unforum

[eOgas]

So the PMs are anonymously dropping hints and making us feel bad for not crediting them? Who was the first one btw?

EDIT: Never mind, I figured out who you're talking about. Hehe, I thought you were joking before, but that definitely sounds like a similar tone of conversation.

[rose]

[rose]

[robblatt]

I'll admit that I thought that it was possible that the PMs were either breaking the rules and posting or having people unassociated with the game that they knew posting here. Some things just seemed to happen too easily.

Although, I'll admit that I also popped up out of nowhere when the first Central Park maps started to pop up, and I'm not a PM. I'm sure that there are a lot of people that haven't posted that will post when they either solve something or something relevant to them is put forward.

[Beeswax]

Hehe, too many chaotic game designers on here (you've got to get what I'm alluding to!)

On the Anon thing ... nothing wrong with a bit of meta-gaming from the PMs in my opinion, but I don't think this is the case this time.

Anon Antipodean had been posting as a guest in the Red Book thread for a couple of weeks (pg 11 at least). Check the posts

The name changed a bit (including Anenome Antipodleons) and ended up as a registered account (Anonymous AntipoJamesDean) in Sydney - which matches the posting times (Sydney UTC+10, forum UTC-6).

Possibly a plant that maintained cover very well and deliberately mislead us but it seems unlikely. Sorry Anti for not recognising your contribution properly but you did overeact a bit!

(Only thing I found a bit odd was the use of the phrase "Piano goes in the trash" which I thought was a uniquely American term - I'm not Australian but isn't it rubbish or waste?)

[EnsO]

[yeah right]

[Relia]

[rose]

On the other hand, I googled "map, Cafe Gratitude, table" and I came up with the exact thread discussing the SF drop on the third page of results. The person who found this knew the name of the location, I just don't think it would have been that difficult to find us through google if someone really tried.

Just googling "Cafe Gratitude, table" brings up Bruce's wiki on about the 10th page of results. I'm not sure what the state of the wiki was on the day the map was found.

[FLmutant]

A few observations, meant in a friendly and developmental and pseudo-meta fashion, from someone who sometimes get labeled a "game designer" by other people. Add it to the random two cents pile.

The source of these complaints isn't really about game design, even though you're labeling it that: you're really arguing about community dynamics. You're wanting a certain pace of development, and I can tell you from experience that the pace that this community wants developments is frequently faster than what a community designer should spool them out. It is, in essence, a variant of the "powergamer vs. non-powergamer MMO dilemma" and it isn't always "bad game design" to let part of that dynamic drag back expectations. Just sayin'.

Second, it is kinda bad form to jump to assumptions that just because someone you didn't know who isn't part of the insular community contributed to a solve, that must mean it was a PM plant. Practically, you can always ASK a mod to check IP addresses. Culturally, you might need to check if you're assuming that only you are playing it. Emotionally, once the frustration gets to a certain level, it can sometimes feed on itself. I've SO been there before: those kinds of challenges are the most difficult for a PM to find an IG and not OOG solution to fix, and is the place where you have to hope the community works it out.

Third ... personally ... I've found TIMM to be one of the most impressive debut grassroots experiences I've seen since labfly came along, and it pains me sometimes when the community can't find ways to love imperfect work. The fact that this team has also had the "we're WHATmasters?" experience and have adapted a plan that wasn't-ARG to the community expectations only ups my admiration for what they've pulled off. Criticism is always fair game: the meta-armchair-PMing is a fixture of this community. Sometimes, though, that creates an impression of "OMG GLASS NOT TOTALLY FULL WTF" that makes me sad, and makes me wonder what we all can do to be embracing of new talent.

Now, back to my lurking

[krystyn]

Speculation over why this alternate Milwaukee is the way it is creates a primary driving force for play in this experience. It's not as though the players here have become ravenous, out-of-control ARGbrain zombies -- in my experience, there was quite a lot of personal interaction between players and the characters inside the game, from November's launch right up to when the holidays kicked in. There were developments and changes that were pretty consistent, and fostered the community fairly well!

So, I don't think it's sad that a few people are expressing their discomfort with the near-complete radio silence (broken, if you don't know, by an OOG message sent by one of the puppetWHATS? just a few days ago) - in fact, speculation on an in-game reason has still been tossed around along with the meta discussion.

We all tend to look for patterns in regular life: in order to drive the correct route to work, discover social cues, learn how to do new things ... People are still playing this experience, but it's just in a more meta fashion, as the pattern established early on has diminished, and the community is attempting to participate in the same pattern in spite of that.

Armchair whatever-ing is not unique to this forum/community.

People are still here and talking and discussing and throwing ideas around. As a mod, I can tell you that IP numbers are not often conclusive, and as far as I could tell, the Gratitude player could've well been legit. I don't know who's behind TIMM, personally, and so I have no benchmarks to test whether they've been violating the TOS or not. I would rather they not, and I suspect that they're not, but it's really sort of astounding how many other pupWHAT?sters either completely ignore the Unfiction TOS, or claim ignorance of any sort of OOG interaction restrictions. It is not surprising (nor alarming) to me as a community moderator that players react the way they do. It is indeed unfortunate that a few frustrated players may have run off someone who was simply trying to do something good for the game, but it was not the end of the world. It a) does not define this community, and b) does not make the TIMM PW?MW?s terrible designers. It was bad timing, and will make for an interesting story, post-mortem. Period.

(It's just part of the internet landscape, man. If I had a nickel for every time some player popped onto a certain super-hero site and was accused of being me or one of my colleagues (AKA a ninja), I would be retired, and typing on my laptop to you from some un-named private island, sipping mojitos.)

Players will play how they play. Many of them will clamor or complain, cajole, quip, or come over all contentious-like. As a player and as a WHAT?WHAT?, it's been my experience that instructing a community on how to respond to a particular experience or narrative is, to be blunt, sort of useless. You only see the squeakiest, most extroverted wheels here, by definition, since community development has been 95% text, with 5% BONUB! against Power Worker. There's plenty of other people who never say a word, and many probably think everything is just hunky-dory. There are people posting that they still really like the experience, and are willing to wait and see (AKA me, and some others.) Anyone who's truly unhappy has simply gone by now.

[FLmutant]

Quoting heavily here, Krystyn, to try to diminish what I think might be your misinterpretation of what I was expressing.

[krystyn]

WTFmasters is so the name of my next band.

(hee heeeeee)

And I guess I should've said more along the lines about agreeing with the spirit of what you were saying, because I think at the end of the day we're probably more in the same boat rather than swimming with the fishes, but you did frame a lot of suppositions as a game designer attempting to elucidate the community/masterpupwhats dynamic through discussion of design theory.

[Relia]

No straw men, only some of your own words.

[jebreject]

Everything Relia says here is golden!