An outsider's point of view

Cool.. stumbling across people commenting about ExamineKey on other sites.
Found this today:

She's all grown up

and someone else had also posted EK to del.icio.us:

http://del.icio.us/everdred

The webstats stuff i'm using currently isn't very advanced, so i can only see referrer, not search terms etc.. but i might try and find something a little better so i can spy upon how people are finding the site

New look and feel

i've managed to squeeze some time out this weekend to create a new look and feel for examinekey. i've not migrated it to this blog yet.. will try and do that tommorow, but please let me know what you think.

i need to find a way of allowing people to easily read the older posts in order.. which is painfully hard at the moment.. i'm also thinking of creating a 'previously on EK' kinda page, which recaps on the important plot and clues so far - which may help people in realising they've missed something key, and also for new users, its a way of rapidly getting up to speed without worrying about having to read all of the story.

Choosing a thread

Still finding it quite difficult to choose which route to take, compounded by the fact that many comments are multi part - ie. at their most basic, a comment would be "Go North" or more in context "Call Lena". However, many comments are proving to be more similar to "Call Lena, and whilst you're on the phone go back to the car, and then rummage through the dead body and then hail a cab and then..." etc.

As the episodes are one per day, or thereabouts, it would be a shame to break it down any more than it currently is, or force comments to be a simpler set of statements.. but it may make more sense to break down the comments into simpler actions, and get voting to choose the selected route. That way, i'm not always tempted to pick the route which is easiest for me, but there is no real way of handling that unless we do it within the same day.. Comments are made, and other can vote for those comments, or make more comments... which is kinda happening now anyway.

Dunno.

Link-o-matic

Jake Shillingford, over at Exileinside (Ex-s of the world unite!) has posted a link to ExamineKey today in his blog. Hopefully a few well placed references and links on sites will help to continue people commenting on the articles.

Jake also suggested a more 'democratic' method of suggesting the next move, with some sort of voting mechanism, allowing commenters to both make a suggestion, or agree with other posts. It might be a good way of forcing me to write a particular comment rather than simply the one i like the look of best ;)

By the way - if you haven't heard Jake's music already - check out Exileinside - great music and great concept for a band. Maybe we'll get a soundtrack put together for the site.. ;)

Weekends

Slim asked me if I was going to continue writing over the weekend - which I originally intended to do, but realised its probably less practical - considering i'll generally get up around midday on a Saturday - so I think I will probably try and write on weekdays only, and leave a friday cliffhanger / puzzle for people to have the weekend to solve and ruminate over. I know most people who read during the week probably do so at work anyway, so may well prefer just weekday posts. Besides, i'm quite often busy on weekends, and wouldn't want to promise the undeliverable.

I've had a comment passed to me that some of the passages are 'too wordy' or too long - and its hard to read the entire passage. I've spent some time on this thought, realising that i don't want to annoy readers this early on, but cannot really (currently) see a way of shortening the passages.

At their most basic, games of this sort could be as such:

Game: You are standing in a clearing. You can go N or S.
You: Go North
Game: You go North, you find an ogre and a knife
You: Pick up ogre
Game: You pick up ogre and stab the knife.

Which is fine, but when waiting 24 hours for the next installment, this would become rather dull rather quickly. Also, as it is, in part, a challenge for me to write the next installment based upon the comments, it needs to be more a story than simply providing the next scenario - especially so that intrigue can be built, a one liner would not suffice. I will try and vary the lengths of the passages, and feedback on this issue is more than requested.

Anyway, hope you had a good weekend, and the next episode will be with you on monday.

Choosing is proving harder than it looks

Okay - so i've already reached my first point of difficulty - choosing who is selected to take the next step.

One the one hand - the story has a rough concept in my head - so I could choose options which would push it in the direction i had intended, but isn't that just writing a story in the traditional sense? On the other hand, choosing a comment which takes the story in a completely different route would make the story go in that direction, and thats closer to the core idea of collaboration, but would it get a bit flimsical? If someone suggests "take all your clothes off", or "read the secret code to access the secret room you've spent your life searching for" - the latter is more helpful to the plot (ps... you're not looking for a secret room.. this is just an example... or is it?? ;) however the former would be a) more amusing and collaborative, and b) more of a challenge for me to write the next step.

I think I know how i'll approach it, but we'll see how it pans out.

This morning for instance - two comments: stay still, or get in the car. One punches the pace up a notch, the other allows room to breath and consolidate - either should result in the next step of the story - i just have to work out how quickly to feed the plot through i guess.

So, I suppose by way of apology to those who don't get selected - it may be because i need to use a suggestion to push a plot element forward, i select the less interesting/amusing/flippant suggestion. Although I am determined to make it a little off the cuff, so amusing/flippant are all welcome. Maybe we will get the guy to "take all your clothes off", and wait for the aftermath.

No Anagram

I've already had my first complaint:

no anagrams in this one :(

Sorry, no anagrams today, but whilst the story kicks off, there will be a bit of a mix of clues and plot. Today is mostly about plot, to get some intrigue building and hopefully give an idea of where we could take this.

To be honest, I've had two complaints, the first one actually coming last night, when my girlfriend asked why I didn't pick her suggestion. Sorry, but its all about building the plot a little bit. The idea is that I'll generally pick a single suggestion, or occasionally a blend of two or three if I feel they're fairly close or work together. The danger is that picking a suggestion which, whilst may be interesting, may not always pull the story that much further ahead - I think it may be a long struggle against keeping a story flowing, and the interactivity.

That being said, I'm quite looking forward to the more off the wall comments which I just have to swallow my pride, and accept that the readers are guiding the story, not me.

You're the voices in the characters (and my) head now, and that's what we'll follow.

Also, for those of you who know my other piece of vaporware - Hyperconsequence, which kind of ties in closely to this, I was discussing with Slim (I say discussing, he was taking the piss out of me for still not having completed hyperc. in over three years [birthday of domain registration in July]) how the concept of hyperc. closely ties in with this. It does, but the concept of hyperc. was more truly collaborative writing, rather than single author with mulitple inspiration partners. Who knows... if I ever get a moment to do some coding, I might fire up hyperc. once more and finally get it off the ground (although everytime I look at the existing code base, i realise how poor it is, and start it all again.. I hope that means i'm improving as a developer ;)

Welcome to ExamineKeyDiscuss

I thought I'd create a secondary blog which is for discussion of the plotlines and next steps in the story, or maybe a chance for me to react or respond 'outside' of the story itself. Also a chance to discuss around the concept of the site, new functionality we can add in, etc. etc.

I welcome all comments and feedback.