[thebruce]

And the fundamental difference there is the philosophical point of admission by the 'game' that it is a 'game'. But whether that's acceptable to the players is a different matter. So I think that puppetmasters these days aren't focusing so much necessarily on retaining the game's self-recognition of it being a 'game', but moving towards catering to satisfaction of the players in their experience (which could mean either retaining the curtain or pulling it back).

It used to be, I think, that ARGs were focused on the philosophical points of TINAG and maintaining the curtain, by definition, and that if a PM broke any of those it was immediately considered 'bad form'. But I'm seeing a shift in that ideal, even if it is experimental in some cases.

When it comes to marketing, I think it's much safer to not have an iron curtain, and the reasons for that I belev are obvious. But now, whether grassroots game has an iron curtain or not isn't so much of an issue to the players - if the PM team manages that decision successfully.

[notgordian]

At least from my perspective, the degree of coverage the curtain achieves doesn't contribute in and of itself to the game experience. However, the puppetmaster decisions of how to deal with their choices does.

Example: I am perfectly fine with puppetmasters revealing their identities as individuals or teams before, after, or during the game. However, the decision they make regarding that information shapes how players will react to unexpected information. And that treatment defines whether the game is "better" or "worse".

I don't really need information to be hidden to aid in my suspension of belief. But what I don't like are discussions along the lines of "are we supposed to use this information, or was this a mistake?" If you choose an iron curtain, you're making any information you reveal (purposefully or inadvertantly) a potential clue. And that's a design choice you'll have to live with or abandon (I'm thinking LG15 here). If you choose a looser boundary, it's your responsibility to provide explicit indicators as to where the boundaries are drawn. And that's another choice you'll have to live with.

Each option is equally valid in my eyes, but the choice creates a responsibility to abide by the consequences. It doesn't matter what expectations you set, just as long as you set them. Because that's what leaves people feeling cheated.

[FLmutant]

I, for one, think it is healthy for the genre that there seem so many way interesting ways to skin these cats and that no one is the right way. My approach tends to think of metacommunication as extremely sophisticated and not something that establishes trust with most "fresh participants". Your approach thinks of the metacommunication itself as establishing the trust (which I agree is true for sophisticated players, the kinds looking for metacommunication.) Both approaches end up with very similar rules about fun, slightly different assumptions about trust building. Every kind of media and experience can have metacommunication, can have narrative communication, can have meta communication, etc. right?

Accepting that "metacommunication is good and part of the fun" is pretty easy, but the topic is really an aside from the question that Dante raised:

Dante wrote:

What are people's thoughts about the necessity of the "curtain" between PMs and players? There seems to be an unwritten(?) rule that players and PMs have no direct contact with one another during games -- and furthermore in the (perhaps ideal) extreme that players are even kept ignorant about PM identities.

Does accepting that "metacommunication is good and part of the fun" necessitate saying "meta communication is a buzzkill and should be avoided"?

Was Cloverfield made better or worse for having a rather iron curtain? I suspect the answer is in who you ask and that you wouldn't even find a consensus among Cloverfield players and moderators. Was Dark Knight made better or worse for having a much less than traditionally tight curtain? Was Eldritch Errors made better or worse for having a non-traditional curtain and a behind-the-scenes blog? Was Sammeeeees II better or worse for knowing who was behind the curtain that time?

I'm interested in the thoughts of players on that, to see how that real experience spread matches up back against the theories. How many times have you become less engaged because of meta communication? How many times have you become more engaged because of meta communication about a game? How does what know about the meta of a game alter the trust between an individual player and the storytellers?

[imbri]

One way to look at it is that metacommunication is comprised of nonverbal and indirect discussions about the game. When that becomes direct it becomes Meta. Not that that really helps with the confusion which comes from the fact that, with ARGs, we are actually playing with metacommunication - it is not just a necessary componant to play it is a part of the play. This is different from other games and forms of play - all of which involve a certain amount of metacommunication. Without it, play simply could not exist because we wouldn't understand that it wasn't real.

Narrative and group play (whether it's putting on a tutu and having a tea party or splitting into teams of cops & robbers and running around killing each other) require more metacommunication so that everyone playing understands just what is happening and that it is only fantasy. This helps avoid hurt feelings and stops kid robbers from freaking out thinking that they might actually go to jail when the kid cop captures them.

However, since ARGs are constantly playing with the boundaries and turning metacommunication into play, they actually require even more metacommunication as that is what builds trust and stops people from feeling tricked or hoaxed. It is the metacommunication that reinforces that it is play.

The closer that one gets to the curtain, the more metacommunication is necessary. Conversely, the further that one gets away from the curtain, the more they are engaged in Meta conversations. When I am writing a character, for example, I am constantly thinking about the messages that I am sending through the characters words and actions and how those will enforce or break down game play. The further back I move from the curtain, I am still considering the metacommunication but I am also able to have conversations with others on the development team about the game itself (Meta). The same is true when I am playing - the closer that I get to the curtain, the more immersed I become in the actual game play. However, when I am talking to a friend later that evening, the conversation will be more about the mechanics of the game and the details of the story.

The curtain represents not just the boundary of but the blending of the communication between the players and the puppetmasters. As we get closer to it, the less effective actual Meta communication is and the more important metacommunication becomes. Not only does it hurt the suspension of belief, but it breaks down metacommunication which is what is needed in order to establish the trust needed to allow for actual play.

This does not, however, mean that Meta conversations between puppetmasters and players are not possible or that all curtains must be made of titanium, iron, or steel. However, it's important to consider how that will impact the metacommunication because suddenly there is an easier way to go about getting the information that one desires and, in my experience, most people will take the easy route once it is provided to them.

Brian: As for the example of the bears, I don't think it was a very good one I would say that if people actually failed to understand the real danger and believed that we had trained bears or whatnot, that was a failure in communication. I don't think that was the case. They didn't fail to understand the real danger, but they also thought we might take advantage of that danger and work it into our storyline. However, if we didn't want them to think along those lines, there was a simple way to handle it. Instead of characters frequently talking about the danger, we could have provided them with a printout (legit newspaper clippings or wildlife information) of the very real danger (the drought starved bears) and the information they needed to avoid the danger (from food handling to the fact that people in the area hunt with dogs, so making barking noises will make the bears run away) would give them the information that they needed. Though, it really was a nice red herring that they thought they'd find Dee & JD's tent ripped to shreds and them missing in the morning and added to the overall spookiness of the event. In other words, it was not just putting that info out there that caused them to think it was foreshadowing, it was the way in which it was presented that did that.

[FLmutant]

Dante, you said the word that I think is frequently missing from the conversations: trust. On the developer side, when I talk to people who say they want to commission this kind of work, trust is biggest issue of education. As you can probably imagine from looking at the advertising around, trust isn't always in the top-5 list of things that clients are motivated by (the typical list is more like profit, sales, acclaim, profit, promotion.)

In my personal opinion, the curtain as this community likes it only works if (1) they trust the PMs and (2) that trust is important to the PMs. Those who have enjoyed trusting a PM without knowing who they even were ended up finding that trust hadn't been misplaced -- which is a pretty magic experience, and leaves a big mark on people. Those who put their trust in a PM and ended up not finding that trust met sometimes call the experience "implosion".

Brooke and I had a knock-down argument about the "metacommunication" versus "meta communication" issue (with the first being essentially what I would call "the wink" -- a second reading in a character's text that is from the PMs not the character -- and the second one using the same definition you had, communication about the game or about gaming.) Under that kind of definition, what the community is really saying is "if in doubt, metacommunication is a better design choice than meta communication".

Your argument, Dante, comes down to sometimes being dissatisfied with getting metacommunication instead of meta communication ... about something "meta" (as in, about the game). I totally get that, as there are some things I want to communicate that I don't want to do through metacommunication for fear it makes interpretation murky. That means we say in meta communication "this game is not for kids" ... otherwise, if we try to give you meta communication through a character you might take it foreshadowing (people in WV warned about bears thought for sure that meant I had hired some trained bears or something, rather that straight out being an OOG warning about bears and food handling during the camping.)

Specifically, though ... say, if you were a player of one of my games: I'm never categorically opposed to OOG conversations, I am just extremely hesitant to be the one to start them, and I never want them to be used as an IG mechanism replacement (no asking "so how does it end?") So if one of my players ever felt the trust starting to erode, contacting me is always an option. It might be, if that erosion or frustration is visible elsewhere, we already know about it.

Sometimes, though, it helps build trust to just hear that. "Message received and taken seriously" is a powerful trust reinforcer, doesn't necessarily kill immersion and can happen alot quicker than the on-stage adjustments we might have made behind the scenes based upon that same feedback. YMMV.

Edit for Spacebass: Wow, must digest. But on first reading, my initial reaction is that you managed to write seven pages about the nature of the curtain without ever once using the word "trust".

[danteIL]

Nice stuff with lots to digest...

But this:

Quote:

This model can help explain why certain tactics have counter-intuitive effects upon the system's stability. Direct communication between Players and Puppetmasters can weaken the tension provided by the focus on metacommunication and the uncertainty that metacommunication brings with it in terms of conveying an effective abstract message clearly. When uncertainty tilts toward certainty, the fire in the fiction reactor can dim or fail.

feels like an assertion without any evidence to back it up.

Furthermore, to my ear your (and Bateson's) use of 'metacommunication' is misleading. For me, metacommunication refers to communication about communication. That is, communication about the medium and/or the message, over and above the message itself. On this understanding, metacommunication necessarily reduces uncertainty because it allows one to explain why certain words/acts were chosen or certain meanings understood.

However, I agree that ARGs are rife with uncertainty, which is partly what prompted my original question about the necessity of the curtain. I feel that extreme uncertainty sometimes interferes with the trust that is required between PMs and players, and that issues of balance and good will should dissolve the curtain when necessary.

[SpaceBass]

Bumping because I've posted my long answer.

[ScarpeGrosse]

Rekidk wrote:

Everything Scrappy says is pure literary gold.

*sends over $50 and the answers to the next quiz*

[Rekidk]

ScarpeGrosse wrote:

bagsbee wrote: Short answer: Everything Scrappy said. Except the pee analogy, wtf. Oh come on. The pee analogy was pure, literary gold.

Everything Scrappy says is pure literary gold.

---

Also, regarding Op's live phone calls... Didn't a player talk to Kristen Rutherford about how they were terrified (and excited) by the live call, only to have Kristen say that she was also terrified (and excited).

Granted, they both played different roles in the live calls, but doesn't the fact that they both experienced similar emotions--emotion being the most memorable and important part of an experience--mean that they had similar experiences?

That's not to say that 'similar' means 'same,' though.

[SpaceBass]

A shared experience does not necessarily imply that everyone has the same experience. The totality of the shared experience created is never accessible to any one person.

[krystyn]

catherwood wrote:

The players and PMs are collaborating only in a meta sense, i think. We're not building a common shared experience at all, certainly not the same experience for the PMs as for the players.

I disagree.

So many of the good moments I have had as a PM has come through a symbiotic relationship with the player base. It's not always visible to all parties, but there is most certainly collaboration, and a lot more improvisation than most players might expect (and not in the places they would expect it, either).

I also wouldn't classify it as meta collaboration, either - mostly because my focus is pretty much always serving the needs of the narrative, and the player's position with regard to it.

As a player, I absolutely consider the Op's live payphone calls during ilovebees to be a common shared experience between the PMs and the players.

[ScarpeGrosse]

bagsbee wrote:

Short answer: Everything Scrappy said. Except the pee analogy, wtf.

Oh come on. The pee analogy was pure, literary gold.

[vpisteve]

Appending my earlier post, it strikes me that there's nothing to prevent PMs from including a support@ or contact@ email address somewhere that players can use to contact someone behind the curtain. Curtain or no, that's never a bad idea.

Plus, it serves the added bonus of providing a place The Press can contact you.

[catherwood]

Everyone is contributing such wonderful stuff in their replies, and i'm agreeing with a lot of it. I just wanted to stir up one little point buried in here:

danteIL wrote:

I just think that it's a very weird situation where everyone agrees that the PMs and the players are collaborating together to create this wonderful shared experience, but the only generally accepted means of communicating about that experience is through the experience itself.

The players and PMs are collaborating only in a meta sense, i think. We're not building a common shared experience at all, certainly not the same experience for the PMs as for the players. If that were the case, there would be no PMs, or everyone would be a PM, or it would become improvisational theater workshop. That's perhaps out there on the frontiers of Chaotic Fiction, and not the traditional ARGs that people are using with their analogies. What I mean to say is that the collaboration isn't on an equal footing, and the curtain is the social fabric (har har) that establishes everyone's position in the team.

[bagsbee]

Medium to slightly long answer:
I love a good curtain, the iron-ier, the better. My first (and to date, favorite) game was Metacortechs, and a big part of the reason is that I had no freaking clue who was running it - the mysterious-ness of it was so tantalizing, I just couldn't wait to scour the in-game sites and forums every single day. I didn't want play "Hunt the PM", and even though at that point, I was a UF noob and wouldn't have known who they were anyway, just the fact the I knew would've killed it for me.

My brief (and only) foray into PM-dom started with a completely open curtain, which was only later closed and solidified, but it drove me absolutely crazy that by that point, everyone knew who was running the show. I felt the same way as I do as a player - I don't want to communicate with you except through the game, I want the quality of the experience to stand on its' own.

Granted, if [Brand Name PM Team] is running a major campaign for [Deep Pocketed Corporate Sponsor], it may be naive and unrealistic to expect them to maintain an iron curtain - they are, by and large, marketing campaigns, after all.

You know what would be really, really nice? If the other players didn't feel compelled to blurt out "oh yeah, that's a [42|GMD|Dave S.|etc, etc] game" every time a new game is mentioned in chat. Can we at least try to maintain the illusion? Pretty please?

Short answer:
Everything Scrappy said. Except the pee analogy, wtf.