unforum

[imbri]

ARG and Role Playing

[mysteryjones]

Weighing in on the controversy

[scrivener22]

The more I read about AWARE, the more I understand the point imbri is making above.

This genre of ours, the one we call 'alternate reality gaming,' has a certain set of very specific parameters, within which appear all the variety and innovation we've seen in games so far.

An ARG, as imbri states above and elsewhere, by necessity, is predicated upon entering a world not your own. Whether that world is believable or not is a separate subject, but the fact remains that you, not a character you play, is accepting the world and the characters within at face value. imbri refers to this phenomenon as 'experiencing' this world (rather than playing a game), which is an adept characterization of an ARG's nature.

Choosing to 'play' a character within the ARG world, as AWARE seems to require, strikes me as less than kosher. Of course, playing a character in an ARG world is nothing new (ask rose about her flirtations in Acheron sometime), nor is choosing sides in an ARG-related conflict. Some people were pro-A.I. during the Beast and some were against, and that affected how they played the game. And don't forget, we all 'chose' a side in Acheron, and damn if it wasn't the wrong one.

But actually choosing to be a 'spy' or an 'employee' in an ARG makes me uncomfortable, because it shifts too much emphasis from the 'reality' part to the 'game' part. In ARGs past, we were exactly who we claimed to be: average, ordinary, concerned citizens, trying to figure out who killed this Chan guy, or what the story is with this time machine. With the right sort of suspension of disbelief, it was a perfectly plausible thing for a bunch of computerish puzzle fiends to be doing. To assume the role of a spy--not pretending to be one to get information or trust from an in-game character, but to actually be one for purposes of the story--is undeniably a radical departude from the traditions of our genre.

Look, if this seems like I'm bashing the AWARE PMs, I'm really not. I haven't played the game, I've just read people's posts on it, so I'm in no position to knock their efforts. It's just that this sort of gaming represents a real step away from ARG towards a traditional role-playing game, and it's important to acknowledge that.

The point mysteryjones makes about Survivor is also interesting (hey, quit laughing) because of the unique nature of this season; namely, that the castaways knew each other before the start of the game.

In every other Survivor in history, the contestants began the game as total strangers; as such, every action they took, every 'friendship' they made, every alliance they entered was entirely within the context of the game.

In ASS (the fans' unfortunate acronym for 'All-Star Survivor'), however, the players entered the game, not only with preconceived notions of each others' playing styles, but also with some real, strong friendships, with Lex van der Berghe and Rob Mariano being the most pertinent example. So when Rob welshed on his deal with Lex, he was going beyond mere strategy, and the 'back-stabbing' complained of in other seasons. He was betraying a real, out-of-character friendship--one that Rob himself had exploited to save his girlfriend, Amber Brkich. And the problem with the million-dollar voting that mysteryjones mentioned stemmed from this sort of blurring between OOC-Rob and Survivor-Rob: people couldn't help taking into considerations the out-of-game friendships Rob had created and betrayed, and had difficulty separating those actions from the ones they were supposed to use to determine who was more 'worthy' of the prize.

How does all this relate to our genre? (It does, I promise.) In both of my big-time ARGs (the Beast and Acheron), people took action, flirted with characters, applied for jobs, attended protest rallies, and so on, but it was understood that it was of course all taking place inside the game, and that people were free to discuss the game out-of-character and be assured that they were all working towards the same goal.

In AWARE, though, you don't have that same assurance, as rose learned in her incident with saucy. Supposedly, everyone's working to play the same 'game,' but since people are assuming in-game personae that are completely removed from their real-life identities, and those personae are on different sides of a conflict and have to attack each other, it becomes far too difficult to discern between the real person and the role that that person must play in order to participate. So that's what I guess makes me so uncomfortable about all thise: that it's necessary to adopt a fictional in-game persona, and then pit that creation against other personae, which are attached to real people with real feelings. It's supposed to be hard to tell where the alternate-reality ends and real-reality begins, but not that way.

[Slyfox]

Though AWARE has developed more closely along the lines of a RPG I feel that every ARG must do so to some extent if the concept of an ARG is to function. I say this for the following reasons,

Suspension of Identity. Many of us 'assume' an identity for reasons of personal privacy when we post on UF. I for example am not a fox (or even called Mr Fox) and I assume that Giskard is not a mind controlling robot etc. Though we may be entirely honest and truthful when we post here we are not necessary being 'ourselves'; we maintain a certain degree of anonymity.

Suspension of Belief. To 'play' we must actively acknowledge the principal of TINAG which would imply that to some extent we recognise that TIAG. This is implicit in the fact that no one ever posts comments like "I've just phoned the Chamber of Commerce for the Amboy area and they have no knowledge of a company called Ideltech or a Marcus Thesburg. It's just one big con everybody!" Therefore, every time we interact with a character in an ARG we know that they are not real though we suspend that knowledge whilst we interact.

Suspension of Action. There are things that we do and say within an ARG that we would not necessarily do in real life and in response the PMs must at times restrict the actions of the characters in order to maintain the narrative. For example, when Krystal was kidnapped *for real*did anybody actually call the police or the FBI? Stop and think about this for a moment. If you *really* thought a young woman had been kidnapped by a psychotic individual would you first call the authorities or log on to a website to discuss it. Then, once Krystal is released what is one of the first things she does. She logs into an IRC session to chat about her ordeal.

Whilst all of these do not necessarily make an ARG a RPG they are all requirement of a RPG.
Equally, in the most part an ARG does not go so far as to require you to adopt a completely new identity, believe you live in a different Universe, and be willing to act in ways completely contrary to your own nature. I believe both ARGs and RPGs are forms of escapism (like novels or films) that share many common aspects. AWARE may be more of a RPG than other ARGS have been in the past but perhaps that is a natural consequence of moving away from a fixed perspective narrative to an interactive storyline in which the lines between good and evil become blurred. AWARE may not be to everyone taste or liking but as far as I am aware it is trying something new and should be praised for that if nothing else. We exist as a community which both supports its members and the idea or ARGing. I am perhaps a little naïve in saying this but I severely doubt that anyone who posts here in a regular fashion wished any ill will against other member. Occasionally we may injure each others feelings but I doubt it is ever down out of true malice.

Finally, perhaps the only way to overcome the requirement for the suspension of belief would be for an ARG to become truly interactive as in the film 'The Game.' With that thought in mind how many of us would have liked a knock on the door, or a visit at work from the FBI linking us to the disappearance of young woman. How would we have explained our lack of action? How would we have justified keeping the 'my puppy mpg' a secret? How would we explain the intercepted emails to Mr Palser traced back to our computers?

Do we really want that level of immersion?

[Varin]

[Slyfox]

[Wolf]

SlyFox:

[Slyfox]

[Wolf]

Geez, it's hard to put into words the differences. They both need interactivity to some degree.

To me, the difference is in an ARG, you find a world parallel to ours, with "real" people, and snoop around in their business. You might or might not be able to directly influence it, but you're part of it. You get info and move the plot along by your own discoveries and hypotheses, rather than what a character directly tells you. You might talk directly to a character on occasion (Barbie in LJ) or you may never have any direct contact with them (Jo, Chet, and the majority of the LJ cast). You're still very much part of that world, even if most of the characters in it don't "know" you're there or ever acknowledge your existence.

In an RPG, you become an integral part of the story and its movement through direct contact with characters rather than, say, clues and puzzles woven into the fabric of the world created. You essentially become a character. The big difference here between the traditional RPG and the current experiments happening is that their stories have to be fixed in general but still allow enough wiggle room to maintain the illusion that you're affecting the progress of the story.

I guess, to me, using traditional communication methods like mail and chat for the majority of the contact and to move the plot forward just feels more traditionally RPG-y rather than ARG-y…but that might just be me.

Edited to add: Here's something that just hit me about the differences. ARGs give you what you need and leave the fine fill-in-the-blanks part up to the players, letting them flesh out the game universe on their own. RPGs tend to spell it out for you (like with e-mails describing exactly what happened to a character during a particular period, etc). Both can be engaging in their own ways but they're not the same animal. Bah...I'm murking it up more by trying to clarify it.

[Varin]

[MageSteff]

[ScarpeGrosse]

In my opinion, there are two things, in terms of chat and IM interactions, that distinguish between RPG-y and ARG-y interaction: 1) Element of Suprise and 2) Explorable Domain

1) Element of Suprise: To make this outrageously simple to start with, I see it as the difference between scheduling a meeting time and place, and being caught off guard. For instance, in Acheron, and to some extent AWARE, there's a large push to schedule "chats" with characters, making you feel more like you're involved in a business meeting or dinner party. While all fine and dandy in "reality", I find that the process of scheduling prepares you too much as a player for the interaction. You become able to script your questions, and as chats progress and get longer and less informative and more social (due to the mere nature of getting to know 'the character'), you become almost desensitized to the experience and the magic of the interaction becomes decreased.
However, if you're just sitting at your computer one evening, and a character happens to IM you randomly out of the blue for 5 minutes and then disappears ... well, to me that's more exciting and more ARG-like, because of the decreased familiarity you have with the character, whereas you would, by nature, have increased familiarity with the character's world.
From experience, I've found that chat's and IMs can become a crutch for PMs because it is an easy method of conveying information to the players. Does that mean its wrong in its entirety? Certainly not, but I think for the progression of another 'reality' and for the immersion of players within it, the use of chats and IMs needs to have a sense of wonder - otherwise, you're just having dinner with your family (and why would you do that online?).

Which leads into:
2) Explorable Domain: If, in traditional ARG-sense, you are presented with a website that can potentially lead to other websites, what you discover and what you find is what I call "explorable domain". You're able to grasp an indication of what the reality the PMs are forming around the characters, and what you as a player will become immersed in. The elegance of the ARG genre lies in the concept of being able to explore the world, interact with it, and yet not have to be trapped within it. I find the latter, being 'trapped within a reality', to be a danger-zone for both players and PMs.
I like the concept of being able to poke it with a stick, see what happens, and then move on. Maybe there will be some more interaction, maybe not. However, I find that in ARGs that rely more on chat-based applications, the players are 'trapped' in a sense by their ability to interact with the chracters at a given time (see #1 re: scheduling and suprise).
If we take AWARE as an example, as a player, it appears you're either in Ideltech, The Restorers, or in OE. You don't get to poke your stick in, test out the water and merely observe and solve puzzles. You're trapped within a set domain of interaction. The same holds true for chats - you're only allowed during that frame of time, to explore what is in that chatroom.
Personally, I find this type of boundary inherently different from ARGs such as LJ, MU and CTW. Again, I don't mean to say that its necessarily wrong or bad, just that I find it different.

I think these two points, for me at least, of Suprise/Wonder and Explorable Domain to be key defining points between more traditional ARGs and those that have more RPG-y tendencies.

[ScarpeGrosse]

[imbri]

[Gupfee]

To me, the best of the ARGs that I played had something very simple in common; the stories themselves were puzzles that needed to be figured out. (In The Beast: Who killed Evan Chan? What happened to Kate Nei? Where is Cloudmaker? Who took Venus? Why does Svetlana look like a Belladerma robot? Who is Johnny? And WTF is the deal with Eliza, Teddy and Sophia? Similarly in Lockjaw: How did Mercedes die? Who is the Serpent? What happened in the tunnels that night? What's going on in Moreland? Why is Chet Doan such an a$$hole? et al)

The driving force was to find out what the heck was going on, and how all the pieces fit together. There have been some fine storytelling events since, but none have had that "HOLY SHIT" factor for me, because, frankly, they tended to spoon things out and feed out the storylines to players instead of leaving things somewhat open and allowing the players to come to their own conclusions. Were those conclusions sometimes wrong? Heck yes, that was part of the fun. Everyone had their pet theories about what had happened, and predictions about what was going to happen, and used the pieces of the story presented so far to support their views and try to shoot down other versions. As the story evolved, false leads became more obvious, theories were discarded, and we all eventually ended up in the same place, even if we took some time to get there.

So, personally, for me, what makes an ARG a true alternative reality game and not just an online storytelling event, is that the players interact with the game universe, and may influence it slightly, but their main reason for being there is to figure out the story behind the universe and what has happened/what will happen there. It's more about forensics, excavation and archaelogy, per se, than about manipulation, subterfuge and an ability to dialog.