[arg_discuss] Re: Communities and resources

[despain at quantumcontent.com]

> Now, before I start this, I'm not speaking for any group or website.
> I'm speaking as a player and as a community member, plain and simple.
> Please take into consideration that before I was anything in this
> community, I was a lurking newbie just trying to follow along.

What pushed you to become a poster instead of a lurker?
I'm curious about that decision point in ARG forums in particular. What
got you to cross that line?


>  > Every community has internal politics. Members gain status
>  > through use of whatever currency that community holds dear. In some
>  > forums it's number of
>  > posts. On others it's how long someone's been registered. Others value
>  > grammar skills over logic or vice versa. To really be a part of that
>  > community, a member has to be involved - at least to some degree - in
>  > the politics of the community.
>
>  > And I'm speaking generally here, not specifically about Unfiction.
>
> But just so we're clear -- you *are* talking about UnFiction too, right?

Sure, UnFiction is an online community and has the same challenges and
advantages other online communities face.


>  > All that maneuvering - how long do I have to be registered before my
>  > opinion is considered worthwhile? - As a player, I'd rather put that
>  > time and effort into the game.
>
> Sure, as a player you would.  And if for any reason a player feels that
> they can't do that at Unfiction, then maybe they've gotten a raw deal.

I suspect maybe we're talking past each other on this point. Are ARGs
"played" in forums? I guess this could be true, although I personally
think that's reducing ARGs to an elaborate party game for message board
communities.

But if that's the case, UnFiction is as good a place as any to "play" the
game. I'm not saying they automatically give players a raw deal. I'm
saying there's a barrier to entry, which may be one of perception but is
real nonetheless.

(snipped some for space)

> -- you get my point.  That's part of the reason why I take exception to
> this whole notion that you have given about players feeling that they
> have to worry about the politics and how to go about getting validation
> for their efforts on the UnFiction forums.  Maybe you were one of those
> people who got the raw deal, though, and that's why you have your
> opinion.

For the record, I don't feel like UnFiction has given me a raw deal.


> But the evidence shows, day in and day out, that people who
> come into the Unfiction community fir the first time are treated with
> respect, and are welcomed with open arms.

I'm talking about a perception. The facts may be that newbies are welcomed
with open arms, but the overtone of the space is fairly thorny. I'll take
as example a quote from the tutorial for newbies:

"Maybe we ARE refusing to post your stuff just because we have a personal
grudge against you. We have the full right to do so, which we will try to
wield with responsibility and tact. Sometimes we will fail. When we do,
you should flame us *mercilessly*. "

I'm sure this is meant to come with a certain degree of humor, but it sets
a mood of hostility many players are just uninterested in dealing with.
This sets them up as outsiders to a large, vocal community of players. I
worry this makes playing the game less fun for them.


> Now, you can go ahead and find me many different examples where people
> are not welcomed.  I am not saying that the Unfiction community en masse
> is a shining example of what a civilized, well-behaved community can
> be.  I am saying that the Unfiction community is what it is, and
> labeling it as an elitist, politically-driven newbie-unfriendly place to
> go and talk about games is either a misconception or an excuse.

I'm talking about the image UnFiction has when viewed from the outside.
I'm sure it's hard to see from the inside. It can _seem_ elitist. It can
_seem_ unfriendly to newbies.

It _is_ politically-driven, but I don't mean that as a loaded phrase or
put-down in any way. I just mean all groups of humans have politics in
them, and as developers we need to take that into account.


(snipping again for length)
> I could not agree with you more -- while playing an Alternate Reality
> Game is often a thing of beauty in itself, feeling as though you are a
> valuable part of a community working towards common goals is icing on
> the cake.  For many, including myself, the first ARG experience is
> usually either (a) the best, because it was an entirely new world, or
> (b) the most intense, because it was a huge world to become encapsulated
> in.  But we have many community members that, years after their first
> taste of ARG, continue to have a lot of fun playing these games on the
> Unfiction forums.

This was where I picked up that we may be talking past each other some.
In my mind, ARGs are not played on forums. Forums are a tool for playing
the ARG. The way dice are used for playing backgammon.


> And when a game starts, and is picked up by the
> Unfiction community, everyone basically starts at square one anyway,
> don't they?

Sure, it doesn't feel weird at the beginning of the game, but as it gets
moving along, the experience can get unfun for players who aren't
interested in joining UnFiction. For instance if 70% of the players go
off together and solve puzzles on an IRC channel and then get sarcastic
when one of the other 30% posts their ah-hah moment on a message board
attached to the game. That's unfun, not just for the one person on the
receiving end, but also for lurkers who were sharing that ah-hah moment.


> And if they don't, isn't that just how life goes?

Yep, this is how life goes. I'm not saying I want to wave my magic wand
and make everything sparkly. The original question from the original post
asked how community fits in and if there was anything we'd change if
we could.

Personally, I love the community aspect of ARGs, but cliques concern me.
And UnFiction is the biggest, most obvious clique in the ARG arena right now.


> Depending on the activity or event, certain individuals or groups will
> have a particular skill set that helps them move more quickly, or will
> enable them to move further into the experience.  That is, unless the
> event is designed in such a way that everyone gets an even playing field
> from the very beginning -- and that's where the design comes in.  The
> designers can grumble and worry about the highly skilled participants
> all they want, but in the end, if it's all for fun, then why does it
> matter who finishes first, or last?

You're right - I think in an ideal ARG, all players move at their own
speed. As designers, we need to worry about making it fun for both the
first and the last. We may do some grumbling as we go, but that's because
we're human and this is a difficult puzzle. Humans aren't used to liking
being last.


> Specifically, let's talk about Last Call Poker.  Let's talk about it,
> because it deals with this from another perspective.  When the game
> launched, the Unfiction community jumped on board and did what they did
> best -- getting whois information for the website, making notes about
> characters and locations, marking down events, making family trees to
> connect characters to each other.  But then, you had this whole other
> group of online poker players, who did what they do best -- get on the
> tables, establish dominance, get lucky and win a few big pots.

This was an interesting attempt to get multiple cliques to interact in the
same game. I think the results were intriguing.

> Would it
> be have been fair for the LCP game designers to cry foul when the poker
> crowd completely bamboozled the "poker newbs" and took them for all of
> their weekly chips?  This is what I see happening here -- a complaint
> about the abilities of a specific community.

I'm sure the LCP game designers had conversations about how "poker newbs"
would experience the game, though probably not in public. I think it's
unproductive to try to be the kindergarten teacher thwacking kids on the
playground and telling them to play nice. Here in this forum for
puppetmasters and developers, I'm identifying one of the things
I find challenging in ARG development.


> I agree with Krystyn when she said this appears, on the surface,
> to be anti-game.

I guess I missed where she said it was anti-game, and come to think of it,
I'm not even sure I understand what you mean by it. Are you saying it
stifles the playing of ARGs if people are too nice to each other? I hadn't
considered that as a possibility. I'll think about it.


>  > One of the valuable assets the Unfiction community brings to the
>  > table is that they don't need the "rules" explained to them. They
>  > already know what an ARG is and can set an example for less
>  > experienced players. That's awesome. But it does come with both
>  > pros and cons.
>
> One thing I don't see a lot of in this vein of discussion is the
> distinction between the ARG community and the Unfiction community.  They
> are two different entities.

I've been completely failing to get my point across then. I see UnFiction
as a part of the ARG community as a whole - and I'm saying I'm not sure
UnFiction realizes the impact it has on the larger community.


> As a Puppetmaster (and although my hair is
> full of premature grey, I've never been one) I can only assume that you
> would want to create games for those outside of the Unfiction
> community.  Otherwise, how is this genre going to get any bigger?

My point exactly. I don't want to only make games specifically designed
to cater to UnFiction's strengths. I want to make it friendly to all
players interested in playing ARGs. But UnFiction has an impact on them as
well and has to be taken into account.


> As a player, I can say that although Unfiction is a lovely place to
> hang out, it is not the end-all-be-all of ARG communities.  Surely
> there must be dozens of communities (small, large, and everything in
> between) that devote some message board space to the discussion of
> Alternate Reality Games.

Not as many as you might think.


> In the end, what does it matter where people
> are playing? -- it's not a competition, and there's no prize for having
> the most registered members at any given site.

It matters if 30% of the players feel like they're being left out by the
cool kids.


> I feel that I'm drifting away on META waves at this point, so that's
> where I'll stop.  I'll stick to my original plan of clarifying the issue
> of the politics at the Unfiction forums, and let the conversation
> continue from here.

Thanks for the links to newbie threads at UnFiction and sharing your
point of view. I hope I was more clear this time in what I was trying to
express.

Wendy Despain
quantumcontent.com