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[Silent]

Should ARG be called Alternate Puzzle Game?

[thebruce]

well, the thing is, puzzles in an ARG can range from the obvious 'hey looks, there's a coded message here', to the quite dubious and covert mystery where no "puzzle" is given to us, but rather clues, a path, a trail where there's no requirement that we must follow it or solve it, but rather curiosity drives us, a desire to resolve a mystery. You're right though, puzzles are the 'fun' part of ARGs, to some people, but they are made up of many other elements, and various players may hover towards any of these, like interacting with characters or being physical go-to-this-place people.

A lot of the time what people consider better ARGs are the ones, as you say, that are more realistic. It's takes away from the 'reality' of an ARG when you're consistently bmbarded with rot13's, binary, hex, and base64 coded messages which don't seem to have any realistic reason as to why they're encoded, nor why they're encoded in what many consider the simplest form of encoding or encrypting.

However, it is still realistic for mysteries to include what we may consider puzzles. If you check up on some past murderers and such, signatures and styles are quite common; consider private detectives and tv shows and movies all similar to what we might consider a run-of-the-mill ARG. Many agree that typical murder mysteries are a dime a dozen in the ARG genre... an unsurprising "Hey, please help me for so-and-so-reason! I don't know what to do!"

The trick of an ARG is to try to be realistic (they don't provide virtual realities, they provide alternate realities - virtual realities are for video games and RPGs (YMMV) ) We want/hope ARGs would immerse a person in its reality - with the intent to blur the line between reality and fiction, ARGs need to meet the players' reality. So puzzle and mystery designing should produce discreet, yet obvious and realistic problems to solve..somehow. The best kinds are the ones that the players want to solve, not because they have to but because they decide to - or at least, the plot evolves in such a way as to make the players believe in what they're doing, rather than say having no choice but to solve this vigenere. That's immersion.

It's a tricky thing. But it's all moot if the theme of the ARG is simple fun and time wasting, and there've been plenty of those too. There can be puzzle games in an alternate reality, but I usually find my favourites to be the ones where we discover the doors to walk through... like the world design of an FPS vs an RPG. An FPS is linear in that you typically only have one place to go next; as opposed to an RPG where the world is presented to you, and you perform acts and tasks within that world. A good ARG, IMO, should present a world, characters, and place an event or events within it, where the mystery is discovered, where pieces lay in various places, and the fun is in exploring and figuring things out... there may be a linear story, a linear plot, but it's presented in a "here's a puzzle - solved; KLOO! here's another puzzle - solved; KLOO! here's another..."
Like you said, that just doesn't seem as realistic. Subversive puzzles more along the lines of say... oh look, there's an itinerary in the midst of these files on an FTP site we hacked into; this item looks interesting - we need to find out what's happening here at this time, anyone want to go and stakeout?

The problem is, if it's an ARG, we should know it's an ARG, but we pretend it isn't. So while the ARG is shooting for a realistic experience (ymmv), it'll also never be fully realistic. But generally speaking, the more realistic the ARG, the more thinking and work needs to be put in by the PM team, which is generally why we see a lot of "Alternate Puzzle Games" as you say, in the grassroots ARG label...

(and just to be clear in closing, personally, I'm meh about "APG"s, because we have many groupings of ARGs styles within the CF realm already, ranging right down to timewaster (pure puzzle games with maybe a bit of plot or character built in), and Puzzle+Game in this case is pretty redundant anyhow, IMO - the key is the "Reality" that makes ARGs ARGs)

[konamouse]

I've always enjoyed the Alternate Reality part of the genre (the story, the characters, the interaction) and less about the puzzles (they should be there with a purpose, not just to have a puzzle for puzzle sake).

Puzzles within the story should fit - why is this email encoded? Why is this website filled with weird symbols? Why did this character private message a stranger with a code? If it doesn't make sense, I have a problem with the "reality" of it.

I love the catchphrase from ARGFest NYC "How do you like your Alternate Reality?" I like mine to be immersive and feel real. But as the genre is growing, seems there is something for everyone out there - some with more puzzles, some using chats, or some providing mostly website trails. Take your pick!

[vpisteve]

Re: Should ARG be called Alternate Puzzle Game?

[Rekidk]

Re: Should ARG be called Alternate Puzzle Game?

[rose]

[Silent|away]

Alright, when I meant puzzle, I sort of included the Interaction as well, but a certain form of Interaction.

Interaction That Is Not Puzzley: "Hi, asl?"

Interaction That Is Puzzley: "So, you say that someone stole the Flux Capacitor? Why in the world would they steal such a thing? And what exactly is the Flux Capacitor?"

And while talking to people might be interesting, and I played games where all I do was talk to people, I was worried that other people may not like it, and because of that, I wanted to appeal to those people to get them to see the possiblity of renaming ARGs to APGs.

I guess I now realize that the APG term isn't that good of an idea since you already got new names to describe it. But I just thought it might be interesting to think about.

[rose]

[Caz]

two points here.

Names) i think of using this as names.
MMO-PG, C-RPG, SRG [sub reality game] or ILRBIAG [it look real but it's a game]
ok maybe not the last one but the first 3 work. but this is all about names agene.

Puzzles) we don't need a new name we need better games. I don't like games when a what's you to drift throw 20 pages of back story and the most I have to do is work out binary and all that tells me is that this guy had a dog call Phil. it just a filler to say have a puzzle, it not like you thrill of think you may be the first person to have fingered and that this may brake the case that you do with a good game. it fell like your not game your reading a not very good book it just fell like your not playing a game your reading a not very good story (like the Da-Vinci Code but a bit harder but not must better).

[Jas0n]

My question is does everything in an ARG have to be puzzle related?

I understand that sometimes just interacting with the players may be considered a puzzle, but an ARG doesn't a puzzle make

I think where the puzzles come in is the whole "game" part of the term and I've always been bugged by that. The concept is that in order to be considered a game, the players have to have a "game" element to it - which is often a puzzle.

I've played many console games that don't have puzzles - so I don't understand why an ARG has to have a puzzle (and I don't count the storyline or character interaction as a puzzle - I'm going to consider that to be part of the plot myself). I'd like to think that a truely great ARG can have an awesome story with awesome interaction and not necessarily puzzles but methods of allowing the players to become a part of the game themselves.

[Caz]

[thebruce]

The key is in the focus... all ARGs have mysteries and/or puzzles (drawing a distinction here). That's the interaction/chaotic part of ARGs, otherwise you just sit and watch, as Caz said. We need to do something to 'play', and to do something, something first had to be 'undone'. If you define a puzzle as anything that needs to be solved, then sure, all ARGs have puzzles. But I think that's a very wide definition... when we hear puzzle, I think the first and most significant thing that comes to mind is a self-contained test, something that obviously has a question and an immediate answer that needs to be reached. A mystery on the other hand is an overarching unknown that needs to be explored and includes discovery and creativity...

In an ARG, I've come to believe that the focus is not on "puzzles", but on story-telling, on being real, on drawing a person into the plot, interacting with characters and other players. All of that lends itself to puzzle and mystery solving. But I think the 'game' portion of the name covers that. "Alternate", "Reality", and "Game" are each significant descriptors in the genre, and puzzle, I think, would just be redundant.

[FLmutant]

Ah, puzzles. How I love thee, how I loathe thee ...

I think for me just personally, the real category is "collaborative activity" -- something that people do together. Traditionally, you'd think of ARG as a subset of collaborative activity (as there are certainly collaborative things that aren't ARGs) and that's where people start to get hung up.

Puzzles are one of those solutions that, if used well, count as the kind of collaborative activity that separates an ARG from a passive media experience. It isn't the only solution, it might not even be a required solution in the mix. The existing devotees of the genre, though, have cut their teeth on narratives that included puzzles, so there is a familiarity to that solution.

That's part of what Spacebass is trying to fix when he advances the "chaotic fiction" label -- a broader umbrella helps dodge some of those questions better than "ARG or non-ARG" did.

[vpisteve]

[sixsidedsquare]

Wow, those last two posts by FLmutant and vpisteve have to he the best description and explanation of ARG (and/or CF) 'puzzles' that I have ever seen. They totally just hit the nail on the head, well done.