unforum

[natas]

[kosmopol]

@Danhon
Here is my little contribution to the discussion, my very personal perspective as a geeky nerdy ARG-junkie. (I send it to the Dan's blog)

[catherwood]

[AUZ505]

My 2 cents:

regarding the things that fascinates me about args I can't really imagine that they will work for hundreds of players.
- Live-events where you meet real IG characters will not happent to a lot of people (besides player-organised events like in Find the Lost Ring).
- Esatblishing a personal based communication with an IG character. This is not possible if hundreds of people are emailing the same person. In Find the Lost Ring I often did not get an reply from the IG characters.
- Being the first to solve a riddle and earning the "nice find" is one of the big motivation for a lot of people. Imagine how often you will be the one that discovers a new website or a new clue if hundreds of players a involved.
- And even having nice chats and solving things in teamwork is in my opinion only possible in smaller groups.

But what REALLY SUCKS regarding in args:

A lot of recent games started and suddendly stopped without reaching the "endgame". At least from them that I have choosen.
Aporia Agathon, BoL/SiD, Eight Days - Thirteen Lights - 42 hours, Stareightsix, Psychosis-Trio, What happened to Jacob Aaron?, Muggle Quidditch, Amelia In The Bathroom, "Dreams" (Aiden Nevoux) ...

I only know of some args that finished with an endgame: Find the Lost Ring, Pirates (German ARG), Rogue Virus (small grassroot game).

If this is how args work, soon people will loose interest in them. It is like reading a book where suddendly the pages are missing or watching a film that suddendly stops and you can read "not to be continued".

[FLmutant]

[imbri]

Media or performance... AUZ505's point still holds. If people's experience with ARGs is one that ends without coming to an endgame, then they are going to be less likely to get involved in the future. I would take it a step further and say that they are more likely to have a negative impression of the genre.

While I agree with calling ARGs a performance and relating the experience to improv, I think that you are leaving out that ARGs are much more of an investment for the players than watching an improv troupe that wanders off the stage. And because players are participants who give so much of their time, energy, and creativity to the experience, it is a much more emotional investment than just watching an improv troupe on a stage for an hour. That emotional investment is one of the reasons that makes them such a good opportunity for branding and other sorts of marketing.

However, that works in reverse, as well. When the PMs wander off the stage (for whatever reason) without providing for a conclusion, those deep emotions turn negative and, unfortunately, we're still small enough and secret enough that isn't contained to just not trusting one team. For most people, they aren't experienced enough with the genre to be able to know what what PMs they prefer and which drive them absolutely batty and the entire genre is guilty just by association.

For that reason, I'd say that one of the biggest mistakes that a team can make (if not the biggest) is failing to provide a sense of conclusion for the players if/when it becomes apparent that a game has to end - for whatever reason. It's not difficult to do a quick wrap and so, to not do so, is completely disrespectful of the players and the investment that they have made. And, it impacts not only the reputation of the team, but the genre as a whole.

[Euchre]

After some consideration there's one point made about ARGs that I can't really agree with that's been brought up as 'wrong' with ARGs is that they can't be 'replayed' or taken up like a book from the library and read later on for the same kind of enjoyment they initially generated. ARGs are living things. A game is an active thing, not a passive - that's a book. CF can not be truly chaotic once it's been played out and completed - it's now static, and has fallen into some semblance of order.

A note in response to Silent|Away: The people that whined about Cloverfield being 'unfun' in my experience were either those used to traditional ARGs or those that just wanted to come into something that was exploding with popular trend and be even cooler by putting it down. Most ARGs don't gather much of a 'hate post' audience, because the audience is so relatively small that nobody cares. I personally find the de rigeur 'puzzliness' of the traditional ARG to be unfun, but to each their own. If ARGs managed to grow enough, there'd be more "I'll be cool by calling this stupid" trolls around. There's also a factor of something very new and different - people will have strong reactions. Anyone that decided they should shout about Cloverfield being 'unfun' to ward off a bad reputation for ARGs was just deciding for others how to experience it. Isn't that the opposite of what uF is supposed to be fostering? Isn't that a sign that a sign that the genre is growing walls and donning blinders?

[Rogi Ocnorb]

Please don't discount the fact that sometimes people mean what they say.
The Cloverfield banality that infected these forums was something that I personally could have done without and don't think I ever dedicated any posting effort to state.
But you take the bad with the good.
I think we picked up a few good ARGers in the process.
Just my brace of copper coins.

[Nighthawk]

[pancito]

Doesn't count. He said good. Anyway... I know there are a fair number of people who are trying or would like to make a living off of this, but so far I greatly prefer the 'small grass roots game.' I ran Rogue Virus (which was very small) on two blogs, one Twitter and four email addys. Total $$$ = 0. Time investment was pretty intense for the couple weeks, but that was what I wanted. I could have done it differently... I enjoyed LGL a lot more than BoL/SiD partly because of the size of audience issues AUZ mentioned above. I've enjoyed all of XIII's games, even though the vast majority imploded. What's my point? Damned if I know. Just saying, I guess.

One of my favoritest SF novels of all time, Triton, by Samuel R.Delany, has this semi throw away bit about a performance group that does its work for small audiences, like 1-10. I've actually always admired that model. Bigger isn't always better. Still, I would have liked RV to be about twice as big, if only so waitress didn't end up having to do 80% of the stuff. You can't beat that kind of dedication. And that's probably what the commercial interests would like to be able to tap into.

[LordIllidan]

[RemixFiction]

Larger scale is feasible

[ndemeter]

Re: Larger scale is feasible

[Euchre]

[Fishjp]