unforum

[imbri]

[colin]

[audioslave]

Ok, I was going to make a new thread about this but, of course, there already was one (thank you search)

Alright, I've about had it. Just about every game I've come in contact with has failed miserably. It's sad that none of these PM's can continue with their games, hell, they can't even give a decent reason why, they just let it drift off into oblivian then make another soon-to-be-imploded ARG that again insults our intelligence as players. I used to love indie games, hell, I used prefer them, now that I've become as cold an callus as all of you () I think I've finally decided that big-budger games are the way to go. When I was playing LCP, I never had to stop and think "will this game just die off?", yet now I find myself thinking it over and over again with each new trailhead I encounter. I understand that things don't always go as plan, it's natural, but to leave us hanging, checking back for updates is nothing short of criminal. I hate to say that I've lost faith in the indie ARG, but when such petty things as leaving for another forum because communications arn't going as planned is disheartening (Jack Harrison, here's looking at you). I think these implosions are overshadowing really great indie efforts that have a chance of going through.

I understand that not every ARG can run smoothly, but all I expect from a PM is that they try to complete it, which I like to believe they did, but these days it's hard to think that way when it seems that PM's just get bored. This isn't a video game where you can stop and start as you please, there are players depending on you to deliever them a game.

[Rolerbe]

Stay away from the games that rely on chat as their primary media. These seem to die off quickly.

Look for at least one well constructed website with some depth. These don't just die off nearly as often.

[PhiloticVoid]

Implosions, I've noticed (I'm a long-time lurker), seem to come from grassroots games with very little funding and resources. Solo-PMs try to run a game solely on AIM or perhaps in conjunction with a blog and an email address, and therefore have to compensate for their lack of quantity with quality. Oftentimes, as the PMs tend to be younger in age (example: Mantis, Doug, Flaming Heart), they have no idea what they're getting into and go way over their heads. They create something they can't handle and instead of toning it down (which can be difficult), they pull out completely, sometimes without even a goodbye.

Grassroots PMs, I think, feel a lot of pressure from the more professional PM teams, such as 4orty-2wo and Colin Brennan. They try to fill in the gaping whole left by lack of websites and other things requiring money with over-elaborate stories and complicated twists that leave the PMs themselves forgetting earlier things and at a loss for what to do. Going through grassroots games that don't make it out of News and Rumors, reading closely will show you contradictions in the story that PMs try to cover up sloppily.

So implosions come from lack of skill and pressure from professional teams. Not that I'm saying professional teams are bad. They're anything but bad. It just seems that unintentional pressure from those teams and the community help create an environment for the PM that is ripe for implosion (or explosion, in the case of certain games).

[audioslave]

Colin Brennan? Didn't she have a major implosion on like...2 ARGs?

I'm just pointing out that implosions can happen to anyone

[PhiloticVoid]

[Nola]

I think the best thing a would-be PM can do is to buy spell-check/grammar check software. Implosion likelyhood is directly linked to the "grammatical and spelling errors per 100 words" ratio.