[arg_discuss] Penny Arcade and the Ovaltine Disappointment

[Morbus Iff]

>>This, as a player, is the chief problem with some of the grassroot ARGs 

>>that are coming out. There are plenty of spooky and mysterious websites 

>>with plenty of spooky and mysterious puzzles. But, there's no "reason" 

>>for me to climb that mountain save for "because it's there". I have to 

>>believe I'm gonna find Noah's ark before I'm going to invest that much 

>>time in the trip. 

>

> There are some really deep questions in the above, lurking beneath the

> surface comment about puzzles having a reason. It circles around the clearer

> question of providing motivation.


Indeed :)


> I know people who use the "ding" of puzzle solving as reward to motivate.


Yes, and this "ding" exists in many forms:

  * the sound made when your WoW character levels up.
  * the Xbox 360 Achievement Unlocked sound and popup.

I am definitely one of those people motivated by reward. It's not enough 
for me to know that I solved the puzzle myself - I also want to ego it 
off to other people. Point-based ARGs, such as the Perplex City cards or 
the forthcoming (and alluded to) Alice Is Lost!, really hit home with 
me. They give me two personal achievements: to be the best I can be 
(ie., to score all the points, or to get 1000/1000 in an Xbox 360 game), 
but also to be the best there is (to be high up on the solve leaderboard 
or to be in the top 7% of Xbox 360 gamers worldwide. Not that I'd track 
that. Every week. /me coughs.)

I am Koster's Explorer/Achiever mix. I want to know everything there is 
about a card ("ha ha, that's one of the cat's of a Mind Candy employee!" 
-- http://www.perplexcitycardcatalog.com/1/015/ [Explorer]) or to have 
solved every card (Achiever, but also, in some cases, Explorer). I 
become a Killer when it helps me to Achieve (ie., kill 400 people in 
deathmatch). Socializing is last on my list.

Whilst the "spooky and mysterious website" ARGs have the Achievers, 
there is nothing truly to Explore, or any way for me to show off my 
achievements for other people.


> I know people who use the puzzles themselves as narrative devices, mixing

> whether it is a sink or generator of motivation.


There's nothing worse for me than a puzzle that breaks the AR of an ARG. 
For lack of a better example, a caveman ARG that has a puzzle involving 
cryptography or, hell, a crossword puzzle, is very contrived and hurts 
my sense of believability. Perplex City had a relatively "cheap" hook 
("Everyone in the city loves puzzles, whee!") but I never consciously 
thought about it. Alice Is Lost is based on books that were full of 
puzzles and in-jokes and mysteries and, while I can't truly opine about 
things that haven't yet happened, I doubt I'll be much offended by any 
puzzles he produces. Both examples, however, very happily choose to show 
where the curtain is (PXC had a fun one: the curtain was, itself, part 
of the game as MC was the authorized Earth publisher of PXC puzzles), an 
action that another commenter suggested wasn't a very good idea.


> Beneath that seems even a question about clichés. You see the same thing in

> MMORPGs and quest design -- templates produce clichés. I, for one, am sick

> of saving the damsel in distress and defusing the ticking time bomb.


Ah, and I too, but as an Achiever, I go to great lengths to save every 
damn princess there is. I no longer play WoW but, when I did, I 
maintained a list of every quest available, and every quest I had ever 
done. I wanted to do every single one of them:

   http://www.disobey.com/detergent/lists/wowquests_morbulin.html


> work, right? Not that the work that does use that technique is bad or

> inferior ... but you can make movies without special effects, you can write

> novels with death tolls. A good narrative device should have tons of


And you can produce ARGs without physical actors: until Season 2 
started, all PXC S1 imagery was illustrations and artwork, a tactic that 
caused me to get MORE involved in its alternate reality. Interestingly, 
in Season 2, they branched out to live video to entice a larger audience 
(as alluded too by Michael Smith in Cubecast 3):

  http://podcast.perplexorum.com/

but, as soon as that happened, loads of "She's nothing like how I 
pictured her" and "Oh, I hope they never film [character] - she could 
never meet my expectations" comments appeared. This was even WITH the 
artistic representations that were well-known and frequently depicted.

If I were to start an ARG, and I'd be lying to say I haven't been 
thinking about one, I already have an artist willing to satisfy.

-- 
Morbus Iff ( omnia mutantur, nihil interit )
Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779
Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/
aim: akaMorbus / skype: morbusiff / icq: 2927491 / jabber.org: morbus