[arg_discuss] Looking for Resources on Engaging Casual Players in ARGs

[Wendy Despain]

Hi Brice,

This is a topic that interests me very much as well. It's so
interesting to see some of the audience "get it" instantly and throw
themselves into full participation... and then some of their friends
get dragged along in the wake, then discover they love it too... but
then there seems to be a large number of people who are exposed to the
ARG-related materials in exactly the same way, yet they don't
participate.

Solving this problem is actually what led me to start studying more
about videogame writing and videogame design. After all - they don't
seem to have the same problem. So I wondered why.

Maybe I should try to sum up what I've learned over the years and put
it into an article... I don't have one I can just point you to. Maybe
others here will.

But what I realized is that videogames -do- have exactly the same
problem (with one exception, I'll get to in a minute) and they have
solved it ... in maybe a hamhanded way sometimes, but I don't think it
ALWAYS has to be hamhanded.

But most videogames include a tutorial. They take the first part of
the experience and teach the players how they (the designers) expect
the players to interact with the materials. Now, I know the idea of
adding a tutorial to an ARG messes with TINAG in terrible and
frightening ways... yet, when I sat down and talked to people who
didn't participate in my ARGs, but were exposed to them (millions of
people watched the show every week... only a tiny percentage
interacted with the ARG...) many many of them said they didn't really
know how they were expected to participate... they didn't really know
what they were supposed to -do-. When I would say something like,
"well... if you saw a phone number, we pretty much expected you to
call it." That blew their minds. They have been trained via TV and
movies and even concerts and plays...  that the audience doesn't
-participate- it didn't even occur to them to try dialing a number.

Most of those non-players I talked to about it were disappointed to
find out that they had missed out on a fun fan experience, and said if
they had only known they would have tried to play at least to a
certain extent.

So I will go out on a limb and suggest that you search gamasutra.com
and the GDC Vault if you have access (and other video game dev blogs)
and read up on how to make a great tutorial, or immersive tutorial
techniques... how to train your players what they are supposed to do
without breaking the immersion and outright saying "Press X to jump."

I think you'll find things that will apply to ARG audiences as well.
We have to overcome the default state of inaction in an entertainment
experience, and show them/encourage them to get involved and take
action.

Another arena that faces this problem is improv acting, where they try
to encourage audience participation - or live magic shows...though
often times what I learn from magicians I reverse, because I WANT the
audience to see my hand moving over here and discover the ace up my
sleeve, instead of learning how to avoid having the audience see/take
part in that way, the way magic acts do.

Today, I wish I had tried one or two things like "Call me. This -is- a
game."

The last ARG I consulted on (I've mostly been embroiled in videogame
narrative design lately) I recommended having a short tutorial, plus a
sanctioned backchannel where players could ask the puppetmaster
questions "OOC" (out of character). Things like... "Am I allowed to
ask my physicist friend to help me solve this problem?" The
puppetmaster felt it was obvious... YES, THAT'S THE POINT. But his
audience was hesitant and didn't want to "break the rules" or "do it
wrong," especially not in front of their peers. So he would respond
with a polite, nice "Yes, as long as it's legal and not on the list of
prohibited actions... you can do something like what you are
suggesting."

The people who ran that ARG reported great success with that approach.
They actually were running a series of ARGs within a large corporation
in an effort to break down walls, encourage communication across
divisions, and generally do "team building" and internal networking,
so people in this huge company had some way of getting to know people
who weren't assigned to the desk next door.

Anyway, the point of that is - once the audience learned "how to play"
with the first tutorial in the first ARG, the tutorial was much
shorter in the second ARG, and fewer questions came through the
backchannel. More inventive solutions were concocted, and once the
audience felt comfortable, they really ran with it - even people I
generally thought of as outside the ARG demographic.

The tutorial for the second ARG - and those after - were down to one
email, as I recall, which included info on how to use the backchannel
and what kind of answers you would or wouldn't get from it. This
"tutorial" was seen by veteran players as the traffic signal that a
new ARG began - and it was mostly used only by new players who were
encouraged into participation by their friends or colleagues, but had
missed the first or second ARG because they were oblivious or nervous
or just didn't understand what was going on. After the core group
really figured out "how to play" the ARGs, they did most of the
training for the puppetmaster (which is what I originally thought
would happen with my first ARGs) but I underestimated the importance
of the sanctioned, "permission" many audience members feel they need,
in order to jump in.

Does this make sense?

I am very interested to hear more about the library-related ARG!

Wendy Despain


On Wed, June 5, 2013 7:37 am, Brice Clocher wrote:

> Hey everybody,

>

> Last March and April, I conducted an ARG project in the French

> university

> INSA de Lyon.

>

> The ARG was designed to engage people in a story revolving around the

> library, with the intent to improve the visibility of the latter.

>

> We created the ARG keeping in mind that our audience was primarily

> casual,

> and it yielded very interesting results (that we are still preparing

> for

> public release), but in the end, it only managed to engage a very

> limited

> part of the audience that it was visible to.

>

> Now I am on a contract to design another ARG, but this time at the

> scale of

> a city, and still targeting casual players, therefore I am trying to

> ensure

> that this one will engage a bigger ratio of people.

>

> Can you point out any useful resource I can read for that matter ?

>

> I've read Montola et al.'s Pervasive Games, and the ARG SIG's

> Whitepapers

> on the wiki

> (http://wiki.igda.org/Alternate_Reality_Games_SIG/Whitepaper).

>

> Do you have other cool resources for me to read ?

>

> Thanks in advance

> Brice

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Wendy Despain
quantumcontent.com