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Forum index » Diversions » TimeWasters

Puzzle Experiment #3
Moderators: Giskard, ndemeter, ScarpeGrosse

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rowan
Unfictologist

Joined: 12 Apr 2004
Posts: 1966

Omega wrote:

When you get a moment, rowan, I'd be interested to hear what you (and others in the community) have to say about that sort of gameplay and the particular problems you see arising,

Be careful what you wish for.

Omega wrote:

Isn't that what an ARG is, though? Interactive (i.e. chaotic) fiction? An ARG is certainly multiplayer, and in many ARGs the player's actions can decide or alter the course of events--the players are still choosing the adventure, in a way. What ultimately distinguishes CYOA/IF from ARG?

While all ARGs may be Chaotic Fiction, not all Chaotic Fiction will be an ARG. I'll grant you that a lot of times its mostly just a matter of degrees considering that there isn't a specific definition you can refer back to, but at other times its not.

Making an ARG is a bit like making a cake. There are a million different ingredients that you can use, in a million different proportions, and if you combine them successfully, you'll have yourself a really good cake. A world class baker, through their experience, is able to make an excellent cake and make it look effortless. A novice baker could follow the exact same recipe and not have it come out nearly as well because they accidentally added too much flour or baked it for a little too long. It doesn't mean it's a bad cake - people will still eat it and enjoy it - but if you've been living off the excellent cake you may find the new one wanting. And then you have the bakers who take more or less the same starting ingredients and make a pie. Which, while yummy, is not a cake.

So what is the difference between a CYOA/IF and an ARG? Mostly I'd say it was a matter of role-playing. Yes, all ARGs do have an element of roleplaying in them since the players are required to treat what's going on as real, but its a relatively minor part. Whereas in a CYOA/IF/RPG, players are put into a role that the PM/author has created and has control over. In your vampire example, if I'm supposed to be new vampire then you're telling me what I was feeling, what I was doing and what I had to do. Nevermind that I personally would never act like that. Meanwhile, in the Landlord game, I'm stuck in a very artificial construct. I may have a little more latitude in my actions, but I'm still being told what is happening to me. And it's a little harder for me to pretend that I'm stuck in a house with a candle and a few pieces of paper while I'm actually sitting at the computer typing away than it would be for me to believe that the blog I'm reading about aliens is actually happening to someone.

It's not to say that roleplaying is specifically forbidden in an ARG because there are plenty of people who go and make up more elaborate personas in order to interact with the characters, but roleplaying shouldnt be necessary in order to partcipate. Think of it like an renaissance festival. You don't have to dress up fancy and talk in olde English in order to have a good time. You can show up in jeans and sneakers and talk normally and no one will care or make you feel less welcome than the people who have elaborate outfits and interact with the hired actors/characters - as long as you're being respectful of the illusion that you're back in the whatever century because no one likes it when someone goes around and keeps screaming 'This is fake!'But now imagine if you had to dress up and you had to interact with the established characters as a specified persona. Now you're no longer in a ren faire but in a LARPing session. From the outside they may look fairly similar, but the inside dynamics are exceedingly different.

So this leads me back into gameplay problems. Quite honestly the biggest problem I see in games like this is one of scalability. They don't do well with large numbers of parcipiants. Now, for some PMs this isn't a problem because they aren't looking to get more than a handful of players into their games. But for me, I never really liked games with those type of artificial constraints. Because if I'm enjoying a game, I want to bring more people into it and if bringing more people into a game ruins everyones experience then what's the point.

The whole reason for this runiation is of course the notion that you are responding to players one-on-one. If you only have five people playing, you can do this very easily. But if you have 500 people playing, someone is going to get the short end of the stick. Not to mention that these are very interaction focused - if you aren't communcating with the characters you're missing out. So where does that leave the lurkers who are watching from the sidelines?

Another problem you run into is the individuality of the players. In the Landlord game, this means that for each player coming in you have to craft a whole new experience for them (which then hits the scalability problem). But for your vampire example, what would happen if some people wanted to flee and others wanted to fight? Two outcomes? But then you'd have people arguing over which is 'the real' one. Would you take a vote thereby forcing potentially half of your players to do something that they wouldnt want to do? And would the game be able to stand up to the pressures of players pushing on the boundaries of the game space? What would happen if I suddenly decided to start killing off the others running around the Landlord's building? Or if I decided to side with the werewolf and take out my own sire? You can't predict all of the ideas that players will come up with, and giving them a 'starring' role by making them the lead persona of a game is asking for trouble, imho.

So where does all of this leave us? I'm certainly not trying to say that certain types of game play are bad but I don't think that they are necessarily appealing to a wider audience. And that's what I'm trying to achieve with my critiques - bringing ARGs to a larger stage then what they have been on. From just looking at the threads in N&R, I don't think it necessarily takes all that much to create an ARG that someone will play as long as you the PM have the attention span to keep it going. But there is a world of difference from having a game that only wants 5 people to play vs having a game that would like 500 to play - and these critiques aren't for the former. I voice my opinions because I want to see 500 or 5000 or even 50,000 people getting involved in something I'm playing as well - because the community is just as important to an ARG as anything else is. Plan small but dream big. Because otherwise I think you're just wasting your dreams.

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Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 12:01 pm

Omega
Unfettered

Joined: 07 Mar 2008
Posts: 430
Location: Utah

rowan wrote:

Be careful what you wish for.

Wow! Terrific points, rowan; you've clarified matters quite nicely! I guess the distinction I was ignoring was a question of immersion/believability and choice, which ties back in with what you're saying about the role-playing element. Scalability and unpredictable actions would indeed cause problems as well... Well, I'm glad that got cleared up! Wink

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Puzzle Experiments: #3, #4, #6

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 5:45 pm

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