I finally met Lucas in person at the Storyworld Conference. He is a lovely and intelligent young man with a lot of passion for his craft. Although we could tell this with his active postings at his company blog, Silverstring Media, he is even better in person. Now Lucas has generously offered to share some crucial lessons he has learned from his first major jump into creating a reactive story online here.

Before we delve into those lessons, some quick info about his background. Lucas had a job as a creative intern at an ad agency where he resides in Vancouver; he has done a bit of freelance PR writing; and was a trainee assistant director on a TV show in the summer of 2010. Some of his published short stories are “Flip City” in the Queer Wolf anthology, a more recent piece he’s “very proud of”, “Subtle Poison”, is in the anthology Speaking Out. His stageplay Life: A Play was performed as part of the Brave New Play Rites Reading Series at UBC in 2009, and his stage monologue Revelations is published at the Good Ear Review online.

Now to his lessons – I’ve included a bit of a dialogue between Lucas and I after each lesson too. Enjoy!

Seven Lessons
At the start of this year, I launched an experimental transmedia story called Azrael’s Stop. After a few months of lacklustre audience and a structure swamped in problems, I affirmed that yes, I do in fact suck at transmedia.

But as we all aspire to do, I have learned from the experience — and furthermore implemented that learning to attempt to repair Azrael’s Stop and re-launched it this November. In the spirit of You Suck At Transmedia, I’d like to share a few of the lessons I learned along the way — and hope you’ll join me in an ongoing self-evaluation of the project.

Lesson #1: Quality. Speed. Cost. Choose two.
Not a new lesson, but a problem I thought I could work around. (Spoiler: I couldn’t.) I designed Azrael’s Stop to be something I could produce quickly and cheaply and get out into the world — the story is told through daily serialized microfiction, tweet-sized bits of story that build over time. I figured I could pump out a bunch of these quickly and easily without actually losing too much quality of writing.

The quality I was losing, though, was in the overall project, not the writing — I didn’t have time to really plan, I didn’t have strong design elements, I honestly didn’t think through all the possible ways people would come at the project and problems they would face. But I thought I could work on the quality later, after I got things going.

But once I had started, I was just trying to keep up with the content along with whatever else I was working on. In the end, I did catch up on the quality side — after I had pulled the plug, gone on hiatus, and went back to the drawing board to fix it. Thus sacrificing speed. Lesson learned.

CD: “Choose two” – hehe, I like that. I’m also working on a project that can be produced cheaply and quicker than say a feature film, but I’m finding that I can’t have speed without cost. If I could pay people to do things, then production would move faster and we could do more things!

LJ: I would love to be able to pay the people who have worked with me on this — and besides just wanting to compensate them for what they’ve done, it would also help solidify the relationship and contractualize deadlines more effectively, not to mention allow them (and me) to focus on this project rather than do it in our spare time. You definitely can’t have it all.

Lesson #2: It’s never as easy as you think it will be.
Daily tweets. How hard could that be? I can write 140 characters a day, no problem. Though I also wanted to have some bonus content, monthly extras that maybe I could make money on, things like longer short stories and music and audio plays and interactive fiction games and comics. And suddenly there was a lot more work involved. Those things required a lot more time and effort, and collaboration with friends who, by the way, had their own deadlines to deal with as well. Not to mention the fact that producing a project like this isn’t just about making the content. Once you’ve made the content, you still have to promote it. Write it up. Sell it. Not to mention maintaining it, fixing problems as they come up. Plan for more work than you assume. And give yourself the time to do it right.

CD: Ooo yeah. The trailer for my project took much longer than planned, due to some
unexpected factors. But what I remind myself over and over again is that projects are
always like that. They always blow out time-wise (especially in experimental projects)
because of unforeseen events. In the end, it isn’t about knowing everything that can go
wrong, it is how you deal with the stuff that does. It is kind of a world-view that I find not
everyone shares…and so one of the things I’m working on at the moment is how to
facilitate that kind of culture. Any ideas?

LJ: I think a big part of it is having the right team — a team that is motivated and interested in the project and wants it to succeed as much as you. And then furthermore being as clear as possible in communicating expectations with the team as far as how to deal with problems and perhaps whose responsibility it may be. Not always easy conversations to have, though.

Lesson #3: Have a plan.
Nothing worse than launching without any real idea where you’re going. You’re just asking for a host of problems to crop up out of the blue. You don’t need everything fleshed out, but have an outline for the whole project — and that includes where it’s ending. Both you and your audience should know how much time they’re expecting to devote to your story. A plan lets you know when something big is coming, so you can devote enough time to it, so you can prepare properly and make sure everyone on your team is on the same page and committed. A plan will also give you a better sense of your whole project, so you can hopefully see where there are problems in your structure, or opportunities to do cooler things. I went into the project with it being very open-ended, and as a result, it quickly got away from me and was in some ways aimless. This time, I know what I’m doing and where I’m going. Not everything is written — but everything is planned.

CD: Yeah, nice. It sounds like you really jumped into the deep end! Even your experience is in the extreme in that you started without an outline, I’ve also found there are certain things that help when you’re knee-deep in the “live” madness. As a writer and designer, you have lots of information in your head and perhaps in shared documents. But some decisions just really need to happen quickly (or you at least want them to). This is where I’ve found having some basic “essence elements” on hand helps. If I know what the theme or message of my project is, that informs/constrains my decisions. If I know what
my character wants and what they need (as two competing drives), then I can usually act in their voice fairly easily. Lucas, what sort of stuff do you do for planning now?

LJ: I now have a full bible for the project, at about 13,000 words, which nails down exactly those thematic elements as well as the look and feel of the project. It also has complete character descriptions, personalities, and the arcs the characters go through, so I know where it’s all going. Separately, I’ve also created a rough outline of the entire year-long story that incorporates all those character journeys, and I have a good idea of what I want my bonus content to be each month so I can plan ahead and find collaborators where necessary.

Lesson #4: Set the stage.
Your audience has to know what they’re getting into from the very start — both from a structural point of view (How much time are you asking them to commit? What’s the duration of the experience? Are you asking for interaction? UGC? Or just passive consumption?) and a story point of view (set up the main characters, the setting, the conflict; give the audience something to care about).

Structurally, if they don’t know what they’re getting into, they won’t trust you, and they won’t be happy when you ask more of them than they assumed. Story-wise, they just won’t care and won’t give you the benefit of the doubt for long enough to pull them in. Hook them early.

CD: Yeah, totally agree. I remember one of the big lessons hypertext fiction writers learnt: that a big difference between a book and an online narrative is the reader knows how big the book is and where they are in it. Motivation to act is closely linked to urgency at times and so people need to know when to act. I recognising that with my current project being a very different way to experience the web, and with players coming with different expectations, I need to make it clear what it is about and what they will do. So my next milestone is to create a playable trailer. I also recall a quote from Andra Sheffer, when she said if you don’t hook your online audience within the first 10 seconds you’re dead. Heavy stuff, but good to keep in mind. As indies, we have to address craft, art and publicity!

LJ: Not easy at the best of times. That design of the user experience is so vital — and thus my next lesson!

Lesson #5: Everything is a barrier to entry.
There are millions of things on the internet that people will entertain themselves with. And watching a cat video is so much easier than registering for your site so they can scroll backwards through some tweets to understand what’s going on.

At some point, some barriers to entry are ok — if you’re looking for player interaction, that’s a barrier to entry, but it might be a necessary one for the structure of your project. A paywall is certainly a barrier to entry, but again could be necessary at some point! But just be aware what is a barrier and that every one will lose you some audience members.

That includes necessary site registration. It includes just moving from one medium to another. It includes forms of media people aren’t familiar with — like interactive fiction. It even includes using Twitter, as I discovered — there are still a lot of people who aren’t on Twitter, don’t understand Twitter, and frankly don’t want to understand Twitter.

Barriers to entry also include things that stop people from getting involved in the middle of a project. Make sure it’s easy for people to get caught up on the story and jump in. Make sure if people miss a week because they were on vacation, they’re going to be able to get back in.

CD: Yeah, I like the term “friction points”. They are a major design consideration in transmedia projects, or just any highly dispersed projects. Easy to enter is one thing, but also there is the power of a good content. I read a study that found people who followed a particular topic (entertainment gossip), went everywhere and anywhere to get it. People are platform-agnostic when the content leads them. They don’t think about moving across platforms or obstacles when they’re following content they want. So on
the one hand we have the need for design that recognises friction points, and on the other hand we need to remember that content is part of that design strategy.

LJ: Yes! I think there’s also a point to make though that people have an intrinsic understanding of how to get something like entertainment gossip (that it can come from TV, magazines, the internet), whereas getting them to understand that a piece of prose fiction can be delivered online via tiny pieces every day along with music and video and things may yet be something not intrinsic for a lot of people.

Lesson #6: Everything is a balance.
The more you ask from your audience, the less audience you will have. You can’t have both a huge audience that is also deeply engaged. If you give the audience control over the narrative, you’re going to lose control yourself. Everything is some kind of balancing act. In my case it was the balance between not asking a lot from my audience (I was only asking them to read a little bit of content a day) and asking enough to get them engaged (one tweet is not enough). I missed that balance. Now I have an introductory story, more content to hook them, and then the microfiction (which I present in much better ways than before as well). You can’t have everything, so pick your battles.

CD: Could you tell me more about how you’re planning on addressing different audiences now?

LJ: Part of it, which was always my plan but which I’m putting extra focus on now, is not making the bonus content — the music, the audio play, the game, and whatever else I devise — necessary to follow the story. So if you don’t know how to play an interactive fiction game and don’t care to figure it out, that’s ok.

Another big part is making sure the content is accessible in as many ways as possible — no longer just on Twitter, you can now get it on Facebook, Tumblr, or on its own dedicated website (with an RSS feed and email subscription). And if you don’t want tiny chunks every day but instead want to consume it all at once, I’m compiling each month of content into single pages on the site, as chapters on Scribd, Wattpad, and Book Country, and as downloadable PDFs.

Having a “Story So Far” page and a “Start Here” page will also hopefully make it easy for people to access the story even if they weren’t there from the start — a very clear step-by-step explanation of what this is and how best to experience it.

CD: Ooo, I should mention I cover some of the early attempts at making dispersed stories more approachable in this essay (PDF) and continue on the online augmentation to the essay.

Lesson #7: Promote yourself.
Your own networks aren’t enough. Unless you have thousands of Facebook fans and Twitter followers and blog readers, you won’t get word out far enough just by flogging your project on your own networks. (If you can, you’ve probably already done this step many many times.) What few RTs you get won’t be enough. Go where your audience is, to forums and blogs and news sites and put your stuff in front of eyeballs. Make deals with other creators. Bring in collaborators who will flog it to their own networks. Guest blog. Publicize.

CD: And here he is! hehe. Yeah, the next major stage of publicity for my project will be doing publicity outside of my networks. I’ll also share one thing I realised – that your peer network/audience is not necessarily your creative audience. It is one thing to have a network of colleagues, but that network won’t necessarily be into your creative work and your creative project will appeal to new people.

LJ: Absolutely! The trick will be finding those methods of publicity outside these channels. It will come, but it will be work ^_^

***
All of which is not to say I don’t still suck at transmedia. But I’m learning! Hopefully you are too. And hopefully the things I’ve learned will help make Azrael’s Stop a better and successful project. Check it out at azraelsstop.com, and let me know!

Thank you so much Lucas for sharing your lessons!

Jan Libby is a respected indie alternate reality game designer, whose day job is a freelancer working with brands to create interactive experiences. (Her impressive bio is at the bottom of this post.) Jan has recently run an indie ARG called Snow Town. I unfortunately missed the participating through the whole experience, but I wanted to hear more about how she has moved from doing long complex ARGs to short ones – an approach that would benefit new ARG creators. Wired covered the beginning of Snow Town, and here Jan shares a post-mortem on how she made the “short story ARG”:

Tell us a bit about your Snow Town ARG.

Snow Town is a short story ARG that is actually part of a larger indie project I’m creating titled “The Legend of the Snow People”. Long legend short: every 100 years the Snow People come to life, wreak havoc (crazy rituals, wild parties, etc.) and eventually terrorize the people in this small Maine village. This year, 2011, with the help of an on-line community (the ARG), the Snow People’s reign comes to an end… we hope. Of course, we won’t know for sure until 2111. Most of the ARG’s story played out on the main character’s blog, and the local library’s site. Although we used the comments section for some “in-game” conversation, there were also personal emails (between characters and players), voicemail messages, a guestbook, a virtual book club and also a hidden page within the library’s site.

You’ve commented that the short length of the ARG meant you could do more of your own indie ARGs, more frequently. Could you share more about what you did with this ARG to make it more manageable?

There is an enormous difference between creating a 10 to 12 week (or longer) ARG and a 2 week ARG. Finding the time from my brand work to design, write and prep a 3 month ARG is impossible, right now. So, last summer I began to shift my thinking about the size and scope of ARGs. I knew I wasn’t interested in making something “lighter” or more “casual”. Then, while searching for something to read at my town’s library, I stopped on a short story collection and had my aha moment. I realized I could still do a story that has the details and character development that I love, but change the scope from novel to short story. Seems ridiculous that I hadn’t thought of it before that point. So, to answer your question.. the story is shorter, fewer characters (due to time constraint), story delivery is a bit more centralized and the design of the roll out must fit into 2 weeks vs. 10 plus. This means you really have to figure out how to intro your characters and get them to connect to the community/players via the unfolding story within your first week. Last part of the first week and beginning of the second week are devoted to the characters and players, together, diving into the meat of the story events (conflict). Last part of the second week takes everyone to the climax and finally the conclusion.

Tell us a bit more about keeping the story and activity constrained to two weeks. Did you have a sub-plot for instance? How many player activities did you end up doing?

So many sub-plots with so little time… ha! With every ARG or Interactive Story I’ve ever launched, there are always many sub-plots that are “available”. Which sub-plots get explored depends on the choices and or interests of the Players/Participants. ARGs are like Soaps in this way. There can be a sub-plot tied to each character. Snow Town had sub-plots revolving around Ruthie Randolph’s love life, Edward Harmon’s love of Gin and drunken late night emails, Clare Haynes Triplet’s breakdown, Natasha Triplet’s secrets, a small one that never really unfolded involving Charles Gulliffer and another involving the ghost of Louise Hoskins that will be explored in the “Legend of the Snow People”.

Activities… Of course we were set up for heavy Character Interaction via email, comments and a Voicemail System. Most of that was designed to allow Players to build a relationship to the world and characters at first and then later to enter and impact the story. Due to the secretive nature of the story, we had 9 or 10 puzzle that had to be cracked to move forward. All of these puzzles tied to the “legend”. We used the pigpen cipher for most because it tied to the history of the legend. Other puzzles came out of character’s needs. Meaning, how would that particular person hide a message. And we had a live virtual Book Club Meeting that was really due to the interest of the Players.

How did you manage updates during the two week period: ongoing characters interactions and frequent updates?

Since the story was playing out in real time, the pacing of updates had to feel like it was actually happening in Snow Town at that moment in time. But, we also wanted to accommodate Players in different parts of the world, you shift some of your Characters habits. So, we had Clare and Edward for the late night crowd. Peg was usually up early updating. The Library and Ruthie had a schedule and rarely moved beyond it. So, back to your question.. we first thought about how we could have updates at different times of day to make the world feel like it was “living” and then connected (or assigned) those times to characters. Of course, some of the updating as we built up in the second week changed due to story events. We had a few nights where everyone was up late.

You’ve also commented on the ‘community theatre’ nature of your cast and crew, could you tell us a bit about that?

I’m living part-time in a very small New England town. The town’s history and people inspired Snow Town. While I was researching and working out the story for Snow Town, it became obvious that I should definitely make this project a “community ARG”. The cast and crew are my neighbors. My local library, general store and church became important locations within the Snow Town storyworld. Everyone was involved in one way or another… acting, making the snow mounds and snow people, puzzles, props, etc. I’m incredibly lucky to have some amazing artist, musician, photographer and filmmaker neighbors that jumped onto the project and truly made it come to life with me. Making Snow Town became the buzz of our town. We were all getting a little nutty from being snowed in all winter… and Snow Town became our escape.

How long did you spend developing the project? Did you write and design it all yourself and then involve the town for the production?

I started writing out the idea last summer. Probably spent a total of 8 weeks to dev and prep. (4 part-time and 4 full-time)This town is filled with a cast of characters and I must say that they inspired a lot of my story. They aren’t these exact characters but, let’s say they have some of the same “colors”. I was also fascinated with the history of this area. My research revealed so much about the violence that the early settlers created and endured. Maine was a brutal place. One thing that I touched upon, but didn’t have time to explore with the short story ARG, was the presence of many alternative religions. My high school history classes skipped the interesting fact that not only Puritans fled England to practice their religion, but many other, more off-beat and occultish, religions came as well.

Yes, I designed it… but like all my indies, my Cast, Crew, Friends and most of all the Players add and subtract to it as we roll it out. That’s true for the story as well. Some details get fleshed out and added as the Characters develop their relationships to the Players and other Characters.

Do you have some other tips for helping indie ARG creators get their projects actually out there, and finished?

Make it doable. Take a look at your story, characters, events and players. Is this ARG something you can execute? I see so many indie (and some pro) ARGs that are developed and then never launch due to the fact that the creators aren’t being realistic. ARGs don’t have to be delivered one way. You don’t have to make a “Why So Serious?” or “i love bees”. You could make a “Must Love Robots” or “Rookery Tower” or “Snow Town” or something like the recently launched “Abandoned Windmill”. Or maybe there is no linear story. Maybe you have an amazing idea that’s more of an ARG poem. Design to your talents and capabilities… what kind of experience is it? HUGE like an epic novel or more of a short story? What can you and your team execute? how many characters, events and platforms needed? where/how does it reach your players (and vice versa)? how many players can your story and design (and team) handle? Figure it out and then just do it.

Yar! Thanks Jan!

Jan Libby Bio: She created the popular indie alternate reality games – Sammeeeees & Wrath of Johnson (Sam II). The following year she was writer and interactive designer for LG15 Studios (on the hit Lonelygirl15 Series seasons 1 & 2). While working with LG15, she began to develop and write brands (Neutrogena and 20th Century Fox) into the show’s ongoing storyline. Jan then developed a transmedia television pilot with Kiefer Sutherland’s East Side Entertainment. She also partnered on Book 3 for the horror/sci-fi ARG, Eldritch Errors, with Brian Clark & GMD Studios. Jan now works as a writer/creator & consultant for media companies and agencies. Most recently, she wrapped on the Levi’s GO IV Game/Experience, an Interactive Adventure for Toyota Scion, and the Transmedia/Interactive Ford Focus Rally (with Amazing Race Prods) to launch the new Ford Focus.

I read this article the other day about the “National Theatre’s screw up“, and it reminded me of a time I screwed up in an ARG. I have of course screwed up more than once, but the article reminded me of a specific event. The article discusses a tweet sent out through the National Theatre twitter account, a tweet that involved pretty crass swearing about another person. The article notes how people responded with understanding to the error:

Rather than berate the theatre for such a terrible lapse of protocol or judgement, the audience acknowledged it for it was – a mistake, and an oddly funny one at that. And as we can see from the representative responses above, the theatre inadvertently presented itself as being fallible, human and honest. Whether it was a lapse in judgement, or just an errant slip of the keys – sending tweets from the wrong account – it nonetheless made the institution a little bit more likable in the eyes of its followers. Just for one brief moment, the National Theatre let a personality shine through the cracks.

And then the article continues, lamenting how the National Theatre then tried to deny the incident:

However, the theatre’s response to all of the above saw them revert swiftly, and sadly, back to type. Rather than admit that someone on staff had clearly stuffed up, or perhaps a disgruntled former employee still knew their login passwords, the theatre instead deleted the post and announced that they “believed(ed)” that they had been hacked.

The article then eloquently explains why this response was antithetical to contemporary interaction:

Two guiding principles in social media, we believe, are to Be Human and Be Honest. Had the National Theatre adopted either policy, they might have done themselves a service. To err is human, and ‘being human’ is increasingly what we respond to when bumping into organisations online. Social media differs from traditional marketing by asking us to ‘be human’, to drop our guard a little and be conversational – to get in amongst our audience and act like ‘real people’ (this shouldn’t be terribly difficult, we are ‘real people’ after all).

I completely agree. Now, what I recalled with my mistake was the time I signed off under my own name not as my character when conversing with the player. I felt terrible (and now create a signature in my character emails so I can’t make that mistake again), and wanted to do something about it. The player emailed back to me, continuing the conversation we were having, and also made a quick funny remark about my slip. The question was how to respond. I wanted to make some clever remark about the slip in-character in some way, but the team voted that I respond to the conversation, and not say anything about the slip. I did so, and the player and I continued to have some interaction in-character.

But what I feel is that there was a great opportunity for the player and I to bond at that point. By not acknowledging it in some way, I sent a message to the player that I was uncomfortable about the slip and wanted them to forget about it. I did feel terrible about the slip, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable about it. I wanted to use it. I understand that there are situations where you don’t want to move too far out from behind the curtain. You want to keep the player immersed. But I think at times an unacknowledged slip can do more harm than a slip.

I remember another ARG where I had the freaky occurrence (there are always freaky occurrences during ARGs). The name of a character I had murdered in the plot, and their profession, was exactly the same as a friend of one of the players. That friend had the same profession and had been murdered too, in real life. The player emailed me (the character) and told me about it. I thought the only ethical thing to do was to email the person directly as a game-master (not as a character), and apologise. I offered to downplay the murder victim or even change the plot if it disturbs them. I sincerely was prepared to change the plot if needed. But they emailed back that the person who died would of loved this coincidence, and so it became a kind of a homage to them. The issue was therefore resolved, the game could go ahead without any feelings of discomfort from both the player and myself, and we bonded. None of this would of happened if I hadn’t emailed directly and said the things I sincerely wanted to.

I recall people saying a couple of times during the reveal of the Rachel Webster person as a character in J.C. Hutchin’s Personal Effects ARG, that the actions of a team and the characters after a hoax are more important than the hoax (intentional or not) occurring in the first place. All of these experiences, and my previous thoughts about sucking, all show me how your response to imperfection is more important than ignoring imperfection.

I was asked to write an article about my company for the IGDA Newsletter special edition on ARGs. I chose to write about why I’m “Going Indie for Meaningfulness and Money“. I thought I’d share it with you since many of you may be traveling down the same path. I also wanted to share with you a postscript. It is a quote from a colleague who I was chatting with in Skype:

Heart, art, and commerce can connect. In fact, that’s where the real gold is.

Great stuff, eh? The IGDA special issue has many articles by people, including some nuggets from Steve Peters and Maureen McHugh, like these tips for meaningful interaction:

* Unlock story content for everyone
* Interact with story characters
* Get information to provide to story characters to move the story along

Read their article and many others here.

Now that sounds like a weird title, doesn’t it? What do I mean by ‘actualising your depictions’? What I’m referring to is the depiction of a character searching the internet, or having a social media conversation in a video, and then not having them seeded online. That is: I hate it when I watch characters doing things on the Internet (in a film, TV show or webisode) and then I (of course) jump online to see the evidence of their activity only to find it isn’t there or it is different. I witnessed this recently and so that is why I decided to rant about it now. It was also done by a person/company that didn’t intend to do a transmedia project and so I’m not giving them a bad time, necessarily. So, what happened?

A couple of days ago Twitter announced the forthcoming launch of the New Twitter:

As many (most) of you would of noticed, the character in the video tweets a pic. I, of course, went straight to the character’s Twitter page (who turns out to be the guy who makes the Twitter videos – which is fine, nice meta). I’m happy to see Jeremy Brigg’s (@gigglebriggs) page does intend have the tweets featured in the video (see screenshot below):

BUT, when I open up the Twitpic it is not the same image as the one depicted in the video:

Source: http://twitpic.com/2mty7m

Source: Screenshot from video

The image is by another person, and is a similar image (of a moon), but is not the image depicted in the video and is by someone else. This sucks. It sucks because it is clear the Twitter implementation is not considered part of the video experience (although it is half-way there). It is clear the creators didn’t think anyone would notice or care. Only the video matters.

This situation is emblematic of a pre-transmedia mindset. In the past (and many times in the present), creators think only about the main medium and don’t care about what the experience across media is like. They start to make an effort but if they don’t decide to make each medium a meaningful and equal part of the experience then it is treated as lesser.

Consider this example from the Godsend movie, where a character searches online for a (fictional) corporation.

I did have images of the character viewing the webpage but I cannot find it in my numerous backups over the years (probably in the two external hard drives I have that are still corrupted). In this scene the character searches and views a corporation. If you went to the website, it existed, but it looked different to the page depicted in the film:

Now the webpage has been taken over by someone who has taken all the images out and has put ads there (obviously taking advantage of the traffic they’re getting). The lack of continuity from the website in the film to the online version annoyed me. I then do of course love it when conversations and sites are actualised with continuity. For instance, I enjoyed watching this Jake and Amir video back in 2008:

And then jumping into Twitter to find the character’s posts as they occurred in the video:

Now, obviously you cannot view these tweets after the watching the video now. That is one problem with creating authentic social media conversations after a broadcast or screening. But it is bloody fun when you do catch it.

Do people really care though? Since the release of the New Twitter video, there are now over 1.500 views of the Twitpic alluded to in the video, and comments by people. And as I like to cite, multiple visits and comments at a website created by a fan for a website depicted in the Bourne Ultimatum. The character Jason Bourne searches Google for an investment company, Sewell and Marbury. The site is there and depicted in the movie. But the site hadn’t been created by the producers and so a fan secured it and created it to a small degree according to the fiction at www.sewellmarbury.com. The website was created in 2007 and has had to date over one-thousand comments from people all over the world (more would have visited the site and not left a comment).

I talk about this example and how a domain name, password, social media account, email and phone number glimpsed in a TV show or film is a powerful call to action to many people. So, it sucks when this opportunity is ignored, misunderstood or used to ill effect.

In response to Nicholas Lovell’s book How to Publish a Game, Phil Stuart of Preloaded wrote a detailed and helpful post about how they publish online games. He includes the following points:

Seed your game smartly
- Seed your game smartly
- Time poor seeding
Integrate with Portals
- Adapt to the environment
Work with the ‘Pirates’
Listen to your players
Analytics rule
Be SEO friendly
Conclusion

I haven’t seen someone be so honest about their approach for a while. I hope this inspires others to share their experiences. It doesn’t have to be your strategies, it can just be the stuff you learned. I know many of you are keen to do this but have troubles with NDAs. I hear ya. But you can post general lessons without mentioning a project or client, and I’m happy to publish posts under a codename. Anyway, check out Phil’s post.

This is another post about what other people have written about. I’m just still head down in the middle of run time for a project, and so that is the reason for my lack of personal contribution. But I’ve been seeing some awesome stuff out there, including these notes from a special workshop run by community and gaming legend Amy Jo Kim (I’ve recommended her Community Building book to many people) for (what looks to be a very exciting company) Big Door. Geoffrey Nuval now works at Big Door, and he shared his notes from Amy’s gamification workshop. Here is a summary of the headings, but see his site for the full post:

I. Identify and Address your Audience

II. Member profiles are very important

III. Types of Users in a Gamified System

IV. Random quotes heard that I felt important enough to write down…

– “Make it easy for everyone to understand: How do I win?”

– “Iterative Development”

– “Show them what they can eventually achieve upfront… establish goals.”

– “Designing a game site for entertainment is very different from gamifying a system”

– “Give new users lots of sugar in the first 15 minutes.”

V. On Building a Community

VI. Mechanics in a Gamified System (what AJK called: “metagames”)

VII.  On Creating a Social Moment

VIII. Gamified System Monetization

The massive social game experience created by Jane McGonigal for the World Bank, Evoke, finished a little while ago. But the team is currently having a debrief and will be sharing their lessons learned online. The first post outlines what went right and what went wrong. I’ve summarised the headings here, but go to the post for the full description, solutions, and section on education outcomes.

Top Ten What Went Right:
1. We created an extremely active, productive community from scratch, virtually overnight.
2. We focused on real, intrinsic motivation and real activity.
3. We defined and bounded the experience very clearly: “a crash course in changing the world”, brought to you by the World Bank Institute: 10 Weeks, 10 Missions.
4. We made it social.
5. We designed multiple win levels.
6. We invented the Leader Cloud.
7. We created a highly addictive activity feed.
8. We created a super-satisfying feedback loop: runes automatically lighting up for completed quests and missions.
9. We designed a great hero’s journey (the quests).
10. We created a real “game-changer.” We took full advantage of media opportunities to create an extremely high-profile project – and to tell an urgently optimistic story – and as a result, EVOKE changed what people think is possible.

Top Ten What Went Wrong
1. We failed to start the gameplay soon enough – ideally, during registration.
2. The social world wasn’t bounded enough.
3. Weekly missions and the final EVOKATION weren’t connected enough.
4. We didn’t design meaningful SMS gameplay.
5. We missed the opportunity on real-time mentors.
6. The +1 voting wasn’t fun or meaningful enough.
7. The quests would have been more valuable if they were more integrated with the missions – players using unique strengths and vision to respond to the URGENT EVOKES.
8. Overall, the collective experience of the EVOKE network subsumed the individual journey toward social innovation.
9. We needed more meaningful opportunities for strengths-based collaboration and teamwork.
10. We definitely want to do a better job presenting the EVOKE Code of Ethics and getting player buy-in.

A few years ago (four years ago), I created a mini-alternate reality game for an industry residential I was mentoring at. The residential was to help teach film and TV creators (what was called at the time) cross-media. But we didn’t just want to tell them about cross-media, we wanted them to experience what it is like receive an SMS from a character, go to a fictional website to find clues, and participate in a live event. This direct immersion approach is something that Michael Andersen would be happy to hear.

The experience was designed and created by two of us (myself and Jackie Turnure), in two weeks, and launched two weeks before the residential. So prior to the event all the practitioners experienced a small issuing of SMSes, email and websites to help prime the narrative and build the desire to participate. But at the actual residential (a lovely resort), they were split into teams. I split them into teams because it would be easier to manage them, and it would facilitate them having to act (rather than leaving it to the loud ones). The most significant reason for the split, however, was the desire to give each team a different experience of the story event. But before I go into why, check out this quaint little chart (see pic) showing the different teams and the ideal path I wanted them to travel through. [The use of wines for names is because the residential was smack bang in a wine valley...and so we created a story around a murder and conspiracy around the nefarious underworld of winemakers. Heard that before?]

So each group was given a different mission and puzzle to reveal, importantly, a different point of view on a murder. I did this because it was around this time I was reflecting on (ex-game designer) Chris Crawford‘s design lessons from his book on Interactive Storytelling. The first is design lesson #12: “The storyworld is composed of closely balanced decisions that can reasonably go either way“.

Lesson #12 presents one of the most important conceptual shifts the storybuilder must make in moving from conventional stories to interactive storyworlds. A storyteller creates a conventional story by striving hard to create a sequence of entirely reasonable decisions that lead to an interesting and perhaps unexpected conclusion. The storybuilder, however, must banish such thinking and instead concentrate on decisions that could plausibly go either way. This concept is totally new in storytelling, so alien that it could excite suspicion or rejection. (54)

Crawford develops this further with lesson #13: “The storybuilder’s most important task is creating and harmonizing a large set of dramatically significant, closely balanced choices for the player“. He continues, saying that you “do not saddle the player with endless trivial decisions about where his feet should be or whether he’ll have one lump or sugar with his tea or two” (55). So, I was thinking about giving players choices which are evenly weighted with significance. Not giving them one option that is ideal and others that are obviously not. Instead, I wanted to give the players a dramatically significant decision to make.

But at the same time I was also researching ‘tiering‘ in ARGs – where different content is issued to different players with different media. So, what I wanted to experiment with in this mini-ARG was giving each of the teams a different and valid point of view of a (fictional) murder. Each of them went through a process that lead the players to think a different character was the murderer. The next step was to have the players come together and have to solve the case together because the journalist that was coming was just in a car crash. The TV crew was there (we had cameras and lights) and so they had to come up with the solution and report it ‘live’ on TV within a certain time. Sharing of information, conversation and debate was ensured because each of them had a unique point of view, and there was an urgency. The choice wouldn’t be easy because all evidence seemed to point to different people, therefore increasing the stakes and dramatic intensity. Sounds like a good plan, eh? So what happened?

1) I suck at plot and participation balance. Why? I had narratively weighted the experience of each team to a fine degree. There isn’t a problem with this, except that it could only work if the players did in fact experience what I had planned. You can image then, something didn’t go as planned. One of the performers (actually one of the organisational peers at the residential, not a trained actor) decided to improvise by bringing in some props for his character. Sounds fantastic eh? This is exactly what you want. But those props ended up tipping the narrative reveal into the direction of another team’s reveal. In other words, the team that was meant to gather information from their interaction with a character came to a similar conclusion to another. This means the whole tiered narrative was not evenly weighted. There was still discussion and debate, but the evidence pointed in a particular direction. So, what lesson did I take from this? Having a dramatically significant choice is easier to implement in interactive systems where you have control over what is given the players (and what they can return). But these sorts of live participatory experiences always have a big degree of the unknown: people! So it is important, I found, to leave room to breathe, to plan for the fact that people are not convenient scripts! But I also learned that making sure everyone is fully briefed on the overall goals and vision is important.

2) I suck at feedback. At the end of the event we ran a debrief session in which we spoke about some of the design process we went through (to help the practitioners apply the experience to their work), and to get feedback. Now the feedback problem isn’t the way we ran the debrief. No. Instead it is what we discovered during that session: the players wanted to know which person was the murderer. They wanted to know if they had made the right decision. My colleague said she had a particular murderer in mind, but I said I seriously didn’t. To me, they all could of been the murderer. The lesson? This doesn’t mean we should of designed the experience to have one definite murderer. But what I realized should of been at the end of the experience was some kind of confirmation for the players that they had made the right decision. We could of done that any number of ways, whatever outcome they chose. For instance, having some character or prop emerge to confirm their decision. I now always make sure there is a feedback loop if players are asked to make a significant decision.

So, did you learn anything from my transmediocrity? Are there other lessons I don’t see? Or do you have a similar tale to tell?