One of the biggest complaints about the ARG storytelling format is if the audience doesn’t discover the story in the very beginning they feel like it would be too much work to get caught up on the narrative.  It’s like walking into a movie after it has been playing for twenty minutes.  By telling our story in short bursts and then putting the game in intermission we’ll make it easy for players to get caught up and hopefully they’ll be more willing to participate in future chapters.  This also solves another problematic aspect of traditional ARGs – most people can’t commit 6-8 weeks of their lives to a game that runs at the pace of real life.

This new format also allows us to adopt an iterative approach to game design similar to software development.  We’ll be able to take what we learned from Chapter 1.0 and roll that into Chapter 2.0 while keeping the same storyline.  It will also allow time between chapters to incorporate player actions into the plot of the story.  The story already has a very strong outline, but there are several places along the way that will be heavily affected by how the players interact with characters and interact within the storyworld.  It also gives us the opportunity to reward the most dedicated players with “guest appearances” as official characters in the story.

The last thing I’ll tell you about is our points system.  Players who register at MartinAggett.com will be able to earn “Facilitator Network Experience Points” (FXP) and climb the ranks on our leaderboard.  We’ll use the leaderboard rankings to reward the top players with character interaction, swag, guest appearances in the story, and other benefits.  If players also fill out the optional survey they will have a chance to get phone calls, packages, text messages, chat, tweets, or emails, from characters in the story.

We can’t wait to get this next phase of our project jump started!  Join us.

So, what can game designers do if they want to keep the “real time” aesthetic of traditional ARGs but still want to reach a large audience?  During his presentation, Patrick discussed several ways that VM-People is tackling the challenge, and Remix Fiction was busy taking notes.  Patrick noted that after the end of each campaign the most common question he gets is “Where do I have to register to get informed about the beginning of a new Alternate Reality Game?“.  VM-People’s answer to this question is their www.folge-dem-kaninchen.de website (in English “follow the white rabbit”) that allows players to register their interest and contact information so that they can be included in future projects.

We have done something similar with our Personalized Privacy Sign Up form where we ask questions about how you would like to interact with Remix Fiction characters and give you an opportunity to share contact information.  Like VM-People, we will never share this information with any third party and we will delete your information as soon as you send us an opt out notification.  So far, we’ve only used the contact information to send out a few postcards and a couple gifts, but as our game deadline gets closer we’ll be using our list to do more game mechanics testing,  and of course we’ll use it to send trailheads when our game launches next year.

What do you think?  Should game designers continue to create ARGs that play out in real time or should they shift to a more single-player and replayable mechanic?  Let us know in the comments.

[VIDEO] ARGfest – Follow the White Rabbit.

For those of you who are willing to sit through an hour-long show we’re still going to broadcast the recording of the episodes live.  Those of you who make the effort to tune in while we’re recording will get a behind the scenes look at the making of the episodes along with some “bonus content” and bloopers that won’t make it to the videos.  We’re still going to spend about an hour with each guest, but we’re going to break the videos down into more digestible ten to fifteen minute chunks and release them as a series.  We’ve also got some ideas for producing some short, non-interview, segments related to the behind the scenes work we’re doing on our own Alternate Reality Game.  We would LOVE to hear your suggestions for these new segments so please let us know your ideas in the comments.

We appreciate Brian Clark’s patience with our first attempt at producing shorter interview shows.  Brian is the CEO of GMD Studios; an experimental media lab focused on the emergence of networked communities, audiences and marketplaces.  Brian put up with us for almost two hours while we recorded several episodes of Remix Fiction Television that spanned a wide range of topics relating to his company’s vision and practices.  Our first short-format episode with Brian is available now on our Vimeo channel.

We’re excited that Nina has agreed to be a guest on Remix Fiction Television to talk about the creation and behind the scenes aspects of the Valemont ARG.  The episode will be recorded live tomorrow night (Dec 22nd from 5-6pm Pacific time) with the video being made available soon afterward.  We encourage you to join our live audience and ask questions about Valemont or any of Nina’s other projects.

Valemont, which was created by Brent Friedman and Christian Taylor, was a true transmedia experience, extending across multiple platforms.