unforum

[OhWhatProvidence]

Fantasy in ARGs

[MageSteff]

The initial push of an ARG was how seamlessly does it fit into the "real" world?


Is the content something that you might conceivable find out there? So the ARG "world" has to resemble the real world of today with the computers, transportation and such with just a few elements tweaked a bit to turn that corner into something else.

While there have been alternate civilizations - having a fantasy setting is difficult to weave into the real without making some sort of allowance for it. Since there are already loads of paranormal background in reality it is possible to find real life examples to base a story around as a starting point. Science fiction as extrapolation of where current technology might go also has a foundation in the real.

Magic outside of the paranormal types- has to be dealt with in a believable manner in order to get the audience to buy in and be willing to suspend disbelief. With some genres this is easy but the more fantastical you make it - the more the audience has to take on faith - you would have to have a very solid background that the storywriters all adhear to or the basics start to show holes and inconsistencies that can be jarring to the audience if not well handled.

I don't think that a fantasy based ARG is impossible, but you would have to have an exceptional team doing the writing and able to handle backstory on the fly as the more complex you get the more opportunity for jarring disconnects become, and the more difficult it becomes for the audience to forgive.

I don't think it is from a lack of interest - but a lack of time and funding. You have grass roots ARGs which are run on shoestring budgets, so they may have difficulty producing a lot of high quality flashy video that would sell the background. The professionally produced ARGs have an agenda - they are selling a product, and are on a time deadline, so the parameters of the story may be set by the product, how it is used, where it shows up.

[thebruce]

[F Synchronicity]

I would like to add that ARGs definitely benefit hugely from the "hair-raising" sensation that a well-produced one in a modern setting gives you. It's a sensation produced by a sort of cognitive dissonance where you know it's just a game and you know that the weird conspiracy/paranormal plot trappings are pure fiction, but they blend together with what you perceive as reality so well that for a brief moment your brain is fooled into thinking that they might be real. The serial-killer ARGs are often the best at this, due to their higher-than-average possibility of being actually real, followed by the conspiracy stories.

Prominently sci-fi and fantasy stories disagree with this sort of tone and often don't even work well as stories at all, due to the large amount of awkward roleplaying that needs to be done to keep everything in-character and non-meta. ARGs, unfortunately, have an extremely limited scope in terms of genre and story choices, which is probably why we've hit this 'wall' where most of the new ARGs we see produced seem extremely derivative of earlier works.

[Pixiestix]

[thebruce]

[amandel]

Yes, ARG choices are quite personal. It's on my bucket list to one day interact with a social, intelligent AI. So, for a number of reasons I regard We Are Earthbourne as one of the most creative, professional, visually-appealing ARGs that I've played. Did wonder why we still emailed instead of using our neural interface *less typos*

[MageSteff]