[arg_discuss] Tools for ARG developers

[Brooke Thompson]

Michael Monello

> I always start with a written narrative document, a "script" if you

> will, that basically tells the story. It details the characters, the

> relationships, and all the events. That 6-20 page document is then

> distilled into a chart that is organized by time and media. 



I do the exact same thing but also include characters & organizations (which
might be utilizing different media). The one thing that is nice is that you
can see at a glance where there are holes - whether one character or site is
inactive for a long time (is that a bad thing? Do we really need that
site/character?), if there isn't enough player activity, how the media is
being utilized, etc etc.

As for wikis - I have a love/hate with them. The quick linking back and
forth between ideas and elements is great, but only if they're used and
they're only used if they're being maintained and they're only maintained if
they're set up well from the get go and if you have the time and resources
(people willing) to maintain them. When those ifs aren't met, the wiki
quickly becomes more of a liability (in my experience) than an asset. I've
learned that there are just too many ifs there to make them reliable. Or,
perhaps, it's just that I've never been able to figure out the best way to
organize them :)

I also keep a massive master excel file which is a habit I picked up in my
very first game (lockjaw). It houses just about everything from key dates
and milestones to character sheets & story arcs to master asset lists to...
- really anything and everything that happens in the development and run is
documented there in some form (and is easy to pull out when needed for
something else). It's a bit of a pain because of revision control on the
editing and, perhaps, google docs would be better for it, but I've not yet
given that a try and it's usually just me playing around with it. And not
having this master file on projects where I'm not in a position to be
keeping such a thing is a strange source of frustration - it's not so much
that I don't trust someone else to have all of this stuff in some form
somewhere, but Wanna see! Wanna edit! Wanna document!