Well, well, well…

Yesterday saw the largest jump in “viewer count” than I have seen here in a while now. Hopefully that means that people are getting excited about the weekly podcast that is being put together as I speak (here’s to hoping, huh?).

We have a temp site picked out for the podcast, http://howtocreateanarg.mypodcast.com. There really isn’t anything there as of yet, but I hope to put a little promo together in the coming days to give you a little taste of what to expect. I’ll probably put it in both audio and video form so I will have something to load onto YouTube as a promotional tool.

Just so people aren’t too confused when they listen to it (if anyone actually does) I am going to be using my DJ name, “JP”, instead of my real name when I host the podcast. It’s a stage habit that I will probably never be able to get out of.

The first show notes are being written down and the first episode is about “bad games”, along with a few rants that I have been holding on to for a while. So it should be pretty “interesting” at the least.

More than likely I will be using this blog in conjunction with the podcast. For instance, if there are any visual aids that I have put together I will load them here and inform people through the podcast what they are and where they are (for those listeners who don’t now about this blog yet).

So that’s it for now. I’ll post more updates as they become available. I thank you all very much for your time and I hope to hear from you again soon.

Take care… until next time.

We’re Moving…

Starting June 1st, 2008, “How to Create an ‘ARG’” will be in podcast form as “yours truly” as your host for the program. We will be discussing, well, how to create an “ARG”.

One question that you might have is “why?” Well, the answer is quite simple, really: Because no one else seems to want to do it, so I might as well put my neck out there to get chopped off. Besides, instead of hearing just my opinion, I hope that you will be able to hear people argue with my opinions as that will make for a better discussion.

The details are still being worked out, atm, but you can check back here over the next few weeks for updates on format and where you can get the show.

Since no one will want to participate there no point in asking. But in the off chance that you do, you only need to comment here and I’ll e-mail you the details when I have them to give.

Until then…

You choose the topic

My brain has been on the fritz lately with this new project (they are working me harder than I had first anticipated) so I would like to know what topics I should talk about. I’m opening the door too you, dear readers. If you are making a game you probably have a question or two, so let me know what they are.

I’m sure there are a few of you out there who read these posts and think I’m off my rocker, and you may be right. My opinions and suggestions are often met with disagreement. However, I think that if you talk too me about my opinions you will see that I’m not as far off as you might initially believe.

For instance, if I was to tell you that within the next five years we will see a move from the traditional forms of launching an “ARG” that we see now and into a more theatrical form of introduction (like a movie), you might think I’m missing a few marbles. But, you only need to look at the trends to see where this thing is going.

I don’t think there is a creator or player who looks at this genre and doesn’t see how big this genre is going to be in the next five years. The question is how are companies going to make this genre more “mainstream”? It is something that we are working on, but the way things are looking you can bet your butt that one day in the near future you will go too the movies and see a trailer for an upcoming “ARG”. It’s only a matter of when.

This genre is going too be huge, you can count on that. Just how huge is up in the air but I can say with certainty that what is going on currently will look teeny compared too what you will see in the next five years.

I would make a prediction, but I’ll save that for another time. Instead, I now give you the floor.

Good against Good?!?

Someone e-mailed me this afternoon asking about how feasible it would be to create a game where the players would compete against each other in groups, essentially “Team 1 vs. Team 2″.

“Alternate Reality Games” are not designed for the purpose of pinning one side against another (both sides being players). They are designed for community collaborative play, where all the players are on the same side.

While it is possible for players to “change sides” during a game, be it providing information too the opposing side (ie., the in-game “evil” characters) or trying to “gamejack” in order to bring a game down too its knees, it is quite difficult to create a game that is designed specifically to break the player base into groups of 2 or more and pin them against each other and see which side wins.

But it is not impossible.

The main problem that you will need to overcome is access too information, that is “how to keep one side from knowing what the other side is doing or seeing, etc.”. If you can get around that issue then you can pull this trick off.

And here is how…

The key here is “information”, both how much the players give out and how much you are providing. While some players may create wiki’s for the games that they are playing, most often then not the wiki’s are incomplete, especially the longer the game runs. This can force people who want to get involved in a game that has been running for quite some time to read through pages and pages of threads and posts, which most people don’t have the time to do. You can use this too your advantage when designing this kind of game.

When most people think about creating a “team 1 vs. team 2″ game, they think in the form of ONE game. In order for this design to work you will need to create two separate games, where both sides don’t know that the other side exists until the very end. The games will look and feel different from each other and have different goals. If the same person was too play both games they would think that they were playing two games that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

Think of this kind of design like a small town with only one main road going through it from east too west. One side is coming in from the east, the other side is coming in from the west. It is only when they get too the town that they realize the other group exists (insert final epic battle scene here).

There is a phrase that goes “different strokes for different folks”. If you have not heard this phrase it means that “not everyones tastes are the same”. By creating two different games it allows you to create two different feels and story lines. While one game might interest one person, the other game may not interest the same person. This works too your advantage as well since we are trying to keep one side from knowing that the other side exists. But, even if the same person plays both games they will not know it until it is too late anyway, so no harm no foul.

The number of games being put out there for people to play is growing day by day. This is what makes this kind of design work. If there were only two games out then there would be a higher chance that everyone would be playing the same two games. But that is not the case, so the odds are quite low which improves your chances of success with this design.

Some people will argue that at some point the two sides will need to know about each other before the end of the game, and they would have a very valid point. However, if you design your game so that there is essentially a landfill of information to weed through, by the time to two sides met (like say, 3/4 of the way through) you would force people who want to know what the other side knows to weed through pages and pages of posts and incomplete wiki’s to get the information that they need.

“Wildfire Industries” did something similar to this in that the game started as two games (“Wildfire Industries” and “Synagoga”) then merged into one near the end, but in both games that players were on the “good” side working against the “bad” side. However, “Wildfire Industries” did prove that this kind of design can work if done correctly (many people were taken by surprise when the two games suddenly merged without warning). I suggest you head on over too the forums and see how they did it. Do your research, I always say.

As I said before, most people think about creating ONE game when they try to do a “Team 1 vs. Team 2″ game. As with anytime you design an “alternate reality game”, think outside of the box to find your answers. They are not as hard to find as you may think. Now you just need to figure out how to execute your idea, and I hope that I have given you some inspiration.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? I enjoy them all so please feel free to express your positive and negatives. I’ve been shot and divorced, so it will take a lot more then “you suck” and “shut your pie-hole, just leave us alone” to get me all hot and bothered.

Been Rather Busy Lately

I have been quite busy the past week with work, designing web-sites for a couple of companies that have asked me to do so as well as designing a game for a friend of mine.

Okay, so I said that I was never going to ever, EVER run a game again, but it’s a rather huge project and I am really honored to have been asked to jump on board to do what ever I can. It is a team project with around 15 other people who will be spending the next year or so creating something that, from on the onset, looks to be quite fun.

I don’t have all of the details right now as I am just getting on-board, but my role will be quite small. While a lot of people might debate with me on my process, it is something that I am still working on an will only get better at over time.

So it looks like I’m back into the creation fold, as it were. I look forward to many sleepless nights over the next year or so.

I can not say for sure when I will be able to post here, but I will do my best to juggle everything the best that I can and get something up here once a week or more.

I have been trying to tweak the blogger blog for Rebeca so that my dates match the story (she should begin posting on January 1st, 2008 but the blog was made rather recently). This used to be as easy as editing the theme by taking out the “date” code, but things appear to have changed over there so it is taking me a little bit longer than I had planned. It will be up soon, though, I hope.