[Caffiend]

Well then doesnt this all also correspond to us , the players, true secret desire, to in fact find one of these so called "GAMES", that in actuallity turns our to be "NOT A GAME".
In other words were hoping to find the one that is real, just a morbid thought, I mean I know I am hoping for the day one of these things does...

[HetMasteen]

I'm seven months too late.

[Mikeyj]

It has come from the Perplex City threads...It appeared a while ago and seems to have got stuck into the vocab. Not sure how, but might be an interesting philological study for someone. Personally I'm happy with TINAG and TIAG does seem redundant, but IG and OOG are used less often too. Intriguing

[thebruce]

AtionSong wrote:

I often see people do posts such as: Quote: [TIAG] But why would the PM just send us around in a circle like this?[/TIAG]

I've personally never seen that, but I think in this instance, you're more likely referring to the sometimes annoyingly over-used /meta 'tag'...

something more like

Quote:

{meta} But why would the PM just send us around in a circle like this? {/meta}

as in purposely stepping OOG (in relation to the context) to make a comment.

[Phaedra]

Yeah, it still seems like you're really defining IG/OOG.

[djsampson]

You probably would have been better off posting OOG or IG as a sticky.

[AtionSong]

Phaedra wrote:

First, in all the ARGs I've played and lurked on, I've yet to see a post about the game as a game labeled "TIAG."

Really? I often see people do posts such as:

Quote:

[TIAG] But why would the PM just send us around in a circle like this?[/TIAG]

Phaedra wrote:

Second, TINAG is a design philosophy, not a rule governing player discussion. There are no rules governing player discussion. That's one of the things that allows the design philosophy to work.

Point noted, and I'll add this to the above description.

[Phaedra]

First, in all the ARGs I've played and lurked on, I've yet to see a post about the game as a game labeled "TIAG."

Unfiction is out-of-game. Therefore the default here is not to pretend to be "in-game" or "in-character" (although occasionally someone does).

Second, TINAG is a design philosophy, not a rule governing player discussion. There are no rules governing player discussion. That's one of the things that allows the design philosophy to work.

See Brooke Thompson's excellent elucidation of the aesthetic here, or Sean Stewart's essay on interactive fiction:

Sean Stewart wrote:

One of our key slogans for the Beast was, This is Not a Game. We wanted to write characters that were more like people than the characters in video games. We wanted the phone numbers in the game to work like real phone numbers; the emails to feel like real emails; the websites to present as real websites. This fetish for verité has real costs and consequences, and nobody has chafed under the restrictions more than us.

TINAG is about the game not admitting it's a game. It has nothing to do with how the players behave, because it is in place as a philosophy before the game even goes live, and will remain in place regardless of how the players react (even if it sometimes has to be compromised a bit purely because of logistics). It's not about player roleplaying. It's not about how players conduct discussion. It's not about how players label their posts.

It's not about the players at all, except in the sense of creating an experience that allows them to suspend their disbelief.

[AtionSong]

 TIAG & TINAG