[arg_discuss] Interactive story-telling via podcast

[John Evans]

>The viewer/player pauses the video and pokes a certain object and is

>rewarded with a clue.


Well, it's simple in Flash. I mean, I think this is the kind of thing
Flash was designed for.


>Moreover, what this Apple patent implies is that different players get

>different active frames, necessitating collective ARG action. 


That's a little trickier, though hardly impossible. It brings up some
odd issues, though. For one thing, if you download a file that has only
one "active frame", do you still get the content associated with the
other ones? Does that mean someone could hack the file and see other
players' active frames? How does the file know what frame is active?--
that's a check that could also be hacked. The most secure way would be
to generate different files for every player...well, maybe not *every*
player but a number of different files. The other thing it makes me
wonder is, do you really *want* to do it? Player A says "Hey, I found
this cool thing in frame 200". Player B says, "Ooh! Let me see!...awww,
I can't do it in my video! This sucks!".

Still, it's definitely plausible. ;)

--John Evans