Speed of new clues

[abby500]

I bet clues will come faster over the hiatus. Although they won't want to give them out so quickly that people with jobs, families, lives, etc. can't keep up and start losing interest. It's only a good marketing tool if they keep maximum numbers of people coming back for more. That means striking the balance between keeping people who make the Lost ARG their lives challenged enough without losing the more casual or first-time ARG players and keeping them interested. . . After all, we've got Sprite to sell!

[nctrnlbst]

This may help. ;D
By Marl64 from The Fuselage:

I can't be the only one on here to have walked this kind of road before, so I thought it might be helpful if people shared some of their experience. Give those new to Alternate Reality Gaming an idea of what to expect.

So I'll start the ball rolling.

Fast highs and slow lows

New clues result in a mad flurry of activity, boards light up as people add their small piece to the bigger puzzle. Threads grow at an alarming rate and it become impossible to keep up with them. People fire guesses at passwords in all directions and in-game websites are brute-forced to death.

Yeah, I've seen an in-game site collapse under the strain of over-enthusiastic hacking attempts under the banner of "if they didn't tell us not to, it must be ok". It's not.

At first, the clues should start quite easy, but they won't stay that way. The rate of change depends on the level of interaction on the part of the people running the game. The way players react to initial puzzles can often lead to later parts of the game being adjusted to keep it within reach yet still make it challenging

It can be very exciting and a lot of people get a real buzz out of it, but you have to be ready for the low that follows. Getting a bunch of clues reletively quickly can give players a real boost, but it makes the inevitable quiet spell that much quieter.

Somewhere, there will be a real mean puzzle that will stop players dead in their tracks, the initial flurry of guessing passwords and frantic random clicking will give way to long periods of contemplation and accompanying frustration.

This is when the real fun starts. This is when the experience changes from a guessing game or hand-fed walk through to a test of reasoning and deduction.

Players will little patience or easilt frustrated will start to lose interest and wander off, it's inevitable. Sure they want to maintain interest, but if the game was easy enough to satisfy these people, it's not much fun for those who like the challenge.

These comments are based on experience of other on-line games and may well not necearily reflect this experience at all, but it may be helpful that there is already a wealth of information and tools at your disposal, should this game turn out to be like the rest.

Quick tip no. 1: You might want to start by googling "steganography"

[jacksloststepkid]

I've seen steganography to hide one image or set of files inside of another. The false game that went up over the long hiatus earlier in the season 2 had a text file and a black and white image hidden in it.

You need an exact image file (edit - I think it must use a lossy file type to hide the image, like a jpg or a mp3). A screenshot from the flash site wouldn't work. So I think any original lossy files might be worth looking at for this.

This is what was used for the image I mentioned above:

www.securekit.com/hidefiles.htm

Also worth checking out: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Implementations

[MiTHRANDiR]

Heh, i haven't been checking out what's going on with the experience for many days now (maybe a week?) and I thought that dang, there must be many clues out already and I won't know what's going on.. And now that i came here i notice there's nothing new. Oh well.. Can't be long 'till a new clue, it's been so long already.

[wannabeactuary]

a new one should be out tonight/today

[MiTHRANDiR]

I sure hope so.

[wannabeactuary]

this is based on the fact that the last two clues launched on Tuesdays when the episode aired in the UK...
the phone line and the sublymonal are the launched clues from the past two Tuesdays...

[Megalobrainiac]

There'd better not be any clues within the next 7 hours, because I'm planning on sleeping, and I don't want to miss out on anything!

[sickrubik]

You might want to check my new post.

lostpodcast.proboards2.com/index.cgi?board=tle&action=display&n=1&thread=5596

[Blaw]

i dont mind having new clues once a week. if there were any more it might feel overwhelming sort of

[wannabeactuary]

odd, I have the RSS set to let me know and I didn't get any update showing...

[sickrubik]

wannabeactuary said:

odd, I have the RSS set to let me know and I didn't get any update showing...

The RSS seems to "update" about a day late. Plus, it's not an official update by Hanso to their site.

[wannabeactuary]

gotcha, I checked it out by checking the source code...