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[Cooler_King]

Wow the minority have come out fighting..

Konamouse, Lovek, Cooler_King : Team Realism lol

Phaedra leads the heretic unbelievers (boooo, hiss!)

I am glad this has been kickstarted again. Please don't think I am insulting any of the emotional involvement that went into The Beast, ILB etc...

Metacortechs, hmm, I think there could be an argument that Metacortechs falls on our side of the fence... I know a ton of bcomputer geeks that want to believe in the Matrix ha ha.

Did anyone play In Memoriam? I have a large group of friends that played it for days on end because they were chasing a serial killer. I tried to introduce them to ARG's in the convential sense but most of them switched off when 'Hyper Space Tunnels' etc were mentioned.

Then the same group started playing The Lost Experience! Because they could identify with real science, newspaper articles, companies, logos and familiar symbols..

I think the wider market wants realism



[/i]

[Phaedra]

[Lovek]

All I'm saying is that -- just like any medium (TV, books, movies) -- as long as it's well thought-out, has good characters, and an involving story, people will want to get involved/attached.

I don't think whether it's sci-fi, fantasy, or just-some-dude-on-a-park-bench really makes a difference.

[Pixiestix]

[Phaedra]

[Phaedra]

[konamouse]

Yes, I need to know it's a game and I can still get myself immersed....

I respond to the characters as if they were real. I have to think "what would they do, say, feel?" and remember what we do in here and in chat is OOG because it is out of their world. And I may not respond to a character with knowledge I have gleemed from UF unless it is something that I reasonably could have found on my own (i.e. if one character emails another player, I cannot tell a second character about it unless the first character posts it publically, or emails to me specifically about it).

I have to put that level of realism into my belief system of the game.

But I also have to know it's a game. Speaking from my experiences:

While the casting call and the webbased signup to be part of Urban Hunt was very real - as soon as a secret code was found in the autoresponse, then I *knew* it was not a reality show casting call, that it was an ARG.

LCP was set up as ARG from the beginning, with obvious metaphysical overtones that went beyond space & time...but also current day time frame that didn't release any of us from getting emotionally connected to the characters (how stressed were some over saving someone from a burning building????).

Space gets boxes with pink paper? definitely ARG. But videos of "real" people and very good individual characterization of email responses and real time/dates (and live meetings) makes Sammeeeees very realistic.

When the next great rabbithole is found (not via shilling or announcement) by stealth and "hmm, what is this" type of curiosity - will we know it's a game right away? That is a grey line. I hope that this genre will find ways to help players keep the "alternate reality" in the ARG but also the "game" so we don't call the cops, the FBI or others (especially in this time of threats of terrorism and other nasty stuff).

[Phaedra]

[Cooler_King]

Phaedra... my last post was plainly tongue in cheek.

But, as you eloquently put, I have only anecdotes, lets discuss that.

Yes, anecdotes. But they are based on actual experiences not academic study. If 10 of my friends turn round and say "that movie sucked" I can pretty much assume that they speak for the majority of the audience across the country.

I feel the same about game playing, of which ARG is just one aspect. Let's be honest, ARG players are a minority, and the 'friends' I talked about are not ARG'ers. They are game players, tv watchers and film addicts. For them, the adventure was "wow, something new, lets explore, ok bo-ring, what else is new?"

lol..actually I have friends that wouldnt play the Lost Experience in case it revealed something ha ha

Anyway, that is by the by.. my point is, ARG'ers with experience in the community may enjoy boundaries and the psychological analysis of realism but casual players interested in a good story just need a hook and for most of the game playing public that hook has to be real, a la AOTH.

And you box office records are a whole other argument. Do box office records take into account all age / cultural / population demographics?
Or have the most powerful men in Hollywood (Lucas, Spielberg) made their success based upon catering to the largest possible cinema-going group in the 70's? That being male teenagers, often interested in sci-fi.

Are those figures reflected in the home movie market? Theatre? How many Sci Fi films have been recognised by the industry they serve with non-technological awards?

[Lovek]

[Phaedra]

[catherwood]

Here i go, replying to an earlier post before I've read the rest of the thread.

[Cooler_King]

[Phaedra]

<sigh>

Okay, you can argue theory (and, I suppose, be rude to cather) all you want, you can ignore facts, numbers, demographic information, and precedent in favor of your opinion, and you can ignore everything we tell you, and we can't stop you.

So, go ahead, make your uber-realistic ARG -- alone, against everyone's advice -- where people can't tell if it's really a game, and enjoy having it go the way of all the identical attempts that have gone before.

[krystyn]

Back in my college days ...

*blows dust off the tome of that chapter in her life*

... I was an acting major, and the prescribed acting style for our department was based upon the teachings of Sanford Meisner. Now, Meisner happened to be one of those mucky-mucks in theatre who really shook things up and revolutionized acting theory for all those black mock turtleneck-wearin' actors who did all that crazy Method Acting stuff.

Now, Meisner said a lot of things about acting and realism, but the basic, boiled-down stuff I took away from my acting labs went something like this:

The man behind the System (from which method acting followed and flourished), Stanislavski, would ask you to remember something that actually happened in your life and have you use that as preparation for the stage. Use the sadness you experience when your aunt passed in order to be sad on stage. Getting engaged to be married can be the moment you use in order to generate extreme joy and happiness.

Meisner recognized the fatigue inherent in such a situation - these moments in your life can never really be mined indefinitely (or healthily) for use on the stage. They can never be more or less than what they were. Meisner asked, instead, to imagine a realistic scenario that can be re-configured and/or tossed aside when no longer potent, in order to keep one's acting skills vibrant, and full of rich moments on the stage.

In other words, our imaginations tend to be much healthier universes in which to trot out our meditations on the human condition than actual experiences from our personal histories tend to do, because we are free of being reminded of things which actually happened (which have inherent boundaries of time and place and scope, thereby running the risk of becoming fatigued, or having our experiences diminished through exploitation of them).

So I can see what Cooler_King might be trying to get at, but I think, also, if he followed his ideas through to their ultimate conclusion, he'd be more in agreement with the flip side than he first surmised. I think a lot of people say they want 'realism,' when all they really want is a compelling and immersive look at facets of human nature being played out before them. I submit that it is not the familiarity to their own lives that is guaranteed to give them that adrenaline rush that they so desire, it is the effective framing of the human condition inside of that universe that keeps them coming back for more. (I know I am repeating/re-phrasing what has been said, but it's definitely the biggest hurdle in this concept of "realism")

That said, there's nothing wrong with you or your friends preferring media/entertainment that appears to reside in exactly same world that you currently live in. But to try and claim that the market demands this particular framing across the board based on a handful of opinions is fairly shaky ground to stand on.