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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Of the three, I am the most lookiing forward to ARGfest. It’s going to be an amazing time and not just because it’s a huge party filled with people that I see once a year (if that) despite chatting with them near daily. First off, I’ll be announcing two projects that I’m really quite excited about and hope that others will be as well. And then there’s the conference. The organizers, notably Rose, have done an absolutely AMAZING job in pulling this together and getting some fantastic people to come in and talk to us. A little taste:

1) The first public appearance by the folks behind lonelygirl15. I’m quite anxious to hear what all they have to say. They’ll be speaking the following week at SXSW, but I have a feeling that the talk at ARGfest will be a bit more intimate. It will definitely be interesting to compare the two, especially the audience reaction.

2) A panel with a number of folks from 42 Entertainment. I’m not sure who all will be a part of it, but from what I’ve heard, it will cover a wide range of roles & responsibilities. It should offer some fantastic insight on how the company approaches a project which is always interesting to me. Plus, they’re just a really fun group of people. I’m sure we’ll be getting our information served with a large side of fun banter & stories.

3) The guys (or at least one of them) from SFZero - a “Collaborative Production Game” which is created by the players almost as much as it is by the developers. By getting people to challenge each other to explore themselves and the world around them, the game makes a very real impact on the players and, by extension, their world. I’ve been a longtime fan from afar and have only heard amazing things by those more familiar with them and their work.

4) Jane McGonigal. She’s hosting Cruel 2 B Kind (a game she created with Ian Bogost) on Friday night and then sitting on a panel about the future of ARGs on Saturday. Her insights on people and play and community are amazing, if only I could sit in her brain for an entire day! It’s going to be nice to get a chance to hear from her before GDC where she’s giving the SGS Keynote on ARGs as serious games - but not serious as in boring, serious as in games for good.

There’s loads that I’m missing, but there’s just no way that I can hit everything that I’m excited about. It was all I could do to limit it to three. Seriously, check out the conference schedule to see for yourself. There will be a bit of coverage of the even on ARGNet, so be sure to head over there for post-ARGfest thoughts, impressions, and whatnots. If I can find a moment or two before getting wrapped up in GDC, I’ll try to add some of my thoughts here as well.

I can’t help but agree with Ben Vershbow over at if:book that the true story is in the discussion pages. The struggles and triumphs as people attempt to come together to create something whole. He’s right in that it is far more a novelty than a novel, but I’m fascinated by the project and anxious to watch it unfold.

I wonder what we’ll see in five weeks when it’s over. Will there be a coherent novel? Will the project continue by those unhappy with the final result? Will it turn into an experiment in hypertext storytelling? What themes will emerge from a novel written by people from all over? What themes will provide the greatest controversy? The more I think about it, the more the questions come. Add your own below, if you’re so inclined.

Common sense, people.

Do not put light brights on highway overpasses and do not duct tape Altoid tins to electrical panels.

I’m not saying this because it could lead to a “chilling effect.” I’m saying this because it’s stupid.

Geocaching is a fun and, sometimes, challenging activity that gets people outside where they may go places they wouldn’t otherwise go and see things they wouldn’t otherwise notice. The location of the cache caused concern not only to the police but also to the first person to find the cache who noted his discomfort in the cache log (in geocaching, it’s common practice to sign a log and, sometimes, trade items in the cache box).

There are thousands of caches out there in the wild waiting for people to find them and new ones are appearing every day. This incident will not put a stop to the activity and the overall effect of this will be an awareness that people think that placing a cache on an electrical box is stupid - the person that might have considered it will now be a bit more creative and that is a good thing.

Fortunately Police Captain Janet Camplin seems to get it. As she pointed out, activities such as these are on the rise and people just need to use a bit of common sense.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Facing a large bill over the city’s reaction (which, Turner will likely have to cover - a fair price for all this internet traffic on a campaign that only took place in a few cities), the Mayor has stated that “this nitwit guerrilla advertising” has no place in the city of Boston. A joke, really. How do you ban something that has no clear definition?

Over at Clickable Culture in a post titled Boston Guerrilla Marketing Scare’s Chilling Effects on ARG Design, Tony agrees with me about the lack of enforceability, but then questions what would happen if other cities follow suit. He goes on to say that, “[i]f any good can come out of the Boston incident, it’s that ARG designers will more carefully consider how the public is engaged, perhaps involving local people–and local authorities–earlier on in the development process, even at the expense of breaking the “this is not a game” mantra some hold dear.”

That statement troubles me on a number of levels, but especially in the way that it implies that designers currently do not fully consider how they are engaging the public as well as their players and that they do not take steps to retain a certain amount of control over the situation or to provide security. Perhaps I am playing the “wrong” games, but in every game that I have played or designed, I cannot think of any examples where designers did not show such concern.

In Art of the Heist, players had to go on a mission at a car dealership and distract the salesmen while another member of the team looked through a vehicle to find a memory card. Not only was the dealership informed of what was going to happen but the diner across the street, where players met, was also informed. People on the design team were present, unbeknownst to the players, and overseeing the situation. Another incident occurred in Chicago when players were taken out on a boat, at night, and in the dark. Again, unbeknownst to the players, members of the design team were hidden on the boat as well as on land overseeing the situation and ready to act as needed.

I Love Bees is notable not only for the amazingly rich story it told but for it’s incredible use of pay phones to tell it. It sent players to phones all over the United States in dozens of cities every week. Unlike Art of the Heist, game designers were not present for each phone call, but they did their best to ensure players safety by flying “payphone scouts” all over the country to find suitable working payphones. This kept players in safe areas and shows that concern was not only given to the game design but also to the public and the players.

Last Call Poker held playful events in cemeteries throughout the country. While the events were organized games and very obviously had members of the team present to oversee and photograph them, they were held in an environment that many don’t see as a playful environment. And, as a matter of respect to the public, not only were cemeteries carefully chosen but the boundaries in which we could play were carefully considered. If someone was mourning, we backed off and let them have their time with their loved one in peace. Every cemetery had agreed to the event knowing full well that it was rather unconventional and, from what I understand, they welcomed the activity provided that people were respectful. In addition, there were separate “missions” that people could take on and perform at any cemetery and these included things like cleaning up a grave site or leaving flowers or finding interesting epitaphs. The designers not only showed great concern for the greater public but encouraged their players to do so as well.

Granted, none of those events dealt with leaving battery operated objects with wires and blinking lights on highway overpasses and the like, but I cannot fathom that the same care and concern for both the public and the players would not be met if the games had included such things. To imply otherwise, is selling those of us involved in the genre short and is rather shocking, if not disconcerting, coming from someone that is involved.

It is important to remember that while ARGs are often part of marketing campaigns, when we engage in public play the goals are very different from that of your average guerrilla marketer. We are not out just to get some attention or after any sort of shock value. Our campaigns are complex and spread out over weeks at a time. We are telling a story and engaging the public in play as part of a play. We act in a spirit of collaboration and community. Therefore, our activities are more carefully designed to elicit a different type of response.

And while Tony was reminded of a similar over-reaction to the Mario Brother’s blocks in Ohio and Zombie Dance Party in Minneapolis, I can’t help but wonder how many dozens or hundreds of displays of public play occurred after those events that didn’t elicit any fear - including the number of cities that did not react to the Mooninite campaign as Boston did, and it took weeks for Boston to react in this way. Stating that these events have a “chilling effect” on ARG Design and/or public play is overstating the situation and, dare I say it, about as reactionary as the Boston police were last week.

THE PROJECT MU ARCHIVES ARE IN PRINT!

huh?

Well, if you haven’t already seen the online version, I suggest you head over there right quick. One of my favorite websites, it’s all about Metacortechs (code named Project MU) but from the players perspective and written in the weeks and months following the actual run of the game. This allowed them to create a unique walkthru of an Alternate Reality Game with the insights of having gone through it. So, unlike the more comprehensive guides and trails, they were able to reduce some of the confusion and speculation as far as the story was concerned - making it much more readable. So readable, in fact, that it’s the first website that I refer to people interested in ARGs.

I was gushing about the website to Giskard, one of the Metaurchins, while staying at his place at the end of September. We were laughing and reminiscing over the game, in part because that was how we met (me a PM, him an active player) but more because it was the third anniversary of the game. Three years. Wow. So, when he handed me a wrapped present at midnight of October 1st, I was flattered and a bit embarrassed. When I opened it and saw this book, I was rendered near speechless. For a good 15 minutes I was unable to say anything but “wow.” As I flipped through the book, my eyes got a bit watery. It wasn’t just the flood of memories or the shock that the players were so drawn to the world that three years later they put a book into print, it was more about the pride and care in which they took in doing it. It shows on every page.

As the ability to talk returned, I came to learn that the copy in my hand was a prototype - they wanted to make sure that they had our (the PM team) permission to take it to print and to check the fonts, cover, etc. Then they explained that they wanted the proceeds of the sale to go to unfiction (wow!). Of course, the moment each of the team saw it, they gushed and immediately agreed to let it go in print. The next few weeks they spent making the few changes that needed to be made and assuring that the referenced websites were in order. So, for 8 weeks, I’ve been sittin gon this secret, quietly admiring the work that they did. But, now, it’s been announced and I can shout it from the rooftops.

So, right quick like, I want to thank all of the metaurchins for this but there are three that really stand out in this effort - Yanka who tirelessly gathered and formatted the original website, xnbomb who somehow managed to translate all of that work to print, and Giskard who has been a wonderful support to both of them and who placed the first prototype in my hands. Over the last three years, you’ve become friends and that’s really been the greatest part of all of this.

So, now, go and check out the book. It really is gorgeous and your grubby little paws would love to get a hold of it!

Gupfee mentioned that quote to me earlier and it’s a perfect quote to reflect what happens in games when discussions of what’s in-game and what’s out-of-game pop up. It’s on my mind quite a bit because of the design of Deus City. On the one hand it’s trying to be a cooperative game and, on the other, it’s encouraging competition and segmentation. This, of course, results in confusion and discussion. It can work to an advantage, but unfortunately, unless or until Deus City deals with it in the game itself, I fear that it may become more of a distraction.

I’m far too busy this weekend to write a proper post on the subject - perhaps Sunday night if we get home from dinner and I’ve not had a few glasses of wine (Fogo, oh yeah!), but probably some time next week. Please, brainstorm with me if you’d like. Are there any great examples - both positive and negative? Any personal anecdotes? Any thoughts or tips on just how to harness that stress? I’m really interested in opinions other than my own and they don’t need to be ARG related - other games or media that have dealt with these issues have many lessons to teach. And, I’ll try my best to come up with a good post summarizing the comments and/or emails and/or discussions that come in. Hopefully tying it all together in soemthing coherent. So, poste em if you got em and I’ll do the same.

11) Which puzzle from past ARGs do you like best/was real fun? Can you tell us why?

My favorite puzzles are those that truly offer a lot to the story, both in their design and in what they reveal. I also like complex puzzles and those that bring the community together, yet could be solved on your own. And, while I create dozens of smaller puzzles, puzzles that do all of that are my goal. And, of those puzzles, the Seven Sins puzzle in Lockjaw was my favorite.

Lockjaw dealt with the questions of immortality and ethics (business, medical, human). We had developed a web browser for the game that, presumably, all of the characters and a number of the players used. The browser had a built in AI named Mephista. She saw every page that everyone who used the browser saw and, within the story, she dumped certain information into a central server. So, clearly, someone or something was aware of nearly everything that was going on (although players weren’t fully aware of this until the end game). Additionally, we had several characters out for revenge and looking at all of the sins, no matter how simple and mundane they might be, that the other characters were committing.

In order to show that in the game and to add to the depth of all of the characters, I created a puzzle deeply rooted in the mythology and symbolism of the Seven Deadly Sins. Each sin is associated with a color, an animal, and a punishment in hell. Additionally, each sin is paired with a corresponding virtue. For example, envy is associated with green and represented by a dog. If you’re guilty of envy, you will be punished in hell by being placed in freezing water. The contrary virtue of envy would be charity - combating the jealousy of others by giving to them. I used the great painting The Seven Deadly Sins and The Four Last Things by Hieronymus Bosch not only because it’s a cool painting but to help clue players in to the idea that the theme of the puzzle was the sins.

So, the puzzle…

It started off rather simply. Players would be taken to a page with a colored background, an image, and a submit box. Every time you returned to the page, the color of the background the image would change. Every time that you made an incorrect guess in the submit box, it would kick you out to various pages online. At first, it seemed very random. But it wasn’t long before players identified the images as being a part of the painting. That gave them the seven sins reference. But they still weren’t sure what to put into the submit boxes. The kickouts offered the clues.

Each of the four images was themed and was paired up with a long list of kickouts. For example, an incorrect guess on the image showing the view of hell led to websites that dealt with punishment as well. Incorrect guesses on the other images led to pictures of animals, punishments, or sins. Once players figured out the symbolism behind the sins, it was a simple matter of pairing up the color (telling them which sin they were looking at ie green background meant they were dealing with envy) with the image and they knew what they had to enter - the name of the sin, the corresponding virtue, punishment, or animal. There were 28 correct answers in total. Each correct answer would send players to page with an image, poem, short story, or statement that fit the sin and which they could later pair up with characters in the game.

It didn’t stop there. The file names for each correct page seemed random at first with names such as 1heaesnu1.htm. It was what’s known in some cipher crowds as a columnar transposition, but that’s just a big fancy term for “line them up and read up & down”. When they were put in order (marked by the numbers on the beginning and end), a phrase which explained the character’s point for the puzzle appeared: Higher than the question of our duration, is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in future, must be a great soul now. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Worship” The Conduct of Life.

In my mind, it really satisfied everything that I want to achieve in creating a puzzle. It could be solved individually - there was nothing extraordinarily difficult about it and all of the information needed could easily be found on Google. Yet, it was easier to solve as a group. Refreshing the page to get the right combination of color and image could be a bit tedious and so everyone could pitch in. It also had that awe factor - initially looking at it and seeing it change and thinking you could never make sense of it, yet it was relatively easy to do. It had the excitement factor with each little solution taking you a step closer and providing a bit of satisfaction. And, the motivation for the puzzle, the content of the puzzle, and the information that it provided all fit into the story. But it also led to more questions - who was doing this? why? how?

He proposes that ARGs are a part of the larger Chaotic Fiction and goes on to describe three key elements, or axes, of Chaotic Fiction: Authorship, Ruleset, and Coherence. What we’re left with is a three dimensional space that contains all sorts of creative efforts, including Alternate Reality Games. What’s very nice about this model is that it is not restricted to fiction and, at the end of the article, he points to other examples such as the Chaotic Fact of Wikipedia or the Chaotic Programming seen in the Open Source Software movement.

So, while he did not define Alternate Reality Gaming, he did a wonderful job of defining the box in which it sits. Even if that box isn’t as much a box as it is a big cloudy sphere.

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.

Pages for an individual post will look something like this:
http://www.giantmice.com/archives/2006/10/changes

Categories will also change and will look like this:
http://www.giantmice.com/archives/category/giant-mice

It’s a simple change but something that will help me out a bit in the future. Best to change the url structure now, while there’s so little here, than later.

The other changes around here are a bit more obvious for anyone that’s seen the site in the past week - a number of the pages are now formated correctly and the style has been changed quie a bit. There are still some trouble spots, but it should all be rendering correctly. If you notice any big problems, please let me know.

Obviously, this is very much a work in progress. I know that a bunch of you have gone to my portfolio. I’m flattered and a bit shocked that so many of you have wanted to see what I’ve been working on the past few years. Unfortunately, I’ve been kept busy by work and out of town guests - both of which deserve my attention far more than the portfolio. As things settle down over the week and my routine returns to a state of semi-normalcy, I’ll have the time to put it up as well as write a post a bit more substatial than “changes & status”. Until then, if you’re so interested, you can check out my old portfolio. It’s a bit out of date as it was last updated about 2 years ago, but it’s something.