unforum

[Crowfoot]

 [Contact] The Interaction Thread

[silverthistle]

AIM and YIM: slvrthistle
E-mail: slvrthistle AT yahoo DOT com

[hkdl]

PMs seem to know my contact info already

[Nightmare Tony]

AIM: Nightmaretony
Email: Nightmaretony at Yahoo.com

But keep the good games a comin!

[PokeKiller]

I'm constantly under attack by trailheads?
* Poke shrugs

AIM and YIM: PokeKiller2k
E-mail: PokeKiller2k at yahoo dot com
or
Poke2k at gmail dot com (Checked less often... Yes, I'm insane, I know)

[colin]

Also a note to PMs you can look at members profiles to get contact info

[Crowfoot]

[Alzheimers]

Didn't RGAlliance have a feature that allowed players to submit personal info (email, mailing addresses, phone #, etc) for PMs to use to reach out and touch them? Whatever happened to that?

[imbri]

Just an FYI...

I'm working on a sort of ARG social networking site for a course project. Basically, every player can submit information to the site, as little or as much info as they're comfortable with. Don't worry though, you will have control over who sees what information you display. For example, if you post your city/state and only want your friends to see it, that works. If you post your email and only want registered to see it, you can do that too. If you post your phone number and only want the PMs of games you played to see it, you will have the power to make that happen. Other information will be available site wide by those that are registered or not, such as the games that you have played and your favorite ARG moments.

For those that were around way back when, this will basically be a ramped up CMDB that will allow you to associate yourself with certain games, so you can see who else played them with you. A few people at school are also calling it the IMDB for ARGs as it will list out each game with full credits and, much like the IMDB, each name will be a link to everything else that they have done. The games database will also be made available in an xml format for anyone to have (not to worry, that's only for the games stuff!). I figure it will be a great way to keep a central depository of game info (title, running dates, pm team, basic plot, sites, characters, etc etc) and the various ARG sites can grab whatever info they want out of it (live games only, games & run dates, games & run dates & dev teams, etc etc) in a simple format that will automagically update itself.

So, um, as you can see, this has become a pretty big project that I'm undertaking and it's far more work than what I actually have to do by Monday to turn in (esp since I have 4 other projects due Mon/Tues). The problem is that I want this site as fully developed as possible as soon as possible as I think that it might come in quite handy as things ramp up this summer. So, if anyone has a good grasp of PHP and a chunk or two or ten of free time... get in touch with me! You'll get some goodies (though not much as I'm a poor grad student) and a ton of ARG karma (everyone will love you! especially me!) out of the deal as well I'll explain the project further and see where you can best help out. Really, a few hands would be good... we could split up the work and, hopefully, make it go pretty quickly

- b

[vpisteve]

We talk about this whole idea of some sort of central database for players to opt in and for PMs to get access to to use in a game as if it's a new idea. Well, it's not. It's an old (but not necessarily bad) idea, and has been tried before.

Personally, while I think it's not a bad idea, in practice, it's proven to be rather pointless, as any game worth its salt will have a way to obtain player information in an in-game way. To me, this is the most sensible, not to mention logical way of doing things, and it makes the most sense in a Meta game sort of way.

How would an ingame character obtain your private information, otherwise? He approached the owner of the database and asked for it? Then there's the whole who can have access to this information/do they pay for it/is it public/ can of worms.

I love imbri's idea, but at the same time, a Puppetmaster would be better served to utilize player info provided via his/her own game. They'd be more assured that the info is current, and more importantly, that the player is interested in their game.

[imbri]

I just wanted to express my agreement with what Steve mentioned. When I came up with the idea of the arg network bit, it was NOT so that puppetmasters would have an easy resource to mine for potential players. In fact, the only reason that potential was explored was because of the way in which the database was put together and just as it will be easy for players to allow PMs to see their information, it's similarly easy to exclude that information from PMs while allowing those you've identified as friends to view the information.

And as I've argued a number of times in the past, PMs farming player data is silly. Not only is there no "in game" reason for them to have that info, it might not be the info that a player would provide to a game. I know many set up specific email accounts for various games... a very wise idea, esp when you don't know who is behind the game. It makes absolutely no sense for players to get information from in game characters/companies/whatnots when they have not provided the character/company with that information in the first place. The thrill of an ARG is (usually) not being forced information, it is in the personal discovery of that information. If you have done nothing to find the information, where's the thrill?

The assignment is actually served by creating the game database. I just thought that it would be fantastic to include something other than the games, especially in light of the project ARGtalk took on (though it has serious flaws, such as being static code for people to take...we'll wind up with a bunch of outdated info all over the place as people have to make the effort to update the info). Seeing as I percieve one of the true values of the genre to be the community that forms around the games, I thought that should be highlighted and that there should be an easier way for people to get to know one another both virtually and physically.

So, no, it's not a database being set up to give PMs a resource though it is theoretically possible but only by the players choice!

- b

[zeldafan8626]

aim: zeldafan8626

msn: zeldafan8626 at msn dot com

e-mail: zeldafan8626 at gmail dot com

[Saevitia]

aim: Cave Corvus

email: saevitia AT gmail DOT com

[jbd]

[Darkstar]

AIM- MuseDarkstar

MSN- muse_darkstarSPLAThotmail.com

Email- muse.darkstarSPLATgmail.com