Because people suck. That's why.

Creative in what way? In the interaction with the device, i.e. revolutionary like The Wii?

If this product were to take off, I think the interface would be the most critical part.



So to correct myself, maybe an electronics engineer as opposed to a programmer?

 

I think this is a really cool idea. I also think there's probably dozens of things similar to it. Just think of classic games like King's Quest. It's puzzle solving, and as you go along, you get more of the story. What you're describing just has less of a role-playing aspect to it. More breaking down the 4th wall rather than playing as a character.

Know that in this day and age, anyone with Google can cheat. But, you could also cheat on crossword puzzles, and tons of people do them for the challenge, without cheating.

Don't let any lack of novelty, whether real or perceived, get in your way though. What's going to make or break this is the quality of both the story and the puzzles themselves. And, if possible, you want to integrate the two. For instance, a puzzle that is more easily solved by having some insight about the personality of one of the characters; things that play into the story's theme that way, not just independent puzzles.

I aced my undergrad mystery novel class, which included tons of puzzle quizzes, to test our ability to reason like the detectives, so if you ever want any help on the story or puzzle side, I'm game. I think the time and energy it would take to make just one of these things at a really high level of quality precludes it from being financially viable, but it still sounds like a really cool idea.

Also: Is this the official WTD or not? I'm confused by the lack of tits and criticism from Nettdata.

 

That's my point. The story isn't going to sell your product.


You're asking someone to create a revolutionary product and you're going to write the stories.


You have no clout in this business offer, thus, you have little to offer.

 

The difference is that this is NOT going to be computer/software based. Computer/software enhanced, yes. But it's still going to be a page turning book. You have to go and get the initial book, register it online, and wait to get your shit in the mail. It's not instant gratification. I want to do 1000 pages where you're dying to get your package in the mail with the next section.

No, the only reason I brought up the WDT was because I had a few rums last night to even put this up.

 

So it's some sort of series, where the plot unfolds over several books, and you have to send the right password or whatever (gained from solving clues) to get the next book in the series?

 

Having worked in semi-related fields in the past, I cosign what Nett said in the post above. Programmers can implement, but this in no way means one should let them design things. There's a reason most endeavors like video games have separate people in charge of creative.

Perhaps some programmers have an eye for intuitive displays and aesthetics, but my experience has been that this is no more true than for the general population. Probably dramatically less so, for several reasons:

1) They gravitate towards what they know how to do/can imagine what they would do, at the detriment of thinking about what it SHOULD look/act like. Like Nett hinted at, they know what the box actually is, so they're therefore more likely to think inside of it.
2) They tend to have quantitative/problem-solving mindsets, not "artistic/creative" mindsets.
3) They tend to design things that THEY, being extremely computer literate and habituated, find intuitive. Not what the average person finds intuitive.

 

You're talking a metric shitton of work, but I'm sure you know that. The last six weeks or so, I've been writing just questlines, not a novel, for a video game. Holy shit. Just a simple, "Hey, if you want to know my history, ask me these questions, then I'll tell you about myself, then I'm going to send you on a quest," beginner quest that takes approximately 1 minute to go through with dialogue prompts in game, if you actually read everything (I was *really* bored on that one, so lots of backlore). The script that does this = almost 3 pages long.

Now, I know you're saying, "But that's like Myst!" Yeah, and that's my point. For every option, you have to write out every possible response to every option given. What will start as say a 200 page novel, with options at the end, let's just say you have 3 options, for math's sake. Now, the next "mini book" will only have 100 pages, because you want to get to more branches. So, now you have 300 more pages to write. And the end of each, let's say you're given 2 choices. Again, 100 pages (600 pages, 3 mini books, 2 choices). You're now at 1100 pages, and people have only *read* 400 of them by the time (due to their choices) they get done with that. So they want more. See where I'm going with this?

I get your idea, and it actually makes sense. Kind of like the whole "alternate endings" to movies, just expanded upon. Now, of course you can reuse some of your 1100 pages for different branches, or you can branch back around to something covered in another branch, but yeah, I can see this being a huge ass project.

I literally use a legal pad drawing out questlines to put it all together, with *'s, X's, etc., to different pages to cross reference. If they get to step 3 and haven't learned stuff they should have asked in step one, I have to lead them back to that, etc. Writing a novel on the same basis would be probably 10 times the work.

This isn't to dissuade you, by any means, I think it's a great idea. Just trying to give you an idea on what you're facing with an actual "novel". IMHO, you should make it a short novel, then have multiple chapters available after that. I know you're looking at an actually hold in hand on paper book, but for this type of thing, the ebooks would be the way to go, with the mail option.

EDIT due to new posts: I'm not a programmer. I haven't touched programming in... let's just say a long time. I'm into the lore, background, questline type stuff on this game, so volunteered when they were looking for someone (completely unpaid). I'm basically learning the code on the fly, asking the true programmers, WTF do I type in to make THIS work? So you'd have to find someone with that ability to teach you, and know what you areare really trying to do.

 

I think the idea of delayed gratification is pretty bad. When you accomplish something challenging, you won't some immediate reward, it's how our brains work. You want the really cool cutscene that advances the plot, or the award ceremony, whatever.

Perhaps an e-book, where completing the puzzle gets you a coupon code to download the next part for free, so you can get it right away. If the puzzle answer itself were the coupon code, that would save you a lot of trouble on the administrative end.

 

My original idea with the mailing stuff was to have it come as kind of a surprise, so you never know when you'd get something. Either that, or it would have a dedicated e-mail address on the server which would get occasional e-mails with clues or whatever.

 

Pretty easy to do with a script, it's EVENT_TIME type thing. You can randomize it, etc.... would take someone with a whole lot more experience than me to do it though.

 

I'm just getting through reading all of this.

$100T2, you've invented something called an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), which, I'm sorry to say, has already been invented. You also seem to want part of it to be a device/experience that carefully mimics what Tom Hanks pitched to the fictitious toy company in the movie Big.

Many modern ARGs have all the elements you mentioned: real-world elements like physical books, Internet elements, interactive elements (like having to be at a particular phone booth at a particular time), varied media types (written, audio, video), and so on. Many ARGs go beyond the single-person experience and encourage the entire world to try to solve puzzles cooperatively.

30-50 year old women the world 'round have the opportunity to play and participate in ARGs all the time, because someone is nearly always running one as part of a viral marketing campaign. Unfortunately for you, I don't think they do.

EA tried to sell participation in an ARG in their early game Majestic, which was clearly inspired by the success of the first large Internet-scale ARG, The Beast (created as a promotional tool for the movie A.I.). This effort tanked, partially due to 9/11 (which made everyone think twice about the wisdom of participating in real-world events that make it look like you're part of some conspiracy). I don't think there have been a lot of significant pay-for-play ARGs afterward.

You might try running an ARG for fun - many people do it. There are groups over at the SomethingAwful forums that run small ones for fun from time to time.

 

Who cares if it's been invented already? It clearly hasn't been marketed properly, I fucking guarantee you if Dan Brown created one that the target market of 30-50 year old women would lose their shit over it. And again, like a said before, there is a huge difference between calling something a game vs a book, even if they are the exact same product.

 

Coming from the perspective of (almost) being in your target market (I am female, 29, love to read, do not play video games other than Guitar Hero/Wii Tennis, am not particularly tech-savvy although I do own/use an iPhone and Kindle), I think your make or break is all in the marketing.

I had no idea that this kind of thing had been done before. I am (and your target market is) completely out of the loop with regard to the history of gaming. If you tell me it's a brand new exciting idea with your marketing, I am likely to believe you.

However, you will really need to work on how you name, frame, design, and market this. Because to be perfectly honest with you, with the way you are currently describing it, this does not sound like fun to me. It sounds annoying and like way more trouble than it's worth, and frankly kind of juvenile.

One of the most important parts of marketing is understanding your competition. In this case, it's not just other video games but books, technology that delivers books, the internet, TV, I could go on... You have to make this more compelling as a use of my leisure time than any of those other options.

If you do decide to create a prototype for this and need marketing help, I do in fact have an MBA in marketing and am particularly well versed in creating a communications strategy. It would be super interesting to work on, that's for sure!

 

I think it sounds like a cool idea, but purely speaking as a consumer, I wouldn't want it in paper form. Investing in the story and working out the clues would be fun for me, but waiting x days for delivery would not. And I think you probably save yourself a lot of executionary hassle if you go with e-books entirely.

 

This. If you could get an author with some notoriety on board it would absolutely sell. Without that, you're basically asking people to get involved with a medium they've never delved into before, with an author they've never heard of before. It's a tough sell.

I'd hurry up though, there's only a few Oprah shows left and that's your meal ticket right there.

 

I just want to clarify what is going on here. Hopefully you can tell me if I'm on the right track.

You open up your e-reader and you read the first two chapters of a murder mystery
-in this murder mystery you learn what kind of weapon was used.
-at the end of chapter 2 you are in a gun store trying to find out who bought this weapon
-in order to get to chapter 3 (which is a discussion on who has been buying that weapon, etc) it would prompt you with something like this-

Gun store owner - "What kind of gun are you looking for information on?"
At this point you have to type in what type of weapon was used, so that you can read chapter three.

I know that is simplified and would be easy to figure out. I was just seeing if I had the idea correct.

If you do this on an e-reader, I'm sure there is a way to download all of the content, but only make it unlockable if you have progressed that far.

I think this is a cool idea.

 

Not actually contributing anything new (yay me!) but I want to reiterate a couple ideas I love.

- Fuck making hard copies and using a physical mailing list. Make it exclusively for Kindle/iPhone/iPad/digital shit and have the new content immediately unlockable with with the correct answer. The reason people will buy this product is because it takes reading a murder mystery to way more interesting levels. No one is going to want to sit and wait for you to mail them new content, that shit just wont fly. If new content was immediately unlockable and all digital you can widen your audience a fuckload.
- Get writing dude, like, now. If you focus all your energy into ideas and don't create an engaging plot line it wont work. Engaging doesn't even need to be original, just well crafted for your target audience. Reference: Twilight series.
- Make it shiny and market the FUCK out of it. Actually make the puzzles difficult to solve.


I'd buy it.

 

Kinda, except the puzzles/clues would be about five hundred times harder. Think more like the Zodiac killer kind of things, stuff that would take some serious thought to figure out.

 

Ask Tucker to do it for his next book. Have one of the clues hidden within a certain school's law library, so that to advance to the next stage, you have to take the LSAT, get admitted, and enroll for at least one semester.

Call it "The Saddest Thriller."

The thing with 30-50 year old women is they like Dan Brown because they don't have to leave their homes to have an adventure. Same thing with Eat Pray Love. You notice these women go ape shit for Oprah and books, not for actually doing active things. For them, getting together with a few friends to work on greeting cards or scrapbooks is a big night out.

That's going to be the hard part about finding people interested in the product. You need someone who likes books and video games, and also likes leaving their home and being active. But, with more people globally getting connected on the internet, even a very small niche can find enough people interested in it.