggest ongoing pet peeve in ARG design at the moment is the over-reliance on puzzles as a mechanism for engaging the audience and pacing the story. When it fits organically into the story's development, it can be a powerful tool. (Example of doing it right: in Skeleton Creek, morse code messages were placed in some of the videos because the dredge workers used to use it to communicate over the racket of loud machinery.) But a lot of the time, puzzles are so contrived there's practically no link to the narrative to justify it.

I'm also frustrated with the growing trend towards treating locative elements of games as F2F geocaches. Yes, it can serve as a great way to generate publicity (I'm thinking of 42 Entertainment's Dark Knight missions and Campfire's Shark Week mason jars) but it doesn't really get people in the area playing together, rather than competing against each other. Scavenger hunts like the ones used for Flynn Lives might be a step in the right direction, but where's our next Lost Sport or Graveyard Game? Give people a chance to gather together in groups (or alone) without a developer presence to complete tasks in the real world, like in Must Love Robots with the Subway soda fountain password. I an ARG is going to help forge a community, give them a reason to actas a community.

Also, I find that most games, corporate and grassroots alike, neglect the casual player. Give me something simple I can actually do to make a difference, and provide me with enough information that I can know (a) what I'm doing; and (b) why I'm doing it without knowing every detail of the game. Find a way to get out regularly scheduled updates to catch me up on the big picture points so I don't feel lost if I need to drop off the face of the earth for a few days, and ideally do so in an entertaining manner so the process doesn't feel like a chore.

So yeah, there are my rants.

[remotedevice]

@notgordian:

Puzzles -- yep, I'm calling this the "reading, interrupted," problem: for players to get to the next part of the story, they've got to do something first, solve a puzzle, complete a challenge, etc. This is fine to an extent, but it can easily become a crutch for coming up with a design that really resonates with content...

Playing together -- I think we can all learn a lot from the kinds of games on show at Come out and Play or other similar festivals of street games/big games. This is real interactivity and real game design, which is often not as much a part of ARG design as I wish it could be...

Thanks for the rants! Anybody else...?

(I'm writing a paper here, help me out!)

[jacklacroix828]

I just hate it when puppet masters drop the ball halfway through due to "writers block" or whatever you'd like to call it. it's annoying.
I remember playing the Human Pet about two years ago. the campaign ended very, very suddenly, and all we had left was a shoe box with a video and a high heel. there was a build up for more...and then nothing.

I also hate gamejacking. anybody familiar with Silver Ladder knows what I'm talking about.

[Caseys_Mom]

[MageSteff]

Some classic missteps:

1. Failing to finish. (Forget failure to launch, if you don't launch no one expects you to finish) If you don't have enough PMs to pick up the slack when real life interferes, or you are trying to run the game solo and there is no one to pick up the slack when Real Life interferes (and it does at the worst times usually).

2. Not planning your ARG all the way through- i.e. relying overmuch on "winging it". Before you start have at least some idea where you will end up - plan a few alternate routes/responses if you have to to keep things flowing.

3. While short breaks acan be good for PM staying power and PM morale, you can lose player interest if you don't update often enough. How often? That depends a lot on what you have done in the past. If you update once a day then suddenly you don't update for three weeks, players may think you have stopped running the game.


4. Not giving interaction - even just letting players talk to a character is enough to make some players happy.

[guywiththegun]

I'm a little late to the party, and I do this mostly casually, but here's a few of my gripes.

The community as a whole seems somewhat resistant to critique, for one thing. I know that these productions are normally done for free, in the creators free time, in the hopes of creating something others will want to play. It's a unique medium, and I'm not saying that everyone has to be awesome, but be open to the concerns of your players and other PM's. Too many people are eager to shoot down constructive criticism and say things like "Well, it's free, and if you don't like it, you don't have to play."

We get TV for free, so long as you have a set, but that doesn't stop people from dissecting and critiquing network TV shows. I'm sure there are other examples better than that, but you get my point. As a writer, I know that if I never let anyone ever read my stuff and hear what they think about it, I'll never have an idea on how to improve. PM's have to be willing to do that, because they're putting their work out there, and the community needs to be receptive to it, instead of ostracizing people who point of the negatives of a particular campaign.

I'm also going to second that I don't like ARG's that don't seem planned well. You can always pick them out (and I won't name names, but there's a few I'm thinking of specifically, one which has already been mentioned) because there's an unrealistic space of time between portions of the game, or there's an obviously tacked on character meant to close a certain plothole, and that's by no means a conclusive list. To me, these are incredibly obvious, and ruin the illusion of the game.

I think a lot of people make that mistake, thinking "Hey, I've got this great idea" and then they just go with it from there. Artists don't toss a lump of clay on the table and call it a sculpture, they work with it, knead it, make it into something that's pleasing to both them and the people who want to see it.

And honestly, I'd like to see less PM's lone-wolfing it, because that fits right there with my second gripe. Some people can pull this off, but most end up just ruining my suspension of disbelief. It can be something as subtle as noticing that all the characters have the same sort of tone in their emails, or the huge lull (can you tell I hate this?) between updates. I'd like to see more duos, even teams, coming up with ideas and characters and giving them life. I think the system works better that way.

Lastly, and this is mostly due to my dislike of fan-fiction (I know, I'm a horrible person for that) is spin-off ARG's. They aren't so bad when the ARG you're spinning off of is over and done, and they really aren't bad when done pretty well. But to run your game, that has the same basic premise and the same setting as somebody elses, at the same time they're running their game, it's sort of disrespectful, in my opinion. It draws attention away from the creators story, which in some cases (not naming any names) is a good thing, because it gives you something to do while you're waiting for that next bit of the trail, because it's taking FOREVER to get to.

So, tl;dr....

1) The community should be more open to constructive criticism.
2) The PM's running the event should have the event well planned.
3) I'd like to see more transmedia campaigns from independent teams, as opposed to individuals looking to get their campaign started ASAP.
4) Spin-offs should wait until a campaign ends, or at least goes into hibernation, before they begin.

Don't get mad at me for saying this, but there's a lot of crap out there, and I tend to try to ignore it, but it sucks when you get sucked into something that sounds good, and it's got one of these problems.[/i]

[Ofiuco]

I've been abandoned, and I've been part of PM teams that abandoned people. I think the biggest lesson I learned from it was FINISH BEFORE YOU START. You don't have to have everything written in stone, but you should have content ready to go nearly all the way down the line before you start, and plan a timeline that gives you the space you need to alter it according to player-induced fluctuations. Even if you really really really really want to get started so you can see the looks on their little player-faces. PATIENCE.

I have also, as a PM, been guilty of having TOO MUCH player-character interaction. I have, as a player, been on the receiving end of this. When characters are your only conduit for information, it often means players are sitting around waiting for stuff to happen, unable to launch searches of their own. That, and too much interaction can take away the mystery!

[Thunderwolf]

Call me old fashioned, but I miss the days when playing an ARG made you feel like you were falling into a shadowy world of government cover ups and conspiracy theories. I LIKE puzzles. It's one of the main reasons I play(ed) ARGs - I like scanning source code, converting binary and solving vigenere ciphers. What I don't like are those games which seem to be nothing more than a semi interactive story made up of youtube videos and blogs. If I wanted to see things happen to someone else, I'd watch a film. I play ARGs because I want things to happen to ME. I wand to fear for MY OWN life, not the life of some fictional character (That's not to say having characters we care about is a bad thing). Maybe that's a little dramatic, but I hope you can see my point.

I think all puzzles should be at least partly solvable by anyone as well. If you want to put a ridiculously hard puzzle in, by all means do it, but ensure that there are some easy steps that contribute to the final solution. That way, players of all levels can get involved and feel they're contributing.

Also, LEARNING CURVES. Start easy and work your way up. Sow seeds at the start which will grow into clues later on. Don't throw all your best puzzles in mid game and then leave a series of anagrams at the end.

Oh yeah, this might be a strange one, but PMs posting on UF in the game discussion threads. As far as I'm concerned, UF is 100% OOG (I always saw it as the one "refuge" from the game while it was running, if that makes sense), so to see IG characters or PMs popping up with clues and/or additional posts just breaks immersion for me. I also always thought it best if the PMs didn't read the game discussion threads until after the game had ended - if the game's well written they should have all the information they need to progress from players in game. And then at the end, they can read through and chuckle at people tearing their hair out over the tough puzzles or what have you.

I 100% agree with the "Don't start until it's finished" rule that Ofiuco mentions, unless you're VERY good at improvisation and the structure of the game is based around player contributions (like Purity Towers and the like).

Oh one more thing. Not a fault of PMs this one, but of players. When you find some new character's blog, at least THINK about whether it's wise to post your life story in a comment. Think about what the character would know or would care about. And try to stay "in character" yourself.

I'm sure these rants make me sound embittered and cynical. I'm not, I just think there's room for improvement, even if it means "rolling back" some of the genre's evolution.