unforum

[kosmopol]

I wrote today (29.02.) to tagruato team about Employees of the March in the hope they would answer 1st of the March. But they replied already some hours later, in February.


Do they are active today.

Have to ask them again, lol.

[CynAnne]

[Melodyman]

10 days until opening and things are kinda slow, dontcha think? Can only wonder about the concept.. and if its been played out as conceived.. C'mon BR.. Release the Kraken already!!

[ljm]

[v37]

[Pixiestix]

[AntaresMHD]

I don't think they hijacked or tried to do something on behalf of Paramount/BR, but I doubt there was an ARG at all until BR got wind of the demand. The whole puzzle pieces thing didn't amount to anything at all and was just a distraction until they set up the sites and got something going.
I mean I don't blame them for that, but it was a clear lack of oversight, since November 15th they (BR) were sure they had something solid, they had enough time to work on a short but compelling ARG, but they kind of let Swamp Pop do its own thing first.

[Pixiestix]

I am willing to concede that SP may have piggy-backed onto the entire promotion, but gamejack is a harsh and frankly over (and wrongly) used phrase that's been being thrown around all week.

[AntaresMHD]

[gimlet]

I have a different theory that I came up with accidentally a while back.

I think this is Bad Robot's second attempt at something they first did a few months back here:

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=17833

Rapidly iterative community engagement.

I think they are coming up with a lot of this stuff on the fly, based on our input and speculation. It's not necessarily a bad way to do things, but it's not super fufilling for us as informed players. I think to do it well you've got to do a lot of planning & research ahead of time, which I think they've occasionally neglected to do here (despite a wealth of time to do it) but since you can't know ahead of time where your players want you to go, it's a bit inevitable.

Still, I salute how responsive this has allowed them to be, and have been.

If I'm right this is quite experimental for them, and experiments get messy sometimes.

I think it's why we're in a lull now. The phone drama really borked the next stage of their plan, and they needed the time it would have taken us to to place this piece of the puzzle to give them the time to make the next one. Time is definitely tricky to this kind of development.

This also explains Swamp Pop. It was what we gravitated to initially, so they came up with a way that gently nudged us in game that referenced the last Cloverfield arg.

Overall, it's not my favourite way to ARG but it's not so bad if you think of it like a chess game we're both (players and PMS) playing together.

[Melodyman]

Still dont get how Swamp Pop was instructed to include 3 puzzle pieces with every order and how they knew who was ordering from the films fanbase as compared to regular customers..? I mean, why would BR equip SP with boxes of Eiffel Tower puzzles with no explanation of what to do with them? To me its a strange disconnect from everything else that has been put forth..

[kosmopol]

I don't know about genesis of this ARG. Perhaps an ARG wasn't planned initially, and SP story was rather a marketing gag. But as they've seen our global urge for an ARG, they made one. For this small amount of time a pretty well one.

[IronJ146]

I think people were looking for too much from the Eiffel Tower imagery. Personally, I think it served as little more than bread crumbs. A guide post, if you will, to get us onto the trail. Frankly, it served that purpose between the puzzle pieces in SP, the image on FaPT, then the bag with the phone. The puzzle pieces in the ammo case sort've reinforces that these are breadcrumbs more so than the actual image having an important meaning.

Think about if SP did nothing. Fans of BR fans are sort've conditioned to start looking for clues in trailers, especially if it's a relatively unfamiliar treat (to the untrained eye, of course) of some kind (slusho, rocket pops, etc.). That poor business would've been slammed with inquiries just by being in the film. The image on their site and inclusion of the puzzle pieces was more or less a nod to "yea, there's a thing, get to searching". Not everything in these experiences have to be their own deep mystery. They may not have had intimate knowledge of everything going down with the film and/or the game, but they were certainly prepared to participate.

I made a point to wait a couple of weeks to order some SP and finally got it last week. No puzzle pieces, but that Satsuma Fizz is the jam.

[Salo]

[gimlet]

So firstly. Yes, I agree with all of that, guys.

Secondly, Seems like Discord users are now openly and hugely trolling the Reddit sub for some indescernable reason. Thankfully the mods are starting a pre release crack down and so they are also getting themselves shadow banned by the bucketful lol.

Still. This not exactly going to prove they're the friendly, open trustworthy fellows they made themselves out to be.

The "leaker" situation is also melting down as that thread thankfully got deleted and user got banned but he contacted another user and was whispering to him that it only happened because that one of the mods is a Paramount shill which is so completely ludicrous.

Which is to say: Mods are doing their best, but with the coming of the release Reddit is becoming more and more of a shit show, so watch out over there guys it's getting messy :/