unforum

[Nightmare Tony]

I dont plan to pick a fight. Its not my style. But basically, its all from this.

I honestly do understand the temptation to use tools such as AIM, blogs, and email in an ARG. But, in my opinion, games that rely upon them are usually nothing more than a communication based IF. They can be used to TELL a story but it's so difficult to use them to create an ARG. It takes an extremely talented author to turn conversational bits into a rich story world and then a strong game designer to turn it into an ARG. We're seeing more and more of these efforts and, knowing what the community is made of, it frustrates me to see us creating such lazy experiences and then calling them ARGs. It's even more frustrating when the story itself has potential as a strong ARG. Sometimes I feel as if it's a waste.


"I honestly do understand the temptation to use tools such as AIM, blogs, and email in an ARG. But, in my opinion, games that rely upon them are usually nothing more than a communication based IF."

And those to me are just another tool of interaction to add to the phone calls or faxes or snail mails.



We're seeing more and more of these efforts and, knowing what the community is made of, it frustrates me to see us creating such lazy experiences and then calling them ARGs. It's even more frustrating when the story itself has potential as a strong ARG. Sometimes I feel as if it's a waste. "

And where IS the defining line? whaty if a storyline is cognizant and depends on using AIM and Blog tools for its primary communications? How can it be a waste for a Pm to want to tell a story in their own styles? Take for example, the job interviews and interactions in Wildfire. Those forms of story advancement would have been IMPOSSIBLE under a cryptic puzzle form of website.

Let me give the example of Synagoga which was quite heavy on the puzzles which was fairly easy, but also relied HEAVILY on AIM chats, literally every single night to advance the plotline. It actually broke new ground by creating puzzles based on all the players themselves. No other ARG I have ever seen had the puzzles determined by the player's own personalities.

ARGs are a work of art. Creative and evolving with new forms of storytelling, of communication, of givcing out the information needed for the storyline to advance.

If I was going to define an ARG, it would be the curtain with the PMs behind it. Not necessarily anonymous, but their actions and final story being unknown to the player. A masterful PM such as Colin Brennan has his signature to Wildfire and Project Gateway, and from that you KNOW you are in for a fantastic story. The same with 42 Ent, Adrian Hon or Sean Stewart.



To pigeonhole into a narrow definition and exclude storytelling expansion methods for making a good ARG is to do a dis-service to the entire community. The name of Immersive is a good tag, but I still prefer ARG for it all. But these should help.

http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8344
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersive_Reality_Gaming

[imbri]

[bill]

[taozero]

Can someone define the difference between IF and ARG? I mean...in layman's terms, isn't ARG IF?

[bill]

The gaming genre of IF, aka adventure games have stories and puzzles, but are meant to be played individually and the environment is contained within the boundaries of the game engine. (think Zork or Leisure Suit Larry).

I might be wrong, but I interpreted imbri's use of the term to refer to stories told interactively making them more collaborative, but giving up the game-like elements.

[Wolf]

[Alzheimers]

In defense of what Tony's saying, in relation to Strange Dreams:

When it was originally conceived back in December, the level of interaction I had planned for SD2 was diverse: Email, Forum, Blog, IRC and IM. There were over twenty mail boxes spread across six domains (the three in-game sites, Earthlink, AOL and Gmail), a monthly in-game newsletter, a phpBB forum that was originally meant to be public, character's blogs, a custom intranet system including Mail and Bulletins (updated DAILY), and various MIRC/JavaIRC/YIM/AIM accounts for different characters to use. There was also a strong web/puzzle element designed around the three main ingame sites.

So what happened? Initial interest was high, but the game itself slowed down to a crawl almost immediately. The pacing just wasn't right, as players tried to acclimate themselves to the world I had created. Right away I noticed something wasn't working. Hints about email addresses began to go ignored. The interest in solving plot-based puzzles was diminishing. Even the logic puzzles were having a hard time finding an audience.

Interest waned, and the story got bogged down as I waited patiently for the community to follow. Was it my fault, as a PM, for not doing a good enough job to keep everyone interested? Was there a problem with my web design, that turned off players to search for clues within the content? Were there just too many games running all at once?

No. Synagogia had changed everything.

Suddenly, everyone expected and wanted face-to-face communication with the characters. Reading their blogs wasn't enough. Daily emails weren't enough. The trail of breadcrumbs through puzzles didn't get as much attention as it used to.

Players had become more interested in the live interaction aspect than they were the static, web-based elements. Expectations of a fixed content Alternate Reality created by in-game websites had shifted into the real-time interaction arena. All the email and all the blog posts in the world weren't going to drive the story anymore. They were still there, but they weren't given nearly the same attention as live characters were.

Players now wanted their actions to have a tangible and immediate effect on the characters. They want to talk to them, to influence them. They want what they say and do to have a real cause/effect relationship in the ARG world.

Everyone wants to be Weephun.

Is this the right way to run a game? Is this the best way to present the story? Is this the correct way to keep an entire community interested in your game? I don't know. What I do know was that the old methods weren't working, and shifting the priority from web/email to IRC/AIM brought a whole new interest into the game.

Maybe that's why so many people are becoming disillusioned with Perplexcity. A year ago, or even six months ago, it's adherence to the traditional lines of ARG design would have been hailed as a masterpiece. Instead, players are bored with the weekly updates, with the endless spec over minutia. Players want to get on with the story, already! Players want to be IN the story.

Like I said, everyone wants to be Weephun.

edit:

To everyone who's read this far, you deserve a cookie! But I just wanted to add one point, going back to the original topic.

Since moving to a more chat-based scheme, the game hasn't suddenly become "IF" or a Labyrinth or a story on rails. In fact, it's even *more* flexible and maze-like now, as I've had to throw out a good chunk of timed events to keep ahead of the players! At least one character has survived to this point and at least two others are dead now, details that totally went against the original plan.

Now, I mold the world around the player's actions. I don't expect the players to fit the mold I created. Is it more difficult? At times. But it's also much more rewarding, to watch as players go off in totally unexpected directions, or to miss the obvious warning signs and go willingly over the edge.

[krystyn]

Not everyone wants to be weephun. There are still a ton of us out here that don't want a thing to do with role-playing in a game.

Even when I answered a payphone and talked to Melissa live, I didn't consider my conversation with her to be strictly role-playing. I was ready for a puzzle, or a clue, or a furtherment of plot. I did not play a character. I was me.

I think it's great that people are finding aspects of these games that really get them excited about the outcome, or the process itself. But I, for one, do not crave endless IRC chats and random people AIM'ing me because their puppetmaster controller found my SN on this very forum.

That ain't immersive to me, people.

[strife777]

Just a preface that this is all IMHO, so meh

There's a fine line for everything. Puzzles, Standard Communication, Instant Messaging, Live Action, etc. In small doses it can be fine, but a reliance on one sense of media runs the risk of only pleasing one portion of your player base content and happy. To me, the majority of the AIM chats that I've seen relating to the game are rather boring and trite. Some exceptions, yeah, but most people are good enough actors to make it believable or worthwhile. I can suspend disbelief to a certain level, but unrealistic manners of speaking and pushing hints/storyline along is a giant thumbs down in my book. The nearest thing I can relate it to is "I Love Bees". If Kristen wasn't so damn talented, that portion could've/probably would've sucked majorly. She had the ability to stay in realistic character(although I guess you can say an AI isn't realistic, but she stayed true and even with her character at least), and that was the reason the media was successful. AIM chats COULD be successful and interesting, if the actor/actress is talented enough, but the majority that I've seen just aren't, erm, good. Some people want to be immersed so badly that they'll turn a blind eye toward glaring "What the heck?" moments like cars mysteriously exploding on IRC. I'll give you a hint, if you need to express somethings happening, do it realistically

The other issue I have with IRC/AIM, etc. chats are they're reliant on specific scheduling, whereas E-mailing etc. are less time restrictive (yet less personal as well). There's nothing hugely to discuss here, its just an observation.

As a further mini-side note...its all pretty much overdone to this point, and thats why less people are playing the games. IMming, Emailing, Blogs (Blogs suck), etc. as a standard are just getting boring at this point. Sometimes I feel some of these grassroot ARG's are the same interactionary methods, with a different story plugged in. I derive a lot of my enjoyment from the "What the Hell is going on?" factor, and use some different interactive methods in order to draw players in/convey methods. Urban Hunt gets a giant golden star, as well as acts as a good example, for both their Rabbithole looking like an actual reality game as well as using an actual published book to further plot/puzzles. Money isn't an issue in either of those cases (I believe Lulu only takes $$ from what you sell, not to pre-post), and they we're really really damn cool to kept people interested.

Finally, the mention of people having less interst in puzzles...I don't think this is true at all. I just think people wants puzzles that make some sort of freaking sense (and note, I'm not making a comment towards you Alz, I never played Strange Dreams, so I can't comment on why people weren't being drawn to the puzzles in that). Why the heck would anyone in their right mind hide their password to something or other in a puzzle? Why would people have a random puzzle trail on their site? A lot of games seem just to have puzzles for the sake of having a puzzle rather than making sure they have a purpose. Thats what I think push people away. If you have puzzles that make contextual sense, even if they're end up being more social/societal puzzles, would draw the player in more, and possibly immerse them better. Instead of having a random cipher, which will reveal a phone number, have a way to watch a security camera (web camera, anything appropriate), where an actor walks in and uses a phone or something. From there, you have to figure out what number/extension/whatever they called, and that will advance the plotline.

Overall, I think any PM is making a mistake if they think they can make a genre-specific ARG and have the same size player-base as some of the more successful "grassroots" ARG's had. Keeping everybody happy/interested is a humongous challenge, but the blend is almost necessary at this point.

[vpisteve]

Must....resist.....meta.....discussion......

/me succumbs:

Wow, quite a few absolutes being thrown around here.

[Alzheimers]

Interaction is, by definition, a two-way street. I don't consider it "role-playing" for players to talk to characters, unless they're developing their own ficticious persona for the Game world. And players shouldn't be required to chat along to participate in that world; on IRC, the rooms are typically filled with "Unparticipants," or lurkers who are merely there to watch the action unfold. Think of it as repeatedly hitting F5 on Thursday mornings, 12pm EST, July-Septemper 2004, waiting for Axons to enhottenate.

It's really up to the players to decide how they want to see themselves; whether they are outside participants conversing with characters through a universe-spanning communiciations device a-la their computers, or they're projecting a persona of themselves into the game world, it's more an interpretation by the player than it is the Game itself.

I'm not saying ARGs should be totally chat based. What I'm saying is that right now players are attracted more to the real-time 'immersion' of talking with a live character, than they are towards static content pages and visual puzzles.

Besides, were Riddles not spoken puzzles long before the invention of the internet? Why is a conversation with an in-game character is any less a puzzle than a cryptogram? They both require good observational skills, to pull clues out of seemingly random data. They both require insight into your goals, to extract meaning from those clues. The only difference is, one is being presented in real time, while the other allows you to make your own time.

It's really the same difference between Real Time Strategy games, and Turn Based Strategy games. RTSs like Starcraft and TBSs like Civilization trade the careful consideration of every move element for quick decision making and reflex skills, but at their heart they're still both about strategy.

[RobMagus]

Is reading a story playing a game?

Is having a story told to you playing a game?

Is being in a story playing a game?

Is writing a story playing a game?

I would argue "no" for all four. They are all the -experience- of a story. So when does a story become a game?

Is having to do something in order to get to a part of the story a game?

In a sense, yes. I believe something is a game only when there is something that you must accomplish in order to win/go on/gain satisfaction. Solving puzzles, finding a website, getting access to new parts of sites - all these things have to be done in order to read the boss' blog or to get save someone's life or to find the cube or to get a snippet of an AI's thoughts, and thus make the "traditional multi-website+puzzles ARG" a Game.

Is interacting with a characters in a story a game?

Only if interacting with a character will accomplish something which will allow you to win/go on/gain satisfaction. Otherwise, it is roleplaying - reading, being told, writing, and being in a story.

What, then, is a roleplaying game?

A game in which the players must interact with other characters to accomplish things. This ranges from killing orcs to bribing the gatekeeper to carefully convincing a night watchman to save the Red King's life. If you interact with other characters only to recieve more parts of the plot through the interaction, you are not playing a game. You are interacting with the characters in a story.

Are gAIMes/SNARGS/Interactive Fiction games?

Nope. They certainly are interesting experiences and another way to avoid work while on the internet, but considering the things I have argued, they are not games. You do not have to accomplish things to achieve a goal - you interact with characters in a story.

What about gAIMes/SNARGS/IF in which you DO accomplish things by interacting with characters?

I haven't encountered any, but I suppose I have to allow for their existance. In that case, sure they're games. They're roleplaying games in which most of the players play themselves. RPGs are a kind of ARG, but they are not nearly as immersive as they could be.

Why are you so awesome?

We may never know.

[krystyn]

I am for good or for awesome.

Reading a book may not be playing a game, but do recognize that a book has already been written, edited, and published in a static format, before you ever lift it off a shelf and crack the spine to the title page.

Alternate reality, on the other hand - it's happening in relative real-time, unfolding as your day progresses. Fictional characters living through events that happen concurrently with you brushing your teeth in the morning, having your six-month review with your boss, asking that girl out for coffee.

The story becomes the game when it truly is the game. When it stops nodding at itself, when it tends towards organic empathy towards itself, rather than gratuitous roadblocks and deus ex machina.

At this point, ideally (for me, I know not everyone shares my vision), the game becomes not a game. The characters and events in it are just as important unto themselves and their reality as you signing your name to a down payment on a house, or finding out that someone you know has passed away. The stakes are high, and immediate.

There's a lot of meta in the games I am seeing lately, and I think that's why it's been difficult for me to play some of the new efforts out there.

I don't know why Josephine kept messaging me in AIM, repeatedly, despite my attempts, in-game (in character, even! gah!) to let her know I didn't appreciate the methods used to get me involved ... I was constantly reminded that the ONLY reason she even pinged me in the first place was because her puppetmaster creator found my AIM info on my profile here.

Tell me, how am I supposed to believe in that alternate reality? I might not even mind the AIM thing so much, if it weren't so blatantly whacking me over the head that I am being played. I'd rather be a player.

[krystyn]

not a playa, mind you

I'd need more bling

[Alzheimers]