unforum

[catherwood]

[imbri]

[krystyn]

I think where you might be tripping up a little on concepts, natas, is not the idea that Steve created Martin and played him out as a persona and would have, in your estimation, 'done no harm' to anyone with his actions.

The issue is that he did it here in these environs. In a way, it doesn't actually matter what his intentions were: the community's expectations were broken in a fundamental way by his actions. The expectations were in place long before Martin came along, therefore establishing precedence in policy over exclusive knowledge by Steve of that policy being breached.

We all have our own highly-individualized opinions (or non-knowledge) of what he did, but when it comes down to it, the expectations of trust were fractured without anyone's knowledge but Steve's. It does not matter that he does or does not kick puppies for fun -- this forum's delineation of the boundaries of trust is one of the things we can count on, when the rest of the time we all have to deal with Real Life and/or the Mysteries and Uncertainties of Alternate Reality Games.

Anyway, that's enough blah blah from me. I am, as the internet kids say, not at all butthurt over this particular incident, but I am very glad for the truthfulness from Steve, and the Unforums' adherence to long-standing policy.

[natas]

[imbri]

[natas]

[imbri]

[natas]

[Varin]

[Rekidk]

I didn't know Martin very well, so I wasn't really upset when I learned that he wasn't real. Like krystyn said, everyone's going to have a different opinion on this, so I'm not going to delve too deeply into my personal feelings on the subject.

However, this does bring up an interesting meta-point that's worth discussing. If Martin hadn't joined Unforums, would this be any different? In other words, is it ethically irresponsible for a character to enter into a conversation with someone who doesn't know that they're talking to a character? This issue goes back to LG15, when some people felt betrayed that the girl who they poured their emotions out to turned out to be an actress. (It's important to note than many more people were intrigued by the idea.) I suppose that the feelings of betrayal are more-or-less proportional to the amount of time/emotion invested into a "person" (character).

The problem is that ARGs sometimes target people who don't (at first, anyway) know about their fictional nature. If I created a character who joined an online Alcoholics Anonymous forum, interacted there, and then was kidnapped - would that be ethically wrong? Some might say that it's just the way the trailhead was designed. Would it change if my character joined the same AA forum, but I later launched an ARG about him to the Unfiction audience (who could then google him and discover his online presence on that forum)?

Even more ambiguous: what if I deliberately created a fictional character on MySpace than interacted with players (who knew that the character was fictional), and then my character was befriended by non-players who began to interact and befriend the character (unknowingly assuming that the character is real). Is it ethically wrong for a PM to continue interacting with these non-players without telling them that the character is fictional? (One might argue that an ARG should have some "hints" to tell players that it's fictional, but for the sake of argument, let's say that these hints are too subtle for the non-players.) Does the PM have the moral duty to break curtain to tell these non-players that the character they're interacting with is fictional?

In other words, what happens when innocents get caught in the crossfire of an ARG? And more importantly, what should PMs be doing about it?

[ndemeter]

[danteIL]

I'm coming in very late to all of this, but those of you who know me also know that I love me some meta. I'm glad that imbri brought up the PixelVixen comparison, because that situation (which I also only recently learned about), combined with this one, has gotten me thinking about the intermittent problem that ARGs have had with the 'hoax' label. And somehow in my stew of thoughts this is also tied up with the entire question of ARGs and 'immersion.' So, it seems to me that one motivation behind 'Martin' was to create a richer sense of verisimilitude (aka 'backstory') than is usually possible with the standard cache o' backdated blog entries that is more typical in ARGs. I think we can all respect the game-design motivations behind that decision, even if we also agree that perhaps interacting on UF wasn't the best way to go about it. But Rekidk brings up an interesting point which was one of my initial thoughts too -- which is, well, wouldn't it have been cool if Martin had confined himself to photography and travel communities, leaving a rich and 'authentic' trail of interactions for players to discover and follow when it came time for the ARG to kick in? At first that sounds great -- it establishes the reality of the character without infringing on unFiction. But, the case of PixelVixen illustrates why this isn't such a good alternative either -- as ndemeter points out, the members of those communities are not 'in' on the game, and when inevitably they do find out about the fictional nature of this person, anger and confusion will result (along with a lot of 'shrug', admittedly). And ARGs become further tarred with the 'hoax' brush. Not good.

So around about here my stew of thoughts turn toward the concept of TINAG -- which is, of course, one of those eternally confounding centers of debate. I won't try to resolve those debates -- in some contexts TINAG seems to mean that the characters in the game don't realize that it is a game, while at other times this is taken to mean that for players there is no separation between game-life and real-life -- that is, the game can ring your phone and send you email just like anyone else can. Obviously, these two aspects are intertwined -- to the extent that the characters believe in their reality, and your game-self is part of their reality, then they will (and should) interact with you like they would as if they were real. TINAG as a design-goal originated, as far as I know, with The Beast -- and given that The Beast was set in the year 2142, it seems appropriate that it would have adopted TINAG as its mantra -- in that context (i.e., interaction with the future), the richness and internal consistency of the world it created was enhanced by doing everything possible to convince the players that they were having an effect upon events in some far-off time.

Nowadays, however, I think that it can safely be said that most games are set, more or less, in our current time and place. Even if they involve robots or vampires or cryptids, the essential framework of these game worlds are for the most part altered versions of our own (and yes, I'm sure that counterexamples probably exist, given that I'm not aware of every ARG in existence). This can be a good thing -- since we are obviously most familiar with our own lives and times, we (as players) can easily supply the necessary details to flesh out and fill in the gaps in the game world (I suspect that this may have benefits from the development side as well). Also, when the game world reaches out into the real world -- because it is congruent with *our* real world -- the boundaries between the game and reality are blurred. On the surface, this is a feature of ARGs, not a bug. And yet..

In a game set in 2142, this game-world/real-world boundary is relatively rigid, obviously -- the very essence of the game-world is by definition very foreign from our own. Hence, TINAG becomes a reasonable goal because the game content itself serves as a signal that this is a game (and I do think you need those signals, even if they are not omnipresent). In a game set in 2009, however, this boundary is much less obvious. Even if the game involves vampires or robots, these vampirebots may be doing things that we recognize and do everyday, like post blogs and buy videogames and shop at Target. On the surface, they're just like us!. Cool, right? But therein lies the danger -- because, to circle back around to Martin, we still need to know that we are playing a game in order to approach the game appropriately. When that boundary is lost, then confusion results. Thus, it seems to me, that for ARGs toward the end of the alternate-reality continuum (and it *is* a continuum) that is more like our 'real' world, TINAG as a philosophy needs to be supplanted, in some important circumstances, with "TIAG" -- explicitly marking out the game space as such. I realize that the makers of PixelVixen tried to do this (i.e., mark her as a fictional entity), but it is likely that they realized that if they made the markers that said "this is just a game" too obvious, then people (i.e., naive 'civilians' not in on the game) wouldn't take the character/etc. seriously in the way that was needed to fully flesh her out as authentic. Same goes for Martin. In my opinion, however, it is the responsibility of the game designers, especially when working within a game world that closely mirrors our own or that is in some ways intertwined with real-world entities, to err on the side of caution -- that is, they should give up some verisimilitude in favor of direct information.

Anyway, what I'm saying probably isn't anything new, and this is too long, but these are just some thoughts I've been having.

[Rekidk]

[thebruce]

[BlackandBlue]

We are all players on a stage