interaction

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.

After five years, it finally happened. I got my very first not-so-random IM from a character in an ARG.

I wish that I could say that my blood raced, that I was shocked and excited and, even somewhat scared. A strange person, happening upon me of the millions of other AIM users, asking for help. And me, a person attached to a forum filled with people that could help her! OMG! So exciting!

But, no, it went something like this… ack! what’s this about? Gah! Why do people launch games this way. Oh, she’s dead. That’s original. Hahaha, now she wants my help. Heh. As if I couldn’t see that coming.

Am I jaded? Perhaps.

I was supposed to contact “them” about a person who had been killed and pass along a message. There was no mention of who I was supposed to contact and, in reality, if I just learned that someone was killed, my first instinct would be to tell the police. Yet, something tells me that if I had called the police and said, “Hello, officer? I just got this instant message from a woman named Claire Andersson. Apparently he killed her and I’m supposed to tell you ‘a doc psyche nerve shin’,” they would have thrown me in the loony bin. Well, they probably would have hung up on me, taken my caller id info and marked me on some list of crazies – but still not a list I want to be on.

Am I being ridiculous? Perhaps.

Of course, I knew it was a game. I also knew that I was chosen specifically because I would know that it was a game and that I would know to tell people at unfiction. Yet, I don’t know why I was chosen out of all the people at unfiction. I’m not actively playing any game or, even, registered at any game that has such things. My name is not on a list of people that would like to be contacted in such a way. I have a rather high profile at the site for various reasons and, perhaps, on some level they knew that the magic of falling down a rabbithole was lost on me years ago and they thought they would try to ignite some long lost passion.

Let me let you all in on a little secret – I’ve never had a passion for strange random IMs from fictional people. In fact, I don’t much care for any one on one conversations with characters. It always makes me a little uncomfortable – even in games that I love. There was always this strange fight in my brain during Last Call Poker when characters would appear at the poker tables.

“OMG! Character at the table! Grab a seat! It’s the thing to do!”

“ACK! No! Don’t do that! You’ll have to, like, chat with them!”

There, the secret is out – I hate talking to characters. I never know what to say. I like to sit back and absorb the story – playing through it all at my own pace and on my own terms. That’s not to say that I don’t like it when there is a sense of urgency or a call to action. I do, very much. I especially enjoy it when it is as part of the community of players.

Individual chats with characters over instant messenger take out the sense of community and very rarely provide the urgency or call to action. That’s shocking really, as you would think it would be an ideal medium for that. A character is placing her fate in your hands – you must get this information to the rest of the community or the world will end! Do it! Do it now! Yet, it just begs the question, “what will happen if I don’t?” And, I, like most players, know that nothing will happen. The story must continue. They will find another player who will share the message.

Is there a place for individual chats and random IMs in ARGs? Sure, there are probably dozens of places for them. However, I don’t think that the way in which most small community based games utilize them is one of them.