The Problem With ARGs

[@thewhitewolf58]

The community trying to solve a problem is always fun.

[@kitteninsanityki2122]

your checklist almost immediately made me think of 2 arg series that (at least mostly) fit the bill imo, neither are finished but its clear that if anything they both at least have serious passion and dedication put into them, as well as crazy levels of skill. These args being Valle Verde and Vermis Malum. Aside from that, as someone thats been Totally Normal about args since i was a kid, yeah, no, all of your points are completely valid. Its a really unfortunate trend of either super predatory people trying to sell you as much stuff as possible while stringing you along with the most basic, bare-bones story with no thought or real effort put into it, or its inexperienced independent creators who are more excited by the prospect of people seeing their work than they are by the actual story/process of making said work itself. same thing with the crazy superfans figuring everything out almost immediately, and that totally sapping the fun out of the mystery for people that may not have that level of time or dedication, or getting stuck on puzzles, or whatever else. Fantastic video dude, this deserves some serious attention bc it puts into words the little feelings ive personally had in the back of my head for years now

[@thekoifishcoyote8762]

FNAF is absolutely a mystery box. Scott Cawthon has gone on record saying that "what's inside the box" (one of the most notable mysteries) changed over time, and has never been revealed. But there doesn't seem to be any malice from him. If anything it seems like he's a victim of unmeetable expectations if Mr Hippo's special dialogue means anything.

[@zenvariety9383]

Haven't played the FNAF games yet, but the contents of the box will probably be revealed once the fourth FNAF movie comes out.

[@XX-sp3tt]

9:44 Reminds me of that murder mystery school visual novel where the big twist at the end of one of the games is that it's been 50+ games since the last one in universe, and the characters have to literally brute force the show to end... the creator screaming, "LET ME WORK ON SOMETHING ELSE ALREADY!" No one wants to be Arthur Conan Doyle forever, least Sherlock Holmes devours all your other stories.

[@MacheTheFerret]

already off to a great start with that intro lmao

[@MacheTheFerret]

but in seriousness, now that i've watched in full there's definitely something to be said about certain creators and viewers alike being obsessed with lore and not giving more attention to the story, and ESPECIALLY to more abstract elements of a work, themes and motifs and whatnot. if nothing else, i want to see more media theories actually take thematic elements into account and not just take the plot they're witnessing purely on its face, and for media itself to care more about having a theme or two instead of just a bottomless pit of "lore" additionally, now that i've thought about it, i think supplementary material to the main medium of the story/mystery/etc is not only fine but can help quite a bit, but you can definitely tell when a piece of media / franchise creates extra material to actually enhance the main content vs creating extra stuff purely to sell more shit and make money; stuff like the book of bill or the unauthorized biography actually expand on things from the original material instead of dumping more lore

[@lorenw1428]

12:47 man... I felt so smart for like a second

[@froggycake9175]

i agree. however, on the other hand you can absolutely see the dedication, love and passion within some args. some of my favourites are gravity falls and welcome home, where you really can see the passion and work that’s gone into it. there is so much content on the surface of both and its so incredible, and then there’s some hidden stuff that really pulls you along, but it’s not impossible or too challenging. i think another thing about args that is bad is the fandoms. sometimes they can be really positive places, like gravity falls. but with welcome home, especially back when it first released, it became too popular and led to people being really toxic and going over the boundaries by the creator, clown. i honestly thought that the toxicity of fans was what this video would be about, but i like the direction it went. and as i said, most of the fandom community is lovely and kind in all fandoms, but there are some people that unfortunately ruin it. anyways, love the video! found your page from the gravity falls video and proceeded to binge that and this haha ❤

[@XX-sp3tt]

13:10 I can safely say that experience is Hell for a writer.

[@j.r.tomlin4265]

11:01 true about fnaf that it will never end and having the story made up as it goes along. I feel bad because i love the series yet I know it's just a bunch of walking contradictions and barely explanied events.

[@ForeverHasFallen]

Wishlist delivered.

[@endorphintherapy]

A lot of ARGs fit your wishlist. I think you confuse "ARG" and "mascot horror" a lot in this. Have you ever looked into stuff like Marble Hornets, Daisy Brown, HiImMaryMary, POSTcontent, or like, any other ARGs than the few talked about in your video? Because a *lot* of ARGs fit your wishlist. And a *lot* of them pre-date FNAF. Hell, there was a big boom of ARGs in 2010! Because of Marble Hornets. Also your criticisms on FNAF are ones that have very little backing. Steel Wool era was, from what Scott has said in recent interviews, fully planned out since Help Wanted. Secret of the Mimic has been in development since Security Breach dropped. Security Breach was rushed, and it was in the state it was due to a lot of miscommunication between Steel Wool and Scott. People talked about how buggy it was a *lot*. The books are pretty much all supplementary material and not at all needed to understand the story.

[@Invalidcookie-bv4cx]

The first ARG that went Mainstream was Cloverfield back in the day. explaining very little and only going off of what the 30 minute teaser showed. It was a great campaign

[@isaacwalker6582]

don't worry ima give you the ARG you want one of these days (I code by the way and can do storylines good)

[@Dinikiii]

I agree with most of the arguments but the William Afton part caught me off guard because in recent years these ARG build his character of how he started the business and his beliefs and why he even killed in the first place, just wanted to point that out still AWSOME VID though👍

[@-pouncingchicken-4889]

You should look into the No Man's Sky ARG: Waking Titan. It was really good. Unfortunately some of the info has been lost to time since the websites went down but you can still find a lot of it on the Wayback Machine and in other videos discussing the topic on KZbin.

[@Roz4628]

Why us thus puzzle puzzling? *I'll agree alot of args are needlessly complicated tho*

[@charlesbennett7484]

I really only got into ARGs thanks to Gravity Falls but it led me to ohers like Marble Hornets, Welcome Home, etc. and I had fun so, to me, that's all that really matters in the end. But then again I'm a total weirdo so what do I know. XIBU EFOPZW FP X OLYLQ!

[@The_evil_jonkler-cart445]

I always thought fnaf was better off ending after Pizzeria simulator

[@sonicmeerkat]

man those redditors are buzzkills, let people have their moment instead of just going "yes", direct them to the next puzzle so they can contiunue the fun.

[@j.r.tomlin4265]

Perfect video underrated deserves more traction hope my view like and comment helps with that

[@Zhidalgo24]

Have you watched the show “from” it’s really good dark creepy and mysterious

[@BigBlueBackpack]

It’s literally what my next video is about

[@Zhidalgo24]

@@BigBlueBackpack great can’t wait to watch your video and tomorrows new episode i love the show and i stumbled across your clover field video and then watched your recents.

[@nerdyganii9580]

Arg critique from someone who thinks mascot horror = args Fnaf didn’t start args, nor did it even popularize it. Internet mysteries have been popular since the internet was made

[@nerdyganii9580]

There are so many series that fit your criteria I could give you a laundry list of them if you asked

[@nerdyganii9580]

There’s a lot of args that don’t have codes at all. My favorite type of args have the “puzzle” being solving the mystery of the story. A lot of low quality args supplement codes for story, that is true. But there are so many good (and popular) ones that don’t do that

[@nerdyganii9580]

7:20 fnaf is by no means an arg in any capacity. It’s a game with mysteries, sure, but that’s not what an arg is. A complicated story that needs to have gaps filled in isn’t an arg

[@sonicmeerkat]

my man their main example is gravity falls. also in the earlydays, yeah fnaf at least used tropes of args from the rare events to the game teasers. dude even used them to troll the fanbase by leading those solutopms to troll games.

[@nerdyganii9580]

@@sonicmeerkat saying that gravity falls is an arg is as stupid as saying the x-files is. The Bill Cipher statue hunt was an arg (more like a scavenger hunt than anything) but saying that its an arg because it has codes is the stupidest thing ive ever heard lol

[@sterlingduck5402]

It's obvious, yes, but an ARG is nothing more than any other marketing idea. It's that simple. Another version of bright packaging, BOGO sales, and clearance pricing. Yes, some are way better than others. It keeps some people engaged to a product. I know it's obvious, but to treat it any other way is when it begins to reach into the unhealthy area.