Alternate Currency

I was just explaining to my friend Ali what Neofuturism was, and I was cribbing notes from the Neofuturist’s mission statement to do so. So I scrolled down and caught the link to Greg’s rules, and thought again just how often and how intensely the theatrical stage and the art involved in putting on a play is so very close to the process and art of making an ARG.

Greg’s Rules that I especially liked:

Rule #1: Don’t create good theater. You must intend to create GREAT theater. We don’t need any more perfectly good productions of perfectly good scripts. You are setting out to do something great or it’s not worth doing.

I would say that the pitfall of this rule is in how you approach it, primarily because it’s easy to consider that everything you create is gonna be “great.” That’s why there are other rules to help supplement this one, and to help define what can be defined as more than “perfectly good.”

Rule #12: Do not suspend your audience’s disbelief. Involve the audience. Make sure you remind them that they are watching live theater. Q: Why do people go to the theater? A: To have a visceral connection with live performers. Take that ball and run with it. If you want to suspend the audience’s disbelief, make a movie. Movies accomplish this much more successfully.

Now, if you know me at all, you know I love TINAG, so why on earth would I select this rule as a highlight? I think that while it’s very important for an ARG to never acknowledge to itself that it’s a game, it’s also important for the Puppetmasters to be very aware of the boundaries and emotional structure of the narrative. There should be a sense of motion or movement in terms of the ‘audience’ (players) interacting with the ‘actors/script’ (characters/game), a vitality that indicates awareness of the chemistry, the give-and-take - even if there’s no e-mail/chat element to the ARG! The ride may be on rails, but the Puppetmaster should strive for honesty in the dynamic so that it can feed the idea of there being an unexpected result, of the characters inside the game having a recognizable human quality that the audience can immediately relate to.

If you’re letting go of the pretense of enforcing an alternate reality, of forcing the immersion, you make it that much easier for your players to fall down that rabbithole.

Rule #17: Change the material world. A small part of the world should be somehow altered by each performance. Something should be destroyed, consumed, built, adorned, or the space itself should be newly endowed by the end of each night of the show. Leave the stage a mess.

I have nothing to say to this rule but: YES.

Rule #23: Establish ritual through repetition. Give the audience a ritual or repetitive pattern with which to identify. Create a shared history for the audience. Once a ritual is established, you can speak volumes through tiny variations on a theme. The art is in the details. There’s nothing better to than feeling part of an inside joke.

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Rule #25: Unify the audience. Give the audience shared experiences which create faith and trust in each other. Create an event that brings disparate people to identify with each other through their mutual, but individual, experience of the show.

People who have been through an ARG with a well-formed community are nodding their heads enthusiastically after reading Rules #23 and #25. Again, a Puppetmaster doesn’t really need to enforce a community’s identity: it’s best to let the players define that space for themselves. Lots of details, and things-that-have-a-pattern can really give the players somewhere to rest their brains in the social space of the game, and gives them an organic framework and vocabulary that they can use to communicate with each other.

I’d like to point you to a post that Jackie wrote in response to the recent publication of a Whitepaper on ARGs, created under the auspices of the Special Interest Group for ARGs at the IGDA.

It is cogent and well-expressed.

I’d like to point you to this, which is a definition that allows for worlds of possibilities.

Thank you, Brooke.

And that’s really the crux, isn’t it? What do you have, if you cannot inspire wonder? Your innovations and your grandiose promises mean nothing if your heart is not tethered tightly to the experience. Your products and your marketing fall flat if the memories you’re engendering grow flat and metallic with time.

Nostalgia is not weakness.

Love may be ephemeral, but it may also be the very thing that saves your game from being a shill-tastic collection of hyperlinks and hoopla.

A lot of video gaming for me over the past few years has been accompanied by a rather intense sense of discovery. Many of the small things I’ve realized usually connect directly to my own fears and insecurities about gaming in general. What if I am not smart enough to solve this level? What if my hand-eye coordination is not up to snuff? What if no one wants to play with me?

Becoming a braver gamer is a process that I am experiencing currently. Mostly, I try to shed my fear of failure. I often want so much for a narrative to remain unbroken in a game’s flow that I often give up if I can’t solve a puzzle or complete a level smoothly the first time through. For so many reasons, games just aren’t designed that way. Learning curves and the vocabulary of movement are things that are built in to nearly every game you encounter in your life. There’s an initial dialogue between you and the game, a sense of introduction and agreement. You make a pact with the game to play with the rules it proposes.

My biggest mistake is assuming that those rules are it. There is nothing else. In the past, I’ve worked hard to frighten myself into clinging to those rules with a death grip, forgetting the joy of exploration, forgetting to have dialogues with myself that use the rules to break outside of what is generally expected. I wanted to be a participant, but not at the expense of my ego, or my pride. What I was missing all along was that my pride could be the thing that I earn a bit more of upon completion. A sense of gaining, rather than chipping away.

The past couple of years I’ve been challenged by friends to spend a bit more time looking around me. To see how I approach gaming, and to find encouragement in the idea that there is still all the game’s value and reward available to me if I take fifty tries to get to the end, instead of just one.

Alternate Reality Games have a great deal to do with this, naturally: in an arena where sometimes you have only you as a game piece, you have to assess and act as seems befitting for your reality in that moment. Is it your time to be a hero? Can you really don a cape and go flying off to save the damsel in distress? The rules of your own reality say “Well, generally, no,” but the rules of your reality also do not restrict against singing to prove you’re a human, either. I find pathways to solutions now that were not so apparent to me back in my Atari Childhood Days. I explore more. I have run across Halo 2 rooftops in the Outskirts, not only looking for the hidden sword, but trying to see the whole place from a new perspective. I’ve run behind the Hotel Zanzibar sign and smacked it with the butt of my gun. I’ve spent meditative moments way up above the sniper alley, contemplating sunsets and complex polygons. I’m no crazy skull hunter, but I also am a lot more comfortable about making the game work to my own pace now, instead of letting it dictate to me. That distinction may not have been lost on the lot of you out there, but for me it’s been a pretty empowering revelation.

What originally prompted this train of thought was my recent purchase of a fancy-schmancy dance pad for the Dance Dance Revolution games I have for the Playstation 2 and XBox consoles. I loved the games when I first got them, but felt frustrated and inhibited by the cheaper dance mat sliding around a lot as I worked up to more difficult songs. I don’t anticipate ever being stupendously awesome at this game, mind you, but I did feel like maybe I was letting something simple get in the way of me reaching my potential - especially with something that was getting me off my couch and getting my heart rate up. Breaking my leg to “Hysteria” would receive an A for Effort, but an F in Common Sense.

Now the game feels like a game again - complete with the addictive (PS2 version) lure of earning points towards unlockable items, like songs and challenge modes. “Oh, 7 more points? 7 more songs! No problem!” Songs that felt prohibitively dangerous on the old slippery pad now feel more funky and fun on the Red Octane now.

Perhaps it seems a bit odd to equate exploration of a gaming universe with what essentially amounts to shelling out cash for a better controller, but to me that is still a part of gaming for me - the environment one finds themself in, and the mode of emotion and motivation they use to achieve particular goals.

Not sure where I am going to store this new toy, though. It’s frkn heavy, and huge.

Swiped from a Metafilter AskMetafilter post: Ordeal by Cheque, a short story told entirely in checks written out to various people in various amounts, over a certain amount of time.

Quite possibly one of the earliest and tiniest ARGs ever!

(I mean that tongue-in-cheek, though. It’s a nice mystery story, really, in a unique format)

I wrote a post on the Unforums yesterday that I’d like to preserve here. A member asked the community if a newbie could conceivably jump into a game during its middle, or whether it was more advisable to try and catch a game at its beginning.

Understanding and sympathizing with the natural anxiety that lead to that question is not difficult. I know that had I not been grabbed by some of the very shiny stuff I was seeing in the Beast, I would’ve never made it past the first day I joined Cloudmakers.

Oh, and the day I joined Cloudmakers? May 6th, 2001, the very night of the A.R.M. rallies taking place in three major cities in the U.S.: New York, Los Angeles, … and Chicago.

I wish I could tell you I’d just hopped up and gone to that little bar hosting the event in my own hometown, and even helped with the puzzle solves, got myself a legitimate anti-robot militia armband. But, no. I sat and watched those IRC logs flood in, transcripts of cellphone conversations - it was mind-blowing, honestly, the sheer amount of information and speculation flooding into my inbox every single minute.

I was nearly a month late to the game, if you’ll notice. Cloudmakers itself formed on April 11th, and the rabbit holes had been languishing for a while before that. Sure, I freaked out over the massive amount of story that had already ‘happened,’ and I felt sad for the puzzles that were all marked ‘SOLVED,’ but I also found myself instinctively finding things to re-read and absorb. The story was intensely good, and the material was solid, and did not crack when I poked at it. It would be there the next day when I came back, persistent and consistent. I could trust in the universe to remain - I could allow myself to become a citizen, because it was still inviting me.

Instead of getting cranky in the thread (which is sometimes my wont) and shaking my fist and spouting off about how there really are no rules (no really there aren’t so shut up man just can it already can’t you see that I am trying to write a blog post?), I said:

I’d say the #1 rule for newbies is: don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

People will tell how How Things Are and How Things Are Supposed to Go, but:

if ARGs are alternate realities

held together by the sinewy and sometimes ethereal-looking net of a ‘Game,’

… then you will find that much like Life, ARGs generally work a bit better when you’re not forcing them to fit your pre-conceived notions.

Basically, use common sense, retain your sense of wonder, and for goodness’ sake, respect the real-life laws of your own country and/or the country hosting the ARG.

All the rest is rabbit holes and narratives on crack. Mmmmmm!

I discuss ARGs a great deal in my spare time, and get into these lovely, meandering meta conversations not meant to save the world, save a newbie, or save the genre. And many times, someone newer to the world than I will tell me that they’ve looked at the Cloudmakers archive of the game, at the Trail, and they just can’t believe that we played through that without our heads exploding. The implication is that of course one could never hop onto that horse mid-stream: go from your normal, predictable life into the midst of a strong community that had ‘already solved everything.’ It simply must be better to wait for a new game to come along, so that you’re ‘ready’ for it.

Oh … really?

It constantly amazes me to enter some of these Meta discussions and find out how wrong I’ve been doing things, this whole time. Heh.

“Where are you off to?” [Momo] asked.

“To our play class,” Franco told her. “That’s where they teach us how to play.”

Momo looked puzzled. “Play what?”

“Today we’re playing data retrieval It’s a very useful game, but you have to concentrate like mad.”

“Is it fun?” Momo asked, looking rather doubtful.

“That’s not the point,” Maria replied uneasily. “Anyway, you shouldn’t talk like that.”

“The point is it’s useful for the future.”

This quote is taken from Michael Ende’s Momo, a book everyone really should read. It’s as old as I am, and easily my favorite book.

To those denizens of the Unforums who don’t truly understand why I have issues with someof the uses of “We” and “Us,” read the quote again. Actually, you should purchase the book and read the whole thing, cover to cover. Ach, you think I joke, but I am quite serious. It’s an amazing little book.

The children in the book are in a play class because their parents have opened accounts with the Men in Grey, who have promised them that the more they hurry, the more time they save into a time account at their bank — this is time that they’ll have later on. That time that they’ve been saving can definitely be cashed out later, like paper money, or candy bars from a vending machine. (Except the Grey Men were totally lying. Time saved is time lost, don’tcha know.) But, their instructions were fairly simple: Eschew those things that are time wasters. Bring others up to speed as quickly as possible, and tell them How Things Run, because that way, we’ll learn how to play better. Efficacy in day-to-day living would obviously mean that everyone gets along better and has a better quality of life, right?

Clearly, this would be the case! Instead of the slow, sexy burn of discovery, We’ve got rules to get us past that first hurdle of discomfort. No more discomfort! No more mystery! Data Retrieval ARGs would be so handy - clearly-delineated Rules of Engagement. Updates that the Old Skoolers can predict with ease. Forum threads moderated into oblivion, with at least 50 emoticons to choose from — y’know, when linguistic nuance just won’t do.

The point is, it’s useful for the future.

Math Champion and Professional Grilled Cheese Innovator Andrea Phillips recently wrote an article for Gamasutra about the representation of women in the gaming industry. Additionally, it’s been Slashdotted, which is just giddy-making.

What’s exciting and more than a little weird for me is getting a mention in the article, in the game developers section. I sent the link to my mom in e-mail yesterday, nearly adding a P.S. recommending that she print it out and stick it on the refrigerator door.

It’s been a couple of very stressful weeks for me, you see, capped this past Monday evening with being the victim of a hit and run on Belmont Ave. as I was coming home from the grocery store. When your car is totaled, there’s not much that can fix that except big piles of money, but this article sure put a dent (ha!) in the dark cloud that’s been hanging over my head recently.

The original team for the A.I. game was almost entirely male, but since then, the rolls of ARG development have grown to be studded with high-profile women: Brooke Thompson, Krystyn Wells, Jane McGonigal. At Mind Candy, our staff is roughly 30% women — and though the actual ARG production team varies in size, it’s been as much as twice that for some arcs.

I feel like I am in fine, fine company.

I have a stack of Games magazines piled high on my living room radiator. I really oughta see about moving them in the next day or two, as the temperature here in Chicago has dropped into the low 20’s, and the heat’s due to be kicked on any time now.

But they remind me that my life, the long and the short of it, has been far from the straight and the narrow.

I used to believe that grade school and junior high were somewhat unpelasant blurs - shyness and awkwardness punctuated by stacks of books checked out through my mom’s library card, secret worlds explored at recess with backpacks full of rations and hand-drawn maps. Truth be told, I felt a little dull, but not in a bad way. Just, you know, not truly rebellious, not running away from home, not getting into fistfights at school.

When I got into acting, I thought perhaps my life might begin to have a bit more texture, the womanly curves of a life warm and supple and full of a kicky excitement. I treasured those moments of wonder, and I tried to keep them clutched close to me - imagining crushes and limelight and adventure and being discovered and inspiration and Hollywood, all wrapped up in my Coca-Cola rugby shirt and my $5 canvas shoes from Zayre.

High school was even better - boys and dances and notes passed and cliques formed and weekends drenched in scripts and character work and mixtapes and boys and movies. I thought, more than once, “I am on my way. I am improving.”

It’s only recently that I’ve taken another look back over my shoulder and seen a pretty clear path to my heart’s desire here. I see myself, shivering, toes cold from padding across the wooden floors of my dad’s childhood bedroom, to grab another Mad, another Cracked, another Games. I’d click on that old-fashioned light switch with a dry, solid clack and I’d read until I thought my eyeballs would fall out. I’d shyly pencil in the crosswords and rebus puzzles, I’d smirk dryly at the political satire that mostly passed over my head with every “Spy vs. Spy.” I’d fold the back page of Mad and get grossed out by the artwork. Occasionally, I’d be cajoled into coming downstairs to read in the living room with everyone else - my Dad, my Gma, and my brother engaged in a fierce board game showdown.

Every Easter for a while, my Mom would wake us up and show us the first stage of a scavenger hunt throughout the house - pieces of brightly-colored construction paper cut out in egg shapes with clues written on them, like: “The next treasure will be found where clothes are folded and ironed,” and Tyler and I would run down to the basement to the laundry room, and the next hint would have us scrambling up to the attic, hunting amidst the covered furniture pieces and boxes for shiny foil-wrapped candies and scented erasers and notepads and water guns and Silly Putty until we’d get to the end and wonder why we rushed. The journey was always so joyous.

We had an Atari 2600, and we also had the Atari computer, and I’d play with BASIC (oh the horrid music I’d write!) and saving simple text files. I was put into some sort of accelerated program in grade school called PROBE, and we did the paper version of Oregon Trail, and we created labyrinths with household materials and and and …

I guess what I am saying is, I am sometimes surprised that I somehow landed in this world of alternate reality gaming. How random it is to have been transported down this very personal rabbithole into a fresh sense of wonder: I get to see people play and discover and share, and it’s all done in this wicked sidelong glance to our daily lives. A stopgap to the madness of drudgery, the pain of other things that ache our hearts and tax our spirits. Fluffy or intense, this way of narrating our surroundings into something new seems to settle on me like a familiar mantle. It feels right, and exciting.

And yet, my background is textured, not dull. Full of wonder and discovery. Puzzly and narrated by someone with a sense of humor. All these things I’ve known and done have been apparently leading up to something like this. At least, it feels that way.

A few years back, two good friends of mine gave me a tarot pendant as a Christmas gift. Inscribed on the reverse of the card image is

The Ace of Wands is the culmination of the suit. Wands are associated with great enterprise and glory.

It suits me. Shut up, it does.

We’re sick of viral marketing, and ARGs are why

We KNOW that marketers will eventually give us all of the details on their products if they want to sell them, so why should we care to solve silly puzzles in order to learn trivial product details? Seriously: why?

Don’t you worry your 8-bit head over it, dude. You’re already at the end of the Consumer Spectrum the viral marketers are pushing people towards. You’re not necessarily being marketed to, if recent efforts can be construed as “typical,” but you can still enjoy a free game. You can still ignore it. For free!

Anecdotal: I played Halo: Combat Evolved and liked it a lot. I was planning on purchasing Halo 2, but it wasn’t until I participated in several puzzle relay situations with the Unfiction community during ilovebees that I seriously considered purchasing an XBoxLive subscription - which is incidentally about to renew itself sometime next week, for another year.

Also: Our Colony? Not an ARG. Origen? Not an ARG. That’s been pointed up in the article’s comment section anyhow, and with some vehement eloquence by ARG fans.