Watch the Footage archive

What were YOUR favorite moments in the ARG? <- self explanatory

Did we ever do something that just made you stare at the computer screen for a moment, wondering what to type next?

Did you ever want to quit mid-game?

Favorite characters?

Once the game got going I didn't think of quitting. It got hard for many of us though at various points. I thought most of giving up months before going live, when it seemed we were no closer to releasing it. It was an illusion of a lack of progress that came from the scale of the game.

I enjoyed watching you guys solve Deanna's final puzzle (the big one involving digital roots, playfair cypher, etc), I was in the chat as Simon at the time.

Although the sequence breaking you pulled off at one point caught me off guard. Here's a clip of my reaction to finding out you guys discovered Tara's blog early: http://replygif.net/i/707

Tom wrote:Once the game got going I didn't think of quitting. It got hard for many of us though at various points. I thought most of giving up months before going live, when it seemed we were no closer to releasing it. It was an illusion of a lack of progress that came from the scale of the game.

This. Once the game was rolling, it was awesome.

I have to say one of my favorite things was watching people freak out when Morgan first entered the chat room.

And as for favorite characters, I have to say I rather enjoyed Bromeo. And while I am biased, writing the Witch was fun. But they were all awesome, frankly.

I loved watching the chatroom whenever we hit you with something big.

Tom wrote:I loved watching the chatroom whenever we hit you with something big.

I would imagine we were quite hilarious.

Actually, one of my greatest fears was that I'd be forced to quit. I found out in August that my wife and I finally got pregnant for the first time. I was practically ready to beg with Dana and Tom to figure out some sort of work schedule that would let me stay on. They pointed out that the goal would be to finish well before the expected due date... and even if the ARG did somehow stretch out to April (which assuredly would have taxed everyone to the breaking point, regardless of imminent parenthood), we'd arrange it that I'd be able to do work somehow.

My favorite thing would be the joy I saw every time someone managed to advance things. It was really cool to see folks that were otherwise quiet or unsure of themselves make a breakthrough, and have them sit up and say "I did it; I made a difference." I wanted as many people to feel that as possible.

My favorites may have been being Morgan in the chat, answering Morgan's emails, and writing/setting up the Cheshire Cabal troll.

My real favorite, though, was seeing all of you guys dedicated to this story we'd been building without you and coming in and making the story with us. That fact you all joined, all stuck around...it's pretty incredible to me. The first few days of our release, I was floating on a cloud. I really enjoyed just...releasing new things for you guys to find and react to, because your reactions fuel what happened next.

I only had one moment where I was like "F*** THIS SH**! I QUIT!" (Obviously I didn't quit, nor would I ever really have considered it.

What happened was, I REALLY wanted to rage quit during the editing of the DQ/Deanna showdown recording. Among all the problems: Premiere and Audacity deciding to poop the bed, my Deanna actress having to redo her lines in a hurry, resulting in not bad but not great readings, like her original readings were. Then I couldn't fix the damn white noise level, again, Audacity wouldn't cooperate and Premiere for some reason VANISHED from my comp. Seriously.

So on top of all that, I had promised the recording by the night of the day I had to restart the edit from scratch, and when the deadline approached, the recording you got was the best I could muster. Had premiere not just vanished, I guarantee it would've been great.

Despite technical problems, I still take full responsibility for the lack of quality on that recording, so my apologies to all players, who deserved better.

I don't think I ever wanted to quit midgame. There was a low point where I wasn't really enjoying myself while working on it, but that cleared up after midterms were over Honestly, I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Ben Plante wrote:I only had one moment where I was like "F*** THIS SH**! I QUIT!" (Obviously I didn't quit, nor would I ever really have considered it.

What happened was, I REALLY wanted to rage quit during the editing of the DQ/Deanna showdown recording. Among all the problems: Premiere and Audacity deciding to poop the bed, my Deanna actress having to redo her lines in a hurry, resulting in not bad but not great readings, like her original readings were. Then I couldn't fix the damn white noise level, again, Audacity wouldn't cooperate and Premiere for some reason VANISHED from my comp. Seriously.

So on top of all that, I had promised the recording by the night of the day I had to restart the edit from scratch, and when the deadline approached, the recording you got was the best I could muster. Had premiere not just vanished, I guarantee it would've been great.

Despite technical problems, I still take full responsibility for the lack of quality on that recording, so my apologies to all players, who deserved better.

That you still pulled through and did it with all those problems is soemthing we'll always consider you badass for And hey, we got a showdown with Deanna, that was totally worth it. That woman was... disturbing.

That woman was... disturbing.

Mission accomplished.

Thank you for your kind words about it still being badass.

I got fairly stressed because I had just start grad school when this started (we tried to start things earlier in the year, but they just weren't ready in time), and I already held a part time job. Basically I was working around 80-90 hour weeks, with everything taken into account. So there were a few bumps along the road during the game for me, but I couldn't really leave anyway

Oh, another thing that was a favorite - every time we saw someone new get pulled in. I specifically remember you starting to get pulled in, eli - spotting someone new tweeting at Cheshire was exciting, and I was rooting for you to keep it up. Seeing you join the forum was a rush, actually.

I agree with what pretty much everyone else said. Watching you guys react in real time was incredibly satisfying.

There was one moment in the ARG that made me kind of BSOD. It was past 4 AM the night before the Cthulhu climax, and I had spend the day scrambling to finish some things. I decided to take a break from anything that required thinking by copying all of your Cthulhu submissions to our shared storage for easy reference.

...Then I opened Qara's email. It had over 20 song-related attachments.

I just kind of broke.

If we're talking about real-time reactions, watching Val break was also kind of fun.

*ducks*

Val Reznitskaya wrote:I agree with what pretty much everyone else said. Watching you guys react in real time was incredibly satisfying.

There was one moment in the ARG that made me kind of BSOD. It was past 4 AM the night before the Cthulhu climax, and I had spend the day scrambling to finish some things. I decided to take a break from anything that required thinking by copying all of your Cthulhu submissions to our shared storage for easy reference.

...Then I opened Qara's email. It had over 20 song-related attachments.

I just kind of broke.

That's gotta be worth a Trope for Qara. I am massively sleep deprived, so *shrug*

Val Reznitskaya wrote:...Then I opened Qara's email. It had over 20 song-related attachments.

I just kind of broke.

Uhhh... sorry!

Hey, you said the number of songs would directly impact Adell's survival chances. What was I supposed to do, let him die?

Nah, don't apologize for playing the game super-well.

Rick Healey wrote:Actually, one of my greatest fears was that I'd be forced to quit. I found out in August that my wife and I finally got pregnant for the first time. I was practically ready to beg with Dana and Tom to figure out some sort of work schedule that would let me stay on. They pointed out that the goal would be to finish well before the expected due date... and even if the ARG did somehow stretch out to April (which assuredly would have taxed everyone to the breaking point, regardless of imminent parenthood), we'd arrange it that I'd be able to do work somehow.

My favorite thing would be the joy I saw every time someone managed to advance things. It was really cool to see folks that were otherwise quiet or unsure of themselves make a breakthrough, and have them sit up and say "I did it; I made a difference." I wanted as many people to feel that as possible.

Congratulations and best wishes.