unforum

[PinkCloud]

[addlepated]

Okay PC, here's a ripe one for you.

The "I'm Sorry" game has had numerous meta swerves with apparently IG characters accusing other IG characters of gamejacking, for instance. It's also been picked up on by conspiracy theorists who are (we presume) OOG.

The PM was invited into the chat room tonight after emailing a player a long, detailed explanation of why he was ending the game.

http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=615596#615596

Turns out his message explaining who he is, why he ran the game, and why he ended it are all... part of the game.

So he's really bending the boundaries of game space in general and discarding the tenets of TINAG principle, which is a somewhat fascinating experiment but not anything I'd be brave enough to do myself!

[PinkCloud]

[notgordian]

And here's the dilemma of having blurred boundaries: one of the "characters" in I'm Sorry was a very real person who wasn't very happy about his life being picked apart (see the transcript posted by classical for details).

http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=616255

Essentially, there were two possibilities: either Brian honestly didn't know about this game and had his sense of privacy thrown into disarray, or he was involved in the game and saw his sense of privacy rapidly disappear based on the direction of the gameplay.

I think I've already mentioned this, but this kind of situation tends to breed cautiousness in people who have played for a while, both out of respect for the privacy of potentially real people and because of the likely utility of the information.

Then again, playing the devil's advocate, the first game people play seem to form a lot of expectations towards the genre, and it seems that there's a growing segment of players that seem genuinely drawn to this type of game. So the cautiousness I mentioned may just be a result of the evolving playerbase.

[church]

i apologise if im wrong pc but i feel you are asking how much do these args take over our lives and how real do we think they are ?? if i am wrong i am sorry ""

[Agent Lex]

[PinkCloud]

[teufelsdrochk]

Re: ARG_research: share your experiences!

[classical]

Since PinkCloud asked us, here I am!

"I'm Sorry" is now over. Since it would be easier to count all the moments it DIDN'T blur the lines, I am going to try and keep this simple...

For my own sake, I did a little introspection on my experience here, so I'll try not to be repetative. Touched on a couple of points of lineblur, especially in regards to my experience with meeting Brian Bricker in Portland during ARGFest this year--which is probably the most poignant example I can think of. If you are not following the game (though who isn't these days? ), there are esentially two versions of Bricker--there is Bricker, our PM; there is also Bricker, a writer and an acting character in his own game. Both played incredibly different roles and knew different levels of information regarding this game, so it was a matter of which person he was going to be. In Portland, he was game!Bricker--simply a writer that knew nothing about what we were playing out through these forums with his own characters.

I will mention it's incredibly bizarre talking, face-to-face, on the spot, to someone else about fictional characters as if they were honest-to-god real people, especially when we're discussing things like Port's dead girl ghost and Rage's incestual relationship with his sister... (then--no lie--a Jimi Hendrix impersonator sits down at the table next to us, everyone around cries out, 'HEY JIMI!', and things just get a little weirder.)

Especially when you know the guy you're talking to is playing dumb, and playing it very (frustratingly) well. Naturally, Wulf and I bombarded him with questions while we had him, but he would only properly answer things that were answers the game!Bricker would know. He played his role--the real kicker was that we were forced to do the same thing as him.

The very nature of this game asked for us, as players, to lay own our disbelief and actually pretend at points that this was really not a game--that these characters were real, that these happenings were real--simply to get the game to work. I dunno about our other players here, but for me, it led to something of an emotional attachment to all of this. It's hard when the game so casually and constantly saunters across the line to separate your real self from something that is "just a game".

It was especially hard in regards to the character Port, who I ended up somehow being the main and only contact for about halfway throught his game. We sort of became ...friends? despite the fact that he's completely fictional.
It probably helped that I related a lot to him as a character, but I spent a long time gaining his trust and leading him around whatever got thrown at him. We had a lot of conversations regarding in-game stuff, sure, but an equal amount of time was spent sending long emails about dreams I have had and sharing favorite films with each other. He even had a nickname for me!

So, believe me when I say I tried not to, but I got ridiculously upset over Port's in-game death, despite the fact that I was totally aware of his fictional nature. (In my defense, it was all quite touching!)

That said... to have a game hit my paranoia button, to have a game bring me to real, honest tears--I wouldn't have it any other way. I really wouldn't. Maybe I should start questioning my own sanity at times like these, but... eh. I still go to sleep every night knowing that it's just a game and I can back away whenever it pushes too far, wherever that point is for me. Let me tell you--I got close to stepping out back just before our thread got pulled, just after I had made first contact with game!Bricker. I had a moment where I honestly wondered if he was really not involved, because his voice over the phone has been that convincing. I can understand that this sort of paranoia is not okay with some players; all I'd ever really ask is that they try to understand my taste in games in return.

Like I told Brian, "I'm Sorry" made me feel less like I've been playing a game for the past five months and more like I've been collaborating with him. The extreme immersion into his world of fiction made me feel like the actions I took had impact on the way this game worked. Like I, as a mere player, actually mattered.

And it was fabulous.

OI THIS GOT LONG and silly /done
There's really a lot more I could ramble about here because, seriously, I don't think there was a moment this game wasn't blurring the lines. This is just mostly about my personal relationship with the game. There's a lot more stuff I could talk about that our group experienced somewhat collectively (like our multiple gamejacks--both imagined and real, our decision to hunt down the "real" writer, and so on...)

PinkCloud: if you ever want to do any sort of follow up to the Portland interview stuff now that this is over, just shoooout!

[PinkCloud]

Classical, thank you so much for sharing your experiences here! And I really enjoyed reading your post at http://billet-deaux.com/blog/?p=93.

I also tend to immerse heavily in character interaction and have been lucky to be able to do so in smaller games where the interaction was frequent and quite personal (although not so intense as the interaction with Port that you are describing). Even though the characters are fictional and don't exist in our 'real' material/physical world the experience is still real. - Especially if you meet one of the fictional characters 'in person' like you did in Portland!
It seems like this game has been quite a ride with all those blurring moments and I'm glad you enjoyed it so much.
What was that with the real and imagined gamejacks, could you explain that please?
And yes, I'll definitely get back at you, thanks Am working on a speech on the blurring subject for Switzerland atm and I'd like to talk about "I'm sorry", too.

[classical]

Oops, I totally forogt I had posted here, haha.

[PinkCloud]

thanks for explaining Classical!

[classical]