unforum

[Elijah Snow]

Player Personas

[Ozy_y2k]

CAVE BEAR DIES TONIGHT!!!!

Ahem. Okay, sorry. What I REALLY mean to say is: this phenomenon that imby and Elijah are describing is a sort of cyclical thing that happens in the earliest stages of any reasonably successful ARG, and we're getting to the point as players and PMs where we should expect, anticipate, and plan for it as part of the game cycle.

That is, the initial stages of any game are ripe (perhaps OVERripe) for player experimentation. Virtually overnight, literally legions of lurkers (woo consonance) will materialize as their own fully-formed and realized personae -- at least fully-formed and realized in their own minds -- and will clamor to become part of the game tapestry. Whether they all want to make an impact, or be the puzzle-solvin' hero, or not, is immaterial; what is important is that they all want to EXIST, to be recognized in the game milleu.

This is a stage. Fully half of these players if not more can not keep this furious pace of interaction up over the course of a long ARG (CTW, for example, is projected to last something like six months), and therefore after the initial crush of emails many players will become bored, frustrated, agitated, or merely distracted by the other responsibilities of their daily lives and will therefore fade quietly into the woodwork. Slowly, eventually, a hardcore cadre of game afficionados will develop, firm up their respective relationships to the in-game characters, and correspond appropriately with the PMs in role-play mode. Others will devote themselves solely to the pursuit and solution of puzzles. Most of the rest will revert to lurkerdom, or wander elsewhere across the landscape of the Internet.

This is a sort of evolutionary process. It's like staring a brand-new puzzle paradigm in the face and literally trying every tool at your disposal for a while, even seemingly ludicrous approaches, because you just plain flat out don't know what's gonna work. Until you get into the minds of the PMs and see behavioral patterns develop (whether those patterns be a sense that they want to adhere to regularly-scheduled "update days," or a tendency to prefer to use a few in-game characters to handle the brunt of the interaction, or what have you), you just don't know what is "in-boundaries" and what isn't.

Historically, the ARG genre has developed a few tropes. For example, it is now de rigeur for a dedicated player, upon stumbling across a new website, to make a beeline for the WHOIS. Similarly, in the earliest stages of a new game, spamming every workable email address in sight is not an inherently bad approach. However, as the players get smarter about looking behind the curtain, so do the PMs. They hide elaborate puzzles or in-jokes in the site registration data. They set up email autoresponders for "dummy" email addresses. In other words, they find subtle ways to tell the player "here is where we WILL allow you to go, and here is the unfinished, off-limits, or just plain irrelevant portions of our little alternate world." Smart, perceptive players instinctively sense these limitations and roll with the punches, incorporating each piece of new data into their online persona. And slowly, gradually, the newbies either become veterans or fall away, and the world of the game gradually returns to some sense of equilibrium.

Give it time. Time wounds all heels.

Old Man Ozy On The Mountain

[ThomasRStevenson]

From a newbies point of view.

[vpisteve]

[ZeusLegion]

I think Imbri left out a third option which is that of adopting your own in-game persona but also sticking with it logically in the game universe.

Some people prefer to play as themselves, others want to become someone or something else to, as Ozy said, become part of the tapestry of the game, to give the PM's something to play off of. To say "Hey, you can use my character to further your own ends for the game, wink wink, nudge nudge."

One of the most exciting developments from LockJaw was that the players completely affected the ending of the game and even the course of the game. If the game is immobile and inflexible, its not going to be a very good game. It should flow like water and evolve by proper player interaction.

I think some hard and fast "rules" the genre could use are:

1. Feel free to play as yourself or an adopted persona BUT keep it real within the game universe and be aware that what you do affects these characters in real ways. You may want to become part of the tapestry but you're not going to be happy (nor are other players) if you become known as "the person that got so-and-so killed".

2. Do not ever tell an in-game player that they are fictional or that they reside in a fictional universe. Don't mention the game to them at all and be careful what you say to them, especially if you don't trust them 100%.

3. PM's should establish their rules from the start of the game by rewarding those who follow the right line of investigation. Let them know that improper behavior can harm in-game characters or even cut off a player completely from access to that character if they continue to push too far. The PM's control whether the characters see our correspondence or not as well as how the characters respond. They should use that to the game's advantage. PM's should also send CLEAR, SOLID responses that get the point across otherwise a player may continue their behaviour thinking that the response was muddied and thus its ok to do so.

I realize that not all PM's or players are going to agree with me on this but I think the few successful ARG's in existence have proven these points. We are all willing to work with the PM's to make the game as entertaining as possible but they have to lead the way if they have any hope of properly containing/directing hundreds of players who have a common goal but different methods of achieving it.

There are many, many creative ways to deal with improper behavior.

Imagine this lovely email being received by the Marzanos for example:

"Hey Sal, Dale is at the mental institute at Klepsydia. You can probably pay off an intern, sneak in and whack him."

This can affect the game drastically IF the PM's decide to acknowledge that Sal has indeed received the email. Otherwise, they can come up with several creative ways to dismiss it:

"Thanks for the info, pal. We owe ya one. The heat is up just a little too high right now otherwise we might take your advice and fry that fish. I think we'll wait until it defrosts if you know what I mean." -salSPLATemptythreats.com

or

"Look, buddy. I am a legitimate businessman and I resent what yer implyin', capiche? Don't send me unsecure emails talking about stuff like this you got it?" -salSPLATemptythreats.com

or

"Listen turdball, you ever heard of a little thing called CARNIVORE? You send me another email talkin' about whackin' people and the Feds'll be on my butt like white on rice and if that happens, I'm gonna whack you, your dog and your grandma too." -cementshoesSPLATanonymousmailer.com

or

The PM's could send the player an email back from the character's ISP telling them that they've been blocked as spam. They'll get the message to back off.


The PM's could even choose to go so far as to kill off Dale but a few warning shots here and there and some creative responses could prevent the need to be that severe.

A PM has to realize that he cannot control every player and not every player understands how these types of games are played or how the PM's expect the players to act.

What the PM's CAN control however is FATE ala whether the email ever arrived or a twist of fate sent it off to limbo. They can also control character responses/actions.

A little give, a little take and a lot of flexibility will solve this issue.

That's my 2 cents.

Z

[Stevoid]

Another newbie's pov

[rose]

Players perspective

[konamouse]

Re: Players perspective