unforum

[colin]

Use Of Myspace

[Ehsan]

In general, I am against the use of any non PM controlled site. PMs should at the very least have root access to whatever folder is serving their content. While it may seems like a good idea for blurring the lines between game and reality, it just shows laziness from the developers' side, trying to ride the success of another website.

Heist did an excellent job using the official Audi website. TLE not too good. Kudos to the Ocular PMs for quickly rectifying that situation, that was impressive.

[European Chris]

Also used in Perplexcity.

I don't hugely mind it, I think the use of as many types of media is important to an ARG-a heavy reliance on it though would be poor form.

[gazdemon]

Maybe grassroots PMs like to use it, because it is FREE?

[krystyn]

I sure liked that Flickr puzzle from Last Call Poker.

Using outside resources is not inherently a sign of laziness, or loss of control.


It may be more difficult to balance a game's timbre or narrative using such sites, but I'm of course uncomfortable with hard-and-fast rules about alternate reality play.

[imbri]

[bwochinski]

MySpace?? ugh! no, no... no no no.

Ok but beyond my initial reaction to the idea... well I still don't think it's a good idea. Now bear with me, I have a number of points to address.



* First, I agree in general with Ehsan in that it's not a great idea to make too much use of resources that you don't control. You are limited by their TOS and by any useage or acceptability rules they may have. Such as bandwidth contstraints, storage limitations, or the case with MySpace, limitations on your web design. You also never know when the site might change it's policy in some way that could affect you and you aren't in control of the security of the site.

* Second, the only time MySpace (or any free online service) would make sense in the story is of course if the character would use that service. You have someone maybe on the run, not much time and certainly a desire to use annonymous services to cover their tracks? That makes pretty good sense for your story, although I'd still say there are better places than MySpace that could be used. But when you've got super secret organization with their really cool flash website, I can't imagine how using any free service would make sense. It really comes down to who's making the content available.

* Third, the target audience idea. The only targets that MySpace pages get are teens, people promoting their adult website, and the creepy guys trying to get friended by the 14 and 15 year olds. So if you're targeting one of those demographics, great! There are of course more "normal" (for MySpace anyways) people out there, but once again, MySpace is not the place to go for that audience.

* Fourth, the idea that MySpace is now the #1 site on the internet. That's great for them, I don't really care. But that fact in no way means that because you have a MySpace page that tons of people will be looking at it. In this regard you can think of MySpace more like a web host. Just because webhost A is the most popular webhost in the world doesn't mean that just because you host your site with them that you'll get any traffic. Now MySpace has done well with the networking aspect, so that it's easier to get your site linked on other people's site via friending. That still doesn't help the "just created for this ARG 2 days ago" MySpace page with no friends though.

* Fifth, grassroots PMs don't have to make use of free services in order to run their game. I'm not saying they should go and spend a ton of money for hosting or anything either. Personally, I have at least 75GB of bandwidth that just sits each month, and I would be happy to set up a serious PM with some space. I know for a fact that there are also other people in the community who have made similar offers. Now I can understand the idea of wanting to do it all yourself, but just because someone hands you the keys to the car doesn't mean you're not driving.



So in closing my feeling is that services like MySpace should be avoided pretty much entirely, unless it's just the absolute perfect fit for your game. Others in this thread have given other good reasons not to use MySpace as well.

And finally, the anecdote:
When I found out my parents had banned my younger sister from using MySpace I jokingly said to my sister "That's good! You'd just pick up all kinds of bad HTML habits there!"

[SirQuady]

I boycott MySpace on principal. If i want a website cheap, i'll use Blogger or some such.
Oh, and i'm a teenager. Just goes to show that not all teens are crazy. Although i am.

[krystyn]

MySpace has been really good to bands looking to get more listenership, especially if they're looking to make good on the indie side of things.

I am not sure why ARGs can't capitalize on that same draw.

Don't Puppetmasters have a prerogative to seek out audiences that fit the story they're telling? Just as much as we get to choose whether or not we play a game that uses such a resource?

/me thinks everyone's been drinkin' a bit too much of the MySpace haterade, as that's very "in" right now.

[MageSteff]

I don't have any problem with a PM using MySpace, Geocities, etc. BUT... It has to fit the story and character; i.e. A character using it as a personal journal or such (as we do) would be OK with me. A huge Corporate site using it as their main site? No. An individual who has no idea how to look professional and is a bit of a joke? Sure. A serious research oriented group with a major breakthrough in some science? No.

There are several people who have offered to help grassroots with domains and hosting, some of which has been discussed over in the Puppet Master Guide section here, and over at Deaddrop. So if you can't afford hosting, then just ask around a bit and PMs with limited budgets can find several people who would be willing to loan space for a project.

FWIW Orbital Colony spent about $50 USD to register 6 sites (some with private registration) for a year. I think between the servers that the PM team had, special deals offered with registration and ones we were offered use on, we didn't spend much for hosting. That $50 represented about 10% of our total expenditures, or less.

We also had a donation kitty out, it didn't bring in enough to cover the cost of all expenses, but it did make enough to cover some of the cost of the domains.

Doing your homework and preparation is the key. Don't just go throwing stuff up everywhere and sundry just because the service is free.

[bwochinski]

Just to note, the "V for Vendetta" mini game or whatever posted in the Time Wasters forum uses some MySpace pages. Now these are the best looking pages I've ever seen on MySpace, and I still don't like them. That the video on the page starts playing every time I come back to the page really grates on me, and no matter what you do MySpace pages seem to be inherently a mile long due to comment spam.

[Phaedra]

[bwochinski]

Links to V and Sutlers MySpace:

http://www.myspace.com/vforvendetta
http://www.myspace.com/chancellorsutler

[Saevitia]

Three words.
Myspace. is. evil.

And not the good kind of evil, either.

[audioslave]

I hate the use of MySpace for ARG use.

I'm not toally against the use of an outside site for ARG useage, it's just profile sites like MySpace that get my goat. I find them rather ineffective for passing on messages because, for one, there's no suddelty to it. If you go to a myspace page, everything is just there and you know where to look (biography, intrests, blog) whereas if a PM creates a site on their own, they can be as creative as they please about hiding things

In my opinon, MySpace is no diffrent from passing on emails, except the PM removed the player element.

I think if a PM wanted a personal account of something, they can use a blog, so that way the players won't need to sign up to see what the PM is trying to pass along.

Though I'm against the PM completely relying on any outside source, they should be able to hold it up themselves, with some help from other sites (ie blogs or image hosting sites)