unforum

[Cortana]

Possible ARG Scandal? Where's the coverage?

[SpaceBass]

Re: Where's the coverage?

[Phaedra]

Clarification:

What he may or may not have done is rumor and innuendo.

That he is no longer running OpAphid is fact.

[Cortana]

Well, with Glenn removed by his parent organization after the surfacing of the rumors, I'd have to think the parent organization did some investigating because you don't just yank your employee back without doing the investigation to match, SpaceBass. Their posts indicate internal discussions regarding Glenn's status and the allegations held up against him.

That said, I appreciate your libel protection here, but I think it's something that we ought to be talking about, as it brings the topic of puppetmaster trust (which I believe the ARGFest keynote was about, in part?) to the forefront. Reporting on allegations is still reporting. If you report what's being said you're protected from charges of libel because you're quoting the original accusor. These are pretty serious charges, to boot.

If ARGN and Unfiction want to make themselves report only the good things about ARGs and the genre, I can understand that decision, but I had thought this was the premiere outlet for ARG news, and that's what I see this as, news. The developments, be they the vindication of the puppetmaster or his dismissal, are important for the community to talk about, and certainly qualify as news.

[SpaceBass]

None of this is fact; it's all hearsay (including that Glenn is no longer running OpAphid, unless you've had confirmation from a source other than that forum post?). Yes, reporting on hearsay does not necessarily constitute libel. No, I do not consider it to be responsible.

By all means, discuss the player-PM trust issue. We do it here all the time. And we can do it without lending weight to unconfirmed allegations.

I will not argue that uF or ARGN should concentrate solely on positive topics and fluffy clouds and lollipop dreams. I will argue that any of us who actually give a damn about this genre ought to take a moment to consider the possible consequences of running with an unconfirmed rumor as fact and sensationalizing it in the process.

Nancy Pelosi didn't demand an enormous airplane for her staff either, but you'd be hard pressed to find people who actually paid attention to the truth in that story, or who could find it through all of the screaming heads going off with no information or evidence because OMG SCANDAL.

[Phaedra]

[Cortana]

[Cortana]

[SpaceBass]

As I said, if you want to discuss the trust issue here, go ahead. If you want to continue to try to twist everything around so that you can have your scandal, evidence or no, take it to your blogs.

[Phaedra]

Erm, I'm not trying to twist anything into a scandal. Please do not twist what I'm saying.

I'm asking why we shouldn't trust the LG15 creators when they say that someone on their team is not going to be running the ARG anymore. It seems to me that if there is anyone that's the final authority here, it would be them.

Noted: they did not say they fired him; they didn't even say whose decision it was for him to stop. And it's reasonable to suggest that whether there's any truth to this or not, he could have made the decision to leave. But they stated that he had left, so I'm wondering why you seem to be saying we shouldn't take them at their word.

[Cortana]

[Phaedra]

Anyway, returning to the trust issue, whether or not this actually happened, without scandal-mongering I think there is a larger issue here to be discussed in general/theoretical terms.

I'm trying to figure out why the idea of a PM requesting nude photos from players in exchange for hints, solves or whatever bothers me so much more than anyone else requesting nude photos from anyone else. Consenting adults, right?

And what I'm leaning toward is that the balance of power between PMs and the player group is more or less equal -- or even weighted toward the player side (people can form online communities without an ARG, but a large-scale ARG -- as we currently know the form -- without a player community is pretty much dead in the water), the balance of power between a PM and an individual player seems weighted significantly toward the PM.

Which makes it an abuse of power, not just icky.

Moreover, it touches on something about the ARG community that maybe we should be celebrating more:

The internet is a rough place, which was brought home to me as I thought about this while deleting shrilly explicit porn spam from a forum I admin this morning. I didn't like playing on XBox Live with non-beekeepers, because more often than not, the people I played with were crudely and sexually explicit about things that really had nothing to do with sex -- moreso if I spoke and they realized I was female. While moderating the Vanishing Point post-game chat, having given my Skype contact info in order to receive and relay questions, and bearing an ostensibly feminine name, I got a number of IMs soliciting at least quasi-sexual conversation from strangers that didn't even appear to have any interest in the actual chat.

Maybe this is just the way the internet is.

This is not, however, the way the ARG community is. No private conversation I've had with any of the male UF regulars has ever gone into that territory. When there's sexually-oriented talk in #unfiction, it generally seems to be light-hearted and even when there's objectification going on, it is usually non-serious and in good fun, and if people express discomfort, it stops.

Hence, we can joke about sending each other nude pics and everyone knows it's a joke, because there is a culture of mutual respect that allows us to be that comfortable with one another.

That comfort level, I guess, is what I feel is threatened here, which is really a tragedy. It doesn't matter if it actually happened, or if the accusations are false. What does matter is that I think a certain type of innocence is lost. Whereas once joking about bribing someone with sex or sexually-oriented material for a puzzle solve was funny, now it looks like it's in bad taste because it might actually have happened.

I don't know what the culture on the LG15 forums was like. I don't know if it was like UF, or if it was less trusting. But I do hope that whatever we end up learning about what went on over there, we don't lose what we have here.

ETA: All of which, I guess, was a really long roundabout way of saying, for all the "OMG ARG GIRLS ARE HOT!" stuff that gets said, perhaps more important is that ARG guys (and girls) are decent, and the fact that it's shocking when someone isn't (or there's a rumor that someone isn't) is as much a testament to the community's basic decency and trustworthiness as it is a Bad Thing.

I mean, if this were politics, this probably wouldn't even make the front page of the tabloids.

[Cortana]

[celina63]

I think Phaedra just wrote the ARGN article right there

And you hit the nail on the head - the possibly solicitation of nude photos for puzzle solves, while icky, isn't really the *major* issue IMO. The MAJOR issue is that the game was UNFAIR - suck up to the PM to get solves? Where is the fun in that? Where is the COMMUNITY SPIRIT in that? I think I personally (and from what I've read of the thread in the LG15 forums, the majority of people there as well) find more upsetting is the fact that the game was more or less RIGGED towards those who curried favor. THIS could eventually be the downfall of ARGS - the lack of trust regarding the fairness of the game, and all players being on equal ground.

C

[rose]

I'm not on the death of innocence bandwagon.

It isn't as if we haven't recognized from the beginning that PMs may be tempted to post an answer, a website, a hint or anything else needed to help a game along. (see the unfiction ToS) The same thing is true with friends of PMs, haven't we seen solves that seem to come from nowhere in games? (And then sometimes the PMs, when running out of time, have a character solve something for us. I understand this is different than leaking or selling a solve to a player, but it is evidence that PMs get stuck in games.)

In some games the information an individual player gets depends on their interactions with the characters. (see the live phone calls in ilb) Sometimes people get more information because they like to email characters - usually that information gets reported back here. Sometimes people get more information because they were able to attend a live event. We have never expected that all players are treated identically by PMs. What we have expected is that the PMs are basically fair, that players share the information they have, and that neither PMs or players "cheat" with solves of puzzles they didn't honestly solve. But we have always known that may not be the case 100% of the time.

I'm not saying that shilling a game to keep it moving along or taking personal advantage of players is acceptable. I'm not saying that this is OK. I'm saying that this isn't something brand new that should equate to the end of innocence and the downfall of ARGs.

I found this quote interesting: