One of the important decisions designers have to make when creating an ARG is how often and when to update or release new information into the wild. There are several different approaches and, I think, I’ve tried them all at least a couple of time. They each have their pros and cons and, while I strongly favor strict update days, I’ll admit that the other approaches have their charms.

There are two basic approaches: structured & loose. Structured updates have a fairly rigid schedule when things update en masse while loose updates tend to appear to be much more haphazard with updates occurring when and where ever. Everything else is a variation or hybrid of those two.

The Basics

Structured Updates

Structured updates occur on a regular basis. For example, a game may update at noon on Tuesdays & Fridays. While it doesn’t have to be two days a week, two days seems to be the most frequently utilized approach. When players catch on to this (in my experience, they do most of the time, but not always), it creates a wonderful event like atmosphere as people dig through the universe looking for changes. Because the ARG updates in scheduled and large bursts, this approach tends to create a strong cycle of player anticipation, exploration, discovery, discussion, speculation. When players figure out the schedule (most, but not all, of the time), they’ll eagerly await “Update Day” and some may begin scheduling their time around it (why go to the dentist on Tuesday when that’s update day and you could just as easily go on Wednesday). This can create an event like atmosphere and tends to allow for a larger engaged audience.

Of course, it does have it’s downside. Because the experience has a regular schedule, it limits group discovery & exploration to those who are available at that time. If you have a regular Tuesday meeting or class when the ARG updates, you will only be able to participate in the discussion, speculation, and anticipation phases – which are more asynchronous and tend to occur throughout the ARG’s “downtime.”

On the developer end, this scheduled approach is quite handy – especially for teams with a strong producer and/or lead designer. It is easy to plan exactly what needs to be done and when, test it all, and schedule it to go live at the appropriate time. Of course, the moment you are late with an update (or, sadly, need to skip one or more), the player community may lose faith in the game and begin speculating on why it is broken and/or begin calling it “dead” or, worse, “imploded”. So this approach is far from ideal for teams which may not be able to stick to a schedule (such as grassroots ARGs which tend to be created by hobbyists in their spare time or small teams which may suffer drastically if someone falls ill or is taken away from the project for whatever reason). This approach also leads to a constant feeling of being in crunch time with the team always preparing for the next big update which may place the developers focus more completely on the story, puzzles, and sites than on the players and interactions.

Loose Updates

ARGs with loose updates often tend to appear more “real” or “natural” as they can occur more or less in real time. They tend to update as the story requires and may update several times a day or just a couple times a week.

Because the game can update when & where ever, this approach can make the discovery aspect of ARGs available to, potentially, all of the players. However, it can also be exhausting for the players who feel the need to constantly monitor for changes, interactions, and updates – and frustrating when they don’t seem to be able to find any. To mitigate this, designers need to clue players into where the next updates may occur and when that might be which may reduce some of the surprise factor. And, because there are those that are always monitoring, these games tend to develop smaller core groups of deeply involved players – if the groups become small enough, the game may struggle as much of the discussion & speculation occurs on smaller forums or in back channels. Game run forums (in game or out) are often used to minimize this effect and to help encourage players to work through the discussion and speculation aspects which may be ignored if they are, consistently, in the exploration & discovery modes.

On the developer end, the loose approach allows the team to update on their schedule and whenever they are ready and available. However, this can cause problems when teams begin to develop (and live) on the game schedule. It is easy for teams to become exhausted when they are constantly working on daily “just in time” routine. And, because these ARGs tend to be more flexible towards player interaction, it’s not uncommon for team members to become obsessed with what is happening in the player community. While reacting to the players is an important aspect of ARG play & design, there is a point where the ARG can suffer from it if the team is not careful to keep their various milestones in check.

Variations & Hybrids

Major Updates & Minor Interactions

This approach follows the structured update days, but allows for player interactions to occur throughout the week. For example, the ARG may update on Wednesday & Saturday, but there may be a character who hangs out on in-game forums and another who is twittering. These character interactions do not tend to occur during the exploration and discovery phases (no need to distract players or, worse, wind up spoiling that super cool plot twist for those that haven’t yet found it), but they rest of the time they are available for hints & clues or to just hang out, making the universe seem more real & alive.

This allows for some of the interactions some players crave while also allowing for the frenzy of update days. Of course, this doesn’t quite solve the problem of folks not able to be around during updates.

Loosely Scheduled Updates with Regular Events

This approach adds regular activities to a Loose update schedule. For example, the ARG may update when and where ever, but there is a conspiracy theorist who sends out a cryptic message every Thursday at 11 am. This cryptic message contains a massive amount of information and, of course, since it’s cryptic it comes with all sorts of fun ciphers & puzzles. This allows players to come together every Thursday for a massive update rush, but then they can follow along as they choose throughout the week.

While this approach seems like an ideal, the event(s) have to be big & exciting enough to appease the crowd but if they’re too big and exciting, they can overshadow the other update – both with the players & with the team. Players may not pay them that much attention and the development team may struggle to keep up because they’re working on the next big event.

Staggered Updates

The staggered approach may work if you have specific sites and fairly strong, yet minor, story lines. It is structured but in a way that may make it feel as though there are more updates occurring, more or less, in real time. Essentially, certain websites or storylines update on specific days. Tuesday & Thursday may be reserved for the cute brunette in trouble (who blogs from her university library in between classes), Friday may be reserved for the evil corporation (who puts out a weekly press release when they hope certain people won’t notice it), Monday may be reserved for the certain people (who did happen to notice the press release), etc. Our lives, whether we like to admit it or not, are scheduled, and this approach takes advantage of that.

It also allows players who may only be available one or two afternoons a week, to become more engaged and involved with (and experts on) specific characters and story lines while allowing players who enjoy the constant changes and more natural appearance of loose updates to feel as if that is occurring. In fact, many players don’t quite pick up on this sort of update schedule until someone mentions it to them. However, because the game is always on and always updating, there isn’t any real “downtime” to encourage the player communities to engage in discussion, speculation, and anticipation which can be a problem if the evil corporation story line needed players to figure something out before the next Friday’s update.

These are all various approaches that I’ve used (with mixed success on all accounts). What approaches am I missing? What pros & cons did I not hit on? Let me know in the comments.

Oh, and thanks to those who were chattering about update days on twitter & getting me thinking about this – now I’m thinking about how update schedules affect game accessibility, how their playing cycles vary, and how they play with “reality”. You can probably expect posts on those… sometime. I wanted to get a good idea of update “types” first.