unforum

[Gupfee]

I've been thinking about car forums. Why do they only talk about cars? Maybe they should talk about bicycles too. After all, they both have wheels and people ride them. Why shouldn't they change their focus? I want to talk about bicycles! They are being close-minded and dogmatic if they won't entertain the bicycle conversation. I am being reasonable by insisting that they change their mindset and allow this discussion, because I am sure I speak for all the forum members when I say something like this is wanted and needed.

I really love bicycles. You should all love them too. Let's insist on posting about bicycles in car forums. It's for their own good.

[Mike Paduada]

re: Gupfee's car forum analogy

[SpaceBass]

[krystyn]

Mike,

I think it's also potentially valuable to look at art movements like Fluxus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus

And to also explore and play with the format of environmental play inherent in sf0:

http://sf0.org/

There are a LOT of platforms and groups and movements out there that play with different boundaries and levels of engagement. And while Unfiction is a strong community/base for narrative-based cross-media experiences (most often termed ARGs, but falling within SpaceBass' delimiters of Chaotic Fiction: http://www.unfiction.com/compendium/2006/11/10/undefining-arg/), it might be worth it to really dig into the basic tenets of player:audience::puppetmaster:performer engagement yourself in order to see where *you're* willing to go.

As players, our response to stimuli is inherently valid.

As creators, we need to seriously check our motivations and egos before proceeding with our brilliance: unprepared, we run the very real risk of feeling misunderstood and overwhelmed with player response.

Once all of those things are seriously, sincerely, and thoroughly considered, design on the experience can begin.

Trust is so huge. So huge. To ignore the implications and fallout of broken trust tends to uh, well. I think you've seen that here.

Also, SpaceBass' post above mine is awesomesauce, and should be heeded.

[imbri]

[Rogi Ocnorb]

Rolling up the ideas of an "experiment", car forums and what Gupfee said, I'll try another analogy...

Mike,
If I came to you with a glass of green liquid and said, "I'd like you to drink this as an experiment. I got it from the radiator in my car. I tasted it and it tastes just like Kool Aid, so it couldn't hurt...".
Would you?
Of course not.
So I ask, "But why not"?
Any explanation you give is met with only insistence that you should really try it.
You point me to people who really know the dangers of drinking antifreeze, give examples of deaths caused by drinking antifreeze, and even make us a pitcher of real Kool Aid. But, all I can say is "But why not? It tastes so sweet. In fact, I think you should put a drinking fountain on your radiator."

Do you go immediately to Home Depot to buy a fountain?
Will I likely EVER convince you to do so?

[catherwood]

Since we're having fun with analogies, i came up with a few more, each with a slightly different spin on the problem.

I. the Unforum is an American cafe in France. We live and work and play in France (the ARG genre space) because we like it, we really do, but we built one tiny sanctuary where we can relax and speak English and just hang out. Think how rude it would be for someone to enter our Chez American and begin to lecture us about how great French is and why aren't we eating French food and participating in French politics. We completely agree with you, it's wonderful out there, but it takes effort to blend in and we just need an occasional break to recharge. You have all of France to play in, let us have the space we built where we can discuss the merits of France while being ourselves.

II. the Unforum is a vegetarian restaurant in a beef-eating world. Out of respect for the diners, we don't berate them for choosing not to eat meat. They know meat exists, they know other people enjoy it, the problem is not a lack of education or being close-minded, they just don't like the taste experience. How rude would it be to serve them a bowl of vegetable barley soup made with beef stock? Or try sneaking peanut oil into a dish to someone who is allergic to peanuts?

III. the Unforum is the observation deck. We're looking out over a busy convention center. If we were down on the floor, it would be noisy and the view would be limited to immediate surroundings; but from up on the balcony, we can hear ourselves think. We can compare the different booths from our vantage point, and we can discuss the products in details that would be inappropriate down among the crowd, where we might ruin it for them if we interrupted a booth presentation. Sure, each booth wants to send representatives up to our skybox, but that's what their floor booth is for; and if every booth had a rep in our skybox, it would be just as chaotic as the convention floor. Remember, yours is not the only booth at this convention.

IV. the Unforum is the palate cleanser. We're tasting wines, we're evaluating coffees, we're sampling from the buffet, pick your poison as they say. To properly appreciate one flavor, the tongue needs a break from the previous flavor. Diners enjoy a sorbet, coffee tasters rinse between cups; you have to exhale after smelling one flower before you can sniff the next one. The experiments being proposed want to blur the lines between real life and game world, but that cannot be done without also blurring all of the game world bounderies as well. Putting everything from the buffet into a blender means you cannot appreciate any individual flavor any more. And posting as a game character is like adding Merlot to my glass of Cabernet while I wasn't looking; it's rude, and ruins the taste of both.

[natas]

Analogies are fun

[Mike Paduada]

[xnbomb]

Mike, you'll have to forgive me for replying after you've decided you're done here, but I'm afraid if you've left me so confused that I have no choice but to ask about this:

[konamouse]

My simple view of this topic:

In unFiction we talk ABOUT the ARGs. The PM of the game and the characters of the game do NOT talk ABOUT their game - because to the characters it is NOT a game. unFiction remains outside the world of the game.

To PLAY with the characters, we rely on email, chat, blogs, livejournal, twitter and IN GAME forums created by the PMs of that particular game, or created by the players as a space where the characters can mass communicate with the players.

A perfect example of that would be http://www.sentryoutpost.com/forums/ for Eldritch Errors (now in it's second year)! There has been loads of internet AND real life interaction with characters - but completely OUTSIDE of unFiction. This is an ARG of the type Star et al are talking about - happening right now! There is no need for uF to change it's philosophy.

Another example from years ago (because I was soooo fully immersed) would be Sammeeeees. The PM never even came into our player chat room, she never posted in our thread. She used blogs and livejournal and MySpace for her characters to communicate with us...and we used those spaces for us to communicate with eachother and the characters in the game space. It was a very immersive experience and in the first game that curtain was pulled very tightly - we all thought there were dozens of actors/PMs and had interaction in real life (both in England and in California).

However, I've enjoyed (for the most part) the conversation.

[AUZ505]

My 2 cents:

When I joined this community and was involved in the first IG/OOG discussion I was fascinated by the idea to have a full immersive ARG with no OOG forum like this one (if you are interested: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=25192).

But in the meantime I am pretty sure - even without having this experiment - that it won't work. Just a few reasons why:

If it is fully immersive (everyone believes it really happens) people will immediately start to act differently. They will stop sharing information. Why? In almost all ARGs there are good characters and bad characters and there is information that the bad characters should not know (the main motivation for most codes/puzzles). I think no one will post the solution to a puzzle because he fears the bad people will also see this.
This will lead to situation where some players will contact each other in a private, non open way to exchange information. In this case I guess most other players can not participate and I fear the PM can not control the game at all.

The game would be like reality and in reality people won't post important information on a public forum. Just take any ongoing or finished ARG and browse through the forum posts. If you would count up all posts that the poster would probably not post if he knews IG characters could read and use this information you will end up with a huge number. The rest is probably very uninteresting.

Even now - with a curtain - people hesitate to post information they got when they are asked "do not tell anybody". Why? Because the curtain is very thin from here to the IG world. Other players can write to an IG character that they heard from a friend that (***insert any private information***).

[FLmutant]

I always manage to show up late for these parties, sometimes after the guests of honor have already left! In the hopes that they still might be occassionally lurking this thread that they inspired, I wanted to drop in a perspective (and I do with only love and support in my heart for this community and for the broader community of experimenters on the creative side.)

I think I get the suggestion of an area in UF where "rule one" (the OOG rule) doesn't apply, but I share the perspective that this isn't really very different from setting up your own IG forums except for three major differences: (1) you're hoping it is already populated with people, thus reducing the "participant recruitment" challenge; (2) you don't become responsible for fueling all of the discussions in that area; (3) someone else will be doing the moderation work, but without a framework of rules to help guide their hand of moderation.

As a fellow experience creator, I sympathize with all of these design challenges ... but think they are just that: design challenges. The challenges of participant recruitment are very real, but imagine what a "spam pit" such a forum here might become if every experience designer (commercial and non-commercial) were using it in the same way? More than likely, it wouldn't become a particularly strong node of community -- goal #2 gets solved, but in the process eliminates goal #1. Conversely, I've found that even with IG forums you don't end up needing to be the primarily source of content once you get that community to gel a little bit: the experience you're providing should be fueling most of that, but the character interactions can be exceedingly fun. There are even design choices that can be made to help an IG forum meet test #3 (EE's IG forums are completely player moderated now, even though they started as character moderated.)

From experience, there are both disadvantages and advantages to UF being the way it is. Among those disadvantages (from a PMs perspective) is not being able to stick your fingers in it, but among the advantages is being able to stick your eyeballs in it and learn more about what your players are experiencing. The fact that the community doesn't want to change that isn't a sign of lack of support, but an issue of scalability and experience. Didn't necessarily make sense to most of us when we first encountered it, but there's a certain wisdom to it ... and a complete willingness to discuss it (if perhaps an occassional weariness from having the discussion over and over again.)

Like Spacie said -- don't just leave the discussion because it isn't going the way you like. The fact that others are investing themselves in having this conversation with you should be taken as a sign of respect and support, even if they aren't agreeing with you.

[SpaceBass]

 For your review and comment

[notgordian]

Space: this kind of issue was actually one of the main reasons I created the thread to move the issue over.

In my mind, there is a fairly fine line between gamejacking and user-generated content, and knowing when you should, as a player, bow out of the conversation seems like a fairly important point. I would like to think that a mental partition should be enough: as long as you don't talk about your user-generated content in the thread, UF is fair game for posting.

Obviously, this shouldn't be a hard-and-fast rule, since I don't see a problem with somebody saying "hey I created an in-game blog and here's the link to it." However, as a sliding scale, the more involved you get with storyline / puzzle creation, the stronger the imperative gets to not post about it.

Why do I think this is a good rule guideline? Because posts both convey information and set priorities, attracting people's attention to certain elements. When your interest shifts from giving people information to saying "hey look at me" the free flow of information breaks down a little and people stop talking to other people and start talking at them. And when you're invested in promoting stuff you made, the likelihood of having that kind of breakdown in communication increases.

I don't think we want to drive games with high levels of participation/control out of UF (which a very strict interpretation of the PM discussion ban might entail) but I think there should be some minimal limits on posting. Having said that, I realize this would be a moderation nightmare, so it would have to be a self-enforcing kind of guideline.