Onder Skall, who I cited earlier with my post about Manoa!, has put a call out for those interested in a Second Life ARG Group. Here is his call:Â
I’m scouting out the possibility of putting together a group in Second Life for people who love Alternate Reality Gaming. This would just be a group for sharing stories of our favorite ones, scouting out new ones, and general group play of the occasional mini-ARG that crops up here and there.
My time is stretched VERY thin, so I’m not going to do this unless I get some very enthusiastic feedback. If you’re interested write me (ruagamer at gmail dot com) with the following information:
Have you ever played through an ARG? Which ones?
Have you ever participated in making one?
Do you have any special talents that you could bring to a player group? (ex: web, scripting, podcasting, artistic, etc.)
What is the best part about an ARG?
What is Neurocam?
There has been alot of talk about SL ARGs for a long time. I don’t get it. The extreme “alternate reality” aesthetic is to make the conjured world as real as possible. That is why so-called ‘real life’ technologies such as emails, SMS and phones etc are employed. So, setting an ARG within the reality of SL just wouldn’t work. It has too many layers of representation. BUT, if Second Life was to be used as it is used in RL — for real people to communicate with each other, run businesses, pretend to women when they are men, pretend to be single when they are not, pretend to be nice when they are not — then that would fit the reality aesthetic. In other words, embrace the reality of Second Life and it can be an Alternate Reality. The other view is that SL can be treated as if it is the only world and so an ARG within it, denying the real world would work. I can see the fun in that…but there is a certain contract that takes place between an ARG player and an ARG creator. The ARG creator does what they can to make the created world seem as real as possible and the player fills in the gaps and keeps the illusion up. But when there are many layers of illusion to keep up you make the player work much harder. Part of the fun of an ARG is how the almost impossible task is executed, indeed co-created with the players…Setting an ARG within a fiction technology demands a whole lot of effort by the player without the creator matching it. Anyway, rant over.
More info about the SL ARG Group at his blog: http://slgames.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/second-life-arg-group/