Giant Mice

If you’ve visited this site over the past year or so, you’ve seen a site very much in progress with an almost complete design and a not nearly complete portfolio. Oh the plans I had. I still have them, but I’m finally giving myself permission to let them go for now. I’m hoping that the return to simplicity here won’t make me feel guilty every time that I want to post something - as if I should be focusing on the design and portfolio instead of the thoughts and ideas that helped me to fill that portfolio.

I’m making no promises. There will likely be few posts. Though, I would like to actually do the Blog Round Table mentioned in the post just below this from almost a year ago. I may start that back up again if there’s interest (is there?). That would mean a post or so a month from me, at least.

Things have been insane, obviously, over the past year (and the five before it). I’ve continued working on corporate games (training & teambuilding) and with the government (military & intelligence). There’s been quite a bit of consulting with people like tv execs and ad creatives. Perhaps the most notable of my projects, seeing as it’s the only experience open to the public, has been Eldritch Errors for which I’ve been a creator, producer, and writer along with the great guys at GMD Studios.

Of course, there’s also Unfiction and ARGN, both of which keep me a bit busy even though I’m a total slacker (see above and sorry guys!). They’re two websites that I couldn’t imagine the internet without - not because of the design or the content, but because of the people involved both behind the scenes and in the community.

It blows me away when I think that it’s been six years (six years!!) since Lockjaw launched. We were so naive and hopeful and, yet, never in my wildest imagination would I have guessed where it would lead me and, more importantly, the amazing community that would take root during (because of?) it. For as much as I love my job, it is the community that has given me the most. I’m constantly in awe of it, learn from it, and am inspired by it. My job may be crazy, but it is the community that keeps me that way reminds me that I’m sane. So, thanks guys. You all are amazing.

(Wow, this got a bit sappy for a “oops, haven’t blogged in a year!” post. Hmmm, built in motivation to keep posting and to get this off the front page. Gotta love it.)

Last fall I stumbled upon Man Bytes Blog, a good blog with a really great concept - a monthly round table of bloggers talking about the same thing. For the next few months, I found myself really excited to see the different takes on topics from Horror in games to making games out of Christmas carols. I almost participated in the Christmas Carol one but then thought it would make a great holiday diversion - so you might see it one of these Decembers.

That’s when it hit me - there are a ton of ARG bloggers and so few of us write or, if we do, it’s not on ARGs. Why not? Is it a lack of inspiration? A lack of topic? The idea that nobody is reading, so why bother? Are we so busy that by the time we actually write it down, it’s no longer topical? The round table solves those things! It can bring people to your blog and give you a topic to think about and enough time to actually write something on it.

Topics will be posted on the the first day of every month. You will have until the 15th to write your post. The topic will change every month - some you’ll love and some you may hate. You don’t have to participate every month and you’re welcome to jump in at anytime. But the more often you participate, the better this all will be. So, without further rambling on, the very first ARG Round Table….

ARGs are Serious Fun!

A “Serious Game” is one that is more than just fun. It’s a game with a purpose - it may be to teach you something or to get you talking about things. ARGs do that.

In honor of yesterday’s launch of World Without Oil, a game designed from the ground up as a Serious Game - a Game for Change, let’s explore this topic. Keep in mind that the topic is nothing more than a guideline and you don’t have to talk about World Without Oil. Maybe you’d like to see more ARGs as “serious games” or maybe you fear ARGs pushing an agenda. You don’t have to get all stuffy and academic, feel free to reminisce on the things you’ve learned as you’ve played or talk about the ways games have dealt with “serious issues” in the past. Are you feeling a bit more creative? Why not think about a game design that could get people talking about your favorite social concern (electronic voting, aids, Darfur, climate change) or about ways that ARGs can be used in schools. There are so many paths to take here and everyone is as good as the last - so have fun with it.

You have until the 15th to write your post. Once you do, be sure to send me an email or catch me in chat so that I can link to it. It might take me a while to get them all up, so if your blogging software allows trackbacks, be sure to point back to this post and if it doesn’t, put a link to your post in the comments. This way, anyone that stops by and reads this post will be able to find you. It’s not an “elegant process” but it’s temporary. Next month, it will all be smoother.

So, to recap…

Topic: ARGs are Serious Fun!
Step 1: write something by May 15th
Step 2: link or reply to this post
Step 3: Send me an email
Step 4: Come back after the 15th and find links to everyone else that’s participated.

I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!

Finally, I want to give huge thanks to Corvus at Man Bytes Blog for inspiring me to do this and generously giving me the code he’s been using. I also want to thank Brian Enigma for taking a look at that code and giving his time to make it better for all involved.

… almost!

We need help in a very big way. You see, the site is absolutely amazing, but, at this point it’s only a fraction of the site that it should be. It needs a full database of the games that have taken place over the course of ARG history. Right now, we have most of the games prior to I Love Bees, but even those contain only the most basic of information. This means that we have a number of beta testers, especially those that have joined the community in the past two years, looking at games that they did not play. So they’re looking at the site and seeing the potential, but being underwhelmed and, to a degree, left out of the fun.

The task of gathering the information we need is a huge one. There’s no way that we can expect any individual to gather the information. However, together we can make quick work of this. Who does collaboration better than ARGers? If a couple dozen of us take on a game each, the database could be filled within days. If a few more dozen help out, it could go even faster. A wiki has been set up for this purpose. Please, go and add to it - add whatever information you know or can find. Read the information that others have already added for accuracy, grammar, and spelling. If you don’t know where to start, start with the games you played. If those are taken, start from the present and work your way back or grab that one game you always wanted to know more about. You don’t even need to be a solid writer, if you can go through and pick out the start and end dates for all the games that start with the letter L, that would be a great help. This something that can take so little of your time but really make a big impact.

If you’d like to see what the site looks like and some of the things that it does, you can take the ARGdb Tour. If you feel like seeing it a bit more up close and personal, and promise to tell us your thoughts - no matter how good or bad, you can sign up for the beta.

Most importantly, you can add any information that you have (or find) to the ARGdb wiki.

No, what’s been shown is that a bunch of strangers with both nothing to lose and nothing to gain worked toward a nebulous common goal. I guess its the sheer benevolence on display that amazed me most. — Jon Elek

Jon wrote that after reflecting on the A Million Penguins project. As mentioned in an earlier post (A million Penguins typing), the project fascinated me. The thing that drew me in to ARGs was the idea that a community of strangers from around the world could (and would) come together and collaborate on some strange project with no true understanding of what they were looking at and where they were going with it. They do so in a supportive environment with few arguments. Each giving what they can to the project and the process. In the end, they are rewarded with a story that they have, together, created.

I say story, but it’s really two. There’s the story and the story behind the story - the one of them as they played the game, the reactions they had, the processes that they went through. Both stories are meticulously documented, though only one of them is done so purposefully, and in the end they are so intertwined that it’s often difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

That’s what fascinated me with the Million Penguin project. They were given the directive to create a story. The pieces weren’t created by people lurking in the shadows and hiding them for the community to discover. The pieces (characters, places, plots, chapters) were to be built by the community while they were putting them together. It took out all of the other elements - the things that I found myself getting caught up in. The play. The game. The puzzles. The goals. The rewards. They are all important for an ARG, but they will never be as important as the fact that a bunch of strangers with nothing to lose and nothing to gain will come together to work towards some nebulous common goal. It’s a thing of beauty, really, that story behind the story. I’m glad that John and all of those involved with the A Million Penguin project got to experience it and that they were able to remind me of why I love Chaotic Fiction.

Twitter.

Of course I signed up back when and promptly got annoyed by it. It was pointless and stupid and something that only a bunch of kids would enjoy. Or so I thought. After seeing it in action at SXSW, I’ve become a fan. Oh, it’s still pointless and stupid and something that a bunch of kids would enjoy, but only 99% of the time. The other 1% is gold.

If you have somehow missed all the twitter talk (more power to ya!), it is essentially massively multiplayer text messaging and there are times when that is really handy - such as during conferences. With twitter, you can post up to 140 characters via the internet or email or sms and anyone (or just your friends) can recieve your post via the internet or email or sms. One post and everyone can see it in a form that’s convenient to them.

At SXSW this included updates on conference sessions and parties - where people were, what was interesting, what rocked, what sucked. It helped people find each other or, for some, avoid one another. It was fantastic. But, not fantastic enough for me to actually have logged in or used it - besides, others that I was with were getting the twitter updates, I didn’t need to bother.

What really excites me is the potential for ARG events. Imagine the ability for those at live events to post a stream of updates as to what’s going on from their phone that hits the web (or email or phones) instantly. Or, perhaps, a distributed scavenger hunt taking place the world over where people have to keep everyone else informed of what they’ve just found - each discovery building upon the other. Those are both possible with other technologies but twitter makes it fast and efficient and the possibilities excite me to no end.

Charlene Li has a great post on What Twitter is good for and how the program needs to be improved. I completely agree with her on the need for a more robust permission system. Until then, there’s just far too much noise - even if it is just my friends. But oh the possibilities.

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