[arg_discuss] Accounting for Player Disruption?

[Andres M. Quijano]

(This isn't really a response, more likely a comment)

I'm seeing quite a few new ARG players from Argentina playing The Lost 
Ring. Expectable, at first a lot of people started to make annoying 
comments regarding the game, claiming that the 6 characters weren't 
really six people with amnesia, and that kind of stuff, then someone 
found the terms & conditions where is states that the game is actually a 
game, sponsored by McDonalds. Then I saw a lot of people "opening eyes 
to the world", by telling them that it's all fake, it's just a McDonalds 
game, that they shouldn't play it, and stuff like that. Nothing new 
here, but my reaction is to think that this has happened EVERY TIME a 
new art/media/you-name-it is introduced.

You must surely have heard of cases of entire towns raising money and/or 
goods to donate for a soap-opera character that is going to have a baby 
in the 60s/70s, my own parents told me how people went to the TV channel 
to protest, insult and even try to hurt "bad guys" actors, unable to 
separate fiction from real life. Even Shakespeare menctions it in "A 
Midsummer Night's Dream", when on the play inside play, Nick Bottom 
tells Peter Quince to write a prologue to tell the audience that they 
shouldn't be afraid, as the lion isn't really a lion, merely an actor in 
disguice.

Luckly for us, those "hecklers" usually are the minority (like in the 
soap operas and plays) and players disregards those comments, because 
even if they know they are playing a game, they believe it, and enter 
the magic circle of disbelief :)

Ivan Askwith escribió:

>

> I was wondering if anyone, either from experience or untested 

> theories, might have advice on how PMs can handle or be prepared for 

> disruptive participants.

>

> Has anyone found particularly good ways of dealing with players (or 

> trolls) who post comments on in-game blogs or forums with comments 

> like "THIS IS JUST A GAME," or "THIS IS A PROMOTION FOR X"?

>

> It seems like a behavior that it's important to be respectful of -- or 

> rather, that it could be dangerous to censor -- but you also don't 

> want those sorts of comments destroying interest in the game for 

> players who are trying to play along.