Much of the early appeal of ARGs lay in the surprise and the confusion -- part of the legend of The Beast was that even if you knew it was fictional, you didn't know where it was going, and that made the suspension of disbelief easier.

And now, we're starting to see some ARG genre conventions. "Oh, I just got another e-mail that someone's been kidnapped and we all have to help them." Is it a challenge to keep the player surprised enough that they forget that it's not real?

It can be a fine balance. And it is interesting to me, in the early part of a gaming genre, people look at it like you said, "Oh, they're doing that again." Well, if you did that with books or movies, it would pretty much be every fifth book or movie. "Oh, they're doing that again."

And I think it's just because it's so new that people expect a much higher level of novelty out of it. And at some point, it has to survive past novelty, and actually figure out how to survive as a storytelling format, minus the novelty. And I think it's still in that transition.

So you think that would be a way for it to grow up -- that people would accept, "Okay, I know this formula or template, and I'm enjoying it, and even enjoying it for its sake."

Yeah. In that speech I did on world generation, one of the slogans I had on there was, "Establish the familiar so people can appreciate the exotic." And if you don't do that, if you try to do something that's too exotic, it doesn't give them anything to hold onto. They don't have a handle. They don't know what they're supposed to pay attention to.

So in many cases, the part that's familiar is the plot line. If I can grab onto that plot line, then I can appreciate the exotic of the fact that this plotline is happening in outer space or underwater -- as opposed to, if I have a totally exotic environment and a totally exotic plotline and totally exotic characters, I get lost.

Other times, you give them a very familiar setting, so the setting is something they're very comfortable in and they can immediately absorb, and then you can throw them a plotline which is totally whacko. They're able to appreciate the fact that the part that's exotic is the plot.

For the final question -- is it safe to say that a majority of the products you're working on will have a storytelling component?

Well, I'm a story guy. So even in -- I'm always looking for a universe that I find compelling, to try to populate with characters that will engage people. So yeah, it's safe to say that everything we do will try to do that.