A View From The Road: ARG, A Portal MMOG!
- Thread starter John Funk
- Start date
The cake may be a lie, but it is delicious. I don't want to know the truth now if the lie tastes this good.
While I understand the argument, it's not an MMO. It really needs to have more than just the bare bones, and more than just one puzzle: now that it's been decoded, and Portal 2 has been released, how many people are still looking at the ARG? If this was an MMO, it'd be in its death throes right now.
And I'm still apprehensive for Portal 2. I mean, the first was all right (but nothing incredibly spectacular), but I don't feel that it'll make for a great full-length game.
While I understand the argument, it's not an MMO. It really needs to have more than just the bare bones, and more than just one puzzle: now that it's been decoded, and Portal 2 has been released, how many people are still looking at the ARG? If this was an MMO, it'd be in its death throes right now.
And I'm still apprehensive for Portal 2. I mean, the first was all right (but nothing incredibly spectacular), but I don't feel that it'll make for a great full-length game.
What fun it was. There was one guy so dedicated to uncover the mystery, that he found coordinates that appeared to point to Valve's old studio in Kirkland. Right underneath a place called "Magnusson Park". He didn't find anything, but it sure was something.
While the ARG might follow the same basic concepts as Massively Multiplayer Online Games tend to, that doesn't really make it a fully fledged MMO, I think. If it is, it's a pretty poor one for all parties involved: it doesn't make money, noone gains any levels, and people don't even get loot! It was a lot of fun, but just because something's fun doesn't make it a game. I'd be calling this a massively multiplayer online... puzzle? I mean, unless you call driving to work through the traffing a PvP competitive massively multiplayer game, instead of calling it a pain in the ass or a fact of life... I can't exactly agree.
Well, in most ARGs run by an evil corporation to promote a product, people do get loot, since there's usually a money prize in the end. And while it doesn't directly make money, it works as a marketing tool to indirectly increase sales of whatever it's promoting, and thus money. Gaining levels on the real life is tricky, but other than that, would you say that those ARGs are legitimate MMOGs?Fenixius said:
I think it has to do with perception, as well. We call them "Alternate Reality Games", but I never really think of them as games. They're mysteries. They're marketing. They're puzzles, maybe. But I don't think of them as a game. I can take it, or I can leave it. I don't have to sign up. I just do it. A game, I sit down to play. While I can't disagree that they do indeed share a lot of the same basic tenets with MMOG's, I just can't help but not even think of it as a "game". Probably just me, though.The Random One said:
A "superconscious" is a better term- they are all working together, or at least working in large groups to achieve a common goal. Saying this would be like saying that Anonymous is an MMO.
When the ARG was starting I thought Valve where going to announce portal 2 as an MMO or even announce that the ARG was portal 2. luckily valve didn't take the cop-out option and are making an actual game.
