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Moneymakin'! The BFRO Bigfoot Expeditions Thread.

HarryHenderson said:
To foggy the pedant's notions even further, here's just the first two paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry on Alternate Reality Gaming:

"An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and uses transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions.

The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real time and evolves according to players' responses. Subsequently, it is shaped by characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and collaborate as a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimedia, such as telephones, email and mail but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium."

Perhaps it's just some crazy confirmation bias of mine, but I'm gonna need further convincing that's not like 98% of what we've decided BLAARGing is.
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It might apply to the organizers but the folks going out on these trips actually believe bigfoot is out there. In ARG, everyone knows it's not real.
 
Checkmite said:
The term "alternative reality game" has a definition. You (plural) picked the term because you thought it made for an amusing acronym in combination with the others and that's really the only thing important to your purposes; but "alternative reality games" are actual things; they have existed in a very consistent form for some time and that fact needs to be realized and respected. Further, there are terms which already much better describe the activity you're badly trying to shoehorn into the acronym.

The term also is nonsensical on its face. There's no such thing as "Live Action Alternative Reality Gaming", "bigfoot" or otherwise. All ARG's are "live action"; it would be like referring to the sport of swimming as "wet water swimming".

It's not a matter of what I "like" or do not like. You are now making retrospective trips to some ARG sources to search for information that you think can be interpreted in a way favorable to your use of the term; but you are failing in that regard, and having to invent rationalizations.

For instance, you continue to misconstrue the "denial that it is a game aspect" despite having already been corrected on it. And you misconstrue alternative reality gamers' resistance to stone-etched rules or formulae for the creation of their games for resistance to any acknowledgement that all (yes indeed: every one) ARGs that have ever been constructed and run have certain things in common that make them alternative reality games, as opposed to other kinds of activities. To wit:

1. They are created by a person or team of persons who writes the story and creates the game elements, and facilitates the game in real-time. Your "bigfootery", to tell from your definition, has no "game masters" or creative facilitators, only "players" who make things up by themselves for themselves as they go along.

2. The game actually has game elements intended to be used by the players - clues, codes, or puzzles, the correct decipherment of which allows the game's story to progress as planned and leads to the next plot coupon. Codes in particular are very common, although including them isn't some kind of rule - every ARG to this point has involved codes of some kind; the game attracts amateur cryptography fans more than any other type of player. Contrarily your "bigfootery" has no pre-planned plotline, and "players" create and place clues for themselves that they pretend to "find" in order to attract notoriety, clues which don't require decipherment and don't advance any plot. And no episode of bigfootery has ever involved decoding a cipher.

3. ARGs begin. There is a First Clue or inciting incident. In ARG lingo this is called a trailhead. This first clue is put in a place where it can be discovered by potential players. Once it is, deciphering the clue initiates the player into the game and provides information leading to the next clue. In your "bigfootery", players don't discover the first or any clues - they plant them, and then "pretend to" discover them.

4. The creative team does not use the word "game" during the game. However, players do, constantly, they're fully aware they're playing a game and freely admit so. Players also do not portray "characters" or play roles. In your "bigfootery" the players/creators pretend to "believe in bigfoot" and insist everything that's happening is real, with nothing but your claim that they don't really believe to say otherwise.

5. ARG's end. The story comes to a conclusion in which the antagonist or their plans are defeated or waylaid, or perhaps they succeed. Either way, the plot comes to an end. Your "bigfootery" does not end, because bigfoot can never be definitively found nor disproven, and therefore anyone can go out to the woods anywhere at any time and pretend to look for bigfoot. You might be right, that that flexibility and replayability gives your bigfootery certain advantages over ARGs, or you might not. But what it doesn't do is make bigfootery an ARG.

Despite all this, you are of course free to "invent" a game in which two teams of players bounce and pass a large rubber ball amongst themselves and then score by throwing the ball into elevated baskets, and call this new game "baseball". However, you should expect to encounter people who will take time to point out that 1) the name "baseball" is already used for a game that's nothing like you describe (and no, "it uses a ball that spends some time in the air and you score points so it's basically the same" isn't an effective rebuttal); and 2) the game you describe already exists, and it's called "basketball".

Everything you try to describe using the term "BLAARG" seems to simply be LARPing, if your theory is true. But I don't think it is. I think the position that nobody actually believes in Bigfoot and everybody who says they do is just "playing" your "game" is neither provable nor falsifiable, and is therefore basically useless in an empirical sense. There are certainly some people who don't really believe in bigfoot but pretend to, and plant clues and so forth; these are - as I already mentioned in the last thread - already called "charlatans". It's a fine word and there's no need to invent another.

Contrarily there are certainly plenty of people who believe that Bigfoot possibly or probably does exist. These beliefs may have been (likely were) influenced by the activities of the charlatans but that is irrelevant; the fact is there are many people who claim a genuine belief and no positive reason exists to claim they are lying. Some of these people go out into the woods hoping to find bigfoot, and genuinely misinterpret environmental cues and wildlife sounds and photographic artifacts for possible bigfoot evidence. There is also already an established and functional term for this behavior as well - it's called legend-tripping, it's not limited to bigfootery, and is a subject of some academic consideration.
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I can understand why you are insulted, gaming is an art form of sorts and doesn't attract delusional people as a general rule like bigfootery does. My children are gamers and I know they would be upset if anyone compared what they do to what goes on in the bigfoot culture so I apologize for the comparison.

If you spend any time in these bigfoot threads you'll learn not to take it too seriously. If it makes you feel any better the term is strictly used here, I haven't seen it used anywhere else.
 
Jodie said:
If you spend any time in these bigfoot threads you'll learn not to take it too seriously. If it makes you feel any better the term is strictly used here, I haven't seen it used anywhere else.
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This is the greatest Bigfoot skepticism forum in the world.
 
I think it's the only bigfoot skepticism forum, it is the best by default.
 
Well OS there is no denying that there is no bigfoot in sight and the BS just keeps flying.
 
Jodie said:
It might apply to the organizers but the folks going out on these trips actually believe bigfoot is out there. In ARG, everyone knows it's not real.
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They believe a 9 foot tall 800 pound ape is roaming the woods, and they go out looking for it?

Seems odd. Do they bring the kids along?

If I believed a 9 foot tall ape was out there, I probably wouldn't go looking for it. I definitely wouldn't wander the area at night.

If I were going to hunt for one, it would look a lot like a typical large game hunting trip.

It wouldn't look like a family camping trip.
 
OntarioSquatch said:
It's a denialism forum.
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You say it like that's a bad thing.

That's where the smart money is. If no one has brought in a piece of footie in 15,000 years, it's a sure bet it isn't going to happen tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day or the day after . . . It's an absolute certainty that you're never gonna see such a thing from the (not) Finding Bigfoot crew or the NAWACers or any of that crew of phonies over at the BFF. Although I think you should encourage your brethren there to indeed go ahead and parachute into "the wilderness" in search of ole foo with nothing more than a compass and a burning desire to become a statistic.

Also, don't hold your breath for the HindenBLAARGers either.

ETA: More denialists.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Science/article1537430.ece
According to Prof. Darren Curnoe of the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of New South Wales in Australia, the chances of finding a completely new species of hominid are remote. He is also critical of the project efforts, especially linking it to the possibility of finding a Yeti.

“There are far better ways to spend scarce funding for science than chasing mythological creatures and more than enough real and mind-boggling mysteries in nature to keep many generations of scientists busy,” he says
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LTC8K6 said:
They believe a 9 foot tall 800 pound ape is roaming the woods, and they go out looking for it?

Seems odd. Do they bring the kids along?

If I believed a 9 foot tall ape was out there, I probably wouldn't go looking for it. I definitely wouldn't wander the area at night.

If I were going to hunt for one, it would look a lot like a typical large game hunting trip.

It wouldn't look like a family camping trip.
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Not only do they go out looking for it, they pay someone to take them out there for the experience.

I think they do have an age cut off if there is a lot of hiking involved. It depends on the "expedition" and whether other activities are involved geared towards them.

I know, right, but they don't necessarily think they need guns because bigfoot is a gentle forest person.
 
AlaskaBushPilot said:
No.

The game master for the Iowa Expedition is on the link I gave above.

The rules are posted there. This particular game is in a secret location in Iowa, and there are facilitators.

The rules are quite strict. The players cannot commandeer the game.

There is a beginning, and an end, announced on that link. Would you care to trouble yourself looking at it?

These "expeditions" fit your restrictive definition perfectly.
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You've perhaps met the definition of a game in general, but not an ARG, because you're missing the story. Remember, an ARG is underlain by an original story. The "bigfoot expedition" has goals based around a certain premise - like a game of golf - but the "players" actions are not advancing a storyline.

You can technically arrange the events of the expedition into a chronological sequence and refer to it as a "narrative" but that is not at all the same thing as the activity having an actual storyline. Stories have characters and a plot, among other things. "Let's go find bigfoot" (followed by whatever happens) is not a plot, it's an objective.

School (pick any type) also has "facilitators", "strict rules", and a beginning and ending of participation. School is not an "alternative reality game".

Your place of work has people giving direction, strict rules, and defined shifts. Work is not an alternative reality game.

The Domes and Dripstones Tour at Mammoth Cave has a facilitator, strict rules for participation, a scheduled beginning time, and always comes to an eventual end. It is not an alternative reality game either.

Need I go on?
 
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You mean go on moving the goalposts?

You just made a really big deal about there being no game master or facilitators, no beginning or end...

once this is disproven you don't want to acknowledge so and just find more things to try disagreeing with.

The thing totally absent from your last post is any alternate reality in the examples you want to match with bigfoot - golf, school, or mammoth cave tours. It isn't anything like those because they have no alternate reality.

The players very much are advancing the story line. We have first-hand reports from participants here and they are much more informative than your speculation.

This is not just true on the expeditions, but for the larger game context as well. There is always some break-out gimmick a player comes up with to advance the big-picture storyline whether it is dermal ridges, a mid-tarsal break, every new gadget they come up with -

But for us it is very interesting to see how one set of gamers looks upon another as unworthy.
 
There is a story with a Bigfoot Hunt.
It is that if you go into the woods, and act like you are looking for Bigfoot, and pay $300, and don't yell "Fake" when someone sees eyeshine, you will probably get to experience Bigfoot, and possibly hook up with the female Bigfooter.

If you play an ARG, like live action dungeons and dragons at a farm, Pay $50 and you act like you are a Level 12 Human Paladin, and portray the character properly, and don't turn on your party, then you will probably get to Kill Orcs or Evil Wizards, and possibily hook up with the female Level 10 Half-Elf Fighter/Theif, with the pointy ears.
 
"...possibily hook up with the female Level 10 Half-Elf Fighter/Theif, with the pointy ears."

If she looks like Tauriel, sign me up!
 
Jodie said:
Not only do they go out looking for it, they pay someone to take them out there for the experience.

I think they do have an age cut off if there is a lot of hiking involved. It depends on the "expedition" and whether other activities are involved geared towards them.

I know, right, but they don't necessarily think they need guns because bigfoot is a gentle forest person.
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What they claim does not match what they do, imo.

Do you think any adults really believe that bigfoot made a cave?

http://www.bfro.net/news/arizona_cave.asp
 
OntarioSquatch said:
It's a denialism forum.
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If there was any decent evidence for the existence of bigfoot, you'd have a point, but I guess that you just prefer to call us names inappropriately. You can blame us all you want, but it's not the fault of skeptics that no one can find your imaginary being.
 
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