sfawtde / dawtde evil rant...
image by Lee_in_plut0
OK so i know this is like. a highly unpopular opinion that’s gonna get me flamed to hell by the community and also probably my friends who love sfawtde / dawtde BUT... i did not like dawtde
any good critique will get into what the criteria is, so let’s get into it!!!
first, is an underrated one — puzzles! or well, usually figuring out encoded messages through base64, morse, caesar cipher, etc! in wifies poll he posted out of which 3 main components of an mcARG are most compelling to his audience (keyword: HIS audience — keep this in mind for later!) and clearly puzzles were the least favourite.
although puzzles actually generally take up a small amount of watch time, they’re actually an important aspect ^_^ not only are they just like. interesting and cool. but they also break up a lot of the more flat exposition just retelling what happens in the arg content itself.
ARG does indeed stand for alternate reality game and so many ppl forget this!! of course with the minecraft variety the media tends to be well. minecraft. and there’s nothing necessarily ‘wrong’ with that! it’s just that an arg shines its best when it uses its unique ability to involve various mediums! of course, one of the best things about the mcARG genre is that by nature, it’s accessible. for example, it’s rare that a mcARG video involves the real world because they honestly don’t need to! the game of minecraft is limitless and there’s so many cool things you can do with it outside of a 12 hour long video… that leads to a link with… a google drive with another 12 hour video and… a google doc. yay…
puzzles are the glue that holds all the components of an arg together, finding different links and clues that come together. the journey is just as important as the destination! it’s another part of the story. HOW you come to conclusions and figure out how all the puzzle pieces slide together is just as compelling as the finished puzzle. take it from me, im in puzzle club bro!!!!
unfortunately, both videos contain very little puzzles, ESPECIALLY dawtde. and the ones that were included were just. not that complex or interesting?? they were very linear and it just felt. wrong. especially knowing wifies used to make escape room content and work with ppl like kenadian and wato (who btw did contribute to the really cool boat glitch you see in part 2), i feel like there was room for, if not the traditional arg puzzle, at least MORE cool minecraft mechanics outside of just the boat phase.
in the mini ARG which was basically a teaser for part 2, wifies really shows that he IS capable of making good puzzles. it’s not that he couldn’t, it’s just that he didn’t.
a good arg will also have its puzzles well integrated into the story outside of just functioning as a bridge from vague video clip A to eerie website B. WHY are these things encoded? why couldn’t they just be said in plaintext or said without all this cryptic nonsense? is there someone else listening the sender is trying to circumvent?? is there something being hidden from us? can the messenger only talk in this manner because they’re some entity or robot?? so many of the ARGs wifies COVERS and others like zachobuilds made do this way better than sfawtde imo. it is genuinely hard to do, and if it wasn’t clear already, I DO NOT HATE WIFIES!! i am a big wifies fan actually!! and it’s precisely that reason that i think he is capable of doing so much better with what’s coming next ^_^
ARG’s are an incredibly delicate balancing act. hey, if having restrictions is great for creatives, then having the unlimited opportunities that creating an ARG provides is kinda hell for a storyteller! it’s understandable that not every video will be a 10/10 banger and that’s ok!!! but wifies has studied the greats, and i think he has great potential to become one. ANYWAY MOVING ON!!!
the way the puzzle works should also fit the characters and setting, related to what i said earlier. especially in the case of encoded messages. for example, in zachobuild’s live-streaming ARG, the puzzles were pretty simple but it actually enhanced the quality because of course! the messenger is a desperate child who probably doesn’t know crazy codes and has seen that very little people are paying attention. so she makes something simple that she can do quickly to avoid being spotted of course, she hides it in all these little hints so that the person watching doesn’t notice her plan, while still making it easy to understand so that people know something’s not right. and that makes so much sense for the protagonist evelyn and her situation. we just didn’t see that often — although i will commend that wifies highlighted the differences between avery and d3rlord3 (or derek, for simplicity’s sake) through the very different methods that they SOLVED puzzles with. yk, avery using brute force and derek being more traditional about it, unless there was an obvious workaround. i found that pretty clever, but just not as groundbreaking as i wish it felt to me.
(1/3)
(2/3) second, horror. why do args need horror and what constitutes ‘good’ horror?
in general i feel like there’s a misconception in the public consciousness about the importance of horror. that it’s just weird and scary and only weird and scary people consume it. therefore, it’s ‘pointless’! and as someone who is HOPEFULLY very much not those things, who generally doesn’t like consuming horror, and is scared shitless at everything… i’d still argue and defend it’s importance till my last limb. why?
it’s easy to look at the monster — psycho killer, scary monster in the cave, spooky ghost in the haunted house — and think. ok so it’s just to scare people?? for the thrill of it?? and it makes sense since unfortunately, a lot of low quality horror tends to be that way. but good quality horror has a very important distinction!! apart from the lack of reliance on solely jumpscares to make your audience invested lol.
like all good pieces of art, good horror has a clear purpose. usually to critique, warn, expose, or challenge. it is confronting in that manner because it’s a way to get your audience to listen and really see the ugliness of what you’re concerned about. maybe you’re trying to critique the horror of capitalism, challenge the status quo of loyalty to the mega corporations through the metaphor of zombies or robots or whatever. if you’re trying to talk about the experience of being a woman in a misogynistic society, you might explore the horror of having your agency taken or being forced to conform.
there’s two great videos from frostbyte freeman on how both sfawtde and dawtde are poor adaptions of the original king in yellow — there’s plenty of discourse surrounding that topic from ppl more qualified than me — but i actually don’t think whether or not it’s a faithful adaption is all too important, for different reasons of course.
i still agree with his belief that wifies ARG fell short, but not necessarily because it wasn’t a 1:1 reimagining of the king in yellow. because honestly, a sign of a good adaptation is not that it captures every little thing from the original. in fact, it’s not really quite adaptation or reimagining at all, it just happens to take inspiration from the mythos. but even looking at adaptations, which are usually criticised to hell and back by the internet for not being ‘faithful’ since they’re just ‘supposed’ to change the medium and nothing else, some of the most well received adaptations are the creative ones! the ones that dared to stray away from the original for the purpose of utilising their medium better.
when you’re taking inspiration from a previous piece of media or trying to weave intertextuality into your creation, it’s not only okay but actually encouraged to put your own spin on it! otherwise it’d just be a boring copy. however, the reason we take inspiration from others, especially really good literature like the king in yellow, is because there is some special aspect about the original that we want to emulate. the original king in yellow is a masterclass on writing good horror because it takes advantage of humanity’s innate fear of insanity to make a point about art and knowledge. and that’s just missing in wifies ARG. in sfawtde, the king in yellow just feels like a token villain, and not the genuinely terrifying and yet intriguing force it could’ve been
the reason why wifies failed to make good use of emulating the king in yellow is not because he strayed away, it’s because he failed to understand what made the original text so poignant, so confronting, so unsettling — so good!
(wifies did admit that he didnt read the king in yellow in its entirety until after dawtde came out, which explains a lot of things)
(3/3) third, storytelling. now this is one of the things i can say that sfawtde and dawtde did really well, apart from how the previous two criteria affected it.
i loved that derek was an actually smart clever protagonist, i liked that he knew so much more about avery than avery ever got to know about him (ouch), i loved the setting crafted by horace altman, among so many other things. wifies has a great skill for telling a compelling story, and if sfawtde was a complete failure, i would not even be entertaining it with critique! it is SO close to being amazing, it is already so good and that’s why it’s frustrating. because it could’ve been better.
unfortunately, what makes a good story is even MORE subjective than puzzles or horror. so i won’t quite be providing much further of a critical evaluation towards the storytelling. HOWEVER, i do want to provide an outside perspective that relates to a larger trend in the mcARG world overall.
the only videos covering ARGs used to be made by people wholly unrelated to the creation of the ARG. the start of the ARG would disrupt some normal content or just be something odd on the internet to build intrigue. people would become invested, and following a cookie crumb trail of clues, find themselves in a captivating journey, slowly piecing together this narrative mystery. it was beautiful in a way. often, questions were left unanswered on purpose. the goal was for the audience to draw their own conclusions, or maybe forever be left theorising.
questions. usually, the goal of a traditional narrative is to wrap everything up in a nice bow at the end, provide a satisfying ending. but ARGs have that unique ability to capitalise on the unsaid, on the unknown.
the best ARGs give the feeling that the participant has discovered something they were not meant to discover. something hidden, something wrong. a secret that only they, and the small community of those who are trying to solve it know.
it is intrigue. it is mystery. THAT is an ARG.
of course, as ARGs began to garner more attention, people began to make youtube videos on them that were VERY successful. and for good reason! solving an ARG is just unfortunately, not very accessible for the average person depending on the difficulty of the puzzles. especially with how long and (sometimes boring) the actual content might be, especially when you have to watch it hawk-eyed to not miss the clue. it’s like finding needles and needles in haystacks and haystacks. not the most thrilling thing.
youtube videos on ARGs boiled them down to their most interesting parts. allowed the reader to partake in the mystery and along the journey of discovery without doing much work. and there’s nothing wrong with that. in a way, these videos are their own little artform. and when mcARGs blew up, the same happened with those!
but to make a youtube video on an ARG, it has to either already be solved which means other people have probably already made videos on it, OR you have to solve it yourself (or come up with some unique conclusion to the general consensus about the answer to the central question). which is hard. especially when you need to pump out videos on a regular basis for the algorithm. solving puzzles can be quick or exhaustingly long. you don’t know! so minecraft youtubers found a solution — make your own ARG and pretend to be a person solving it. you can admit to that, your audience doesn’t really care and honestly there’s no reason to. they’re in it for the story!
but creating an ARG is very different from a youtube video. and for good reason. ARGs can do anything. not only does the medium itself allow for so much creativity, but the creator of an ARG is free to do whatever they want because they’re completely anonymous. no-one knows who made it, so there’s no incentive to be entertaining or clickable or palatable to the algorithm. they’re not getting money or fame for it. they’re making art for the sake of making art. they are trying to make it hidden. but youtubers need to have a very different approach. it’s why the ARGs they create tend to be so linear, so flat. they have a very genuine reason to be afraid to lose the audience, while the ARG allows the audience to get lost.
it’s not wrong. ARG videos are not ARGs. it’s just an interesting trend that i feel impacted sfawtde. maybe im looking at it too deeply, capitalism destroying art or whatever, but the way part two focused more on avery and derek’s relationship, had very little puzzles, and very little narration, felt like it was pandering to an audience, a majority. rather than trying to challenge the audience, confront them with something new.
media is not created in a vacuum. it is designed for an audience. not any particular audience. just the most possible people. and i feel strangely about that.
but that doesn’t mean an ARG video can’t be compelling. they have a perspective, a new character that they can make the audience care about, a driver of the narrative that i think ARG creators should take advantage of more — themselves!
what i mean is that, when youtubers make these mcARG videos, they’re doing it from the lens that they’re the guy solving it, for one reason or another. like any good character, a good mcARG video will give their narrator TWO things:
a motive for getting involved. why are they spending hours investigating this?
some transformation they undergo that changes them fundamentally as a person. after solving this ARG, what did they realise? what choices did they make?
otherwise, it’s no different from a retelling of what happens in the ARG and it loses its spark.
the worst part is that wifies IS capable of doing this. he did it on his video ‘finding a player that doesn’t exist’, and even though it wasn’t as successful on youtube, i found that it garnered much more genuine well-thoughtout praise. wifies — well, the wifies persona solving the ARG — was distraught over what alex was being put through, and he had to keep going despite the danger of the DMS and the horror of what he was witnessing to save this man. and once he let alex free, it’s clear in the video that something shifted in wifies. he made a hard decision, his journey weighed on his mind, and his heart was broken by the end of it all, but he knew he did the right thing. THAT’s compelling.
anyone who has watched the video knows the hollowness left afterwards. the questions that won’t leave your mind. a good piece of art will make you feel, will make you think. and it sure as hell did. i can write a whole essay on how it was honestly, the BEST mcARG video, but that’s for another day.
sfawtde and dawtde are not bad videos. they’re not even bad stories. they’re just not very good ARGs. and they’re… pretty poor ARG videos.
but this does not make wifies a bad storyteller. he is an amazing storyteller! and if the success of his channel doesn’t attest to that, i don’t know what will. those videos were not failures. but they could have been better, and i’m really excited to see what wifies comes up with now after making his very first ARG from scratch. because i have a feeling that all that he’s learned from sfawtde and dawtde will come in handy, and the next one will be that 10/10 banger.
