Chain Factor

[Simon (Uni of Portsmouth)]

Hi

A nice little write-up of a talk by Frank Lantz (area/code) on their
last ARG:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22885

Cheers

Simon

[Tom Maillioux]

Thanks for this link, Simon !

I especially liked the part about the "classic" structure of story >>
puzzle >> story and the solution the Chain Factor team offered by
experimenting with a single entry point for the ARG. I'm quite sur
that Dan and Adrian will be interested, as they (among others) have
been working to change that pattern in ARGs. I must say I'm looking
forward to what'll come out of all this brain-storming/ideas-
swapping !

All the best, T.

[Adrian Hon]

Hi all,

Definitely an interesting interview. I certainly agree with this section:

'The company wanted to solve the "player experience" problem --
frequently, people who are not already familiar with ARGs are confused
when they attempt to engage with one, due to the medium's frequent
"intentional ambiguity" and obfuscation.'

There are far too many ARGs out there that make things difficult for
players under the mistaken assumption that this is what's interesting
about the genre. Sure, it's interesting for some people - a minority -
but the obfuscation is one of the biggest things limiting mass uptake.

It's not just ARGs that suffer from the story > puzzle > story
problem, it's practically all games with any semblance of story,
whether that's something like Tomb Raider or ITV's new Primeval game.
It's not something that's easy to pull off, particularly in ARGs,
given the novelty of the genre (as opposed to, say, FPSes where people
already know the conventions).

We are tackling these problems head-on in our next game for Channel 4;
it's too early to say how we'll do, but we have some interesting (and
in retrospect, pretty obvious) solutions we're going to try!

Adrian

--
Adrian Hon - mssv.net
Chief Creative at Six to Start - www.sixtostart.com
Founder of Let's Change the Game - www.letschangethegame.org