unforum

[notgordian]

AngriBuddhist--because it seems there's been a lot of confusion in this thread, I'll try to explain in my own words what I think you're asking about.

Paraphrasing attempt begins now: You're interested in an IG news resource that allows puppetmasters to submit stories without breaking the curtain. The extent of it is uncertain, so if puppetmasters wanted more than news (although I do not know what that would entail) it would be allowable.

If I'm off-base with that much, any comments to follow will not make sense. Someone already mentioned the World07 site as an example of what you've been describing...the problem with that and most other iterations of the idea as a puppetmaster resource is, as colin mentioned, control.

If the content posted on a third party site are taken as "in game", players of a specific game would need to go through a vetting process with every new post: is this something to be believed? Gamejacking attempts happen fairly frequently...and any content put on "acceptable" websites needs to be controlled if the puppetmasters want to have any influence on the story. It might even be as simple as related worlds--Tomorrow Calling mentioned World Without Oil as being part of their reality. Would the World Without Oil PMs necessarily want that relationship to be reciprocal?

So either you need some way of identifying the source of the news (whether through World07's concept of "different universes) or you need to have every person utilizing the site allowing articles to go through. It might just be easier to create an open-source world that players can set their games in (I know somebody's doing that, but I forgot who).

[AngriBuddhist]

Thank you notgordian. Your description is completely accurate.

[AngriBuddhist]

[konamouse]

There are now means to set up websites and forums and seed them with historical data.

Eldritch Errors did that with the Sentry Outpost forum. When we (players) finally arrived, there were existing posts from characters dating back to January. But they talked about having a history stretching back beyond that (those posts did were not online because of a system crash that happened over the holidays but there was some backup files that the players found as part of the game).

Blogspots can easily be modified to include past dated entries. Can include RSS feeds. Course, you have to have a good reason for a site to have a xxx.blogspot.com address (but, hey, they're free).

You can seed information out on other internet sites that allow comments to articles (many magazines do that) but how do you know it's going to be found and known to be ingame? Tagging with certain phrases or keywords is easily spoofed once the players know the pattern.

The key here is control of access for posting, and a player recognized method to distinguish IG from gamejack (since that is becoming more persuasive as the genre has expanded). So you really have to come back to PM controlled resources that can provide direct (or indirect) links to the legitimate sites (any new found site linking back to the original is not necessarily proof of co-existence unless the original IG site publically acknowledges it or there is a unique tag/identifier - like creation prior to game start noted in the Whois).

At least, this is as far as my brain can think of this stuff.

[thebruce]

Here's a thought that just came to mind Angri...

Are you thinking along the lines of something like a 'meta ARG' - as you say, a middleware site? In such a way that it's as if you're creating the 'shell' within which ARGs can be set up freely by PMs, to take place and use (or not) to any capacity they wish? One comment you mentioned multiple sites catering to different demographics, such as cyper punk, or future sci-fi...

Immediately I envisioned an 'alternate world' set up as a website - how alternate is a variable (could be entirely real-world - real news, real items, mixed with fictional characters, places, events). Puppetmasters could then create an ARG utilizing anything within this world - characters, places, events - and spawn their CF from there.

This obviously presents the security issue - that PMs would have to retain control of anything in-game, and they would also have to follow the rules of the site in question. If using a character/place/event with history, then somehow it can't conflict with another's use of the same asset.

In a sense, the non-PM run website that is intended to be a free, trustable in-game site for any ARG, becomes a persistent world in itself, where ARGs may or may not use existing assets, may or may not add new assets, and may or may not play out at that location (from simply launching the rabbithole to being entirely contained within).

Like reading an ARG newspaper... might have real world news, might have ARG news. But by its nature, those ARGs may potentially be required to exist in the same 'world', or the same 'demographic' as you put it.

A middleware ARG that supports the existence of ARGs and CF, without explicitly running them, while being a free resource for PMs and players for that purpose, and being a trustworthy host.

It's interesting... but quite an undertaking.
Is that something along the lines of what you were thinking? Or am I completely off base?

[notgordian]

Also if you're talking middleware and support functionality, what you're probably looking for is the IonARG mailinglist. A few months ago a group of people were discussing creating software to streamline and simplify the PM-ing task...you seem to be proposing something similar.

As for the rather difficult task of world creation, slap up a wiki and make the creation and population of the world an open source product so the people who want to use it can use it--maybe lock up controls so people can post in the discussion pages only leaving administrators the right to make things canonical. But again, because there are so many things PMs don't have control over, I'm not sure how kindly they'd take to ceding control of reality. The closest things have come to that by my knowledge is World Without Oil (and as you said, this could open up a different kind of chaotic fiction for those willing to cede that control)

[AngriBuddhist]

[AngriBuddhist]

It's difficult to give anyone an exact example as most of my ideas depend on what PMs would want or be willing to use if their requirements were met.

I'll use the "Reclaimers" site that I linked to earlier in this thread as one example that would have a specific use.

With a little tweeking and a lot of work, imagine the "Reclaimers" as a in-game player base of sorts. The members could be an in-game version of ARG players. Think: an organized Lone Gunmen.

These would be the type of people who go searching for or inviting mysteries into their lives. Add to that the "Reclaimers" sci-fi/fantasy theme (that pervades many ARGs) and you have a much more natural way to leave a rabbithole than mailing an item to SpaceBass. PMs want to target a group who is interested in sci/fi ARGs? We have a huge, built in mailing list. We could bulk email something for you. You really enjoyed having this or that player in your last ARG? You now know where to go to get their attention and have a way to contact them in-game beyond AIM and email.

This concept although not fleshed out could open new doors. With a public in-game site, could a player create an in-game persona for themselves that they could carry from sci-fi ARG to sci-fi ARG? Would anyone be interested in doing so?

With the theme of the "Reclaimers" site (think alien/conspiracy theory/lone gunmen) it could actually fit into many ARGs without having an affect on a PMs choices, control, or creativity.

Another idea-

Imagine a fictional whois/wiki. Do you want character, organization, or topic information to be available to your players? Not want to create, host and maintain it yourself? You write it, we post and lock it. With enough people participating, this could become an encyclopedias worth of information. Do a "search" on a fictional company, character, or topic and get actual results.

The whole point of this is to see if there are ways to utilize the tools we have in creative ways that PMs don't have the manpower, resources, or solutions for.

[Rekidk]

[rose]

I think I understand this a little better.

As an example: I remember there was a law firm used in Acheron and also in AWARE. So perhaps there could be an existing firm that grassroot PMs could just use in their game without having to create another site. Not that anyone uses law firms in games that much.

Something like this might make it easier for people to add to their games. I think of Perplexcity which created all those sites - the bank, the university, PCAG...and other stuff. If there was a way to these general sites that PMs could use, that might be helpful.

Funny that Kona mentioned Eldritch Errors. This idea reminds me of how Lovecraft created a city (Arkham) with a university and characters that subsequent people then used as the basis for their own stories. They took a parts from the framework he started and made their own stories out of it. Just like the Eldritch Errors PMs are doing.

I'm not so worried about overt gamejacking. That comes up all the time and PMs find ways to deal with it.

[AngriBuddhist]

[thebruce]

Another hurdle though is the sharing of in-game assets. Or are you saying that none of the ARGs you'd see included in this resource would actually be linked? So the 'demographic' is more like a theme for the site... a sci-fi site would include science/space/technology related real-world news, and allowed PMs to post their own leads and in-game info, not necessarily linking their ARG to any other that also uses the site... Players registered there could use their same profile/in-game 'character' to be communicated to by the PMs easily. PMs could utilize news that appears on the site, if they wish, in their ARGs.

I don't know if this would be considere "in-game" per se, as maybe "safe-game"? *shrug* a site that the PMs can utilize, though not specifically a PM-run site, and not everything on the site IS necessarily in-game to that specific ARG, since some PMs wouldn't want to share their ARG assets (coming back to the issue of gamejacking, piggybacking, etc).

It's an interesting concept, but I'd consider it still kind of a meta-arg site, since it would be in-game to many ARGs, but they wouldn't necessarily be able to recognize each others' existence, which kind of breaks the illusion of a real alternate reality. There would need to be agreed upon rules by any PM using the site, depending on whether it allows interaction between ARGs, or maintains them independently of each other either by global requirement or PM choice.

[FLmutant]

Digging into this from a PMs perspective.

[AngriBuddhist]

We've been watching my 5 yr. old nephew the last couple of days. He's pretty much an attention whore so I haven't been able to truely give this very much focused attention. While going back through it (and fixing my horrible spelling) at 5:30 a.m., I noticed this-

[thebruce]

so, along those lines, and off base... ok then!

No, you made your point about that post already...

again, what you're suggesting I think is an intriguing idea, and potentially a great tool for PMs who wish to use it... I don't know if it would be as significant a catalyst to advancing the genre as hoped, but then we have no practical experience to test that... the discussion going on here though really is interesting and thought provoking.