[arg_discuss] Software for managing games/events/player communication

[Thomas Maillioux]

I do not have anything to contribute right now, but thanks to the two of you
for all these tools and links !

T.

2010/11/7 Necole Duncan <neekono at gmail.com>


> We (Pistolsniffer Industries <http://pistolsniffer.com/>) have used Ning

> for

> all of our games, and it accomplishes most of what you’ve mentioned. If you

> would like to take a look at how we use it, we have a game running now for

> which we’ve set up a network.

>

> Here is the main website for the game. It leads to the Ning network and a

> YouTube channel:

>

> http://larp-hard.com/

>

> Ning is a great way to keep all of the most important information needed

> for

> game play in one place. We use the discussion boards to issue player

> challenges, which adds to the game element of the story. LARP Hard is a

> murder mystery. Sophia the Soft was killed during a LARP festival when a

> mechanical dragon head fell on her. The other LARP Hard founders decided to

> expand the group after her death, so the network was created. Players

> discovered through a Sticky

> Itchers<http://www.youtube.com/user/StickyItchers>video that the death

> was not an accident, and they must interact with the

> characters (mostly through the Ning, which also has a private messaging

> function) to discover which one of the founders did it.

>

> Jane McGonigal’s most recent game, Urgent Evoke<

> http://www.urgentevoke.com/>,

> also used Ning as the center of the game. It’s customizable, so by the time

> they were done with it only those familiar with the platform would really

> know it for a Ning network. It works very well for a game in which player

> interaction is important. It allows them to easily share their own thoughts

> and creations with each other and with the characters in the game. One of

> the problems we’ve had with the forums is that players don’t always post

> their interactions, which excludes the other players from that part of the

> experience. However, Ning makes all communication except private messages

> available to anyone on the network.

>

> The only problem I see with using Ning is that it is possible that the most

> casual lurkers, the largest section of the target audience, might not join

> the network. The content of the network is not visible unless a player

> signs

> up, and that might discourage some people.

>

> Hope that helps!

>

> Necole Duncan

>

> On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Kim Plowright <kim at mildlydiverting.com

> >wrote:

>

> > Hello

> >

> > I'm having a bit of a poke around trying to find useful bits of

> > software / cloud applications for folk making ARGlike things.

> >

> > I've had a look back through the list archives which tends to point to:

> >

> > Scriptwriting / Storyplanning software:

> >

> > Word / Excel

> > Celtx  - http://www.celtx.com/

> > Scrivener -  http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

> > Final Draft -  http://www.finaldraft.com/

> > FiveSprockets -  http://www.fivesprockets.com/fs-portal/

> > Storyist -  http://storyist.com/index.html

> > Novamind -  http://www.novamind.com/

> > Tinderbox -  http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/

> > With more listed here; http://www.literatureandlatte.com/links.php

> >

> > Project Management/Coordination Software:-

> >

> > Basecamp - http://basecamphq.com/

> >

> >                                           ProjectPier -

> > http://www.projectpier.org/

> > CoMindWork -  http://www.comindwork.com/

> > OpenAtrium -  http://openatrium.com/

> > Yammer -  https://www.yammer.com/

> >

> > These are all great for internal team coordination, and for planning

> > the story, but there's a piece that seems to be missing from this

> > suite: running the experience.

> >

> > Broadly, I think this is 'things which help manage communications with

> > players and time-sensitive cross-platform content rollout.'

> >

> > The sort of use cases I'm after are:-

> > - associating a player with a facebook id, twitter id, mobile number,

> > and being able to track all of their interactions with the game in one

> > place.

> > - Smart use of external APIs to publish once to many places, and

> > aggregate responses centrally

> > - being able to send an SMS message to multiple players from a central

> > point

> > - being able to store story content objects centrally, and manage

> > player progress through those objects: sending the right

> > email/SMS/tweet at the right time, from the right character

> > - cue tracking during live events: team notifications, progress

> > tracking, content release

> >

> > I suspect that there are tools out there that do this sort of thing,

> > but I don't know about them (I'm SURE that the social media marketing

> > crowd use them all the time!). I've used Cover It Live

> > http://www.coveritlive.com/ to run a live event in the past, for

> > instance. I'm fairly sure that someone announced they'd created

> > something like this here on the list, but my email search foo is

> > failing me.

> >

> > So - my questions...

> >

> > - Does anyone know of any products designed specifically for

> > transmedia/arg/crossplatform/social storytelling?

> > - Have you experience of using them? Good? Bad? Indifferent? What were

> > the catches? What did they do well?

> > - If you've bodged this kind of thing together from existing tools in

> > the past, what different things have you used?

> > - Have you used any tools that helped you manage the realworld-online

> > bridge successfully?

> >

> > Hopefully this is useful stuff to share on the list, too!

> > _______________________________________________

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> >

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