Voices: A Case Study in Failure
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 9:24AM
Roughly two years ago, I began a short-lived independent wiki fiction project called Voices. About a year later, it was dusty with neglect and overgrown with spam. I took it down, and it remains down.
I've been encouraged to speak about the project directly and indirectly by several people, most notably Brooke Thompson, who wrote a thoughtful post on the need for more critical scrutiny in our field. I learned a lot of important lessons from the Voices experience, and even though the project is definitely not one of the gleaming highlights of my career, I thought it might be interesting and helpful to others to take a careful look at it and see what I was trying to do, and why it was ultimately a failure.
Intent
One of my core creative touchpoints is the idea of net-native literature. I am obsessed with the idea of making works that are inextricably native to the medium or media in which they reside. How do you make works or experiences that are so utterly net-native that they simply couldn't exist in another form? (My experiments along those lines also include Circular Logic, a super-short experimental time travel story told via Google calendar.)
With Voices, I was attempting to use the wiki as a fiction vehicle. There have been other works of wiki fiction before mine, of course; prior art includes Ghyll and at least a handful of Choose Your Own Adventure experiments. For a different spin on it, I wanted to incorporate talk pages as part of an emerging and collaborative experience, and see if I could come up with a work of fiction that had a single author, but was also shaped by the influence and input of audience/participants.
Concept
The idea I settled on was simple enough. I would make a wiki where the first-person narrative thread would unspool on the main pages, and the comments on talk pages would be "heard" by the character, as though they were voices in her head. Those voices could affect her thinking and decisions.
Further activity on talk pages might even cause branching moments, where the story split off in multiple directions. And as the story progressed, the character would begin to talk back to the voices in her head silently, by posting on the talk pages of the wiki herself. This way the character and the players would develop a relationship that would affect the progress of the narrative.
With some technical and logistical help from the talented and generous Tom Bridge, I set up a wiki where only I could edit the wiki pages, but anyone could edit the talk pages. We soon learned that it was better and wiser to require registration to have any input at all, in order to prevent spam; but this immediately created a barrier to entry for participation, which proved to be unfortunate. It was, however, one of many, many elements of the project plan that proved to be unfortunate, as you will soon discover.
Utter Failure
I announced the project here at Deus Ex Machinatio and on Twitter; I announced updates almost exclusively on Twitter. This was a very poor method for accruing audience, because at the time, I had a readership that amounted to a couple of dozen on a good day, and about two people on a bad day (and one of those people was probably my mom). It's no surprise, then, that participation was very low.
Ultimately, perhaps a half a dozen people, almost all good friends and a majority of them probably humoring me, went as far as registering for a user account and posting comments. I posted updates sporadically, aiming for a couple of times a week, but ultimately hitting once a week, and then once a month, before quitting entirely.
I still adore the core concept of Voices, but there's no question it wasn't a success. In fact, it might be the most failingest project I have ever done. So what went wrong?
Commitment and Participation
There was a vicious circle between commitment and participation for me. Participation was low, so I didn't get the buzzy jabs of egoboo I craved to keep me working on it; and as my commitment levels dropped off, my audience members didn't get enough payoff or frequency to keep them coming back routinely. So they... didn't. And who can blame 'em?
Look, commitment is a hard thing on a personal project. Paying work will always take first dibs on your time. And so will birthdays, grocery shopping, and general slackery. That's why we writers talk so much about butt-in-chair and discipline.
Building an audience is most often a long, hard slog. I knew it at the time, but I'd envisioned my audience numbers starting slow, but gradually increasing over time. This is the opposite of what happened. If I had it to do over, these are the things I'd think long and hard about doing:
- Don't expect instant gratification, duh
- --and make your personal project a high priority, so it gets done at all
- Provide more incentive and reward for audience participation (at least in terms of fiero or enjoyment)
- Update on a consistent and predictable schedule
- Continue to find more ways to bring in audience, or make the project more visible, even post-launch
Secrecy
But participation is, in a way, a red herring. Here's what I think is the most fundamental reason for the failure of Voices (and the reason it would be a failure if I did it in exactly the same way now, even though I have a much wider potential playerbase now):
I didn't let my audience in on the joke.
I was so busy being coy about my plan -- so wrapped up in the idea of surprises and emergent behaviors -- that I simply never made it clear what I was trying to do, or what made it special.
At ARGfest last year, Elan Lee told me some words of advice that I have taken very much to heart. "If you want the players to know something, tell it to them." I didn't tell them, and they had no way to read my mind or guess what I'd planned to do.
How to fix this for another time?
- Write an artist's statement putting it all on the line straightaway
- Provide models of the kinds of behavior I anticipated or desired via alternate accounts on the wiki
Planning
Another big problem with Voices was that I simply didn't have a clear enough idea of where I wanted the story to go. I set it up with a lot of potentially juicy hooks; a woman stumbling half-drugged across a field in the middle of the night, immediately postpartum, and unsure of where she was or what she was escaping from.
Did I know where I was going? Heck, no! I wasn't sure if it was going to be an alien abduction story, or about a secret insane asylum, or about conspiracy-style government experimentation on the innocent, or about genetic manipulation. No freaking clue.
I expected my audience to fill in the blanks for me by making suggestions! But the audience didn't have any idea what to expect, and certainly had no idea that's what they were supposed to be doing, because I'd never given them enough information about what was going on. They simply didn't have the tools they needed to fully engage with the story.
So the story staggered along until I'd painted myself into a corner. Players posted helpful, supportive comments encouraging the main character to keep her cool, and promising her it would all be OK, but not so much with the concrete ideas on where to go next. Which proves they were a sweet bunch of good human beings.
When I closed the doors on Voices, I hadn't updated for months, and I had no idea where the heck I was supposed to go next, because I'd never had a sufficiently clear core concept of where I was going.
Lessons learned?
- Always know what's going on behind the scenes, even if you aren't telling your audience, duh
- Have a clear plan of action; don't rely on your audience to do all the heavy lifting for you
- Have a Plan B, and a Plan C, too
Conclusions
There's a lot of water under the bridge since Voices. If you're familiar with my work, you may even see some of the ways I've applied these lessons learned to later projects. I'm still proud of the concept, but definitely not proud of my shameful dedication to the project. I let myself down, and I let down the (admittedly few) people who came into my sandbox to play with me. Sorry, guys. I hope I can make it up to you someday.
I'm also open to the idea that the project failed for other reasons than those I've outlined above; was the content too outre or graphic, the writing sloppy? Was the whole thing simply embarrassingly bad in execution? If you participated in Voices (or even if you didn't) and you have an opinion on why it ultimately didn't work out, I'd love to hear it.
The nice thing about failing is that you can always learn to do better. Every project is worthwhile, provided you learn from your failures. And I did learn a lot from Voices; so now, hopefully I've moved into new and different categories of mistake. Onward and upward.
Reader Comments (14)
While Elan's advice is good to an extent, you also don't want to go so far as "dumbing things down" for the audience. I know as a player, I *like* to figure things out for myself, and not to be spoon-fed. Still, it's true that in Voices I had no idea *we* were supposed to give *you* ideas as to what kind of story it was :)
Also... anything you learn a lesson from cannot be considered a total failure :)
Thank you for walking through your lessons learned. Too often we do not admit to ourselves, let alone the public, the mistakes we've made. However, I found it really humbling and informative. Thanks again for sharing. Cheers.
Jimbabb: Thanks. ^_^ I'm glad you got something out of it. I just think you can't expect to get better if you don't look for the places where you didn't do your best in the first place!
Andrea: I don't think it's necessarily bad that you didn't have a "real answer" planned out. (I just wrote about this concept, actually: http://www.chaoseed.com/garden/2010/05/29/game-design-inductive-continuity ) The problem was that (as you said) the participants didn't know what sort of interaction was allowed.
This week's reading list: Compare and contrast MS Paint Adventures (Problem Sleuth might be a good place to start: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4 ).
As you alluded in the your closing, every project is worthwhile. Learning what went wrong is important, but to focus entirely on the failings is also somewhat counter-productive.
What went right with Voices? What elements *would* you replicate if you attempted a similar project?
And while it's easy to rack up all of the things that *might* have contributed to a project's failure, any one of them might have been moot if another component had changed. Had you achieved a larger audience, you might not have found yourself painted into a narrative corner, for example.
Most importantly, you don't state what your goals and objectives were for this project, so it's impossible to call it a success or failure. Were you looking for marketing exposure as a writer? Commercial success? A certain number of regular contributors or total audience reach? A particular number of entries/word created? Whatever the goal, how would you measure it?
Creativity for the sake of creativity is awesome (and needed!), but if that's the original impetus for creation, it makes no sense to retroactively hold some kind of measuring stick of metric criteria against it.
To paraphrase an animated sage, "Stupid project, be more successful!" Or to put it another way, "don't punish your project for not living up to non-existent goals."
Scott: Ahh, fair enough. My objectives with Voices were not at all articulated, so of course I couldn't live up to them. Gazing backwards, my objectives were probably to give myself portfolio work I could point to, and stretch my creative wings to see how I worked when I was in charge. Also very much in the mode of trying new things for their own sake. But as above, I consider it poorly done because I didn't see it through more than anything else.
On the other hand, remember that MSPA is *extremely* efficient in terms of managing player/audience expectations. There's a blinking cursor and a screen with an avatar on it. The players have decades of gaming culture to draw on to decide how to interact with that. It sounds like Voices was trying to do something a bit more brand spanking new.
...the concept of failure +/- success is an interesting 1 when applied 2 any experimental>emergent or even traditional form: i've commented on here b4 regarding that + am actually swimming "its" demonically-furry grip myself atm with the _feralC_ [or #feralC] project at http://netwurker.net ...
the #feralC proj [which u've reffed here b4, thx!] is a 'socumentary' which breaks new ground (4 me anyway): channeling thru multiple fictional + non-fictional twitter accounts & incorporating media such as Augmented Reality [upcoming] + QR code tech. it meta_plot_reaches thru part-improv sessions where the "audience" is included + who actively help shape the narrative. it jigsaws character scripting [via live tweet formatting] + refs pop_culture conventions [think: game & scifi serials ("Previously on #feralC..") & episodically ARG-reffing + morality play arc(h)ing]. it involves an incredibly dynamic & evolving set of variables + skill-sets & is constantly surprising in its directionality [+ yes i do have an "ultimate MWUHAHA plan" that weaves throughout the various multilogues *but* that is highly adaptable given input from any "Secondary Chars" or audience members participating].
...in terms of determining a baseline 4 #feralC success: i'm partially buffered by the context in which it has currently gestated [tho the squalid birth was supposed 2 occur in 2006 when it was initially funded + then hastily shelved after concerns from the moolah-org that copyright would be an issue - back then it was 2 b a wiki!! (cf Voices!)]. it now exists as a Gallery commissioned work that's currently being shown with works of astoundingly wonderful & institutionally acknowledged artworks [Louise Bourgeois (RIP:(() among others: http://bit.ly/c78TXc] so that allows me substantial freedom in terms of it being divorced 4rm nasty commercialized money-machine requirements. it will require additional funding ultimately, but for now it's taken care of: that allows me an enormous amount of artistic>poetic freedom + i'm thoroughly enjoying creating>molding>muddy-ing in it all. in terms of overt audience participation: that's also difficult to quantify - the primary @pupa_mistress account has only 37 followers, but when examining the stats it's evident that at least 10 times that number r lurker-following the narrative via alternate channels [ie website[s]>individual twitter hashtag listings]?
...so all up i'm not really sure how 2 navigate the #feralC success vs failure waters....4 me + 4 select others [including 1 sec char who's labeled it "painfully brilliant" (yay!)] it's an intriguing unfolding play, well worth the effort + intricate machinations required... 4 others [ie those examining it thru number-participation or money generating potentiality] it's probably a failure?
I’d be interested to hear more of your thoughts on generating an audience. You obviously pointed out that you didn’t promote it enough, but what would you do differently? I’ll confess to having had an “if I build it they will come” experience in the past which was also a dismal failure. I think we all get seduced by stories of the cryptic link that gets magically found and is forwarded to every blog in the universe: the viral marketing nirvana. Sadly, those seem to be rather the exception, at least in my experience. I’ve improved on my initial launch failures but I certainly have yet to achieve the runaway 100K+ viral hit by …umm.. let’s just say more than decimal point or two. Someday....
I think it’s important to set check-points and objectives. Instead of letting something fade out, reach a point where you haven’t hit your objectives and just pull the plug. It sounds like you would have had a hard time making this type of project work without a participating community. Conversely, if it’s ”art” maybe you see it through anyway. My initial project lost its meager participatory audience before completion and I ended up playing it out myself, taking on multiple characters. I did have an audience of “lurkers”, but none of them were actively playing. But I had invested enough in the creation so that I was determined to see it completed even if I had to induce a multiple personality disorder in myself to do it.
Mez: I think most of us would say FeralC is a success for getting exhibit space and funding in the first place, and for getting any participants. ^_^ But that's another angle I hadn't considered yet. The metrics I use for success for something like a 2012 aren't and shouldn't be the same ones I use for my experimental art-for-its-own-sake stuff. Sets myself up to lose, that does.
Atemys: Thanks for the kind words. 'Viral' is such a difficult expectation, isn't it? I've talked about that in the past -- we have this idea that the best stuff all gets crowdsourced to the top of the attention stack, but it's not so reliable that you should bet your project (or career) on it. Really all you can do is create the best work you can, and then look for likely audience members to put it in front of. --Bravo to you for seeing your project to the end. It's a tough thing to do.
Mela: I'm glad you liked the post. ^_^
Kateri: Ahh, you see? Unclear intentions! Horrible!
Whalewdolphin: Absolutely OK to make mistakes! Fear the day you can't find any; that's the day you don't know how to get better anymore.
What i fFound difficult as a [reader/player/fFollower/contributor/cultist] was saying something that was useful, but was not also completely overbearing to what was happening. I fFelt like the main character, if she were to be told to break out an uzi and start going berzerk on the strange people, would respond with "what are you, insane?? Who carries around an uzi??"
I think, getting more to the point, we didn't know what kind of story we were living in, and we did not know what powers the main character had. Was she a ninja? We couldn't suggest she do ninja moves, without knowing that. She seemed to know nothing, which made her very fFragile, which made it hard to think she might be able to do anything at all.
I think if we had a genre right up fFront, it would have helped. If we saw her as suddenly able to do something un-known-before, that would have been interesting.
Thanks fFor the post-voices wrap up commentary! It had been sort of out-there, ya know? Nice to get a little closing thoughts on it.