Ground Control to Major Providence
Some things, like human nature, we could always count on. We could be reasonably assured that the participants who spent 28 continuous hours with our actors (under frightening and challenging situations) would end up bonding with them. We could even work from the assumption that it might be difficult for them to explain why they felt that way, because our brains are just great at picking up subtle cues by the tone that turn into "I trust them" or "I don't like them." At the same time, we could be fairly certain that losing contact for days with their live event investigators would produce tension and anxiety among the online audience -- especially if we encouraged them to feel that way through a storyline they were experiencing on parallel tracks.
We even had a third potential leg of the story prepared for if some of the investigators chose not to spend a night in the wilderness and instead stay at the "base camp" in Cass: the Forsythe story would have played out mainly in Cass, while Devon and Saint-Feline built the experience at the wilderness cabin and the Dreamers and Exu wove the online experience. Their "reunion" in West Virginia might have been surprising, given how different their experiences would have been. Instead, the situation unfolded where we provided that Forsythe experience to the online audience and perserve a bit of Exu's mystery for another Book.
In design, we imagined a Book with a unified experience that then suddenly branched, creating real differences in perspective while communication channels were thin, but concluding with a shared experience. In some ways, that design philosophy succeeded in ways we didn't quite imagine, tapping emotions from some of the participants that come from dark palattes: sympathy, fear, vulnerability, terror, misunderstood protectiveness, deja vu ... even the continued mourning for a character who died months ago. This is confusing territory for immersive participants, as their real emotions begin to affect their perspective on a narrative where you can't easily sort the good guys from the bad guys.
Wow.
It is humbling, but it also raises the stakes for the community of participants and thus our responsibilities as storytellers. There's some real catharsis happening among the tension of needing to rebuild the community's shared perspective on the story. All of that is intended to be entertaining and part of the collective protagonist's story; after all, the Outpost's history has always included passionate debates from radically different perspectives. Among the good benefits of that messy community experience? It has unlocked the inner storyteller in more of the participants, and it will hopefully help unlock further understanding of how we imagine the "collective protagonist" fitting together with the "individual protagonists" who make interesting choices.
Eldritch Errors is a team sport, but with plenty of room for individual performances. As storytellers, we look for the individual performances that we think can enhance everyone's experience ... but in a Lovecraftian horror, we might have unusually unique standards for what it means to "enhance experience." We know the audience feels that same basic instinct: the team experience is the most important aspect.
And always remember: Providence fared much better than Laika did.
If I could just provide a bit of criticism about the design of this event ('cause that's what I do :) ).
Related to this point:
"At the same time, we could be fairly certain that losing contact for days with their live event investigators would produce tension and anxiety among the online audience"
I understand conceptually the point of having Howard come in periodically during the weeks leading up to WV to fret about establishing a successful communication link with the campers, only to have that link be completely and utterly thwarted by reality on the ground -- it was intended, I suppose, to heighten the anxiety and concern in those of us left behind for those who had dropped 'off the grid'
However, my feeling about this (and caveat: I am speaking only for myself) is that *because* of the constant reminders to worry about communications beforehand, those of us who were staying behind were led to believe that we would be participating in some way in the events unfolding in WV. I know that there was excitement among us about what would be going down and how we could help. Instead, the way things unfolded, we were completely stymied and left feeling out of the loop. You allude to a 'parallel storyline' unfolding online, but in reality that felt rather patchwork since we had no way to influence or *do* anything other than send out random emails. Again, speaking only for myself, it all felt rather anticlimactic and I was disappointed by the whole thing. This was compounded by the fact that EE.com and Schmeldritch were all trumpeting the fact that Something Big was going to be going down in WV and this was the perfect time to Jump In! I feel sorry for anyone who tried to jump in during that weekend, because all they ended up experiencing was a lot of standing around wondering what was going on.
I know you are experimenting with various things here, but I would argue that it is important to maintain the sharedness of the ARG experience during all aspects of the game. It's one thing if different people are privy to different information *in the game* that can then be shared through out of game channels, but it is another thing entirely if different people are privy to experiences in both in-game and out-of-game ways that simply aren't shareable. The opportunity to participate is part of the fun -- waiting for the reports of others' participation is not fun at all.
-Dante
Dante, let's be fair: around our office, we figured out a few ways that the investigators could have staying in contact with the online audience. Howard pushing the Sentries to worry about communication was an attempt to encourage you to address that situation as a puzzle.
We had entirely different plans in place for if you guys had setup a communication system or not. We just didn't want either situation forced on you (I would have preferred an unreliable channel to a non-existent one myself.) People did an admirable job of trying to put solutions in place, we didn't want to take away from that.
I totally accept that we might have different opinions on this aspect of the game design, but it isn't like every Book will taking place in the NRQZ, Dante. Sharing the experiences is exactly what we want people to do: experiences are designed to be share, some just aren't as easy to share as others.
That said, I agree that participation is more fun than waiting for others, which was way MOST of the Book played out in a shared fashion. There's a tricky 3 days in there, though, the community are still sharing with each other.
I'm definitely interested, though, in non-normative experiences and how they fit into the mix of a more generally normative experience. That's one of the reasons we made sure there was "non-non-puzzle" (*evil grin*) activity each week leading up to that, to create a stronger normative experience to help balance the extremely non-normative experience of the Investigators.
Sorry it was anticlimactic and disappointing for you, Dan.