Source Type

The various creators of gameplay resources are: PMs; ARG community; game-specific community; individual players; and an existing property community.

2.1.1 Puppet-Master

An ARG designer is known as a 'puppet-master' or PM. PM-created resources are, when compared to player-created resources, in the minority. This is due to a number of factors, including ARG verisimulate discussed in the journal essay. It should be noted too that most of the game-play resources created by PMs have been for large-scale ARGs that target ARG and non-ARG players. This shows an effort to target audiences according to player expertise. Table 3 shows examples of PM-created resources, listed according to media type.

2.1.2 ARG Community

ARG community gameplay resources refers to resources created for a particular ARG within an existing ARG community. At present there are two main ARG community sites -- Alternate Reality Gaming Network and Unfiction -- which formed during the 2002 ARG Lockjaw (Thompson, 2006a). ARG Community resources include threads in unfiction forums, Immersion Unlimited and Deaddrop. Community sites utilise, due to the collaborative nature of the software, forums, wikis, and IRC (internet-mediated chat). Although not indicated here in the short listing I've provided in table 4, ARG community resources are in the majority (particularly for forums).

2.1.3 Game-Specific Community

A game-specific community is one in which a group of players of a specific game create resources for that game only. They sometimes assign themselves a name. The 'Cloudmakers', for instance, emerged out of The Beast and is the name of a yacht featured in the ARG. But the Cloudmakers have also played other games under that title. In his academic paper on the subject, Jeremy Reynolds lists a few player groups and their ARGs: 'Cloudmakers' for The Beast, 'Retrievers' for Art of the Heist (which was actually assigned by the PMs); 'Beekeepers', 'Crewmembers' and the 'Sleeping Princess Army' for I Love Bees (Reynolds, 2006). 'The Namastae' is the community name for a group of The Lost Experience (ABC, 2006) players. It was decided by a poll in the Lost Experience listserv, in May 2006.

2.1.4 Individual Players

Individual players also create resources, usually general webpages and sometimes blogs and wikis. These forms of textual production, Guides, Primers, Timelines, are considered interpretations and personal expressions that are single-voiced. This is why they are attributed to a single author, and are usually housed on the author's own server.

I would have to say that ARG-player resources appear to have remained fairly consistent in their content and appearance. Some recent variations, however, include Konamouse's 'trail' for Jan Libby'sSammeeeees(2006). As you can see from figure X, player 'Konamouse' has utilised different software:

Figure 9. Screenshot of Konamouse's Sammeeeees Trail

2.1.5 Non-ARG Community

Due to the popularity of ARGs and any work that appears to be an ARG, there are many gameplay resources being created in existing community sites dedicated to a non-ARG but extant entertainment properties and in individual sites. For example, the Metacortechs ARG extends the The Matrix property but gameplay resources were created by players in existing Matrix fansites such as MatrixFans forum for Metacortechs; the same with the SuperHeroHype forum The Dark Knight ARG _and Cloverfield Clues by Dennis (2007) for _Cloverfield.