Ed's Expanded Role

[narrativedilettante]

It's been said that Ed was not initially intended to be an important figure. How did he grow to be as significant as he did? At what point did you realize you wanted him to have a video appearance, in addition to just being an account on the forum?

[Rick Healey]

Well, it first started when we were trying to figure out, back when Joe's only avenue for communication was a YouTube channel, how to send an update on what was going on with him when he was supposed to be busy. It was rightfully noted at the time that Alex needed time to put the video together, so Joe would also need that time and couldn't just respond to YouTube comments.

It was a bit of a stumper until Edward was brought up - he was close to Joe, had nothing keeping him busy, and he'd know what was going on. So Ed responded, and he entered the ARG proper.

The convenient thing about Edward was that in pretty much any case where Joe might not be available, it was really easy to come up with a justification for Ed to be active instead. As pointed out, this did detract from Joe's development a bit. On the other hand, it gave players two different viewpoint characters that they liked and could relate to, which was valuable on multiple levels. Giving more protagonists that people care about makes it easier to get folks interested in your story. It allowed for the deep but interesting conflict when the two had a fight (in which both had good, understandable reasons for acting completely opposite to each other). It showed that there was a place amongst the players for both the more technical-minded (like Ed) and the more artistic-minded (like Joe).

There were some things related to Joe that we had to sacrifice to make it work, but the flip side is, there was so much more that clicked across all levels with Ed present that it's understandable that folks are surprised that he wasn't an established presence from the start.

[Tom]

I remember it being a bit simpler than that, at first. That stuff occurred to us retrospectively.

Rule of Funny suggested Joe needed to use Windows Movie Maker to edit his videos. But he used (badly) a chroma key in his intro. We needed to justify that. So "Edward" made it.

Later, we realized someone at least technically proficient would be needed to set up the website and hack the void. So Edward stuck around.

When we needed to show it was okay to support the Cabal or Mr. A, Edward became a device through which we showed that.