[arg_discuss] TINAG and the curtain: necessary?

[varin]

> I think we should replace "curtain" with "bathroom stall" - you can peak 

> under to see there are feet there, and certainly knock to hear someone say 

> "occupied", but anything more (say, sticking your hand under and feeling 

> around) can get pretty ooky until the door is actually opened and you can 

> see what's going on.


Hahaha.  I like the bathroom stall idea.  And any proposal that includes the 
word "ooky" gets my vote.  :D

At the Synthetic Worlds Ludium II conference last spring, a few of us got 
into a discussion about curtains in ARGs, virtual worlds and video games. 
During our discussion we abandoned the term curtain and began calling it a 
membrane.

For most, the word curtain brought to mind the thick red curtain on a 
theatre stage.  You can get through if you really work it at by making your 
way through the rows of other theatre-goers, passing theatre security and 
shoving your way through the curtain to the back stage.  For most in the 
audience though, the theatre curtain hides everything that happens behind 
the scenes.  You might see a bit of shuffling or hear a few noises, but for 
the most part the curtain is fairly opaque.  And while the term curtain fit 
rather well for ARGs, it didn't really fit well with virtual worlds or video 
games.

When using the term membrane, on the other hand, it felt more comfortable to 
apply it to all three.   ARGs have a porous or permeable membrane between 
reality and the game.  Of course, it's still somewhat *selectively* 
permeable.  If the membrane was not at all selective, we would have 
something like The Game... and not being able to tell the difference between 
reality and game is scary!  We went into this a bit more at the conference, 
but I don't think I need to explain to any of you what an ARG is like ;)

On the other end of the spectrum are video games.  For the most part, they 
have a more rigid and non-porous membrane.  There are a few instances like 
the /pizza command in Everquest (type /pizza in the game to order a pizza 
delivery from Pizza Hut), clans and alliances that have real world get 
togethers or the use of Teamspeak to talk to your friends while playing. 
And there are a few video games out there that try a little harder to 
experiment with membrane porosity.  I think it was Half Life (?) that had a 
real website address that you could find in the game.  Eternal Darkness for 
the Gamecube would "mess with" your Gamecube System and therefore peek 
through the membrane.  Just one example - the volume of the game would 
suddenly increase and a bright green "volume" would show up at the bottom of 
the screen (like someone was sitting on the remote).  I think at one point 
it also appeared to shut off or reboot your Gamecube.  It wasn't necessarily 
a good video game, but was a very interesting experiment.

Between ARGs and videos games on the spectrum are virtual worlds like Second 
Life.  The membrane here is often more porous than in video games.  Real 
world corporations have a presence in Second Life.  People make a living off 
of selling things in the game and exchanging their game money for real cash. 
They are not as porous as ARGs because you still have that rigidity of 
having to sit at the computer to play.

So there you have it... something else to think about this morning :)

Michelle Senderhauf aka varin