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[rose]

ilovebees references

[Phaedra]

Re: ilovebees references

[Clayfoot]

Re: ARG Priorities

[Crowfoot]

Re: ilovebees references

[Crowfoot]

Re: ARG Priorities

[Alzheimers]

Well, as someone who just wrapped their own Zero-Budget game, I can honestly say it's possible to get by without spending a dime and still get a halfway decent product.

The key to realism is to understand that the game takes place in a world extremely (but not exactly) like ours. Time flows at a regular pace. People have a lifetime of experiences that they carry with them. Puzzles aren't always about math.

For example, in one of my puzzles the players needed to get into one of the character's bank accounts. They had already found a receipt with her account number. They had also found an email with a song typed out in DTMF phone codes. When they realized the song was "Happy Birthday", they had her birthdate, which was the password to her account.

But obtuse puzzles don't mean anything if the characters and the world isn't believeable. Even in a Sci-Fi setting, characters should still have emotions, feelings, doubts and hopes and dreams. After all, if you want your players to connect with your story, they have to find something in common.

ILB succeeded in making us care for the Sleeping Princess AI, not because she was the "good guy" (which we weren't certain of) but because she acted like a little girl. She played games. She made up stories. She was lost and frightened and it was for these reasons we wanted to help her.

The bottom line is, if your world feels artifical you're ruining the R part of ARG. And I dunno about you, but AG just doesn't sound right to me.

[Crowfoot]

[Varin]

Re: ARG Priorities

[Crowfoot]

Re: ARG Priorities

[Alzheimers]

[Alzheimers]

Re: ARG Priorities

[Varin]

Re: ARG Priorities

[jamesi]

Re: ARG Priorities

[Varin]

Re: ARG Priorities

[yanka]

I have to say, I'm thoroughly puzzled about all the fascination with the "interaction" aspect of these games. Every time I read "more interaction! more interaction!", I can't help thinking "Really? This is what you want? WHY???" Frankly, I don't understand why chatting with a character (whether irl or on the internet) is considered so important, and, apparently, highly enjoyable.

I guess it must have to do with what one expects out of this kind of game. For me, it is: to watch a brilliant story unfold, its characters drifting through their universe (not mine!), unaware that I and thousands of others are passionate spectators (not participants!) of this strange and addictive drama that their lives have become; to embrace this *other place* where the game lives – another world that only crosses mine at that imperceptible point of my observation. I imagine it would be like me watching, from behind the Christmas tree, the Nutcracker battle the Mouse King – not me running out there to help him fix his broken jaw. I don't belong there. That the game lives on its own, that it doesn't need me, that I can "look but not touch", that I can feel this amazing rush that comes from a realization of just how secretive and forbidden my "sneaking a peek" is, that the game is autonomous, impenetrable, and – heck, I'm not even supposed to *know* about it – discreet, are the very reasons that I want to play. That so many people are willing to trade all of that^ for chatting is just really beyond me.

I keep thinking of Pattern Recognition: there, thousands of people are chasing video clips of what appears to be a budding romance of a mysterious couple; the "players" are frantically deciphering every word, every frame, every location depicted; they don't know who the man and woman are, or why they are being filmed… the whole thing is very enigmatic and out-of-this-world. The very essence of the "game" is the universal notion that they, the players, are faceless, unknown, invisible bystanders to the couple… the secret knowledge they share as observers is what binds them together into this enormous virtual army of "footage heads." As an ARGer, I find this kind of experience extremely appealing. If the players were able to interact with those characters, I'd feel like the delicate crystal sphere that holds the world of the footage in it was smashed, the mystique gone, the precious and sinister secret camaraderie broken – the game no longer a Game, but some sort of a silly childish role-play.

Reading a character say "Gee, I wonder who has been trying to hack into my server?" fills me with excitement and makes me want to scream "omg, it was us! us!!"; chatting with a character (especially frequently and/or extensively) just seems… well, yeah… silly. And there is another thing, too: apparently, quite a lot of people don't really want the game to tell them how to play it. Lurkers want to be able to lurk, and still have as fulfilling an experience as the most vocal, front-line players. If the game is centered around interaction, that kind of renders that expectation obsolete, doesn't it? How involved can a lurker become in a game where "interacting" constitutes "playing"?

All of that said, I don't – of course – pretend to define the criteria of ARG, or to differentiate between this-kind-of-ARGing and that-kind-of-ARGing, or to tell the PMs that they must/should/might_want_to develop games that would be "playable" by all tiers of players, or even to put forth any "what makes a game better, according to…" I simply want to voice the concerns/opinions of those gamers (however few) who would rather not have a voice in the game, heh.