unforum

[krystyn]

Re: You Traitor!

[jlr1001]

But Aren't there Two Curtains?

[krystyn]

Re: But Aren't there Two Curtains?

[SpaceBass]

Discussions and participation on Unfiction help to describe game universes. They are not a product merely of audience collaboration but also of the collaboration between the audience sphere and the architect sphere. I do not believe these roles are equivalent and disagree that the puppetmasters' need for a curtain equates to a similar player need.

The philosophy that Unfiction is out of game cannot be extended beyond our borders. We are unable to fully control such abuses even here, where we have as complete control as possible. We have no hope or desire to control what people do outside of this sphere, whether they be players or puppetmasters.

There's no denying that Unfiction as a perceived entity can have an effect on or influence a campaign, by the actions of its members and by their co-authorship of the campaign universe's descriptions. But again, this only works if the architects know about those elements and have access to them. I cannot conceive of a situation in which it would be better to hide information or keep secrets from the architects during gameplay; this could only make things more difficult for them and likely cause more problems.

When someone asks you out for a spin on the ballroom floor, do you say, "Yes, but you may only go through the motions. No touching!" Paired dancing is a partnership in action and many cues are passed between partners through subtle touch. Why would you purposefully cut off one of the few lines of metacommunication you have with your partner?

I hope puppetmasters use any information they can discover on Unfiction to make their campaigns better but I also hope they use it in a way that makes sense in their universe and keeps it consistent for the entire gameplaying sphere. I don't think that merely mentioning Unfiction or any other playerspace by name necessarily constitutes a breach of the curtain because who is to say that the site does not exist in the alternate reality as well, perhaps just without all of the meta threads that exist here in our universe?

[jlr1001]

[ariock]

Re: You Traitor!

[ariock]

[jlr1001]

[thebruce]

[ScarpeGrosse]

OMG, okay, that's it!

NO ONE CAN READ ANYTHING ANYMORE!

*places large fuzzy sleep masks over everyone's eyes so no one can see what anyone else is saying*

Now, no peeking

[imbri]

While it might be nice to have a rule that PMs can't use information on unfiction (being generally rule adverse, I'm not sure it'd be so nice), there would be absolutely no way that we could enforce it. We can say that you can't post in your a section devoted to your game or that you can't have duplicate accounts - that's enforceable because we can remove their posting privileges. Having a rule just to have one would be silly.

In most cases, it's quite stupid for PMs to use information that they find on unfiction (or any other player-only gathering point) because of what that does to the player community. The mistrust and paranoia that it breeds will likely have a negative impact on not only the player experience but also the game. If PMs do want to use such info in a game, they need to be quite selective and make it something that the players would take lightly or place it in a context that would not create that mistrust and paranoia among the players (it might be useful to create it between the players and a game entity). While I'm sure that there are other positive examples that I'm forgetting, there are two from Lockjaw that come instantly to mind...

1) The Mephista Browser. This was an browser created by one of the PMs (Andy) that had some AI something or other in it. Players downloaded it earlier in the game and, while they had some idea of what it was, the true intent was revealed at the end of the game when the players found a place where the browser was dumping all of this information and including things that the players would find while surfing the internet (including bits and pieces from irc chat logs and the y! group where players congregated). At that point, they no longer needed to be concerned that what they were saying could be used against them.

2) The Bathroom Wall. This was really a little bit of a gossip page created by an employee of an ingame company and included a lot of injokes created by the players and pms throughout the run of the game. It, too, was discovered late in the game, after we had shown the players just how much we respected them and wouldn't abuse their trust, and only included humourous bits designed to make them feel a part of the universe in a fun and casual way.

We understood the risk that each of these might bring and, I think, we were prepared to deal with any negative ramifications that they may have caused and attempted to head that off as best as possible (by letting the players discover the cache of info at the very end of the game, for example). It's a very careful balance but when there is a shared trust and respect, and more importantly, a confidence that the PMs won't abuse that trust and respect, you are able to tip the scales a little more than you would otherwise. However, every time you tip those scales, you make it easier for the players to fall off.

So, it can be done, but it has to be done very carefully and only once the community is cohesive enough to deal with it and has the confidence that PMs will deal with the ramifications of it in a way that will not harm the game play and their enjoyment of it.

[rose]

I've been away and I'm wondering what sparked this thread now? It can't all be about what happened years ago with i love bees. Can anyone summarize what happened?

My feeling is that people should share what they want to share with the understanding that anyone else may use it as they choose. If you don't want to share anything, you don't have to do so. There is no consequence for not sharing - if the game or promotion depends on information you have being shared - the designers will figure out another way to get the information out to the rest of the players.

Personally, I have an incredibly strong bias in favor of sharing everything that I can with everyone else. Even so, looking back, if I had been in Weephun's shoes and was asked to keep something quiet for a bit, I think I would have done what the PMs asked me to do. So, I think everyone should do what they feel comfortable with under the particular circumstance.

I guess my bias is also that we are all in this together - players, lurkers, sharers and non-sharers - so that the concept that something could be "used against me" doesn't fit into my philosophy. I also don't have the concept that I use something in a game to benefit me only; I'm sure I've never even thought about a game that way - but, again, that is my philosophy of the community.

[jlr1001]

Well, some (actually most) of this stems from the currently running Enitech - Gardner Project game. This game is the presumptive official ARG for the Sarah Conner Chronicles, so it's all about Terminator...

The notion of being selective in how information was being shared between players first came about after one of the characters, in an in-game video, thanked Unfiction by name (as well as Something Awful) as being places where people were helping them figure out what was going on (in their in-game reality).

Some time later, players were awarded for participation--and by that I mean emailing information directly to characters--with private user access to an in-game resource. TheBruce, IIRC, was the first person to get a username and password to the system. He received it as a token of trust between him and particular characters in the game... however, since UF was mentioned by another of the characters (and thus brought into the game's reality) he hesitated posting his access information on the forums because that could be a seen (by the characters) as a violation of their trust in him...

That's where the whole idea of posting information on this out-of-game resource being used against you in-game stemmed from.

As for the second issue, whether the PMs should use information that was meant for an OOG context if a player openly gives it to them, came to a head after we started communicating with Skynet and resistance members who had time traveled from the future...

I can't quite remember why, but some of the players began "playing with" Skynet by posing as Terminators. They were giving it false reports about one of the characters who was supposedly dead, but we knew otherwise. So they kept reporting, as Terminators, that the character had been killed. Also, Skynet had mentioned some obscure protocol in one of its emails, so they were also trying to get it to reveal more information it it and other targets it had in mind.

After a while Skynet seemed to become "pissed" and communication with it became spotty. It, correctly assumed that some of its Terminator units were "corrupt". Well, in an attempt to help move the game forward, one of the players sent Skynet the UF usernames of people he "knew" to be corrupt Terminators. Unfortunately he included usernames of people who weren't involved in any way in this part of the story...

Skynet took his information and sent out a message that these particular units/people were now targets for termination. Obviously this was a vexing turn of events...

I think that sums up what caused this current discussion. If I missed something I'm sure someone will let me know.

(Sorry for the dog-long post--yes, I just made up "dog-long"...).



-jlr1001

[thebruce]

Actually, this I believe to be incorrect (and does slightly alter the situation at hand)

[Rekidk]

I was originally going to say that the PMs had made a poor game-design choice by deciding to acknowledge that information; however, I think that I, as a player, would find it pretty cool to be brought into the game in that way.

That said, I absolutely love the idea of UnFiction as an OOG resource. In other words, I like the idea of the characters (or the game's universe) being unable to read it. Someone once made the analogy of an ARG being a crime scene, with UnFiction as a sort of office for the investigators (the players). If we let the suspects (the characters) in the office, it would mess up the investigation. Aside from that, though, it just works. There needs to be a somewhere to discuss the not-a-game as what is actually is: a game.

The issue here is this: the players exist both IG and OOG. Should their OOG personas be required to be separate from their IG personas? Isn't it sort of true, in an IG way, that the characters might understand that there is a place where the players are collaborating?

Regardless, it's impossible to set up any sort of rules to govern this, so debating it is almost a moot point.