Return to Unfiction unforum
 a.r.g.b.b 
FAQ FAQ   Search Search 
 
Welcome!
New users, PLEASE read these forum guidelines. New posters, SEARCH before posting and read these rules before posting your killer new campaign. New players may also wish to peruse the ARG Player Tutorial.

All users must abide by the Terms of Service.
Website Restoration Project
This archiving project is a collaboration between Unfiction and Sean Stacey (SpaceBass), Brian Enigma (BrianEnigma), and Laura E. Hall (lehall) with
the Center for Immersive Arts.
Announcements
This is a static snapshot of the
Unfiction forums, as of
July 23, 2017.
This site is intended as an archive to chronicle the history of Alternate Reality Games.
  

The time now is Mon Nov 11, 2024 11:13 pm
All times are UTC - 4 (DST in action)		 View posts in this forum since last visit
View unanswered posts in this forum
Calendar
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Ephemeral » ARG: Year Zero
[GENERAL/META] The BIG Picture of Year Zero
Moderators: BrianEnigma, chippy, konamouse, ndemeter
View previous topicView next topic
Page 2 of 4 [54 Posts]   Goto page: Previous 1, 2, 3, 4 Next
Author Message
Shad0
I Have No Life


Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2180
Location: Southern California, USA

 		Re: I'll go first
Would you like to play a game?
rose wrote:
The websites are impossibly difficult to read without real effort.

Even easier way to deal with this on 95% of the pages: just hit ^A (or whatever the equivalent of "Select All" is for your browser).

rose wrote:
But most of all, I am sick of these apocalyptic visions of how terrible the future will be. These people from the future come to warn us -aren't they also blaming us for screwing up the first time? If we had been paying attention in the first place, this would never have happened. I feel blamed for the creation of a fictional reality that I know will never exist.

Or...

It's a little early to tell, yet, but what if the point of them sending us all of these awful visions from the future is because we'll be getting the chance to fix it? And I don't mean in the generic "You Have Been Warned, Now Go Out And Make A Better World" sense -- I mean fix this future, specifically.

One of the most enjoyable occurrences in past ARGs for me has always been interaction with the story. The feeling that we, the players, are not merely spectators watching a drama unfold, but can actually affect things in some way. Able to contribute. Able to change. Able to help.

Perhaps Year Zero isn't going in that direction. But perhaps it is. And perhaps that is precisely why the future is sending these disturbing images to us: the future needs our help.

Just my $0.03 (inflation, y'know).
_________________
These were the puzzles that would take a day, these were puzzles that would take a week, and these puzzles they'd probably never figure out until we broke down and gave them the answers. ... The Cloudmakers solved all of these puzzles on the first day.

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:46 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
chippyModerator
Entrenched


Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Posts: 789
Location: Leeds, UK

 		for me, i don't need to worry about changing the future, as the Presence looks set to sort them all out. Serves them right!


(parody of religious types who look forward to war and death as being a sign of a coming paradise...)
_________________
Do cats control our online behaviour?

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 7:28 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website AIM Address Yahoo Messenger
 Back to top 
rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117
Quote:
for me, i don't need to worry about changing the future, as the Presence looks set to sort them all out. Serves them right!


And here I was worried, I feel so much better.

Go Presence! Now does the Presence have a catchy avatar or maybe some sticker downloads to post around town?

[ That was a joke...added because I don't want to be in trouble with the Political Correctness police- is there a player group for that? You know to make sure the other players aren't taking the game in vain? No parodies of the game parody of the Presence allowed! The Presence is evil and shouldn't be made into a joke! Please wait here for the next Federal agent, or militant player, whoever arrives first. and don't even try to lie. (yes, that was a joke too. I'm teasing.) ]

Quote:
And perhaps that is precisely why the future is sending these disturbing images to us: the future needs our help.


Hey, I'm willing to believe the future needs our help, the present does to. Heck this very minute needs our help. The world has endless places that need our help. Maybe we should have a game about that?

Back to the game. I don't see the future asking for help yet, they seem so angry: maybe it is all just a big wake-up call. As I said, my problem with the wake-up call that it is so way over done. Like that one Cheech and Chong routine where the nun screams to the class WAKE UP!

I guess these people from the future don't believe in subtlety or nuance. They want to be sure we get the message dammit! My problem: the message feels like a giant neon myspace flashing page! Pay attention to me! Makes it impossible for me to take them seriously. But, out of Political Correctness, I hasten to add, that is just my opinion. Yours may, and almost certainly does, vary, and I'm cool with that.

I thought my idea that the message is to question what you hear and to listen for the truth in it...well, I thought that was a good idea. That idea is going to help get me into this world. I suspect that idea is totally not what the designer intended. But it makes this work for me. Straight up going with that blatant, sensational and obvious propaganda from the future as the message- I can't access that. Just me (I know!)but otherwise there is no room for me in that space.

At the risk of repeating myself a third time. I respect and value the views
of the other players. Some of this post -the bracketed part- is a very META joke that I am not sure everyone will get. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, I'm not making fun of you. I don't expect anyone to agree with me. I do expect to be allowed to have the opinion I have, because, it is my opinion. Variety is the spice of life. Smile

Go, Presence, Fight!
_________________
I love this site for being free, in every sense of the word~Spacebass

Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:54 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
chippyModerator
Entrenched


Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Posts: 789
Location: Leeds, UK

 		subtlety - I don't think its subtle, i agree.

Does it seem to you very black and white, us vs. them re: the story?
Are there shades of gray between right and wrong?
The stories from the soldiers-only-doing-their-job perhaps?
Federal agents also questioning what's going on?

We are getting a series of snapshots from the future, a group is sending them - They are editing the reality (as everyone has to do when talking about things), showing us their map of what they think is going on - their map seems to be photocopied in black and white with the contrast set to max.

so, looking at this photocopied dystopian map, we can see that there should be shades of gray and colour there, but the map doesn't show that, the story is black and white.
_________________
Do cats control our online behaviour?

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 2:17 pm
 View user's profile Visit poster's website AIM Address Yahoo Messenger
 Back to top 
yanka
Fickle


Joined: 06 Oct 2003
Posts: 1214
Location: undesirable
blackhawk127 wrote:
actually i understand most of your feeling because i agree on allot of it, and its one of the reasons why i think musicians shouldn't involve themselves with the political world so much. It always seems like theres a desire to run around and point out problems, and accuse different parties, but no one wants to try and help solve the problems, o well i guess.

This is a very interesting opinion.

The earliest socio-political reflections in music I can think of are, perhaps, Homer's epics. Historically, musicians have always been politically involved: there are Scottish ballads and slave folk songs; classic masterpieces such as those by Rahmaninov and Shostakovich; the anti-war and anti-segregation music of the 60s in the US - just to throw out a few random examples through times and genres.

So, if "musicians shouldn't involve themselves with the political world so much", what should said musicians do? Speaking of contemporary musicians, would you find it more reasonable for them to relegate their talents to pop? Or should they still "try and help solve the problems", but in some other ways? If so, then - in which ways? Should they quit music and become politicians? What would you accept as a valid attempt to "solve" a problem? For example, you would be hard-pressed to find a contemporary historian that would argue that the Russian rock of the 80s wasn't substantially responsible for the fall of the USSR - or, as it pertains to this conversation, didn't contribute to "solving" the problem. Concerning the individuals that that musical arena was comprised of, I cannot think of anyone whose efforts would have been better applied elsewhere.

As far as pointing out problems and accusing different parties - that doesn't entirely "solve" the problem, but it usually does contribute to solving it. Any socially/politically-aimed art identifies the problem as well as the parties responsible for creating and perpetuating it, to begin with. All sorts of people - writers, artists, journalists, social leaders, philosophers, movie makers, academics, etc. etc. - speak about problems in their societies. Sometimes they are successful enough to raise social awareness of the problem, and to inspire enough individuals within that society to make changes - whether through voting for certain policies, or through altering socially acceptable behavior, or simply by causing society at large to re-think what it considers "moral" or "good". I am not saying that every social change is brought about exclusively by these groups of people - I think this sort of feedback between the artist (etc.) and the public is mutual, but it certainly seems that the artistic/"intellectual" community is usually closely associated with changes in social/political climate. Renaissance, for example, comes to mind. Anyway, to cap all of this off, I guess I would like to know why you think that of all of these groups of people, musicians should be the ones to stay away from the "political world".
_________________
Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it.

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:59 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
chippyModerator
Entrenched


Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Posts: 789
Location: Leeds, UK

 		It goes both ways - Musicians and artists are also known to support the status-quo (i.e. not desiring social change), and publically support their leader, their government and any wars their governments may have been waging.

Whilst an artist can be political, and do it well, no one else makes me cringe as much, and gets my bile rising than Bono:
http://fanonite.wordpress.com/2006/12/02/bono-as-a-brand/
_________________
Do cats control our online behaviour?

PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 8:33 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website AIM Address Yahoo Messenger
 Back to top 
EarlyWyrm
Veteran


Joined: 27 Nov 2006
Posts: 144
Location: Houston

 		Ducks Eat Cantalope
chippy wrote:
Whilst an artist can be political, and do it well, no one else makes me cringe as much, and gets my bile rising than Bono


Did you know that Bono once took a duck in the face at two hundred and fifty knots? All Gibbyness aside, though, I have to agree with a bit of a skin crawling sensation at some of Bono's "statements". It gets to be very fatiguing and somewhat surreal after a while...

rose wrote:
Like that one Cheech and Chong routine where the nun screams to the class WAKE UP!


I'm generally one of the most cynical cats you'll ever meet, but I just can't relate to your perception of the material. I can play devil's advocate enough to understand it comes across as an overly assertive, painfully blunt, extremely obvious and insultingly dogmatic bunch of imagery and concepts to you, but I just don't see it as such. Could just be lack of experience in this narrative genre, who knows, but I'm actually quite enjoying the point of view simply because I can't relate to it and that makes me curious Wink
_________________
Blind Mice Sit On Us

PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 5:24 pm
 View user's profile Visit poster's website Yahoo Messenger
 Back to top 
blackhawk127
Decorated


Joined: 28 Nov 2006
Posts: 278

 		its one thing to be political and its one completely different thing to be a muckracker and cause problems for the heck of it

PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 7:49 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
ahecht
Veteran


Joined: 23 Oct 2004
Posts: 130
Location: Wilton, NH
rose wrote:
Ok I looked at this again. I'm still not convinced that this message (from the characters in the future) isn't part of an elaborate propaganda campaign based on sensationalism. I am not buying into what they are selling, but I am skeptical that way. They may be telling the truth but they are doing so in such a heavy-handed way that it undermines, to me, what they are trying to say. It is well done though, I give them that.

How funny would it be if it turned out that all of this was set up by the government in the future? The "bad" guys pretending to be good guys exposing the bad guys. Just a thought.

But I know, I know, no one but me thinks this message is what this story is lecturing us about. I think the message of question what anyone is telling you-even if they seem to be people from a screwed up future coming back to warn us- is a good one. So I want to stick with that. Smile


This reminds me a lot of I Love Bees, where we were led to believe that the Pious Flea was helping us, when in fact it was trying to destroy humanity. And by helping the flea (and sending it's messages), we were duped into bringing along that very destruction. The short-lived TV series 7 Days had a similar plot line, where a time traveler came back from the future supposedly to prevent an apocalypse. However, in the end it was discovered that this time traveler was in fact the Devil, and if they had done what he had said, they would've caused the apocalypse they were trying to prevent.

In other words, this sort of deception wouldn't be unprecedented in the genre of time-travel sci-fi (or even in the much smaller genre of time-travel sci-fi ARGs by 4orty2wo).

rose wrote:
Actually, because I was talking about the context of this game I was thinking more of the immediate time and the near future- like when people would write books about "the coming stock market crash of whatever" or all the fear mongering around Y2K.


But Y2K is exactly the sort of thing Phaedra was talking about. People (Doomsayers, prohets, or computer experts, whatever you want to call them) were coming forth with doom and gloom predictions, and as a result billions and billions of dollars (and man-hours) were spent fixing and patching the problem around the world. Because of the frankly heroic efforts of IT staffs everywhere nothing happened, and as a result the computer experts were called fear mongers and Y2K was called a hoax.

Sometimes the world just isn't fair.
_________________
ILB: Lt. Luzer
LCP: ahecht
VP: ahecht
NIN: 24.24.2.106

PostPosted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 1:37 pm
 View user's profile Visit poster's website AIM Address
 Back to top 
rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117
Quote:
This reminds me a lot of I Love Bees, where we were led to believe that the Pious Flea was helping us, when in fact it was trying to destroy humanity.


Yeah, I was one of the people who didn't believe in the Flea. I think that might be part of the reason xnbomb and I won the Best Spec award. Smile

Quote:
But Y2K is exactly the sort of thing Phaedra was talking about. People (Doomsayers, prohets, or computer experts, whatever you want to call them) were coming forth with doom and gloom predictions, and as a result billions and billions of dollars (and man-hours) were spent fixing and patching the problem around the world. Because of the frankly heroic efforts of IT staffs everywhere nothing happened, and as a result the computer experts were called fear mongers and Y2K was called a hoax.


Yay programmers! Smile

But that isn't the point I was making - my point is that these doomsayers are wrong about what will happen, I don't remember anyone coming forward and saying that everything will be fine. They may have done so, but I recall people wondering if things would work after midnight. I don't recall anyone saying "you can stop worrying now, we've got it under control."

Maybe you don't recall all the fear and predictions about attacks and other things happening on New Year's Eve 2000? I recall people being afraid to go to Times Square or any public gathering because of the fear mongering. I think this is probably something that we can agree to disagree on. (I am curious as to why people in general seem more receptive to messages of fear than they are to messages of hope. I guess people can't safely ignore messages based on fear, but if they ignore hopeful messages, and good things happen, people can be pleasantly surprised. If the predicted doom occurs, people will at least feel prepared? I don't quite understand why this is, but it seems to be true.)

I think this discussion isn't (totally) off-topic. In the story of Year Zero, the government uses fear to justify putting drugs in the water. They lie about what they are doing. So the government uses fear to motivate people, the same way our resistance artists are doing. My point is that we need to look critically at the message that we are being given - and not just accept it on face value.

I did read the article that Ariock had posted from the Spiral forums. I think Trent was saying that his message was basically 'pay attention." My point about the game is that it has been so black and white that the message from the future is just another kind of propaganda. My point was that maybe the game is asking us to look critically at messages, wherever they originate.
_________________
I love this site for being free, in every sense of the word~Spacebass

Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

PostPosted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 9:57 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
The Shepherd
Guest


 		Phaedra
Phaedra

My efforts to rally a feeble plot of minimal significance (SHELL SEARCH)
may go unrewarded, however......

With these latest statements of understanding being considered,...
Your presence in my existence, will not be forgotten.

Peace amidst Chaos
The Shepherd

PostPosted: Sat Mar 31, 2007 11:08 pm
 Back to top 
Hellion88
Greenhorn


Joined: 17 Apr 2005
Posts: 9

 		Re: I'll go first
Delusional wrote:
rose wrote:

When I enter the space of this game

Ok first mistake, coming into this expecting a game. I think you're going to be sorely disappointed. I don't see this being the typical "ARG" this place is used to. As this pertains to something I have thought about quite a bit but applies to a broader realm, I'll finish this thought down below.*

*Ok back to my thought of different kinds of ARG's.
This is something I have not seen discussed.
Where are the "games" that actually say something?! Sure ARG's are fun, I like sci-fi and supernatural storys, but here we have this relatively new medium of story telling and nobody's doing anything useful with it.
This is what so attracts me to this "game" regardless of my liking of NIN's music. They started something I have been waiting for, the movement of this genre into the realm outside of geekdom(sorry it's true) and into the stages of becoming a pure art form. I have wanted to try and do this myself for sometime but haven't due to lack of time(but still hope to get there one day) so this really excites me and I hope it does well in this community.


Regardless of whether or not this ARG is art, it's still a game. Just because a piece of literature has artistic merit doesn't mean it isn't a short story or a novel. There is no 'different approach'- a good ARG, like a piece of classical music or a painting, should be aesthetically pleasing regardless of artistic merit. In that sense, I'm with rose; I shouldn't have to squint to read the text of the story, or chew through chunks of cliched exposition. I think that Year Zero deserves some slack, as it's definitely trying for a shock value approach, but if we analyzed this ARG as art, I think that right now we would be looking at 'bad art'.

PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:02 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Delusional
Entrenched


Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 839

 		Re: I'll go first
Hellion88 wrote:

Regardless of whether or not this ARG is art, it's still a game. Just because a piece of literature has artistic merit doesn't mean it isn't a short story or a novel. There is no 'different approach'- a good ARG, like a piece of classical music or a painting, should be aesthetically pleasing regardless of artistic merit.


What? You shouldn't be talking about "art". Art has no need to be pleasing, and if you think it should be you don't know art.

Hellion88 wrote:
In that sense, I'm with rose; I shouldn't have to squint to read the text of the story


That's a part of the story.

Hellion88 wrote:

or chew through chunks of cliched exposition. I think that Year Zero deserves some slack, as it's definitely trying for a shock value approach, but if we analyzed this ARG as art, I think that right now we would be looking at 'bad art'.


Shock value? look around you, this world is shit, there are a lot of "shocking" things out there and it's only getting worse.

PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:28 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Hellion88
Greenhorn


Joined: 17 Apr 2005
Posts: 9

 		Re: I'll go first
Delusional wrote:
Hellion88 wrote:

or chew through chunks of cliched exposition. I think that Year Zero deserves some slack, as it's definitely trying for a shock value approach, but if we analyzed this ARG as art, I think that right now we would be looking at 'bad art'.


Shock value? look around you, this world is shit, there are a lot of "shocking" things out there and it's only getting worse.


Shock value in art is something explicitly designed to evoke a negative emotion. A picture of the Virgin Mary suspended in a jar of urine, for example. Of course, the reaction of the audience will inevitably vary. In Year Zero, we're presented with items designed to shock us on a number of levels; even the unreadable text is supposed to throw us off. Some of the stuff can be really shocking, like the Star Room sound recordings. Other stuff doesn't necessarily work so well- that unreadable text makes me frustrated at the ARG, not the state of society. Shock value is certainly acceptable in art, but it's difficult to use effectively- George Orwell's 1984 comes to mind easily, not because it doesn't utilize shock value, but because it remains one of the few truly great pieces of literature which manages to use shock value to the fullest. For an example of ineffective utilization of shock value, try watching Jackass.

PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 5:06 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117
Quote:
What? You shouldn't be talking about "art". Art has no need to be pleasing, and if you think it should be you don't know art.

hmm. I think there is room here, on this board and in this forum, at least, for different view points about "art." In fact, this forum needs people with different perspectives. So I think that people should share their opinions and not be afraid to disagree.

Quote:
Sure ARG's are fun, I like sci-fi and supernatural storys, but here we have this relatively new medium of story telling and nobody's doing anything useful with it.


Heheheh. I guess that depends on what you define as useful. I will simply say I disagree that nobody is doing, or has done anything useful with this genre. I also am not sure how "useful" this game is, but it has provoked discussion and comment, even made people aware of some important books they may not have read, made people think about some issues surrounding them that maybe they hadn't before.

You know, I'm sorry if you are offended somehow that I see lots of stereotyping and cliches in this story. The writing and production are brilliant, the integration of real world stuff, like T-shirts, buttons and lithographs is great. People keep telling me, what do you expect, it is Nine Inch Nails, as if that explains the darkness of the world of the future. I understand that the scientists only had a short amount of time to dump back as much information as they could, so I guess it makes sense they would only send the most extreme stuff, but come on...

As I said, I like the idea of question the message.
_________________
I love this site for being free, in every sense of the word~Spacebass

Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 8:50 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
Display posts from previous:   Sort by:   
Page 2 of 4 [54 Posts]   Goto page: Previous 1, 2, 3, 4 Next
View previous topicView next topic
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Ephemeral » ARG: Year Zero
Jump to:  


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum
You cannot post calendar events in this forum



Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group