Rules to Play by: Variety

This week I'm trying to look at three categories different from the 'entertainment games'; ARGs, Art Games and Serious Games.

First up are ARGs:

Why you should care about ARGS
-by Margaret Robertson

"Why you should care about ARGs was a talk Margaret Robertson did at the Develop Brighton Conference in 2008. Is this talk she pointed out that there are three major problems with ARGs. For one, nobody knows what they are, they're not all that great and last of all, they're dead.

Robertson then continues to adress these problems, starting with defining ARGs, and arguing that Halo is in fact an ARG. Alternative Reality Game, where an alternative, fictional reality becomes your own, and you no longer have to obey by the laws of the 'real' reality.

As Margaret Robertson delicately puts it: "I think ARGs are a bit shit", and she makes a pretty convincing point as to why that would be: They have no proper beginning, middle or end. ARGs tend to flourish in the early to middle stages when the entire game blows up and goes into full swing. Then people start losing track of it, get bored with it or lose interest. And when the game nears the end it quickly fades away.

Then there's the problem of attracting players. Most ARGs use the 'rabbit hole' approach, trying to lure the player into the game by using a trail of clues. Problems arise when players start missing clues, can't be bothered to solve the riddles and puzzles, or just can't be arsed to jump through hoops just to be sucked into a game.

So how are ARGs dead? Well, according to Robertsen it's because of the two problems mentioned earlier that 'traditional' ARGs are starting to die out, and the designers have moved on to nuARGs, which try to move away from all the old conventions of narrative, puzzles and mysteries, instead often functioning without any of those.

Then, if ARGs are dead, why should we care? Well, we can learn certain things from them. We can learn to link our games to the reality of our players, crossing mixing the real world with the fictional world we create, or going cross-medium. We can learn to respect that players have a life outside playing our videogames, and we can use that against them to try and lure them back into the game. We can learn from ARGs that unsolvable challenges and puzzles in games aren't neccessarly bad, as long as they don't break the progression of the game. A challenge that seems impossible can create a whole new buzz between players trying to work together to overcome and obstacle the designer hasn't even figured out himself.

All in all, there's a lot we can learn from ARGs, but from their weak and their strong points. In my opinion, we're seeing a gradual shift towards more social gaming, where people are moving away from their computer screens and gather to play video-games, primarily because of the rise of consoles, but also because of the evolution of different platforms, such as the iPhone and online applications such as FaceBook and Twitter. Using principles from ARGs, by looking further than just the game we're offering on the platfrom we're developing for, we can create a broader spectrum of challenges and get people engaged in on different levels without forcing them to participate.

The Path For Art Games
-By Leigh Alexander

In this article Alexander discusses why players seem to demand 'more' from games, but when such games are created, they never seem to be a commercial success. He looks at several different games and attempts to analyze why they aren't as popular as some people would expect.

The first point Alexander makes is that while players might demand certain things, that isn't always what they want. Case in point; Mad World and GTA: Chinatown Wars, on the Wii and DS respectively. Both platforms have had long time demands for more mature games, but when they came out, especially Mad World didn't do particularly well, leading to the suspicion that gamers might not always be completely in touch with what they want, or maybe they demand things for platforms they don't even own.

He then moves to investigate The Path, trying to look into how and why this game isn't a commercial success. One of the arguments Alexander brings forward is that gamers are alienated by the design of The Path, finding it hard to cope with a game that falls outside the traditional views people have on video games. But he also shows through an interview with the Path's creators that they themselves hardly have any idea who they're making their game for, or even worse, they're making a game for people who don't like games.

And this is what seems to be the crux of the problem. The 'art game makers' tend to focus outside of the gamers market, which is usually oblivious to the very existence of these games, or is under the assumption that they don't like games at all. The gamers themselves (rightfully) feel that they're not targetted by the games' creators.

I found the article an enjoyable read, as it was quite objective and just showed the different opinions on art games. The most interesting to read were those of the Tale of Tales game designers, which I really had issues with. They admitted to be creating a game for people didn't like games, and agreed that perhaps the Path wasn't a game at all, leading me to believe that they are pretty clueless as to what they were doing when they built the game, relying solemnly on the novelty of the concept to get publicity. What bothers me the most is that 'art games' are often gimmicky, or exceptionally narrative in nature, with all the problems that these games already tend to have. Their gimicky nature makes them short, and often easy to figure out and then beat. The narrative issues I have discussed in earlier reports. But in the end, I guess all Art games fall victim to the same problems Narrative Games have. When we use a game as a creative expression, when we use it to make 'art', we do the same as when we try to tell a story through a game. An artist who paints a picture is the storyteller, the onlooker the person listening to the story, and as such passive. When we create an 'art game' we start telling a story, leaving the player a passive onlooker with stints of interaction.