21: 48 - ARG.com

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Written by: Melaisis


As loyal followers of this blog will remember; I tend to avoid forums like the plague. My personal extent of interacting with other individuals via the medium of unoriginal ‘posts’ and ‘threads’ was severely limited after a brief experience of the mystical Ways of the Forum many moons ago during my Neopets days. The times of ‘tweens’ attempting to communicate with one another as they would do on a chatroom over message boards made me cringe horribly, and I scarcely returned to the dark depths of that side of the Internet; restricting myself to so-called intellectual forums, such as The Escapist or even PC Gamer UK; both aimed at niche audiences so I did not have to experience the horrors of being ridiculed as a ‘gay n00b’ every time a lesser being had the guts to disagree with my long-established principles.

Fortunately ARG!.com has, in one fell swoop, managed to switch my opinion totally into reverse. I stumbled across their infamous banner advertisement sporting enormous eye-candy whilst exploring the vast land of similar sites. Immediately, being as shallow as I am, I was drawn into ARG!’s world. As many of you will already know; I like to think myself a bit of a Christopher Columbus of the Internet – exploring brave, new worlds as a pseudo-intrepid adventurer. Most of the junk I find out there is the viral universe’s adaptation of barren saltflats with the occasional exceedingly hostile native thrown in. Yet when upon disembarking onto the shores of ARG! - it was like finding El Dorado. In the case of the majority of forums, saying that the community and depth is ‘golden’ is a huge overstatement, but not with ARG!

The crowds found within the hallowed halls of this metaphorical palace of wonderment are, to say the least, fresh. In fact to call these guys ‘fresh’ is about as obvious as proclaiming videogames to be ‘fun’ or Sean Bean to be the world’s greatest actor*. It is definitely a huge risk basing an entire website upon simply the forum aspect with some extra features thrown in (the surprisingly competitive arcade, useful-as-always private messaging); but the gamble has paid off. I could spend all day discussing how invigorating it is for a creator not to lure in users simply by the premise of a ‘social networking site’. Then again, somehow, ARG! has achieved what many more popular forums have failed consistently to do: Attract the right kind of people. Certainly the members are not the most literate or intellectual of Internet denizens; yet this is not a wholly negative thing. Sometimes people require a place to casually discuss day-to-day topics with new, like-minded folks without feeling the pressure of having to engage in a depthy debate every three threads. ARG! - as a teen forum - is about as near to a place simply to chillout as one could ever hope to accomplish upon the wide sea that is the Internet.

A laidback attitude is applied across the board; from rules and disciplinary action to basically none-existent community taboo. People chose to discuss everything openly here, and we’re not just talking about sexually frustrated members. As a perfect landmark for the larger community, the forum has thoughtfully included an ‘Advice’ board where participants can discuss their problems – detailed or as vague as they wish – with the outside world, hoping for input. Fellow forum wanderers from around the web will know that this, as an idea, is hardly a grand act of originality. However, most other self-proclaimed ‘advisory’ communities claim that the ones with issues should be told to ‘get lives’ followed by any number of expletives. Once again, ARG!’s members are not afraid to break the mould: Instead assisting thread posters with actually helpful advice en masse. This truly highlights what a wonderful community ARG! is slowly blossoming into. Politeness and constructive dialogue is favoured above all here; proving that the people there are to communicate and network in a way which is, on the whole, far more satisfying than simply adding them as a friend on MySpace, or even flame-baiting.

Of course the site would not progress without the basics. Whilst having a strong, friendly set of members is essential to the forum’s beginnings, it is often the more technical difficulties that finally lead to the decline of even the mightiest of message board powerhouses. Veterans of GAIA Online; today the world’s biggest English-speaking forum, will remember the horrendous amount of downtime that particular site experienced during its early conception. This is no problem for ARG! however, as mechanical faults on the site are few and far between. The forum is consistently up, ready, and able to support up to (and beyond) 186 people online at one time. With the recent addition of the ‘Arcade’ section, followed by the ability to link your own movies from YouTube in ‘Videos’, ARG! is set to incorporate only the best parts of today’s Internet fads. Both non-Forum features are still being built around the dynamic model of interaction: With people racing to beat one another’s high scores on classical games, or perhaps commenting on that one particularly hilarious video. ARG! has all the bases covered.

This sort of quality, both within the small society and on the IT side of things, is extraordinarily rare. The idea has kicked off with tremendous initial success (why else would I be writing about it?) and let us all hope this level of class is kept as the year proceeds.

ARG! is still a relatively young site, and as such, I encourage you all to sign up and join the beginnings of a righteous revolution.

ARG!

*What!?

Labels: ARG, forum, Melaisis, Review

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Article Posted: Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 21:48.
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