[arg_discuss] whitepaper:wiki, next version

[Andrea Phillips]

It looks like the most controversial section of the paper is Methods and
Mechanics, which I wrote. I've been quiet on this until now because I wanted
to be able to make a rational response, rather than an emotional one. This
response has been a long time in writing, too,  because of that alone. I am,
after all, only human, and given the strong tone of the initial Intellinuts
criticism, well. It's not easy to look past to see the legitimate points.

That said, I really do think there *are* legitimate points! I do think the
omission of a section on use of forums was terrible, and I regret it. If
anyone feels personally slighted by this, I'm terribly sorry. I'll also
agree that my personal experience of ARGs probably colored the work. But I
daresay that would have been true no matter who wrote it; and moreover I
tried very hard not to be biased in favor of my own game. Everyone sees the
world through their own filter.

In going through my own copy of the draft, I mention Perplex City 6 times
and the Beast 9 times. But I also have 5 citations for ilovebees; 2 for Last
Call Poker; 6 for Art of the Heist; and 3 for Jamie Kane. You can see that
saying I only cited games I was personally involved with is, well, flatly
untrue. I was definitely trying to spread around citations, while trying to
keep the number of games accessible for a traditional game developer (who
is, after all, the target audience here.)

As for not mentioning ilovebees in the phone section. Well. Maybe I should
have; the irony here is I was trying to spread around my examples. I thought
the most interesting thing about ilovebees was their fantastic use of audio,
and the liability issues Elan himself has spoken about. I promise it isn't
some nefarious plot against 42, though, even though that's what it feels
like I'm being charged with. How could it be, when I mention their work more
than twice as much as anyone else's? (Deservedly so, I think, since they've
had such influence on the shape of the genre. I suppose there's room for
difference of opinion there, too.)

I could go down the list of criticisms and offer explanations or rebuttals
for all of it, but that would be frankly unproductive in this context. I'd
love to get to into later, when the discussion is framed as "Why did you do
X and how can we make it better?" But let's go even further; I think there
are some terrible flaws that nobody else has even mentioned! It would be
fantastic to have a cost/benefit chart for different mechanics, for example;
this is something Adam asked for, that I wasn't able to deliver on. I also
think it desperately needs a section on best practices for playtesting. We
could use a section specific to the challenges of production for grassroots
developers. Heck, while we're at it, I think it would be ideal if, rather
than citing other ARGs at all, we had very simple demo interactions
available as a companion to the White Paper.

All that said, I don't think that these problems somehow invalidate all of
the work I *did*. Jackie suggests that this is the most important section of
the paper; and in fact, it isn't even the section I signed up to write at
all. (I was originally slotted to write the section on antecedents; Bryan
Alexander stepped in, though, and did a much better job than I ever would
have). But at the end of the day, nobody had volunteered to write the
section, so I did. I think we all agree that the paper needed a mechanics
section in some form. So I think I deserve some credit just for making the
attempt when nobody else stepped forward!

I would welcome a discussion on how to improve the paper as a whole and my
section in particular going forward to the next paper released. I would have
welcomed a discussion like that from the beginning, had the approach been
phrased differently. If anybody would like to question *me* about specific
statements in the paper, I'd love to talk about it ad nauseum, provided the
conversation is conducted in a professional and civil tone. (Or: can we
please stop calling me biased and stupid now plzkthx?)

--Andrea