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[Ehsan]

Well ranting aside, and to add to what CreativeEmbassy said, the narrow definition is just trying to get a game which I can enjoy. I would encourage broader definitions but I only have bad examples of why they shouldn't do it.

The following games failed to immerse me enough to care, and this is why:

Lost Experience: Persephone coming out through the flash, talking to every player the same way... just doesn't make sense. It's a programmed trigger which mimics how a real interaction would have occured, but it's so obviously fake it hurts.

I Love Bees: I actually have no problem with aliens calling payphones... but I couldn't reach any of those payphones, I was never a Halo (or xbox) fan, and waiting for other players to trigger audio clips was just not interesting to me.

Orbital Colony: The website design/content was not consistent with the entities represented. Left me wanting something more realistic which doesn't remind me of templates, which is fine for a game but wouldn't happen in real life.

Perplex City: I still don't get this one... did someone from an alternate dimension contact Mind Candy to create a game on Earth? No, I just don't get it.

Last Call Poker: There are too many to list here, but in general dead people don't make websites--they are dead. If they did I expect the site operators to investigate or do something about it and that would be the game we play. LCP hurts so much because they didn't even try. I played for the money.

Many other smaller games: Unrealistic websites, weak characters, no real purpose, illogical story, etc.

So for me it's just about caring enough about a game to play it. I swear I try... you can't imagine how much I wanted to love the Lost Experience because there's so much potential in there... but it's so weak in so many areas that I can't spend 5 seconds looking at the site anymore.

The numbers state that there are a lot of people who enjoyed these games. To them, these are great ARGs.

But I'm looking for something else... it can be done without interaction... it can be done without puzzles... it can be done without websites. You can be creative and unconstrained by definitions, but don't do it in the expense of TINAG, which nobody seems to care about anymore.

Whatever happened to "don't tell anyone" and "don't build a game"?

Stop making things so gamey... bring back TINAG.

[Phaedra]

[ScarpeGrosse]

[krystyn]

This makes me wish even more that people here had paid attention to Omnifam. That was a really good game, and I would've had some company after having to deal with CLOWNS ZOMG again.

[Ehsan]

[krystyn]

The thing with the leaderboards in LCP was that I felt that game-wise, they could certainly be consistent with a TINAG sort of play style.

Lucky was using us, the players, as pawns. We were there to help bridge the gap between the dead and the living, to help break the curse of the gun and help Lucy Brown in the process, who he loved very much and identified with.

In order to do so, he hooked us in with poker, and created allegorical references between Hold 'Em and the history of The Gun. He encouraged the players to become invested in the reality of the dead teaching the living about letting go and moving on and living life a bit more fully.

I dunno. Maybe it's because I did a gazillion and one Favors that this really hit home for me. I had some very cool experiences completing those tasks. I played harder at that game than I have in a long while at any game.

Lucy was at the River, and we were the Boat to carry her. (named Cloudmaker? har!) That's sorta how I view the leaderboards.

[Rolerbe]

I've always thought that the 'Game' part of ARG was the limiting part. The rants here are always about story -- give me an engaging story (its also the most distinguishing differentiator between a good movie and a bad one, a good book and a bad one, etc.)

So, I propose 'Alternate Reality Story Experience'

or ARSE

[Mikeyj]

[krystyn]

Change the ladder to a plane, and you'll be SET.

[Ehsan]

[imbri]

Not to turn this into a post about LCP, but I really agree with Krystyn on this. And, yeah, perhaps it's because it is probably the first ARG that really captured my attention and, outside of the games that I've actually worked on, given so much of my time and energy to. Sure, there were some problems with it but overall it was one of the best executed games we've ever seen. In my opinion at least.

It just goes to show how we all have our personal preferences in what we like to see and what we want out of a game. However, our preferences should not get in the way of a general group concensus. Certainly, we're all open enough to understand that there are going to be ARGs that don't meet our personal preferences, our personal standards, our personal definition of a good alternate reality game.

[jamesi]

I'll try to steer this back on course by saying: I like TLE even though, to me, it isn't the most engaging game. However, I guess my suspension of disbelief is pretty high, because I don't care about all of the bad stuff people have pointed out in this thread. Instead, I'm focused on the fact that it's a game and is meant to be played for fun.

I guess that's why I enjoyed LCP, and Lockjaw, and The Beast, and The Cult of Adramelech, and The Art of the Heist, and Regenesis ER v2.0 (which I'm still playing). Those were all fun games that, in the eyes of others, had faults which broke the fourth wall, or faults which made the game less compelling for them, or faults that made the story unbelievable, or... you get the point. For all of their perceived faults, they were still games, and they were still fun to play.

Now, I can't very well say that TLE is an ARG because it is fun to play. Believe me, I've wrestled with the fact that the term 'alternate reality game' does not have a easy-to-digest set of definitive attributes that I could relate to the multitude of people who email ARGN (shamelsss plug) on a weekly basis asking for more information on what an ARG is. From that side, I can see how valuable a definition would be, but I don't think this is the thread to work within to find that answer.

Instead, I will look at TLE from a player's point of view, and think about it as I usually do, with a four category checklist.

Characters: Yep. Not all are believable, but they are definitely there.
Story: You bet. Consistent? Not always, but believable enough.
Puzzles: Oh yes. Some have been quite fun, actually.
Interaction: A bit. Canned conversation triggered by clicking, but the element exists.

So, for me, TLE is an ARG. It's not the best ARG I've ever played, and it's not the most fun ARG I've ever played either. But it meets my requirements that are based on my views about ARG in general without forcing it into a cookie-cutter definition.

[Rolerbe]

Perhaps this whole thread is really all just a subtle arg itself. The alternate reality of META WARS! How's that for realistic?
(should we move this thread to ARG's with potential?)

[colin]

I'd like to reply, but this should really be split. It now has three parts; the actual question and answers; usual 'what is an ARG' crap; and some constructive talk about specific games.

I'd like the talk of specific games to continue (elsewhere) it's some of the freshest meta I've seen in a long time.


(TBH, the amount of moderators and long time community members dragging this OT is a bit disappointing)

mod note: TBH. I completely disagree and don't feel that we've strayed off topic. The original poster posed this question: Is The Lost Experience, by defenition, an ARG?

In order to answer that, sadly, we have to rehash the definition of an ARG. While there's a decent basic agreement on a simple definition (see Short Definition of ARG), we each have our own preferences that steer our individual definitions and, for whatever reason, we like to state those very preferences time and time again (see just about every other thread in this forum). However, as the original poster mentioned other games and the components contained within, it's completely on topic to have a discussion about defining the genre while utilizing other games for example and whatnot (such as Ehsan's post) in this thread. If it moves into a discussion of comparing games and whatnot, I'll rename the thread. - imbri

[Rolerbe]

The original question that started this topic was