Comments on: Alternate Reality Games Need a Generation Iteration

By: SWIFIT

SWIFIT — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:05:32 +0000

I appreciate the insight, phaedra. As such, I will continue to dig deeper.
Much of your comment speaks to one of my personal frustrations with this fledgling genre, which is the lack of consistency and clarity. If the original coiner of the TINAG concept says its first definition is incorrect, and especially since there seems to be widespread confusion around it, why is it still around and present in so much ARG literature? I think the lack of at least a general, clear framework hurts the continued development and innovation of ARGs. It also makes it far more difficult to jump in and hit the ground running when you are immediately told much of everything you’ve read about ARGs isn’t totally correct.
My intention of truly platformless campaigns has no bearing on frequency of updates. I agree that constant updates would both alienate most players and put a tremendous amount of stress on the development team. A little surprise, however, goes a long way.
Based on the responses I have received, current and recent ARG systems are largely regarded as working well because the judges have been within the community. I posit that these same ‘working’ systems actually alienate millions of potential players because of the predictability and light real-world integration. It seems that the ARG community as a whole has become very comfortable in how things are done and I think pushing that envelope can pay dividends.

By: ARG Generation Iteration Redux « SWIFIT

ARG Generation Iteration Redux « SWIFIT — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:50:41 +0000

[...] 12th, 2007 Much to my surprise and delight, the April 6th entry received far more attention than I had expected having become a discussion point on Episode 20 of [...]

By: ARG Netcast, Episode 20: What Have You Learned? | ARG Netcasts

ARG Netcast, Episode 20: What Have You Learned? | ARG Netcasts — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 02:09:27 +0000

[...] alternate reality gaming “platformless”? Our panel discusses a recent post at swifit’s [...]

By: phaedra

phaedra — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 14:27:12 +0000

This is actually an old, old debate in the ARG community. It turns out that people actually don’t *like* playing games where the line between fiction and reality isn’t clear, when that aesthetic is tried. Browse around the META forum on Unfiction and you’ll find plenty of discussions about why it doesn’t actually work. It seems like every month someone new appears on UF and says, “I think there should be a game that’s so real that you can’t tell it from real life!”

This is due to a common misunderstanding of the TINAG aesthetic among newcomers. It doesn’t refer to realism. It refers to the game’s internal consistency. The man who coined it — one of the Beast’s designers, Elan Lee — recently explained that he did a bad job of describing it by saying “this is not a game.” What he meant was, “we will never make you feel stupid for playing with us/trusting us.” I suggest watching the video of the ARGFest keynote or reading the transcript at wiki.argfestocon.com for an in-depth discussion about it.

He also discusses how clients that come to his company often think it would be so cool to do a game that was so real people couldn’t tell where it left off and real life began, and explains a number of reasons why that’s actually a Bad Idea.

Finally, while you’re right that few ARGs are truly platformless, your characterization of two of the games, at least, is incorrect. I Love Bees delivered as much story over the internet as it did over payphones, and the puzzle cards in Perplex City do nothing to advance the plot — most of that is over the internet as well. The game is equally distributed over multiple media.

Furthermore, you leave out games like Last Call Poker, in which the narrative was equally spread over the internet, phone calls, and live events in cemeteries.

The problem with trying to do a large-scale ARG that’s truly platformless is the same problem that exists when you have a game that’s constantly updating, instead of having regular update times: you lose all but the most hard-core players very quickly because they don’t know where to look, and they can’t keep up. In addition, it makes the barrier to entry for newcomers almost insurmountably high. It may work for small grassroots games, but it doesn’t for large-scale games. Plus, when your player base shrinks that far, you have to make other sacrifices to compensate for the reduction: much easier puzzles, less complex narrative, less real-world elements (because you’re no longer guaranteed to have players in every city), etc.

Anyway, it’s not as if these questions don’t come up often — as I noted above, the META forum on Unfiction contains numerous discussions on them that you may find interesting. Hope that helps.