From ARGFest-o-Wiki

Back to Index: Video Transcriptions

Contents 1 Transcription Complete - Needs Cleanup -SpaceBass 1.1 Intro 1.2 How Puppetmasters Can Screw Up Community Relations 1.3 The Structure of SF0 1.3.1 Distract the Mailman 1.3.2 Non-Narrative Structure 1.3.3 Points and Incentive 1.4 Player Interaction in I Love Bees 1.5 Part Five 1.6 Part Six 1.7 Part Seven 1.8 Q&A 1.8.1 Q1 1.8.2 Q2 1.8.3 Q3 1.8.4 Q4 1.8.5 Q5 1.8.6 Q6 1.9 Epilogue

Transcription Complete - Needs Cleanup -SpaceBass

ARGFest 2007 - Panel II ~ Running an ARG 40:09

• Panel II ~ Running an ARG (Specific Issues, Part I)
• Moderator: Krystyn Wells (KW), Unfiction
• Jaclyn Kerr (JK), Unfiction ~ Acheron, Omnifam - Community relations: How not to alienate your players
• Sam LaVigne (SL) ~ SF0
• Ian Kizu-Blair (IK) ~ SF0
• Kristen Rutherford (KR) ~ I Love Bees - One-on-one interactions with players

  Credits: Panel II, Running an ARG, ARG Fest-o-con 2007, San Francisco, CA

Intro

KW: Hi, everybody. My name is Krystyn Wells. My name tag keeps falling so you're just going to have to remember that. With two Ys, please. Welcome to ARGFest-o-Con. I am so glad to see all of you here. This is really awful <about nametag>. You know what? I give up. Fall. <lets go>

Welcome to a panel about how to deal with community relations in Puppetmastering and ARGs, dealing with how not to alienate your players, and on our panel, we have four people in front of me because we have another addition from SF0, which I'm really, really happy about because I want to know more about that and their particular experience. I'd like to go ahead and have the panel introduce themselves, starting with Miss Thang over there.

KR: I'm Kristen Rutherford. I worked on I Love Bees and Last Call Poker, and I <was> the projected winner of the bingo game. But he cheated, so you know. <laughter>

JK: I'm Jackie Kerr. I'm one of the Assistant Editors of ARGNet and I'm an Admin at Unfiction.

SL: I'm Sam Levigne. I run SF0.

IK: I'm Ian and I also run SF0, along with Sam.

SL: And Sean runs it too. He's over there.

JK: Hi, Sean!

How Puppetmasters Can Screw Up Community Relations

KW: It's kind of interesting that we come to this panel directly after the last one, because I think we started to get into some really good discussions about incentive. I actually wrote that down and then Brian Clark started talking about that quite a bit, about giving your players incentives as Puppetmasters and talking about that investment. Not just if you're a corporate ARG, having that client relationship and that client responsibility but also dealing with the community, and with the player base, and seeing what it will take for them to continue playing the game, and exactly what they require in order to feel as if it's a worthwhile experience that they're in. You know, something worthwhile that they're to do. So, I think I'll turn it over to Jackie and just pop her a really quick, quiz question. You can pick, and it doesn't have to be the top three, but any three pet peeves of yours that you see only in ARGs--

JK: I only get to do three?

KW: <laughs> Oh no, you can do five. Go to ten if you want.

JK: Oh, all right. I can talk all day. Three pet peeves that I see in terms of community relations and the PMs: the boundaries of the game not being well-defined, so that the players get lost and confused; challenges to the player community itself - theoretically communities are supposed to produce great experiences, this is why they're great for educational purposes, if you can get a large number of people together and almost train them to act as a collective intelligence - so things that almost break down that ability to kind of organize the intelligent part is an other big pet peeve of mine; and I think my third big pet peeve is a game design that inspires more meta discussion about how the game is actually supposed to work, versus enabling the players to actually play the game itself, without having to really think about how they're interacting with the game. That should be kind of natural. Those are my big three, right now. Subject to change, you know, over time.

The Structure of SF0

KW: I think that they sort of tend to interchange pretty easily too because they all relate to pretty corporate and just gaming in general, not just Alternate Reality Games. For SF0, I'd like you to explain a little bit the game experience itself, how it's structured, and maybe tie into that, start talking about is there stuff that depends on a sense of reward, and then what that means for you guys, as creators.

SL: Well basically the way the game works is that you set up on our website, you're presented with a series of tasks or activities to perform offline. They start off easy, and they get progressively more difficult. You do them, we document what you've done in the form of text or video or pictures, put that back on the website, and then other people are able to comment on what you've done, vote on what you've done, or flag it if you've screwed up and haven't done what you were supposed to do. Each time you do a task, you get a certain amount of points, which unlocks more difficult tasks.

So initially it took some incentive, I think, for a lot of people just sort of to-- this fun thing to do, you like accumulate all these points, right? Then as you're playing the game more and more it becomes less about the points, more about the community interaction with the other players. How to get votes? Try to do something as well as you can, not just sort of massively accumulate, you're doing as much as you can. And then eventually...eventually, I don't know why people continue to play... *laughter*

What happened is that people aren't just doing these tasks that we have created. They're also creating tasks for other players to do.

Audience: Can you give an example?

Distract the Mailman

SL: Of tasks? Yeah. My favorite task right now is called "Distract the Mailman." <laughter> That's all it says. Those were the instructions, just "distract the mailman." So, you know, people do it in a different way. <laughter>

JK: <adult gesture> <more laughter>

KW: This is the best panel, ever.

Non-Narrative Structure

IK: I think one thing that we should explain is that this is a non-narrative ARG. It's not another world, where you're playing through a storyline about other characters. It's more of a sort of MMORPG-type structure, where you're building up your own character. In this case, the character's not a fantasy character, although people do often roleplay characters in some way. So mainly you're just playing as yourself, in the real world and you're going to be doing tasks in the real world that aren't based around some sort of larger narrative. So the intended structure is different because it's not about unlocking more information, or gaining access to better information. The incentive structure is to level-up so that you have the ability to do more difficult, more interesting tasks. And as you get higher level, they get very complicated, the tasks you have to do, so "Distract the Mailman" will seem like a whole different task. The level, fixed tasks or whatever--

JK: <extremely inappropriate adult gesture> <yet more laughter>

IK: --Like "Bus Stop Seating Conversion," where it's go to a bus stop and completely remodel the entire bus stop so that it's more comfortable for people to sit there, it's more fun to be at the bus stop, and in a lot of ways so that if homeless people want to stay at the bus stop, it's easier for them to stay there. This one group did that task and they put in a stereo - hooked it into the power system at the top, that runs the lighting - they put in water, they put in food, they put in toasters. They put in curtains, they put a bunch of pillows...

SL: Stuff to read, I think, too?

IK: Yeah, they put a bunch of reading material. <laughter> So in a lot of ways, we're operating with a different sort of paradigm than the idea of accessing more information, or finding out more about characters. It's more about finding out, in this particular case, about your ability to modify the place you live, or modify your own behavior in interesting ways.

Points and Incentive

KW: I'm getting the sense from that, that there is an interesting feedback loop. That, like you said, you started out with a point system and from there on it becomes more of an exhibitionist sort of thing, where you're depending on peer pressure in order to maintain that type of structure. Would that be accurate to say? That the audience sort of determines what has value?

IK: I think that's true in some ways. In a lot of ways the incentive becomes that you meet people who - in the same way as any other ARG - you meet people who kind of become your friends, become your peers, right?

SL: And your enemies...

IK: Yeah, we have a new feature of the game that we just implemented, so you can have enemies.

SL: Which was just expressing something, you know, that was already there, or rivalries. So what we really want to do here is, instead of write narrative like [Ian] said, that we're revealing, we want to create a structure where narrative can occur organically, between the players, right? And that becomes in itself something really compelling for people, especially when they start kind of screwing around with each other, and creating mysteries for each other, creating maybe a task that's targeted at one specific person, or they complete a task in a way that's trying to disrupt someone or get into their life.

IK: For example, we have a task called, "The Things We Bury for Our Friends." What you need to do in that task is you go out, and you bury something, and then you have to give instructions to a player that you don't know, how they can find that thing that you buried. It's a collaborative task because a lot of the tasks in the game end up having to be collaborative between multiple players. So that type of thing is the same type of concept, where you're going, you're finding something that's hidden but instead of us hiding it ourselves, and having it based around a story to go find it, the players will create that between each other. That type of peer interaction is a lot of what drives SF0, and drives ua sort of community-building, and guides people doing, praising good content - instead of just distracting the mailman. And of course we like when people are just like, "Hey mailman!" <laughter>

And people do go to more elaborate ways because they want to do a good job and have people say, "Wow, you did that task... it was only one line, but you did it in a really interesting way."

Player Interaction in I Love Bees

KW: And that brings me to Kristen. Don't stare at me!

KR: I'm not!

KW: Talking about the peer pressure, and talking about having to sit on a phone for hours and hours and hours...did you experience that? Was there something you got from the players that-- you know, the phone would ring and they'd pick it up and they'd realize that you were there. What sort of structure do you feel that there was at play? Do you think that there were people that were operating under some sort of sense of obligation, and how did that play out for you?

KR: Obligation how?

KW: To help your character achieve objectives.

KR: I found that at first, when we first went live with the phone calls, there was this - that first day going live with the phone calls, that was amazing. I still remember that first kid that we got, who - that I could hear it in his breath, he was was like, "Oh my god!" <laughter>

And I think that first day as it started to catch fire and people that were hoping - it became a lottery, and I think that's what you were talking before about rewards. I think that, that in itself, I mean it was critical to the story, we made the story so compelling that people were just - they were just so passionate about their characters and they just - I don't know why, but god you guys love Melissa so much! I mean just anything for her and they were all going to the phones in the hopes that they were going to get people, that they were going talk to her and that became a lot of it because it also gave them power to feel like they were helping me, that they were moving the story forward.

Part Five

KW: The structure initially, when you were going to start the phone calls, did that structure change because of the players at all? I mean, did you go into it thinking it was going to be like this? And did it change?

KR: You know, I did not go into it with any kind of hope that this was going to happen. I really had no idea.

KW: Did you have any rules in place that you were given?

KR: God! *looks at certain audience member*

Elan Lee: Don't do--

KR: Yeah, Sean! Stop laughing at me! I mean it's more - I don't even know how to describe it. There weren't so much rules, and that was half the fun of it that it was just "whatever happens." You know we were the definition of dead reckoning, at least I was. It was just flying by and whatever they said it just seemed so - I completely immersed myself in the story and in the Halo role. Because, you know, Artificial Intelligences, they don't go "um" or "uh-uhh." *laughter*

KR: (Cont.) They have to be able to spit everything out. And you know the Halo role--

KW: Unless they do and they're just foolin'.

KR: <something unintelligible but hilarious> *laughter*

KR: (Cont.) But as I remember it, we were very flexible with the players and I was - I don't know if you guys know how it was structured but I'd be on the phone and we would all be in IM and obviously I can't be typing questions so it was a lot of them feeding me in some ways, maybe trying to take them this way, and they would coach me. But even then from time to time there I was on my own because there was lag time between chat and interacting with somebody. We just let them go and just take it and - well I just had to be so immersed in the story that it would just naturally go to a place where it was supposed to.

KW: And that brings me to a question about just the acting in general, of immersing yourself, of - I don't know - pursuing a sort of a Method approach to it. Do you think there was a particular common thread from the players, that you were sort of instinctively honing in on, with a common personality trait perhaps that you were trying to pick up on? Was there something about the callers?

KR: You know, a personality trait - well, I really do, I always joke around with everybody. I say, "Why do you love her so much?" And when I listen to that message that's still on Dana's voicemail, it's - she's terrifying! But you know that's what was so - and people usually call this Method, and this and that - people would ask me, when they would listen to the live recordings, people asked, "How did you not laugh?" When people would sing to us, people were singing all day and I told them, "Well, it wasn't funny." It wasn't funny at all; they were really trying to help her, and that was what I think everybody had in common. The common thread was they were her crew and they just loved her and they just wanted to help her. A lot of times I would just get so caught up in the feelings that everybody had towards her and it was, it was almost easy because the feelings were so strong for her. I would get so caught up in it that on Fridays when we would get the live - when they would update and we'd get to hear bits and pieces of the live - it was like listening to somebody else sometimes. I would really have no recollection because I was so focused on listening to them, responding to them, and trying to rebuild all her systems.

Part Six

KW: Bringing that back, you talk about flying blind, about having no real structure there. For SF0, what sort of structure do you have in place to prevent that sort of thing from happening. You have a point structure, you have these updates that happen, everybody can see everybody else's progress, is there some sort of gamejacking that can occur in that kind of situation? Do you have things in place to prevent that from happening? To keep other players from feeling as though the game is spiraling out of control?

SL & IK (in unison): Hmm. *laughter*

IK: Well, the only thing that people can do is submit tasks that they haven't done adequately. And we just reject those tasks.

SL: Yeah, it's gets annoying for the really good players when someone new comes along and just like half-heartedly submits ten new tasks in a row, and advances really, really quickly. At least on paper, advances really, really quickly. And everyone's kind of like, "Grrrr," you know? "That guy's not really doing what he should be doing."

IK: There's a big question of whether you should be allowed to submit things that you've done in the past--

SL: Not for SF0. So if, for some reason, you've already distracted the mailman before you came to the site-- *laughter*

SL: (Cont.) Are you allowed to submit that--

IK: Right, right, right.

Audience: <something hilarious> *laughter*

IK: In terms of spiraling out of control, we run live events sometimes. Those have a little bit more of a quality where we have less control over - in the same way as if you're on the phone with people - where you have to kind of live adapt to what's going on.

SL: And of course when we do our live events, we try to really relinquish control, because that's the environment we like.

IK: For the most part, right, that's true, we don't try and control everything. Like we did an event in New York and we had one of the checkpoints was right in front of the New York Stock Exchange. And we liked that the whole area was barricaded off and there were cops everywhere, and that people would be running up and down the deserted street in front of the Stock Exchange, chasing each other. But, um, they had a little, you know--

SL: They had a terrorist... *waving* *laughter*

IK: They had - I had to talk to the cops and move the checkpoint. That was a sort of live thing where, then we had to have the person at the checkpoint before tell everyone that it had been moved because it was marked on a map, on a manifest. That's the type of thing where we're dealing with something that's sort of spiraling out of control but in the real game, it doesn't usually happen.

Part Seven

KW: And this brings me back to Jackie, who I want to have come up with three more pet peeves.

JK: Oh no! *laughter*

KW: Because you said you could!

JK: And then I want the pony show. *gestures as if flinging a dead fly off the end of a warm fly swatter* *laughter*

KW: And maybe talk a little bit too about - I know this is something that, in the Netcasts for ARGNet - that there's a lot of talk about creating trust for the players and what you feel jeopardizes that in terms of how a game is constructed, and how it hinges on the various communities that play the game. Go!

KR: Go!

JK: The PM/Player trust is also reinforced by the player-to-player trust and the difficulty comes when you've got a PM team that is of a finite number. You've got four- to five- to six-PM teams, versus thousands of players. You can't out-think your players. You can try, you can try to control them, you can try to think that you're going to be smarter than the collective brain, but it's just not going to happen. You can get PMs that will almost try to direct the story and it's only going this way, and-- *gesticulates*

JK: (Cont.) And you can almost see the players rail against it and when they start to rail against it, they start losing their trust in the PM's ability to react to the situation. There is a give and take in the creation and the development, and the actual playing of the ARG. The PMs are throwing out content and the players are picking it up and throwing it all back. It's very much like a tennis match. And when that PM team, instead of playing like they normally would, instead hitting the tennis ball back, they hit a bowling ball, it doesn't make sense. The players are like, "What is this?" If you can't hit the ball back within the court area then your players can't play your game. It's hard, you know, that trust is a very tough line and it's hard to not want to say to your player group as a whole, "This is the only way that you're gonna play and you're gonna do this and you're gonna do that." Your players won't want to do that, necessarily, and they're going to, within their own community dynamics, determine their own game mechanic. Then when we get multiple forums, there's going to be multiple ways of playing this game, and multiple communities that are all setting up their own basic ruleset of how they are going to interact with the game and the PMs have to adapt to that. Otherwise, the trust experience between the players gets jeopardized and then everything just goes to hell in a handbasket. You just can't control them and when you start to do that, it just gets nasty.

JK: (to SL) Clearly with SF0, you guys don't really have that. I mean, you let them create what they want.

SL: Yeah.

KR: Whereas we had the game where - everybody remembers Weephun - ratted out the Sleeping Princess and all of us collectively on the phone were like-- *makes face* *laughter*

KR: (Cont.) So we had a bad reaction, that that happened, and it sort of changed the course of the story.

JK: Right, and that adaptability of it to a PM perspective is that you guys are actually listening to us as players and we're actually having a dialogue besides - it's a second-level dialogue. There's the game dialogue and there's what we would talk to each other just one-on-one, and then there's that kind of a nebulous area where we're talking but we're not really talking, but we're communicating. That's where that trust is built. We're listening to you and you're listening to us but we don't have to say it, it's just happening.

KW: Like the body language of ARGs.

JK: Yeah. At least, it's hard to see you online because I can't see you.

KR: What?

JK: I'm sorry?

KR: What?

JK: Well, I can see you. Thanks for that hookup. *winks* *laughter*

JK: (Cont.) The body language is kind of all in how you address the tone that the players take with the players, how the websites are addressed to the players, how the players then interact with your characters and you as a team. That body language, that's body language that is not body language; it's the whole community versus--

KW: Its brain.

JK: --Its brain. It's a brain massage. *massages air*

IK: Along those same lines for us, we did what we wanted to do with something where we had the least amount of control possible and the players had the most control.

SL: It's working.

IK: In a lot of ways, it's less work for us but in a lot of ways, it's a lot of work to maintain the structure. We're not producing narrative content, we're not doing specific phone calls to people or whatever. But the structure that we're working with still requires a lot of maintenance and continually changing it because players want to see tasks scored correctly. If something is very difficult to do, it needs to be scored appropriately. If something is very easy for people to do, you don't want to give people to get a lot of points for it. That's the type of thing we deal with. When we first created this, we didn't really want to have a top-down model, where we were coming up with a story and everyone was living out our story. We wanted people to come up with their own stories and to come up with their own tasks. Like you're saying, control is a very touchy issue because you don't want to just lead people down one narrow path. You have to be very adaptable. That's something we wanted to have as a major feature of our game.

KW: I know that one of the other Puppetmasters for 42 often talks about how this ride is on rails, giving the impression that the game is open but that there are signposts, there are milestones that you have to reach along the path and maintaining that. Even how to know about tipping the scales, where you have the player effort and control versus the Puppetmasters and their game fluidity, is the foundation strong enough to withhold everything that the players can throw at it because they will, where everything can happen.

KR: When you take that trust and use it for the benefit of the story, even though it seems like a violation but the game took Sleeping Princess, all day long I felt so terrible because people were so - they thought they were helping her, they thought they were helping her, and then it turns out they were just helping Melissa swoop down on her and squished her.

KW: And then they destroyed her. *laughter*

KW: (Cont.) I'd like to actually go ahead and open it up to questions, and I have ninjas. So anybody who asks a question, gets a ninja. Trust me, they're awesome!

KR: I have monkey mints.

JK: And actually, monkey mints!

KR: They're flan-flavored.

KW: Marie, you've got a--

Q&A

Q1

Q1: I'd like to ask the SF0 guys, the tasks that you have, are they specific to your location? Is this a local game that can only be played within your area? Do you see it expanding into other cities? And how would you like release it into the wild? Like, "Come play our game. Let's take it and do it in your own city," or would you want to maintain control of that, if that happened?

SL: Most of the tasks in the game can be done from anywhere. Some of them are location-specific, like "Discover the Mysteries of the Six Bus Line," I think that's one of our tasks.

IK: Right, but even that--

SL: Right, even though there's really location-specific things, players will do - you know, when they live outside the Bay Area - they'll figure out a way to make an analagous task. And that's fine, right. So we kind of have a big community in the Midwest, and they found another Six Line there, and discovered the mysteries of that Six Line. *laughter* You know, that's totally fine. We have players there and we have players in Chicago, we have players in Russia even. We've got players from all over the place but most of them are in the Bay Area. What's more important about location isn't the tasks, it's that you have a community of people that you're working with. That is really important. Although it's also really important to have players collaborate with each other from really distant places, like we have a soldier in Iraq who is playing and she's collaborating with one of our good friends, actually, and doing different tasks. She's actually supposed to be collaborating with me on a task that involves like Frank Chiu - I don't know if you know him, he's like a local celebrity, he has a little sign *waves pretend sign*, and we were gonna put something on it. So anyway, there's like fun collaboration that can happen from great distances and it's open to the world. We hope that people play it from all different places.

Q2

Q2: Also for the SF0 guys, what's the most positive thing you've learned about getting people to do things in the real world from SF0?

SL: First of all, people will just do about anything and they'll do things that - I mean, the highest-scoring task in the game is to put a flag on the Sutro Tower.

Sean Mahan: On the top.

SL: On the top of the Sutro Tower, which, in case you guys aren't from around here, it's a big radio tower in San Francisco and it's hard to get up there. That was kind of - we came up with that really, really early on and definitely didn't have the expectation that anyone would do it. And now we sort of do have the expectation that someone will do it. In fact - I mean, I don't even know how far along that is--

IK: We see additionally not only the tasks that are public, installation-type tasks, but also tasks that are very everyday. A lot of the tasks in the game are kind of everyday, sort of behavioral modification-type things, doing things differently, speak only in a foreign language you don't know for a day-- *laughter*

IK: (Cont.) There's one called, "Anti-Wallet Freedom Venture," which is, instead of carrying around everything that you would carry in a wallet, carry it in a non-standard receptacle. We had people do that in really interesting ways, like someone did it inside of a squash they carried all of their stuff-- *laughter*

IK: (Cont.) This guy had a--

SL: Lantern.

IK: --these Chinese lanterns, yeah. So those tasks - in a lot of ways, that's the type of thing that surprises me, when people are willing, not just to go and do just one big thing, like, "We're gonna install all of this stuff in a bus stop." But when they're willing to do small things like carry around all of their stuff in a different receptacle just because, hey, it's interesting. It just changes your interaction with the world in a small way.

Q3

Q3: Also for SF0, two questions--

JK: I wanna work for SF0. *raises hand* *laughter*

Q3: Just answer for them. *laughter* Why do you do this? What's your motivation to running this? Secondly, have you thought about if you wanted to monetize this, or brand it, have you thought about how your structure--

IK: Well we don't really believe in that. *applause*

Q3: Then can you answer the first part?

IK: The incentive for us in making it, is we found out about ARGs a while ago and saw that this ARG would be made by Microsoft that was a sort of form of having people do work in a decentralized way that's not based around physical location or a sort of top-down managment structure, but a much more diverse sort of viral network's way of doing work. We wanted to make an ARG that was a sort of independent ARG, just because we thought it would be fun. So we did that and had a really, really good experience making an ARG in Chicago called "Chanam." Then we realized that what we really wanted was to share that experience with the players so that they were making ARG storylines and making tasks for people to do, and they were the ones going out and burying things. Because we had such a good time doing it, we wanted that to be the game for other people.

Q4

Q4: I was wondering, do you have to do any risk management? *laughter*

Q4: (Cont.) I mean with the flag, does it say on the website that really you're at risk, or--

IK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a disclaimer, yeah. The disclaimer or what it says is that anything that's done in this game is considered fictitious unless proven otherwise. *laughter*

Sean Mahan: We don't even exist.

IK: Yeah, yeah, yeah! So I don't know if that would stand up in court but we would-- *laughter*

Q5

Q5: So I have a question for everybody. Each of you seem to have some different perspectives about the role of cooperation versus competition in the games as interfering and I was wondering if you had any thoughts about when cooperation is fun, when competition is fun? What's the the right balance or is the one better than the other for some purpose?

JK: I think its a balance. From my perspective, which may be biased and/or skewed, there are a number of levels of competition within the community structure itself. Players gather together because it's fun and they need to work together to solve problems, but there is also a competition within that community itself. Who is going to be the leader, who is going to be the one that solves this? There is a very natural competition that happens in that regard. You can play off that in the game structure. Last Call Poker did a very nice job of that, where you got extra bonus points for doing various things, and you got more poker chips at the end, you got to play longer and not run out of money like I did every week. *laughter*

JK: (Cont.) It was awful! I told you, I suck at poker! And--

KW: You're great at distracting the mailman. *laughter*

JK: But that was not there, that was not a bonus point issue. *laughter*

JK: (Cont.) In Perplex City there are the cards that have - there's the point structure that go along with that and that's kind of separate from the ARG structure itself but that stands alone very nicely in allows the community to kind of interact with itself - everybody can collaborate on the cards but then everybody gets points--

KR: And Art of the Heist. I want a Treo!

JK: I know! *laughter*

KR: I mean I already liked that game and then I liked it more because I wanted that!

JK: I want a porta-potty to hide in. *laughter*

JK: (Cont.) So there's kind of a resource and there's a kind of competition within the community that develops organically - and the competition is very organic - and I think the competition is health and safe for the overall community as long as it doesn't become the center of attention. That's where my balance line lies. I don't know what you guys think.

SL: I tend to look at that stuff through the perspective of narrative between the players so I like it when there's cooperation that creatives narrative, I like it when there's competition, they're both good.

KR: I agree, it's a balance between the two of them. You do want that sense of competition but it's got to be a healthy competition and not--

JK: The driving motivational force.

KR: --Yeah, people trying to kill each other.

Q6

KW: I've got time for one more question. I'd like to give the ninja to that part of the room and then anyone who wanted to ask a question can pick up a ninja. And then anybody after that. *laughter* Go ahead, Kona.

Q6: The challenge when you have one-on-one interaction as Puppetmasters, as characters, as game designers...how do you get that information out to the other people? How do you know that your one-on-one interaction is going to get shared with the community if it's important information? Then how do you deal with that one-on-one interaction with players who are not part of the collective community, you've never seen this person before, that's a challenge and I put that out to all of you Puppetmasters because the community is growing beyond just this one bulletin board system. As more and more players are discovering the world of ARG, how do you share that imporant information?

JK: The stupid answer? Instead of one-on-one, you have more than one. You just multiply that. When I look at designing ARGs for that type of thing where you're going to have one-on-one interaction, you kind of have to have a reduncancy system built-in somehow, so that if it doesn't get shared, you have a way to work around that. Either share it again or find another way within the game structure to pass that information on to a greater collective.

KR: Jane was so great about that, because she was always right with us then, when there were parts of the story that we really wanted to communicate to the masses. Jane would always have her eye on the community and the boards and be able to say, for instance, that San Francisco was such a strong team. What we always used to say about Crispin <?> and [hmrpita], "We know we've got Pita and she'll probably get a phone in San Francisco," because that team was really great and the team in D.C. But then we'd have these interactions with people who were so - they came out of nowhere and we'd just have to put our heads together and go, "Please, come out of your shell and come and tell this story." I had these amazing interactions with people that we'd never heard from and have disappear, they played the game and then we just never heard from them again.

KW: Dragonrider.

KR: Like Dragonrider. I loved her. We'd just hope that they would have such an amazing experience that they feel the need to go and to come out of the closet there. Not like "come out" but-- *laughter*

JK: It's almost that there's - how do you empower your players to become a community member? How do you engage them enough that they want to share that information? Reading a book or watching a TV show can be a very singular intimate experience and creating and ARG, and creating a community around that, is very much empowering the players to share that intimate experience with 10,000 of their not-so-closest friends. It's an empowerment; you get that incentive and the ability and the drive to share that information.

KR: Hopefully, it'll make the game better for them all if they share it.

JK: Right.

KR: Or if they will instinctively recognize that.

JK: Then there's that community competition thing, where they get that little boost because they're like, "I did that." *points and winks* *laughter*

JK: (Cont.) And then they're like Dragonrider, they get mentioned all the time.

KR: Yeah.

Audience: Bingo! *laughter*

KW: I didn't know there were write-in squares. That's a good idea, actually.

KW: (Cont.) I'd like to thank the panel very much for talking to us. *applause*

Epilogue

KW: (Cont.) We're kind of going a couple of minutes over, so make sure and try to come back and more. And I have ninjas! So come get a ninja. Thank you very much, everyone. *applause*