unforum

[vpisteve]

[Varin]

[Mozzie]

Bobby, Spacibo bolshoe! I appreciate the explanation of what happened to your game. It looked really interesting, and I am truly sorry you won't be able to continue. Hope you can move on and do some more good work. As my old professor always used to say: "Uzhin bez celyodka ne uzhin!" Rough translation for those who don't do Russian: "You can't make a decent dinner without skinning a few herrings first...."

[wraith]

Imbri's first post seems to have largely summed it up for me, but I'll throw in my own two-bits anyway.

First off, despite all he did wrong, Bobby deserves a lot of credit for having quickly learned one of the most important tenets of game development -- YOU ALWAYS SHOOT YOUR OWN HORSE. And you don't let it suffer very long. I can't tell you how many millions upon millions of dollars have gone down the drain because no one on a project will own up to a lame horse. Even though you might end up pissing some people off, I can assure you that no one is going to thank you for spending an extra $10 million bucks (frequently more) because you didn't have the courage to eat the million you've already spent and admit your project needs to be put out of its misery.

As to catastrophic ARG failures: Its going to happen a lot. A whole lot. You can try attacking it by jumping all over the ones that fail, but its kind of like railing against the wind. Look at all the MUDs and MOOs that started up and failed quickly (and this was long before MMOs became big). Even professional efforts in any given field or genre fail with great regularity and amateur efforts are even more prone to melt-down. This is not to denigrate amateur efforts, you only have to look at the vibrant game modding community to know that some of the best creative work is done by non-professionals. And of course some of the best ARGs to date have been grass roots efforts. But almost any endeavor that attracts large numbers of people is going to generate large numbers of failures. It's just the nature of the beast (and of people). And if the past is any judge, your best efforts aren't going to hold back the flood waters.

This is not to say that you shouldn't do anything about it. You SHOULD point out the failures, bad practices, and bad actors. But the better part of your energies would be better spent in calling out successes, facilitating future success and putting the best foot forward. Some of this is already being done by the community. Most of the ARG sites have sections on PMing and best practices. But try finding a review. Although there ARE reviews out there, they're not easy to find. A quick perusal of the main ARG sites shows very few that have a prominent or separate link to a "Review" section on the main page (vpisteve's idea of game reports/thumb-nail-reviews is a nice step in this direction). Neither are there links to any "best of" sections in any of the sites. I note that we now have an ARG museum, which is cool (although it doesn't seem to start until 2003, grouch, grouch), but no Hall of Fame (or Shame) to call out the exceptional. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitching at the wonderful, tireless folks that put these sites together on their own time and expense (several of whom deserve to be in an ARG Hall of Fame). I'm just saying that there's plenty more that can be done to promote the genre and show it in the best light.

I also think that new players, marketers, and the press often have a hard time getting into and understanding the games (or however you want to define them). Some sites have excellent introductory sections, but I don't remember any press or marketing kits or links (though I might have missed them -- which, come to think of it, reinforces the point). And when you get down to the level of individual ARGs things can get pretty intimidating. Again, I can't fault the people who put together the trails and wikipedias, these people are in a large part responsible for the success of ARGs, but even so, coming in cold on one of these can be an overwhelming experience. Too often there is no simple, engaging summary of what the game is about and what has gone before, and to be perfectly honest I don't think this is the responsibility of the trail writers (although some do it). I think the PMs need to step up to the plate (as some of them have) and provide a top line intro and story/progress summary to their games. This doesn't need to take you out of the game, it can be provided by in-game characters and sites without breaking the fourth wall. For one thing its just good design as it becomes a strong reward and situational awareness mechanism for the players.

And last but not least: Passion. I see a lot of it. Frequently the folks that seem the most upset or uptight about this subject are also the ones that seem to have a great deal of passion for the genre and its future. And that's a good thing. But I guarantee you that if you're this uptight about it now, you'll be ten times more uptight about it next year. Focus on what can be done to promote ARGs long term, we have yet to go through any number of cycles of boom and bust, before we even get to the point of being a large and successful genre. So as others have said before me. Don't curse, light a candle. Well OK you can still curse, but then you have to light two candles...

[colin]

[Lewis the Second]

Excuse me?

[Fi]

Abbot, props to you. You clearly had a good concept for a game that you were able to implement well, albeit to a very limited extent But you were mature enough to handle its implosion well, to make the effort to post here and to take criticism like an adult, instead of a precious little child, as so many of the 'PMs' these days seem to be.

And now can we please unsticky and lock this thread? Do we /really/ need another thread that's just going to end up in sniping and whining and bitching? Given that the author is no longer going to reply, surely this matter is dead.

[Ehsan]

[krystyn]

That's ... not very immersive.

I wish I had a better solution, though.

[Varin]

[wraith]

[Flidget Jerome]

I could see this eventually turning into a trailer-type thing, though. How many trailers have you seen that were a lot more fun than their movies?

[colin]

A while ago it seemed everyone one was doing "pre-game" stuff. That would be good way to indicate how it's going to play. Since it's pre-game you should be able to jump in when the game starts, without knowing the pre-game (people who have played the pre-game can review it)

[FLmutant]

Re: GypsySoft Post-Mortem by the PM

[i_monk]

I set out to write a reply to the original two or three posts the other day, but it turned into a condemnation of all tolerance for failed games, with overtures to shunning and/or pilloring PMs who fail and the players who coddle them. So I deleted it and decided to wait and see what direction the thread would take...